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diff --git a/1383-h/1383-h.htm b/1383-h/1383-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddc8dcc --- /dev/null +++ b/1383-h/1383-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9058 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Poems, Volume 3 [of 3], by George Meredith</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poems, Volume 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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 3 [OF 3]*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” +edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/fpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The South Wester" +title= +"The South Wester" + src="images/fps.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>POEMS<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">VOL. III</span></h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +GEORGE MEREDITH</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">SURREY EDITION</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +THE TIMES BOOK CLUB<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">376–384 OXFORD STREET, W.</span><br +/> +1912</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageiv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iv</span>Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, +Printers to his Majesty</p> +<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +v</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A STAVE OF ROVING TIM,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The wind is East, the wind is West,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A revelation came on Jane,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page5">5</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE RIDDLE FOR MEN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">This Riddle rede or die,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">One fairest of the ripe unwedded left</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page15">15</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>‘LOVE IS WINGED FOR TWO,’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page30">30</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>‘ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE,’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page30">30</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>‘JOY IS FLEET,’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE LESSON OF GRIEF,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Not ere the bitter herb we taste,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>WIND ON THE LYRE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">That was the chirp of Ariel</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page32">32</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE YOUTHFUL QUEST,</p> +<p class="gutindent">His Lady queen of woods to meet,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page33">33</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE EMPTY PURSE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Thou, run to the dry on this wayside +bank,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page34">34</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>TO THE COMIC SPIRIT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sword of Common Sense!—</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page56">56</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>YOUTH IN MEMORY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Days, when the ball of our vision</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page68">68</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>PENETRATION AND TRUST,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sleek as a lizard at round of a stone,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page75">75</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vi</span>NIGHT OF FROST IN MAY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">With splendour of a silver day,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page76">76</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A Satyr spied a Goddess in her bath,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page79">79</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>BREATH OF THE BRIAR,</p> +<p class="gutindent">O briar-scents, on yon wet wing</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>EMPEDOCLES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">He leaped. With none to hinder,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page82">82</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The day that is the night of days,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page83">83</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>TARDY SPRING,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Now the North wind ceases,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page85">85</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE LABOURER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">For a Heracles in his fighting ire there is +never the glory that follows</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page87">87</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sprung of the father blood, the mother +brain,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page89">89</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE WARNING,</p> +<p class="gutindent">We have seen mighty men ballooning high,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page99">99</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>OUTSIDE THE CROWD,</p> +<p class="gutindent">To sit on History in an easy chair,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page99">99</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>TRAFALGAR DAY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">He leads: we hear our Seaman’s +call</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page100">100</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>Odes in +Contribution to the Song of French History</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE REVOLUTION,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Not yet had History’s Aetna smoked the +skies,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page105">105</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>NAPOLÉON,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Cannon his name,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page116">116</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>FRANCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">We look for her that sunlike stood</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ALSACE-LORRAINE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The sister Hours in circles linked,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page150">150</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE CAGEING OF ARES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">How big of breast our Mother Gaea +laughed</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page170">170</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE NIGHT-WALK,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Awakes for me and leaps from shroud</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page175">175</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>AT THE CLOSE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page178">178</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A GARDEN IDYL,</p> +<p class="gutindent">With sagest craft Arachne worked</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page179">179</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>A Reading of +Life</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE VITAL CHOICE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Or shall we run with Artemis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page185">185</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>WITH THE HUNTRESS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Through the water-eye of night,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page186">186</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>WITH THE PERSUADER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Who murmurs, hither, hither: who</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page189">189</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE TEST OF MANHOOD,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Like a flood river whirled at rocky +banks,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page200">200</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE HUELESS LOVE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Unto that love must we through fire +attain,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page208">208</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>UNION IN DISSEVERANCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page209">209</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>SONG IN THE SONGLESS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">They have no song, the sedges dry,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pageviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +viii</span>THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH,</p> +<p class="gutindent">If that thou hast the gift of strength, then +know</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE MAIN REGRET,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Seen, too clear and historic within us, our +sins of omission</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page211">211</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ALTERNATION,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Between the fountain and the rill</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page211">211</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>FOREST HISTORY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Beneath the vans of doom did men pass +in.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>Fragments of the +Iliad in English Hexameter Verse</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">‘Heigh me! brazen of front, thou +glutton for plunder, how can one,</p> +<p class="gutindent">‘Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, +having heart of a deer, thou!</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page221">221</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a +forest enormous,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page225">225</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">These, then, he left, and away where ranks +were now clashing the thickest,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page227">227</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>PARIS AND DIOMEDES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">So he, with a clear shout of laughter,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page228">228</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>HYPNOS ON IDA,</p> +<p class="gutindent">They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother +of wild beasts,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page230">230</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it +bursts upon shingle,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page231">231</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE HORSES OF ACHILLES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of +the war-ground,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page232">232</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. ix</span>THE +MARES OF THE CAMARGUE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A hundred mares, all white! their manes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page234">234</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>‘ATKINS’,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Yonder’s the man with his life in his +hand,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page236">236</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE VOYAGE OF THE ‘OPHIR’,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Men of our race, we send you one</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page237">237</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE CRISIS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Spirit of Russia, now has come</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page239">239</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>OCTOBER 21, 1905,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The hundred years have passed, and he</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page241">241</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE CENTENARY OF GARIBALDI,</p> +<p class="gutindent">We who have seen Italia in the throes,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page243">243</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE WILD ROSE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">High climbs June’s wild rose,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page245">245</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE CALL,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Under what spell are we debased</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page247">247</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ON COMO,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A rainless darkness drew o’er the +lake</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page250">250</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>MILTON,</p> +<p class="gutindent">What splendour of imperial station man,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page251">251</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>IRELAND,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Fire in her ashes Ireland feels</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page253">253</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE YEARS HAD WORN THEIR SEASONS’ BELT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The years had worn their seasons’ +belt,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page255">255</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>FRAGMENTS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Open horizons round,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A wilding little stubble flower</p> +<p class="gutindent">From labours through the night, outworn,</p> +<p class="gutindent">This love of nature, that allures to +take</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page257">257</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>IL Y A CENT ANS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">That march of the funereal Past behold;</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page259">259</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pagex"></a><span class="pagenum">p. x</span>YOUTH +IN AGE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Once I was part of the music I heard</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page261">261</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>Epitaphs</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>TO A FRIEND LOST,</p> +<p class="gutindent">When I remember, friend, whom lost I +call,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page265">265</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>M. M.,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Who call her Mother and who calls her +Wife</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page265">265</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE LADY C. M.,</p> +<p class="gutindent">To them that knew her, there is vital +flame</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page266">266</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ON THE TOMBSTONE OF JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Thou our beloved and light of Earth hast +crossed</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page266">266</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>GORDON OF KHARTOUM,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Of men he would have raised to light he +fell:</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page266">266</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>J. C. M.,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A fountain of our sweetest, quick to +spring</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page267">267</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME,</p> +<p class="gutindent">With Alfred and St. Louis he doth win</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page267">267</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ISLET THE DACHS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Our Islet out of Helgoland, dismissed</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page267">267</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ON HEARING THE NEWS FROM VENICE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Now dumb is he who waked the world to +speak,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page268">268</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>HAWARDEN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">When comes the lighted day for men to +read</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page269">269</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>AT THE FUNERAL,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Her sacred body bear: the tenement</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>ANGELA BURDETT-COUTTS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Long with us, now she leaves us; she has +rest</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE YEAR’S SHEDDINGS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The varied colours are a fitful heap:</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>A STAVE +OF ROVING TIM<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">(ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN FRIENDLY +TRAMPS.)</span></h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> wind is East, +the wind is West,<br /> + Blows in and out of haven;<br /> +The wind that blows is the wind that’s best,<br /> + And croak, my jolly raven!<br /> +If here awhile we jigged and laughed,<br /> + The like we will do yonder;<br /> +For he’s the man who masters a craft,<br /> + And light as a lord can wander.<br /> + <a name="page2"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 2</span>So, foot the measure, Roving Tim,<br +/> + And croak, my +jolly raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">You live in rows of snug abodes,<br /> + With gold, maybe, for counting;<br /> +And mine’s the beck of the rainy roads<br /> + Against the sun a-mounting.<br /> +I take the day as it behaves,<br /> + Nor shiver when ’tis airy;<br /> +But comes a breeze, all you are on waves,<br /> + Sick chickens o’ Mother Carey!<br /> + So, now for next, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And croak, my +jolly raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">Sweet lass, you screw a lovely leer,<br /> + To make a man consider.<br /> +If you were up with the auctioneer,<br /> + I’d be a handsome bidder.<br /> +But wedlock clips the rover’s wing;<br /> + She tricks him fly to spider;<br /> +And when we get to fights in the Ring,<br /> + It’s trumps when you play outsider.<br /> + So, wrench and split, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And croak, my +jolly raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Along my winding way I know<br /> + A shady dell that’s winking;<br /> +The very corner for Self and Co<br /> + To do a world of thinking.<br /> +And shall I this? and shall I that?<br /> + Till Nature answers, ne’ther!<br /> +Strike match and light your pipe in your hat,<br /> + Rejoicing in sound shoe-leather!<br /> + So lead along, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And croak, my +jolly raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>V</h3> +<p class="poetry">A cunning hand ’ll hand you bread,<br /> + With freedom for your capers.<br /> +I’m not so sure of a cunning head;<br /> + It steers to pits or vapours.<br /> +But as for Life, we’ll bear in sight<br /> + The lesson Nature teaches;<br /> +Regard it in a sailoring light,<br /> + And treat it like thirsty leeches.<br /> + So, fly your jib, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And top your +boom, old raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p class="poetry">She’ll take, to please her dame and +dad,<br /> + The shopman nicely shaven.<br /> +She’ll learn to think o’ the marching lad<br /> + When perchers show they’re craven.<br /> +You say the shopman piles a heap,<br /> + While I perhaps am fasting;<br /> +And bless your wits, it haunts him in sleep,<br /> + His tin-kettle chance of lasting!<br /> + So hail the road, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And hail the +rain, old raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p class="poetry">He’s half a wife, yon pecker bill;<br /> + A book and likewise preacher.<br /> +With any soul, in a game of skill,<br /> + He’ll prove your over-reacher.<br /> +<a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>The reason +is, his brains are bent<br /> + On doing things right single.<br /> +You’d wish for them when pitching your tent<br /> + At night in a whirly dingle!<br /> + So, off we go, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And on we go, +old raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Lord, no, man’s lot is not for bliss;<br +/> + To call it woe is blindness:<br /> +It’ll here a kick, and it’s there a kiss,<br /> + And here and there a kindness.<br /> +He starts a hare and calls her joy;<br /> + He runs her down to sorrow:<br /> +The dogs within him bother the boy,<br /> + But ’tis a new day to-morrow.<br /> + So, I at helm, cries Roving +Tim,<br /> + And you at bow, +old raven!<br /> + The wind according to its whim<br +/> + Is in and out of +haven.</p> +<h2><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +5</span>JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">revelation</span> came on +Jane,<br /> +The widow of a labouring swain:<br /> +And first her body trembled sharp,<br /> +Then all the woman was a harp<br /> +With winds along the strings; she heard,<br /> +Though there was neither tone nor word.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">For past our hearing was the air,<br /> +Beyond our speaking what it bare,<br /> +And she within herself had sight<br /> +Of heaven at work to cleanse outright,<br /> +To make of her a mansion fit<br /> +For angel hosts inside to sit.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">They entered, and forthwith entranced,<br /> +Her body braced, her members danced;<br /> +Surprisingly the woman leapt;<br /> +And countenance composed she kept:<br /> +As gossip neighbours in the lane<br /> +Declared, who saw and pitied Jane.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">These knew she had been reading books,<br /> +The which was witnessed by her looks<br /> +Of late: she had a mania<br /> +For mad folk in America,<br /> +And said for sure they led the way,<br /> +But meat and beer were meant to stay.</p> +<h3><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>V</h3> +<p class="poetry">That she had visited a fair,<br /> +Had seen a gauzy lady there,<br /> +Alive with tricks on legs alone,<br /> +As good as wings, was also known:<br /> +And longwhiles in a sullen mood,<br /> +Before her jumping, Jane would brood.</p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p class="poetry">A good knee’s height, they say, she +sprang;<br /> +Her arms and feet like those who hang:<br /> +As if afire the body sped,<br /> +And neither pair contributed.<br /> +She jumped in silence: she was thought<br /> +A corpse to resurrection caught.</p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p class="poetry">The villagers were mostly dazed;<br /> +They jeered, they wondered, and they praised.<br /> +’Twas guessed by some she was inspired,<br /> +And some would have it she had hired<br /> +An engine in her petticoats,<br /> +To turn their wits and win their votes.</p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Her first was Winny Earnes, a kind<br /> +Of woman not to dance inclined;<br /> +But she went up, entirely won,<br /> +Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done;<br /> +And once a vixen wild for speech,<br /> +She found the better way to preach.</p> +<h3><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>IX</h3> +<p class="poetry">No long time after, Jane was seen<br /> +Directing jumps at Daddy Green;<br /> +And that old man, to watch her fly,<br /> +Had eyebrows made of arches high;<br /> +Till homeward he likewise did hop,<br /> +Oft calling on himself to stop!</p> +<h3>X</h3> +<p class="poetry">It was a scene when man and maid,<br /> +Abandoning all other trade,<br /> +And careless of the call to meals,<br /> +Went jumping at the woman’s heels.<br /> +By dozens they were counted soon,<br /> +Without a sound to tell their tune.</p> +<h3>XI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Along the roads they came, and crossed<br /> +The fields, and o’er the hills were lost,<br /> +And in the evening reappeared;<br /> +Then short like hobbled horses reared,<br /> +And down upon the grass they plumped:<br /> +Alone their Jane to glory jumped.</p> +<h3>XII</h3> +<p class="poetry">At morn they rose, to see her spring<br /> +All going as an engine thing;<br /> +And lighter than the gossamer<br /> +She led the bobbers following her,<br /> +Past old acquaintances, and where<br /> +They made the stranger stupid stare.</p> +<h3><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>XIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">When turnips were a filling crop,<br /> +In scorn they jumped a butcher’s shop:<br /> +Or, spite of threats to flog and souse,<br /> +They jumped for shame a public-house:<br /> +And much their legs were seized with rage<br /> +If passing by the vicarage.</p> +<h3>XIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">The tightness of a hempen rope<br /> +Their bodies got; but laundry soap<br /> +Not handsomer can rub the skin<br /> +For token of the washed within.<br /> +Occasionally coughers cast<br /> +A leg aloft and coughed their last.</p> +<h3>XV</h3> +<p class="poetry">The weaker maids and some old men,<br /> +Requiring rafters for the pen<br /> +On rainy nights, were those who fell.<br /> +The rest were quite a miracle,<br /> +Refreshed as you may search all round<br /> +On Club-feast days and cry, Not found!</p> +<h3>XVI</h3> +<p class="poetry">For these poor innocents, that slept<br /> +Against the sky, soft women wept:<br /> +For never did they any theft;<br /> +’Twas known when they their camping left,<br /> +And jumped the cold out of their rags;<br /> +In spirit rich as money-bags.</p> +<h3><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +9</span>XVII</h3> +<p class="poetry">They jumped the question, jumped reply;<br /> +And whether to insist, deny,<br /> +Reprove, persuade, they jumped in ranks<br /> +Or singly, straight the arms to flanks,<br /> +And straight the legs, with just a knee<br /> +For bending in a mild degree.</p> +<h3>XVIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">The villagers might call them mad;<br /> +An endless holiday they had,<br /> +Of pleasure in a serious work:<br /> +They taught by leaps where perils lurk,<br /> +And with the lambkins practised sports<br /> +For ’scaping Satan’s pounds and quarts.</p> +<h3>XIX</h3> +<p class="poetry">It really seemed on certain days,<br /> +When they bobbed up their Lord to praise,<br /> +And bobbing up they caught the glance<br /> +Of light, our secret is to dance,<br /> +And hold the tongue from hindering peace;<br /> +To dance out preacher and police.</p> +<h3>XX</h3> +<p class="poetry">Those flies of boys disturbed them sore<br /> +On Sundays and when daylight wore:<br /> +With withies cut from hedge or copse,<br /> +They treated them as whipping-tops,<br /> +And flung big stones with cruel aim;<br /> +Yet all the flock jumped on the same.</p> +<h3><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +10</span>XXI</h3> +<p class="poetry">For what could persecution do<br /> +To worry such a blessed crew,<br /> +On whom it was as wind to fire,<br /> +Which set them always jumping higher?<br /> +The parson and the lawyer tried,<br /> +By meek persistency defied.</p> +<h3>XXII</h3> +<p class="poetry">But if they bore, they could pursue<br /> +As well, and this the Bishop too;<br /> +When inner warnings proved him plain<br /> +The chase for Jump-to-glory Jane.<br /> +She knew it by his being sent<br /> +To bless the feasting in the tent.</p> +<h3>XXIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Not less than fifty years on end,<br /> +The Squire had been the Bishop’s friend:<br /> +And his poor tenants, harmless ones,<br /> +With souls to save! fed not on buns,<br /> +But angry meats: she took her place<br /> +Outside to show the way to grace.</p> +<h3>XXIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">In apron suit the Bishop stood;<br /> +The crowding people kindly viewed.<br /> +A gaunt grey woman he saw rise<br /> +On air, with most beseeching eyes:<br /> +And evident as light in dark<br /> +It was, she set to him for mark.</p> +<h3><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>XXV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Her highest leap had come: with ease<br /> +She jumped to reach the Bishop’s knees:<br /> +Compressing tight her arms and lips,<br /> +She sought to jump the Bishop’s hips:<br /> +Her aim flew at his apron-band,<br /> +That he might see and understand.</p> +<h3>XXVI</h3> +<p class="poetry">The mild inquiry of his gaze<br /> +Was altered to a peaked amaze,<br /> +At sight of thirty in ascent,<br /> +To gain his notice clearly bent:<br /> +And greatly Jane at heart was vexed<br /> +By his ploughed look of mind perplexed.</p> +<h3>XXVII</h3> +<p class="poetry">In jumps that said, Beware the pit!<br /> +More eloquent than speaking it—<br /> +That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast;<br /> +The heated nose on face of ghost,<br /> +Which comes of drinking: up and o’er<br /> +The flesh with me! did Jane implore.</p> +<h3>XXVIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">She jumped him high as huntsmen go<br /> +Across the gate; she jumped him low,<br /> +To coax him to begin and feel<br /> +His infant steps returning, peel<br /> +His mortal pride, exposing fruit,<br /> +And off with hat and apron suit.</p> +<h3><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>XXIX</h3> +<p class="poetry">We need much patience, well she knew,<br /> +And out and out, and through and through,<br /> +When we would gentlefolk address,<br /> +However we may seek to bless:<br /> +At times they hide them like the beasts<br /> +From sacred beams; and mostly priests.</p> +<h3>XXX</h3> +<p class="poetry">He gave no sign of making bare,<br /> +Nor she of faintness or despair.<br /> +Inflamed with hope that she might win,<br /> +If she but coaxed him to begin,<br /> +She used all arts for making fain;<br /> +The mother with her babe was Jane.</p> +<h3>XXXI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not<br /> +Her business, waved her from the spot.<br /> +Encircled by the men of might,<br /> +The head of Jane, like flickering light,<br /> +As in a charger, they beheld<br /> +Ere she was from the park expelled.</p> +<h3>XXXII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,<br /> +Did Jane around communicate:<br /> +For that the moment when began<br /> +The holy but mistaken man,<br /> +In view of light, to take his lift,<br /> +They cut him from her charm adrift!</p> +<h3><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +13</span>XXXIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">And he was lost: a banished face<br /> +For ever from the ways of grace,<br /> +Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.<br /> +They saw the Bishop’s wavering sprite<br /> +Within her look, at come and go,<br /> +Long after he had caused her woe.</p> +<h3>XXXIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Her greying eyes (until she sank<br /> +At Fredsham on the wayside bank,<br /> +Like cinder heaps that whitened lie<br /> +From coals that shot the flame to sky)<br /> +Had glassy vacancies, which yearned<br /> +For one in memory discerned.</p> +<h3>XXXV</h3> +<p class="poetry">May those who ply the tongue that cheats,<br /> +And those who rush to beer and meats,<br /> +And those whose mean ambition aims<br /> +At palaces and titled names,<br /> +Depart in such a cheerful strain<br /> +As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!</p> +<h3>XXXVI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Her end was beautiful: one sigh.<br /> +She jumped a foot when it was nigh.<br /> +A lily in a linen clout<br /> +She looked when they had laid her out.<br /> +It is a lily-light she bears<br /> +For England up the ladder-stairs.</p> +<h2><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>THE +RIDDLE FOR MEN</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">This</span> Riddle rede or die,<br /> + Says History since our Flood,<br /> + To warn her sons of power:—<br /> +It can be truth, it can be lie;<br /> +Be parasite to twist awry;<br /> +The drouthy vampire for your blood;<br /> +The fountain of the silver flower;<br /> +A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;<br /> +Supple of wax or tempered steel;<br /> +The spur to honour, snake in nest:<br /> +’Tis as you will with it to deal;<br /> + To wear upon the breast,<br /> + Or trample under heel.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry"> And rede you not aright,<br +/> + Says Nature, still in red<br /> + Shall History’s tale be writ!<br /> +For solely thus you lead to light<br /> +The trailing chapters she must write,<br /> +And pass my fiery test of dead<br /> +Or living through the furnace-pit:<br /> +Dislinked from who the softer hold<br /> +In grip of brute, and brute remain:<br /> +Of whom the woeful tale is told,<br /> +How for one short Sultanic reign,<br /> + Their bodies lapse to mould,<br /> + Their souls behowl the plain.</p> +<h2><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>THE +SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">One</span> fairest of the +ripe unwedded left<br /> +Her shadow on the Sage’s path; he found,<br /> +By common signs, that she had done a theft.<br /> +He could have made the sovereign heights resound<br /> +With questions of the wherefore of her state:<br /> +He on far other but an hour before<br /> +Intent. And was it man, or was it mate,<br /> +That she disdained? or was there haply more?</p> +<p class="poetry">About her mouth a placid humour slipped<br /> +The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve<br /> +Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped.<br /> +The surface was attentive to receive,<br /> +The secret underneath enfolded fast.<br /> +She had the step of the unconquered, brave,<br /> +Not arrogant; and if the vessel’s mast<br /> +Waved liberty, no challenge did it wave.<br /> +Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls,<br /> +With something of a wavering line unspelt.<br /> +They hold the look whose tenderness condoles<br /> +For what the sister in the look has dealt<br /> +Of fatal beyond healing; and her tones<br /> +A woman’s honeyed amorous outvied,<br /> +As when in a dropped viol the wood-throb moans<br /> +Among the sobbing strings, that plain and chide<br /> +<a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>Like +infants for themselves, less deep to thrill<br /> +Than those rich mother-notes for them breathed round.<br /> +Those voices are not magic of the will<br /> +To strike love’s wound, but of love’s wound give +sound,<br /> +Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams.<br /> +They waft to the moist tropics after storm,<br /> +When out of passion spent thick incense steams,<br /> +And jewel-belted clouds the wreck transform.</p> +<p class="poetry">Was never hand on brush or lyre to paint<br /> +Her gracious manners, where the nuptial ring<br /> +Of melody clasped motion in restraint:<br /> +The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing.<br /> +With such endowments armed was she and decked<br /> +To make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind;<br /> +Surpassing many a giant intellect,<br /> +The marvel of that cradled infant mind.<br /> +It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe;<br /> +Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed;<br /> +And promised in fair feminine to grow<br /> +A Sage’s match and mate, more heavenly orbed.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">Across his path the spouseless Lady cast<br /> +Her shadow, and the man that thing became.<br /> +His youth uprising called his age the Past.<br /> +This was the strong grey head of laurelled name,<br /> +And in his bosom an inverted Sage<br /> +Mistook for light of morn the light which sank.<br /> +But who while veins run blood shall know the page<br /> +Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank?<br /> +Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud,<br /> +Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in<br /> +To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed,<br /> +Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin<br /> +<a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>Quick as +the young, and spell those hieroglyphs<br /> +Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent;<br /> +They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs<br /> +For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent!<br /> +Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth,<br /> +The legends of her mission to beguile?</p> +<p class="poetry">Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youth<br +/> +He bore at times, and tempted the sly smile;<br /> +And not on her soft lips was it descried.<br /> +She stepped her way benevolently grave:<br /> +Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride,<br /> +By tossing victim to the courtier knave,<br /> +Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign.<br /> +Rather ’twas humbleness in being pursued,<br /> +As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine.<br /> +Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed?<br /> +All wisdom’s armoury this man could wield;<br /> +And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased<br /> +Traverse her woman’s curtain and poor shield,<br /> +For new example of a world diseased;<br /> +Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare;<br /> +A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast;<br /> +Yet she most surely to this man stood fair:<br /> +He worshipped like the young enthusiast,<br /> +Named simpleton or poet. Did he read<br /> +Right through, and with the voice she held reserved<br /> +Amid her vacant ruins jointly plead?</p> +<p class="poetry">Compassion for the man thus noble nerved<br /> +The pity for herself she felt in him,<br /> +To wreak a deed of sacrifice, and save;<br /> +At least, be worthy. That our soul may swim,<br /> +We sink our heart down bubbling under wave.<br /> +<a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>It bubbles +till it drops among the wrecks.<br /> +But, ah! confession of a woman’s breast:<br /> +She eminent, she honoured of her sex!<br /> +Truth speaks, and takes the spots of the confessed,<br /> +To veil them. None of women, save their vile,<br /> +Plays traitor to an army in the field.<br /> +The cries most vindicating most defile.<br /> +How shall a cause to Nature be appealed,<br /> +When, under pressure of their common foe,<br /> +Her sisters shun the Mother and disown,<br /> +On pain of his intolerable crow<br /> +Above the fiction, built for him, o’erthrown?<br /> +Irrational he is, irrational<br /> +Must they be, though not Reason’s light shall wane<br /> +In them with ever Nature at close call,<br /> +Behind the fiction torturing to sustain;<br /> +Who hear her in the milk, and sometimes make<br /> +A tongueless answer, shivered on a sigh:<br /> +Whereat men dread their lofty structure’s quake<br /> +Once more, and in their hosts for tocsin ply<br /> +The crazy roar of peril, leonine<br /> +For injured majesty. That sigh of dames<br /> +Is rare and soon suppressed. Not they combine<br /> +To shake the structure sheltering them, which tames<br /> +Their lustier if not wilder: fixed are they,<br /> +In elegancy scarce denoting ease;<br /> +And do they breathe, it is not to betray<br /> +The martyr in the caryatides.<br /> +Yet here and there along the graceful row<br /> +Is one who fetches breath from deeps, who deems,<br /> +Moved by a desperate craving, their old foe<br /> +May yield a trustier friend than woman seems,<br /> +And aid to bear the sculptured floral weight<br /> +Massed upon heads not utterly of stone:<br /> +May stamp endurance by expounding fate.<br /> +<a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>She turned +to him, and, This you seek is gone;<br /> +Look in, she said, as pants the furnace, brief,<br /> +Frost-white. She gave his hearing sight to view<br /> +The silent chamber of a brown curled leaf:<br /> +Thing that had throbbed ere shot black lightning through.<br /> +No further sign of heart could he discern:<br /> +The picture of her speech was winter sky;<br /> +A headless figure folding a cleft urn,<br /> +Where tears once at the overflow were dry.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">So spake she her first utterance on the +rack.<br /> +It softened torment, in the funeral hues<br /> +Round wan Romance at ebb, but drove her back<br /> +To listen to herself, herself accuse<br /> +Harshly as Love’s imperial cause allowed.<br /> +She meant to grovel, and her lover praised<br /> +So high o’er the condemnatory crowd,<br /> +That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed.</p> +<p class="poetry">The picture was of hand fast joined to hand,<br +/> +Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged<br /> +Under the threatened flash of a bright brand<br /> +At arm’s length up, for severing action edged.<br /> +Why, then Love’s Court of Honour contemplate;<br /> +And two drowned shorecasts, who, for the life esteemed<br /> +Above their lost, invoke an advocate<br /> +In Passion’s purity, thereby redeemed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne,<br +/> +The woman stricken by an arrow falls.<br /> +His advocate she can be, not her own,<br /> +If, Traitress to thy sex! one sister calls.<br /> +<a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>Have we +such scenes of drapery’s mournfulness<br /> +On Beauty’s revelations, witched we plant,<br /> +Over the fair shape humbled to confess,<br /> +An angel’s buckler, with loud choiric chant.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of +bard,<br /> +The lady’s hand in her physician’s knew.<br /> +She had not hoped for them as her award,<br /> +When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew<br /> +Her charge of counter-motives, none impure:<br /> +But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said,<br /> +Her free confession was to work his cure,<br /> +Show proofs for why she could not love or wed.<br /> +Were they not shown? His muteness shook in thrall<br /> +Her body on the verge of that black pit<br /> +Sheer from the treacherous confessional,<br /> +Demanding further, while perusing it.</p> +<p class="poetry">Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed.<br +/> +She sank; she snatched at colours; they were peel<br /> +Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed.<br /> +For the dark downward then her soul did reel.<br /> +A press of hideous impulse urged to speak:<br /> +A novel dread of man enchained her dumb.<br /> +She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek,<br /> +Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum:<br /> +Welcome to women, when, between man’s laws<br /> +And Nature’s thirsts, they, soul from body torn,<br /> +Give suck at breast to a celestial cause,<br /> +Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn.<br /> +<a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>Nathless +her forehead twitched a sad content,<br /> +To think the cure so manifest, so frail<br /> +Her charm remaining. Was the curtain’s rent<br /> +Too wide? he but a man of that herd male?<br /> +She saw him as that herd of the forked head<br /> +Butting the woman harrowed on her knees,<br /> +Clothed only in life’s last devouring red.<br /> +Confession at her fearful instant sees<br /> +Judicial Silence write the devil fact<br /> +In letters of the skeleton: at once,<br /> +Swayed on the supplication of her act,<br /> +The rabble reading, roaring to denounce,<br /> +She joins. No longer colouring, with skips<br /> +At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears<br /> +Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips<br /> +To do the scaffold’s office at his ears.</p> +<p class="poetry">Into the bitter judgement of that herd<br /> +On women, she, deeming it present, fell.<br /> +Her frenzy of abasement hugged the word<br /> +They stone with, and so pile their citadel<br /> +To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt.<br /> +As had he flung it, in her breast it burned.<br /> +Face and reflect it did her hot revolt<br /> +From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned;<br /> +Because the golden buckler was withheld,<br /> +She to herself applies the powder-spark,<br /> +For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled,<br /> +Perishing to astound the tyrant Dark.</p> +<p class="poetry">She had the Scriptural word so scored on +brain,<br /> +It rang through air to sky, and rocked a world<br /> +That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane;<br /> +Most women! see! by the man’s view dustward hurled,<br /> +<a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.<br /> +They sink upon their nature, the unnamed,<br /> +And sops of nourishment may get some few,<br /> +In place of understanding, scourged and shamed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Barely have seasoned women understood<br /> +The great Irrational, who thunders power,<br /> +Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood,<br /> +And courts her in the covert’s dewy hour;<br /> +Returning to his fortress nigh night’s end,<br /> +With execration of her daughters’ lures.<br /> +They help him the proud fortress to defend,<br /> +Nor see what front it wears, what life immures,<br /> +The murder it commits; nor that its base<br /> +Is shifty as a huckster’s opening deal<br /> +For bargain under smoothest market face,<br /> +While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel,<br /> +Justice protests that Reason is her seat;<br /> +Elect Convenience, as Reason masked,<br /> +Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat;<br /> +Until a sentient world is overtasked,<br /> +And rouses Reason’s fountain-self: she calls<br /> +On Nature; Nature answers: Share your guilt<br /> +In common when contention cracks the walls<br /> +Of the big house which not on me is built.</p> +<p class="poetry">The Lady said as much as breath will bear;<br +/> +To happier sisters inconceivable:<br /> +Contemptible to veterans of the fair,<br /> +Who show for a convolving pearly shell,<br /> +A treasure of the shore, their written book.<br /> +As much as woman’s breath will bear and live<br /> +Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look,<br /> +That held as if for grain the summing sieve.<br /> +<a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>Her judge +now brightened without pause, as wakes<br /> +Our homely daylight after dread of spells.<br /> +Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes<br /> +Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells<br /> +About a story of the naked flesh,<br /> +Intending but to put some garment on,<br /> +Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh,<br /> +A traitor lurks and will be known anon.<br /> +Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,<br /> +Stationed for index down an ancient track:<br /> +And ware of it was he while she poured out<br /> +A broken moon on forest-waters black.</p> +<p class="poetry">Though past the stage where midway men are +skilled<br /> +To scan their senses wriggling under plough,<br /> +When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled,<br /> +Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,<br /> +Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,<br /> +Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed<br /> +Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech,<br /> +The valour of that rawness he could read.<br /> +Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran<br /> +From senses up to thoughts, how she had read<br /> +Maternally the warm remainder man<br /> +Beneath his crust, and Nature’s pity shed,<br /> +In shedding dearer than heart’s blood to light<br /> +His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.<br /> +Therewith he could espy Confession’s fright;<br /> +Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks;<br /> +They suck from soil, and have their urgencies<br /> +Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves.<br /> +Veins of divergencies, convergencies,<br /> +Our botanist in womankind perceives;<br /> +<a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>And if he +hugs no wound, the man can prize<br /> +That splendid consummation and sure proof<br /> +Of more than heart in her, who might despise,<br /> +Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof<br /> +To soar and be like Nature’s pity: she<br /> +Instinctive of what virtue in young days<br /> +Had served him for his pilot-star on sea,<br /> +To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze<br /> +Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue<br /> +Was gifted to encourage and assure.<br /> +He gave her of the deep well she had sprung;<br /> +And name it gratitude, the word is poor.<br /> +But name it gratitude, is aught as rare<br /> +From sex to sex? And let it have survived<br /> +Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair,<br /> +Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived:<br /> +Unknown to Passion, generous for prey:<br /> +Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.<br /> +Their tenderest of self did each one slay;<br /> +His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce;<br /> +Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,<br /> +Things living, slew they, and no artery bled.<br /> +A moment of some sacrificial smoke<br /> +They passed, and were the dearer for their dead.</p> +<p class="poetry">He learnt how much we gain who make no +claims.<br /> +A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire<br /> +Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames,<br /> +Confessing; and its conjured image dire,<br /> +Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed;<br /> +The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force,<br /> +Visioned to hold corrected and abashed<br /> +Our senile emulous; which rolls its course<br /> +<a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>Proud to +the shattering end; with these few last<br /> +Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice,<br /> +Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!<br /> +And still, though having skin for man’s abuse,<br /> +Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath<br /> +Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet,<br /> +Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth<br /> +Between the vivid lips; a vassal set;<br /> +And numb, of formal value. Are we true<br /> +In nature, never natural thing repents;<br /> +Albeit receiving punishment for due,<br /> +Among the group of this world’s penitents;<br /> +Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft<br /> +Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.</p> +<p class="poetry">Our world believes it stabler if the soft<br /> +Are whipped to show the face repentance wears.<br /> +Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,<br /> +Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;<br /> +Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom<br /> +The chasm between our passions and our wits!</p> +<p class="poetry">Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows,<br /> +It trembles at betrayal of a sore.<br /> +Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose<br /> +Impurities for clearness at the core.</p> +<p class="poetry">She to her hungered thundering in breast,<br /> +<i>Ye shall not starve</i>, not feebly designates<br /> +The world repressing as a life repressed,<br /> +Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates.<br /> +<a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>How Sin, +amid the shades Cimmerian,<br /> +Repents, she points for sight: and she avers,<br /> +The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan<br /> +Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters.</p> +<p class="poetry">Sin against immaturity, the sin<br /> +Of ravenous excess, what deed divides<br /> +Man from vitality; these bleed within;<br /> +Bleed in the crippled relic that abides.<br /> +Perpetually they bleed; a limb is lost,<br /> +A piece of life, the very spirit maimed.<br /> +But culprit who the law of man has crossed<br /> +With Nature’s dubiously within is blamed;<br /> +Despite our cry at cutting of the whip,<br /> +Our shiver in the night when numbers frown,<br /> +We but bewail a broken fellowship,<br /> +A sting, an isolation, a fall’n crown.</p> +<p class="poetry">Abject of sinners is that sensitive,<br /> +The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled<br /> +Incorrigible: such title do we give<br /> +To the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled;<br /> +And, taking it for Nature, place in ban<br /> +Our Mother, as a Power wanton-willed,<br /> +The shame and baffler of the soul of man,<br /> +The recreant, reptilious. Do thou build<br /> +Thy mind on her foundations in earth’s bed;<br /> +Behold man’s mind the child of her keen rod,<br /> +For teaching how the wits and passions wed<br /> +To rear that temple of the credible God;<br /> +Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain,<br /> +Will shine, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm:<br /> +Then, as a pathway through a field of grain,<br /> +Man’s laws appear the blind progressive worm,<br /> +<a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>That moves +by touch, and thrust of linking rings<br /> +The which to endow with vision, lift from mud<br /> +To level of their nature’s aims and springs,<br /> +Must those, the twain beside our vital flood,<br /> +Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife<br /> +(Whom the so rosy ferryman invites<br /> +To junction, and mid-channel over Life,<br /> +Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites)<br /> +Instruct in deeper than Convenience,<br /> +In higher than the harvest of a year.<br /> +Only the rooted knowledge to high sense<br /> +Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur<br /> +For fruitfullest advancement, eye a mark<br /> +Beyond the path with grain on either hand,<br /> +Help to the steering of our social Ark<br /> +Over the barbarous waters unto land.</p> +<p class="poetry">For us the double conscience and its war,<br /> +The serving of two masters, false to both,<br /> +Until those twain, who spring the root and are<br /> +The knowledge in division, plight a troth<br /> +Of equal hands: nor longer circulate<br /> +A pious token for their current coin,<br /> +To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate,<br /> +Fair feminine and masculine shall join<br /> +Upon an upper plane, still common mould,<br /> +Where stamped religion and reflective pace<br /> +A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold<br /> +Rounds to horizon for their soul’s embrace.<br /> +Then shall those noblest of the earth and sun<br /> +Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea.<br /> +But not till Nature’s laws and man’s are one,<br /> +Can marriage of the man and woman be.</p> +<h3><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>V</h3> +<p class="poetry">He passed her through the sermon’s dull +defile.<br /> +Down under billowy vapour-gorges heaved<br /> +The city and the vale and mountain-pile.<br /> +She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved.</p> +<p class="poetry">A new land in an old beneath her lay;<br /> +And forth to meet it did her spirit rush,<br /> +As bride who without shame has come to say,<br /> +Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush.</p> +<p class="poetry">A natural woman’s heart, not more than +clad<br /> +By station and bright raiment, gathers heat<br /> +From nakedness in trusted hands: she had<br /> +The joy of those who feel the world’s heart beat,<br /> +After long doubt of it as fire or ice;<br /> +Because one man had helped her to breathe free;<br /> +Surprised to faith in something of a price<br /> +Past the old charity in chivalry:—<br /> +Our first wild step to right the loaded scales<br /> +Displaying women shamefully outweighed.<br /> +The wisdom of humaneness best avails<br /> +For serving justice till that fraud is brayed.<br /> +Her buried body fed the life she drank.<br /> +And not another stripping of her wound!<br /> +The startled thought on black delirium sank,<br /> +While with her gentle surgeon she communed,<br /> +And woman’s prospect of the yoke repelled.<br /> +Her buried body gave her flowers and food;<br /> +The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled;<br /> +Love, the large love that folds the multitude.<br /> +<a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +29</span>Soul’s chastity in honesty, and this<br /> +With beauty, made the dower to men refused.<br /> +And little do they know the prize they miss;<br /> +Which is their happy fortune! Thus he mused</p> +<p class="poetry">For him, the cynic in the Sage had play<br /> +A hazy moment, by a breath dispersed;<br /> +To think, of all alive most wedded they,<br /> +Whom time disjoined! He needed her quick thirst<br /> +For renovated earth: on earth she gazed,<br /> +With humble aim to foot beside the wise.<br /> +Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raised<br /> +Yet lowly over morning’s pure grey eyes.</p> +<h2><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +30</span>‘LOVE IS WINGED FOR TWO’</h2> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Love</span> is winged for two,<br /> + In the worst he weathers,<br /> + When their hearts are tied;<br /> + But if they divide,<br /> + O too true!<br /> +Cracks a globe, and feathers, feathers,<br /> +Feathers all the ground bestrew.</p> +<p class="poetry">I was breast of morning sea,<br /> +Rosy plume on forest dun,<br /> +I the laugh in rainy fleeces,<br /> + While with me<br /> + She made one.<br /> +Now must we pick up our pieces,<br /> +For that then so winged were we.</p> +<h2>‘ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE’</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Ask</span>, is Love +divine,<br /> +Voices all are, ay.<br /> +Question for the sign,<br /> +There’s a common sigh.<br /> +Would we, through our years,<br /> +Love forego,<br /> +Quit of scars and tears?<br /> +Ah, but no, no, no!</p> +<h2><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +31</span>‘JOY IS FLEET’</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Joy</span> is fleet,<br /> +Sorrow slow.<br /> +Love, so sweet,<br /> +Sorrow will sow.<br /> +Love, that has flown<br /> +Ere day’s decline,<br /> +Love to have known,<br /> +Sorrow, be mine!</p> +<h2>THE LESSON OF GRIEF</h2> +<p class="poetry">Not ere the bitter herb we taste,<br /> +Which ages thought of happy times,<br /> +To plant us in a weeping waste,<br /> +Rings with our fellows this one heart<br /> + + +Accordant chimes.</p> +<p class="poetry">When I had shed my glad year’s leaf,<br +/> +I did believe I stood alone,<br /> +Till that great company of Grief<br /> +Taught me to know this craving heart<br /> + For not my own.</p> +<h2><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>WIND +ON THE LYRE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">That</span> was the chirp +of Ariel<br /> +You heard, as overhead it flew,<br /> +The farther going more to dwell,<br /> +And wing our green to wed our blue;<br /> +But whether note of joy or knell,<br /> +Not his own Father-singer knew;<br /> +Nor yet can any mortal tell,<br /> +Save only how it shivers through;<br /> +The breast of us a sounded shell,<br /> +The blood of us a lighted dew.</p> +<h2><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>THE +YOUTHFUL QUEST</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">His</span> Lady queen of +woods to meet,<br /> + He wanders day and night:<br /> +The leaves have whisperings discreet,<br /> + The mossy ways invite.</p> +<p class="poetry">Across a lustrous ring of space,<br /> + By covert hoods and caves,<br /> +Is promise of her secret face<br /> + In film that onward waves.</p> +<p class="poetry">For darkness is the light astrain,<br /> + Astrain for light the dark.<br /> +A grey moth down a larches’ lane<br /> + Unwinds a ghostly spark.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her lamp he sees, and young desire<br /> + Is fed while cloaked she flies.<br /> +She quivers shot of violet fire<br /> + To ash at look of eyes.</p> +<h2><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>THE +EMPTY PURSE<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">A SERMON TO OUR LATER PRODIGAL +SON</span></h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Thou</span>, run to the dry +on this wayside bank,<br /> +Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!<br /> + Quenched youth, and is that thy purse?<br /> +Even such limp slough as the snake has left<br /> +Slack to the gale upon spikes of whin,<br /> +For cast-off coat of a life gone blank,<br /> +In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine;<br /> + And thine to crave and to curse<br /> + The sweet thing once within.<br /> +Accuse him: some devil committed the theft,<br /> + Which leaves of the portly a skin,<br /> + No more; of the weighty a whine.</p> +<p class="poetry">Pursue him: and first, to be sure of his +track,<br /> +Over devious ways that have led to this,<br /> + In the stream’s consecutive line,<br /> + Let memory lead thee back<br /> +To where waves Morning her fleur-de-lys,<br /> +Unflushed at the front of the roseate door<br /> +Unopened yet: never shadow there<br /> + Of a Tartarus lighted by Dis<br /> + For souls whose cry is, alack!<br /> +An ivory cradle rocks, apeep<br /> +Through his eyelashes’ laugh, a breathing pearl.<br /> +<a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>There the +young chief of the animals wore<br /> +A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware<br /> +Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap.<br /> +In a dingle away from a rutted highroad,<br /> +Around him the earliest throstle and merle,<br /> +Our human smile between milk and sleep,<br /> + Effervescent of Nature he crowed.<br /> +Fair was that season; furl over furl<br /> +The banners of blossom; a dancing floor<br /> +This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair<br /> +Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast:<br /> +Careless, a centre of vigilant care.<br /> +Thy mother kisses an infant curl.<br /> +The room of the toys was a boundless nest,<br /> + A kingdom the field of the games,<br /> + Till entered the craving for more,<br /> + And the worshipped small body had aims.<br /> +A good little idol, as records attest,<br /> +When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream<br /> +By sweets and caresses: he gave but sign<br /> +That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race,<br /> +Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine.<br /> +Almost magician, his earliest dream<br /> + Was lord of the unpossessed<br /> + For a look; himself and his chase,<br /> + As on puffs of a wind at whirl,<br /> + Made one in the wink of a gleam.<br /> + She kisses a locket curl,<br /> +She conjures to vision a cherub face,<br /> + When her butterfly counted his day<br /> + All meadow and flowers, mishap<br /> + Derided, and taken for play<br /> + The fling of an urchin’s cap.<br /> +<a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>When her +butterfly showed him an eaglet born,<br /> + For preying too heedlessly bred,<br /> + What a heart clapped in thee then!<br /> + With what fuller colours of morn!<br /> +And high to the uttermost heavens it flew,<br /> + Swift as on poet’s pen.<br /> + It flew to be wedded, to wed<br /> + The mystery scented around:<br /> + Issue of flower and dew,<br /> + Issue of light and sound:<br /> + Thinner than either; a thread<br /> + Spun of the dream they threw<br /> + To kindle, allure, evade.<br /> +It ran the sea-wave, the garden’s dance,<br /> +To the forest’s dark heart down a dappled glade;<br /> + Led on by a perishing glance,<br /> + By a twinkle’s eternal waylaid.<br /> +Woman, the name was, when she took form;<br /> +Sheaf of the wonders of life. She fled,<br /> +Close imaged; she neared, far seen. How she made<br /> +Palpitate earth of the living and dead!<br /> +Did she not show thee the world designed<br /> +Solely for loveliness? Nested warm,<br /> +The day was the morrow in flight. And for thee,<br /> +She muted the discords, tuned, refined;<br /> +Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak.<br /> +Eye of the waters, and throb of the tree,<br /> +Sliding on radiance, winging from shade,<br /> +With her witch-whisper o’er ruins, in reeds,<br /> +She sang low the song of her promise delayed;<br /> +Beckoned and died, as a finger of smoke<br /> +Astream over woodland. And was not she<br /> +History’s heroines white on storm?<br /> +Remember her summons to valorous deeds.<br /> +Shone she a lure of the honey-bag swarm,<br /> +<a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>Most was +her beam on the knightly: she led<br /> +For the honours of manhood more than the prize;<br /> + Waved her magnetical yoke<br /> + Whither the warrior bled,<br /> + Ere to the bower of sighs.<br /> +And shy of her secrets she was; under deeps<br /> +Plunged at the breath of a thirst that woke<br /> +The dream in the cave where the Dreaded sleeps.</p> +<p class="poetry">Away over heaven the young heart flew,<br /> +And caught many lustres, till some one said<br /> +(Or was it the thought into hearing grew?),<br /> + <i>Not thou as commoner men</i>!<br /> + Thy stature puffed and it swayed,<br /> + It stiffened to royal-erect;<br /> + A brassy trumpet brayed;<br /> + A whirling seized thy head;<br /> + The vision of beauty was flecked.<br /> + Note well the how and the when,<br /> + The thing that prompted and sped.<br /> + Thereanon the keen passions clapped wing,<br /> + Fixed eye, and the world was prey.<br /> +No simple world of thy greenblade Spring,<br /> + Nor world of thy flowerful prime<br /> + On the topmost Orient peak<br /> + Above a yet vaporous day.<br /> + Flesh was it, breast to beak:<br /> +A four-walled windowless world without ray,<br /> +Only darkening jets on a river of slime,<br /> +Where harsh over music as woodland jay,<br /> + A voice chants, Woe to the weak!<br /> + And along an insatiate feast,<br /> + Women and men are one<br /> + In the cup transforming to beast.<br /> +<a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>Magian +worship they paid to their sun,<br /> +Lord of the Purse! Behold him climb.<br /> + Stalked ever such figure of fun<br /> +For monarch in great-grin pantomime?<br /> +See now the heart dwindle, the frame distend;<br /> +The soul to its anchorite cavern retreat,<br /> +From a life that reeks of the rotted end;<br /> +While he—is he pictureable? replete,<br /> +Gourd-like swells of the rank of the soil,<br /> + Hollow, more hollow at core.<br /> + And for him did the hundreds toil<br /> + Despised; in the cold and heat,<br /> + This image ridiculous bore<br /> + On their shoulders for morsels of meat!</p> +<p class="poetry">Gross, with the fumes of incense full,<br /> +With parasites tickled, with slaves begirt,<br /> +He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull,<br /> + He rolled him, a dog, in dirt.<br /> +And dog, bull, cook, was he, fanged, horned, plumed;<br /> +Original man, as philosophers vouch;<br /> +Carnivorous, cannibal; length-long exhumed,<br /> +Frightfully living and armed to devour;<br /> +The primitive weapons of prey in his pouch;<br /> + The bait, the line and the hook:<br /> + To feed on his fellows intent.<br /> + God of the Danaé shower,<br /> + He had but to follow his bent.<br /> +He battened on fowl not safely hutched,<br /> + On sheep astray from the crook;<br /> + A lure for the foolish in fold:<br /> +To carrion turning what flesh he touched.<br /> + And O the grace of his air,<br /> + As he at the goblet sips,<br /> + <a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +39</span>A centre of girdles loosed,<br /> + With their grisly label, Sold!<br /> +Credulous hears the fidelity swear,<br /> +Which has roving eyes over yielded lips:<br /> +To-morrow will fancy himself the seduced,<br /> + The stuck in a treacherous slough,<br /> +Because of his faith in a purchased pair,<br /> + False to a vinous vow.</p> +<p class="poetry">In his glory of banquet strip him bare,<br /> + And what is the creature we view?<br /> +Our pursy Apollo Apollyon’s tool;<br /> + A small one, still of the crew<br /> + By serpent Apollyon blest:<br /> +His plea in apology, blindfold Fool.<br /> +A fool surcharged, propelled, unwarned;<br /> + Not viler, you hear him protest:<br /> +Of a popular countenance not incorrect.<br /> +But deeds are the picture in essence, deeds<br /> + Paint him the hooved and homed,<br /> + Despite the poor pother he pleads,<br /> + And his look of a nation’s elect.<br /> + We have him, our quarry confessed!<br /> + And scan him: the features inspect<br /> + Of that bestial multiform: cry,<br /> +Corroborate I, O Samian Sage!<br /> + The book of thy wisdom, proved<br /> + On me, its last hieroglyph page,<br /> + Alive in the horned and hooved?<br /> + Thou! will he make reply.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Thus has the plenary purse<br +/> + Done often: to do will engage<br /> +Anew upon all of thy like, or worse.<br /> + <a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>And now is thy deepest regret<br /> + To be man, clean rescued from beast:<br /> + From the grip of the Sorcerer, Gold,<br /> + Celestially released.</p> +<p class="poetry"> But now from his cavernous +hold,<br /> + Free may thy soul be set,<br /> +As a child of the Death and the Life, to learn,<br /> + Refreshed by some bodily sweat,<br /> + The meaning of either in turn,<br /> + What issue may come of the two:—<br /> +A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach<br /> +Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold:<br /> +A firmament passing our visible blue.<br /> +To those having nought to reflect it, ’tis nought;<br /> +To those who are misty, ’tis mist on the beach<br /> +From the billow withdrawing; to those who see<br /> + Earth, our mother, in thought,<br /> + Her spirit it is, our key.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ay, the Life and the Death are her words to us +here,<br /> +Of one significance, pricking the blind.<br /> +This is thy gain now the surface is clear:<br /> +To read with a soul in the mirror of mind<br /> +Is man’s chief lesson.—Thou smilest! I +preach!<br /> + Acid smiling, my friend, reveals<br /> +Abysses within; frigid preaching a street<br /> + Paved unconcernedly smooth<br /> + For the lecturer straight on his heels,<br /> + Up and down a policeman’s beat;<br /> + Bearing tonics not labelled to soothe.<br /> +Thou hast a disgust of the sermon in rhyme.<br /> +It is not attractive in being too chaste.<br /> +The popular tale of adventure and crime<br /> +<a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>Would +equally sicken an overdone taste.<br /> +So, then, onward. Philosophy, thoughtless to soothe,<br /> +Lifts, if thou wilt, or there leaves thee supine.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thy condition, good sooth, has no seeming of +sweet;<br /> +It walks our first crags, it is flint for the tooth,<br /> + For the thirsts of our nature brine.<br /> +But manful has met it, manful will meet.<br /> +And think of thy privilege: supple with youth,<br /> + To have sight of the headlong swine,<br /> + Once fouling thee, jumping the dips!<br /> + As the coin of thy purse poured out:<br /> + An animal’s holiday past:<br /> +And free of them thou, to begin a new bout;<br /> +To start a fresh hunt on a resolute blast:<br /> +No more an imp-ridden to bournes of eclipse:<br /> +Having knowledge to spur thee, a gift to compare;<br /> +Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book<br /> +Of the world can be read, by necessity urged.<br /> +For witness, what blinkers are they who look<br /> +From the state of the prince or the millionnaire!<br /> + They see but the fish they attract,<br /> + The hungers on them converged;<br /> +And never the thought in the shell of the act,<br /> + Nor ever life’s fangless mirth.<br /> +But first, that the poisonous of thee be purged,<br /> + Go into thyself, strike Earth.<br /> +She is there, she is felt in a blow struck hard.<br /> +Thou findest a pugilist countering quick,<br /> +Cunning at drives where thy shutters are barred;<br /> +Not, after the studied professional trick,<br /> +Blue-sealing; she brightens the sight. Strike Earth,<br /> +Antaeus, young giant, whom fortune trips!<br /> + And thou com’st on a saving fact,<br /> + To nourish thy planted worth.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>Be it clay, flint, mud, or the rubble of chips,<br /> +Thy roots have grasp in the stern-exact:<br /> +The redemption of sinners deluded! the last<br /> + Dry handful, that bruises and saves.<br /> +To the common big heart are we bound right fast,<br /> + When our Mother admonishing nips<br /> + At the nakedness bare of a clout,<br /> + And we crave what the commonest craves.</p> +<p class="poetry"> This wealth was a +fortress-wall,<br /> +Under which grew our grim little beast-god stout;<br /> +Self-worshipped, the foe, in division from all;<br /> +With crowds of illogical Christians, no doubt;<br /> + Till the rescuing earthquake cracked.<br /> + Thus are we man made firm;<br /> + Made warm by the numbers compact.<br /> +We follow no longer a trumpet-snout,<br /> + At a trot where the hog is tracked,<br /> + Nor wriggle the way of the worm.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Thou wilt spare us the +cynical pout<br /> +At humanity: sign of a nature bechurled.<br /> + No stenchy anathemas cast<br /> + Upon Providence, women, the world.<br /> +Distinguish thy tempers and trim thy wits.<br /> +The purchased are things of the mart, not classed<br /> +Among resonant types that have freely grown.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thy knowledge of women might be surpassed:<br +/> +As any sad dog’s of sweet flesh when he quits<br /> + The wayside wandering bone!<br /> +No revilings of comrades as ingrates: thee<br /> +The tempter, misleader, and criminal (screened<br /> + By laws yet barbarous) own.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>If some one performed Fiend’s deputy,<br /> + He was for awhile the Fiend.<br /> + Still, nursing a passion to speak,<br /> +As the punch-bowl does, in the moral vein,<br /> + When the ladle has finished its leak,<br /> +And the vessel is loquent of nature’s inane,<br /> + Hie where the demagogues roar<br /> +Like a Phalaris bull, with the victim’s force:<br /> + Hurrah to their jolly attack<br /> + On a City that smokes of the Plain;<br /> + A city of sin’s death-dyes,<br /> + Holding revel of worms in a corse;<br /> + A city of malady sore,<br /> + Over-ripe for the big doom’s crack:<br /> + A city of hymnical snore;<br /> + Connubial truths and lies<br /> + Demanding an instant divorce,<br /> + Clean as the bright from the black.<br /> +It were well for thy system to sermonize.<br /> +There are giants to slay, and they call for their Jack.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Then up stand thou in the +midst:<br /> + Thy good grain out of thee thresh,<br /> + Hand upon heart: relate<br /> + What things thou legally didst<br /> + For the Archseducer of flesh.<br /> +Omitting the murmurs of women and fate,<br /> + Confess thee an instrument armed<br /> + To be snare of our wanton, our weak,<br /> + Of all by the sensual charmed.<br /> +For once shall repentance be done by the tongue:<br /> + Speak, though execrate, speak<br /> + A word on grandmotherly Laws<br /> + Giving rivers of gold to our young,<br /> +<a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>In the +days of their hungers impure;<br /> +To furnish them beak and claws,<br /> +And make them a banquet’s lure.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Thou the example, saved<br /> +Miraculously by this poor skin!<br /> + Thereat let the Purse be waved:<br /> +The snake-slough sick of the snaky sin:<br /> +A devil, if devil as devil behaved<br /> +Ever, thou knowest, look thou but in,<br /> +Where he shivers, a culprit fettered and shaved;<br /> +O a bird stripped of feather, a fish clipped of fin!</p> +<p class="poetry">And commend for a washing the torrents of +wrath,<br /> + Which hurl at the foe of the dearest men prize<br /> +Rough-rolling boulders and froth.<br /> +Gigantical enginery they can command,<br /> +For the crushing of enemies not of great size:<br /> + But hold to thy desperate stand.<br /> +Men’s right of bequeathing their all to their own<br /> +(With little regard for the creatures they squeezed);<br /> +Their mill and mill-water and nether mill-stone<br /> +Tied fast to their infant; lo, this is the last<br /> +Of their hungers, by prudent devices appeased.<br /> +The law they decree is their ultimate slave;<br /> +Wherein we perceive old Voracity glassed.<br /> +It works from their dust, and it reeks of their grave.<br /> +Point them to greener, though Journals be guns;<br /> +To brotherly fields under fatherly skies;<br /> +Where the savage still primitive learns of a debt<br /> +He has owed since he drummed on his belly for war;<br /> +And how for his giving, the more will he get;<br /> +For trusting his fellows, leave friends round his sons:<br /> +<a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>Till they +see, with the gape of a startled surprise,<br /> +Their adored tyrant-monster a brute to abhor,<br /> +The sun of their system a father of flies!</p> +<p class="poetry">So, for such good hope, take their scourge +unashamed;<br /> +’Tis the portion of them who civilize,<br /> + Who speak the word novel and true:<br /> +How the brutish antique of our springs may be tamed,<br /> +Without loss of the strength that should push us to flower;<br /> +How the God of old time will act Satan of new,<br /> +If we keep him not straight at the higher God aimed;<br /> +For whose habitation within us we scour<br /> +This house of our life; where our bitterest pains<br /> +Are those to eject the Infernal, who heaps<br /> +Mire on the soul. Take stripes or chains;<br /> + Grip at thy standard reviled.<br /> +And what if our body be dashed from the steeps?<br /> + Our spoken in protest remains.<br /> + A young generation reaps.</p> +<p class="poetry">The young generation! ah, there is the child<br +/> +Of our souls down the Ages! to bleed for it, proof<br /> +That souls we have, with our senses filed,<br /> + Our shuttles at thread of the woof.<br /> + May it be braver than ours,<br /> +To encounter the rattle of hostile bolts,<br /> +To look on the rising of Stranger Powers.<br /> +May it know how the mind in expansion revolts<br /> +From a nursery Past with dead letters aloof,<br /> +And the piping to stupor of Precedents shun,<br /> +In a field where the forefather print of the hoof<br /> +Is not yet overgrassed by the watering hours,<br /> +And should prompt us to Change, as to promise of sun,<br /> + Till brain-rule splendidly towers.<br /> +<a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>For that +large light we have laboured and tramped<br /> +Thorough forests and bogland, still to perceive<br /> + Our animate morning stamped<br /> + With the lines of a sombre eve.</p> +<p class="poetry">A timorous thing ran the innocent hind,<br /> +When the wolf was the hypocrite fang under hood,<br /> + The snake a lithe lurker up sleeve,<br /> + And the lion effulgently ramped.<br /> +Then our forefather hoof did its work in the wood,<br /> + By right of the better in kind.<br /> +But now will it breed yon bestial brood<br /> +Three-fold thrice over, if bent to bind,<br /> + As the healthy in chains with the sick,<br /> +Unto despot usage our issuing mind.<br /> +It signifies battle or death’s dull knell.<br /> +Precedents icily written on high<br /> +Challenge the Tentatives hot to rebel.<br /> +Our Mother, who speeds her bloomful quick<br /> +For the march, reads which the impediment well.<br /> +She smiles when of sapience is their boast.<br /> +O loose of the tug between blood run dry<br /> +And blood running flame may our offspring run!<br /> +May brain democratic be king of the host!<br /> +Less then shall the volumes of History tell<br /> +Of the stop in progression, the slip in relapse,<br /> +That counts us a sand-slack inch hard won<br /> +Beneath an oppressive incumbent perhaps.</p> +<p class="poetry">Let the senile lords in a parchment sky,<br /> +And the generous turbulents drunken of morn,<br /> + Their battle of instincts put by,<br /> + A moment examine this field:<br /> +On a Roman street cast thoughtful eye,<br /> +Along to the mounts from the bog-forest weald.<br /> +<a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>It merits +a glance at our history’s maps,<br /> +To see across Britain’s old shaggy unshorn,<br /> +Through the Parties in strife internecine, foot<br /> +The ruler’s close-reckoned direct to the mark.<br /> +From the head ran the vanquisher’s orderly route,<br /> +In the stride of his forts through the tangle and dark.<br /> +From the head runs the paved firm way for advance,<br /> +And we shoulder, we wrangle! The light on us shed<br /> +Shows dense beetle blackness in swarm, lurid Chance,<br /> +The Goddess of gamblers, above. From the head,<br /> +Then when it worked for the birth of a star<br /> +Fraternal with heaven’s in beauty and ray,<br /> +Sprang the Acropolis. Ask what crown<br /> +Comes of our tides of the blood at war,<br /> +For men to bequeath generations down!<br /> +And ask what thou wast when the Purse was brimmed:<br /> +What high-bounding ball for the Gods at play:<br /> +A Conservative youth! who the cream-bowl skimmed,<br /> +Desiring affairs to be left as they are.</p> +<p class="poetry">So, thou takest Youth’s natural place in +the fray,<br /> + As a Tentative, combating Peace,<br /> + Our lullaby word for decay.—<br /> + There will come an immediate decree<br /> +In thy mind for the opposite party’s decease,<br /> + If he bends not an instant knee.<br /> +Expunge it: extinguishing counts poor gain.<br /> + And accept a mild word of police:—<br /> + Be mannerly, measured; refrain<br /> +From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks.<br /> +Our political, even as the merchant main,<br /> + A temperate gale requires<br /> + For the ship that haven seeks;<br /> +Neither God of the winds nor his bellowsy squires.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page48"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 48</span>Then observe the antagonist, con<br +/> +His reasons for rocking the lullaby word.<br /> +You stand on a different stage of the stairs.<br /> +He fought certain battles, yon senile lord.<br /> +In the strength of thee, feel his bequest to his heirs.<br /> +We are now on his inches of ground hard won,<br /> +For a perch to a flight o’er his resting fence.</p> +<p class="poetry">Does it knock too hard at thy head if I say,<br +/> + That Time is both father and son?<br /> +Tough lesson, when senses are floods over sense!—<br /> + Discern the paternal of Now<br /> + As the Then of thy present tense.<br /> + You may pull as you will either way,<br /> + You can never be other than one.<br /> + So, be filial. Giants to slay<br /> + Demand knowing eyes in their Jack.</p> +<p class="poetry">There are those whom we push from the path with +respect.<br /> +Bow to that elder, though seeing him bow<br /> +To the backward as well, for a thunderous back<br /> +Upon thee. In his day he was not all wrong.<br /> +Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked.<br /> +He scrambled to shore with a worship of shore.<br /> +The Future he sees as the slippery murk;<br /> +The Past as his doctrinal library lore.<br /> +He stands now the rock to the wave’s wild wash.<br /> +Yet thy lumpish antagonist once did work<br /> + Heroical, one of our strong.<br /> +His gold to retain and his dross reject,<br /> +Engage him, but humour, not aiming to quash.<br /> + Detest the dead squat of the Turk,<br /> + And suffice it to move him along.<br /> + <a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +49</span>Drink of faith in the brains a full draught<br /> + Before the oration: beware<br /> + Lest rhetoric moonily waft<br /> + Whither horrid activities snare.<br /> + Rhetoric, juice for the mob<br /> + Despising more luminous grape,<br /> + Oft at its fount has it laughed<br /> + In the cataracts rolling for rape<br /> + Of a Reason left single to sob!</p> +<p class="poetry">’Tis known how the permanent never is +writ<br /> +In blood of the passions: mercurial they,<br /> +Shifty their issue: stir not that pit<br /> + To the game our brutes best play.</p> +<p class="poetry">But with rhetoric loose, can we check +man’s brute?<br /> +Assemblies of men on their legs invoke<br /> +Excitement for wholesome diversion: there shoot<br /> +Electrical sparks between their dry thatch<br /> +And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light.<br /> +’Tis instant between you: the trick of a catch<br /> + (To match a Batrachian croak)<br /> +Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins.<br /> +Then may it be rather the well-worn joke<br /> +Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write<br /> +Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem,<br /> +When thou readest that form of thy homage to brains!</p> +<p class="poetry"> For the secret why demagogues +fail,<br /> +Though they carry hot mobs to the red extreme,<br /> + And knock out or knock in the nail<br /> + (We will rank them as flatly sincere,<br /> + Devoutly detesting a wrong,<br /> +Engines o’ercharged with our human steam),<br /> +<a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>Question +thee, seething amid the throng.<br /> +And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-heat;<br /> +Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here;—<br /> +Aught more than the banquet and roundelay,<br /> +That is closed with a terrible terminal wail,<br /> + A retributive black ding-dong?<br /> +And ask of thyself: This furious Yea<br /> + Of a speech I thump to repeat,<br /> + In the cause I would have prevail,<br /> + For seed of a nourishing wheat,<br /> + <i>Is it accepted of Song</i>?<br /> + Does it sound to the mind through the ear,<br /> +Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet?<br /> + Thou wilt find it a test severe;<br /> + Unerring whatever the theme.<br /> +Rings it for Reason a melody clear,<br /> + We have bidden old Chaos retreat;<br /> + We have called on Creation to hear;<br /> +All forces that make us are one full stream.<br /> +Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse,<br /> +Showing its practical value and weight,<br /> +Pipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse,<br /> +Lead thee aloft to that high estate.—<br /> + The test is conclusive, I deem:<br /> + It embraces or mortally bites.<br /> + We have then the key-note for debate:<br /> + A Senate that sits on the heights<br /> + Over discords, to shape and amend.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And no singer is needed to +serve<br /> + The musical God, my friend.<br /> +Needs only his law on a sensible nerve:<br /> + A law that to Measure invites,<br /> + Forbidding the passions contend.<br /> + <a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>Is it accepted of Song?<br /> + And if then the blunt answer be Nay,<br /> +Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde,<br /> +Slaves of the Goddess of hoar-old sway,<br /> + The Queen of delirious rites,<br /> +Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend<br /> +For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord,<br /> +Pursuing insensate, seething in throng,<br /> +Their wild idea to its ashen end.<br /> +Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong,<br /> +Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend!</p> +<p class="poetry"> But thou, should the answer +ring Ay,<br /> + Hast warrant of seed for thy word:<br /> + The musical God is nigh<br /> +To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer<br /> + Through the shoals: is it worthy of Song,<br /> + There are souls all woman to hear,<br /> + Woman to bear and renew.<br /> +For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs,<br /> + Broad as the arms of his blue,<br /> + Fine as the web of his rays,<br /> +Justice, whose voice is a melody clear,<br /> +The one sure life for the numbered long,<br /> + From him are the brutal and vain,<br /> + The vile, the excessive, out-thrust:<br /> +He points to the God on the upmost throne:<br /> + He is the saver of grain,<br /> + The sifter of spirit from dust.<br /> +He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain<br /> + The virilities: Measure alone<br /> + Has votaries rich in the male:<br /> + Fathers embracing no cloud,<br /> + Sowing no harvestless main:<br /> +Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed<br /> +<a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>To create, +to perpetuate; woo, win, wed;<br /> +Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own,<br /> +Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff<br /> + Simulacra, though solid they sail,<br /> + And seem such imperial stuff:<br /> + Yes, the living divide off the dead.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Then thou with thy furies +outgrown,<br /> +Not as Cybele’s beast will thy head lash tail<br /> +So præter-determinedly thermonous,<br /> + Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled.<br /> + Thou under stress of the strife<br /> + Shalt hear for sustainment supreme<br /> + The cry of the conscience of Life:<br /> + <i>Keep the young generations in hail</i>,<br /> + <i>And bequeath them no tumbled house</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry"> There hast thou the sacred +theme,<br /> + Therein the inveterate spur,<br /> + Of the Innermost. See her one blink<br /> + In vision past eyeballs. Not thee<br /> + She cares for, but us. Follow her.<br /> + Follow her, and thou wilt not sink.<br /> + With thy soul the Life espouse:<br /> +This Life of the visible, audible, ring<br /> +With thy love tight about; and no death will be;<br /> + The name be an empty thing,<br /> + And woe a forgotten old trick:<br /> +And battle will come as a challenge to drink;<br /> +As a warrior’s wound each transient sting.<br /> +She leads to the Uppermost link by link;<br /> +Exacts but vision, desires not vows.<br /> +Above us the singular number to see;<br /> +The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick,<br /> +A dot or a stop: that is our task;<br /> +<a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>Her lesson +in figured arithmetic,<br /> +For the letters of Life behind its mask;<br /> +Her flower-like look under fearful brows.</p> +<p class="poetry">As for thy special case, O my friend, one must +think<br /> +Massilia’s victim, who held the carouse<br /> + For the length of a carnival year,<br /> +Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice.<br /> +For thee, by our law, no alternatives were:<br /> +Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice.<br /> + He cancelled the ravaging Plague,<br /> + With the roll of his fat off the cliff.<br /> +Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink,<br /> +Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague<br /> + And catches the not too pink,<br /> +Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause<br /> +Is the cause of community. Iterate,<br /> +Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite:<br /> +Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff:<br /> +Yet always in measure, with bearing polite:<br /> +The manner of one that would expiate<br /> + His share in grandmotherly Laws,<br /> + Which do the dark thing to destroy,<br /> +Under aspect of water so guilelessly white<br /> +For the general use, by the devils befouled.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Enough, poor prodigal boy!<br +/> +Thou hast listened with patience; another had howled.<br /> +Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned.<br /> +And ’tis bony: denied thee thy succulent half<br /> +Of the parable’s blessing, to swineherd returned:<br /> +A Sermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf!<br /> + By my faith, there is feasting to come,<br /> + Not the less, when our Earth we have seen<br /> +Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs:<br /> +<a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>Who gives +us the man-loving Nazarene,<br /> +The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the vines.<br /> +By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom;<br /> +Revelations, delights. I can hear a faint crow<br /> +Of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct;<br /> + As down the new shafting of mines,<br /> + A cry of the metally gnome.<br /> + When our Earth we have seen, and have linked<br /> +With the home of the Spirit to whom we unfold,<br /> +Imprisoned humanity open will throw<br /> +Its fortress gates, and the rivers of gold<br /> + For the congregate friendliness flow.<br /> +Then the meaning of Earth in her children behold:<br /> +Glad eyes, frank hands, and a fellowship real:<br /> +And laughter on lips, as the birds’ outburst<br /> +At the flooding of light. No robbery then<br /> +The feast, nor a robber’s abode the home,<br /> +For a furnished model of our first den!<br /> + Nor Life as a stationed wheel;<br /> +Nor History written in blood or in foam,<br /> +For vendetta of Parties in cursing accursed.<br /> +The God in the conscience of multitudes feel,<br /> + And we feel deep to Earth at her heart,<br /> + We have her communion with men,<br /> + New ground, new skies for appeal.<br /> +Yield into harness thy best and thy worst;<br /> +Away on the trot of thy servitude start,<br /> +Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air.<br /> +If courage should falter, ’tis wholesome to kneel.<br /> +Remember that well, for the secret with some,<br /> +Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer,<br /> +And free from impurities tower-like stand.<br /> +I promise not more, save that feasting will come<br /> +To a mind and a body no longer inversed:<br /> +The sense of large charity over the land,<br /> +<a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +55</span>Earth’s wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the +rough,<br /> +And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal<br /> + Through the active machine: lean fare,<br /> +But it carries a sparkle! And now enough,<br /> + And part we as comrades part,<br /> +To meet again never or some day or soon.</p> +<p class="poetry">Our season of drought is reminder +rude:—<br /> + No later than yesternoon,<br /> + I looked on the horse of a cart,<br /> + By the wayside water-trough.<br /> +How at every draught of his bride of thirst<br /> +His nostrils widened! The sight was good:<br /> + Food for us, food, such as first<br /> + Drew our thoughts to earth’s lowly for +food.</p> +<h2><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>TO THE +COMIC SPIRIT</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sword</span> of Common +Sense!—<br /> +Our surest gift: the sacred chain<br /> +Of man to man: firm earth for trust<br /> +In structures vowed to permanence:—<br /> +Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain!<br /> +Implacable perforce of just;<br /> +With that good treasure in defence,<br /> +Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain<br /> +Since first men planted foot and hand was king:<br /> +Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve<br /> +To wield thy double edge, retort<br /> +Or hold the deadlier reserve,<br /> +And through thy victim’s weapon sting:<br /> +Thine is the service, thine the sport<br /> +This shifty heart of ours to hunt<br /> +Across its webs and round the many a ring<br /> +Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds<br /> +Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke<br /> +Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster’s +grunt;—<br /> +Once lion of our desert’s trodden weeds;<br /> +And but for thy straight finger at the yoke,<br /> +Again to be the lordly paw,<br /> +Naming his appetites his needs,<br /> +Behind a decorative cloak:<br /> +Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law<br /> +We read upon that building’s architrave<br /> +In the mind’s firmament, by men upraised<br /> +With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave<br /> +For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed,<br /> +Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw,<br /> +<a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>Thou, soul +of wakened heads, art armed to warn,<br /> +Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang,<br /> +Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot,<br /> +Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn;<br /> +Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise,<br /> +Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen<br /> +His rebel agitation at our root:<br /> +Thou hast him out of hawking eyes;<br /> +Nor ever morning of the clang<br /> +Young Echo sped on hill from horn<br /> +In forest blown when scent was keen<br /> +Off earthy dews besprinkling blades<br /> +Of covert grass more merrily rang<br /> +The yelp of chase down alleys green,<br /> +Forth of the headlong-pouring glades,<br /> +Over the dappled fallows wild away,<br /> +Than thy fine unaccented scorn<br /> +At sight of man’s old secret brute,<br /> +Devout for pasture on his prey,<br /> +Advancing, yawning to devour;<br /> +With step of deer, with voice of flute,<br /> +Haply with visage of the lily flower.</p> +<p class="poetry">Let the cock crow and ruddy morn<br /> +His handmaiden appear! Youth claims his hour.<br /> +The generously ludicrous<br /> +Espouses it. But see we sons of day,<br /> +Off whom Life leans for guidance in our fight,<br /> +Accept the throb for lord of us;<br /> +For lord, for the main central light<br /> +That gives direction, not the eclipse;<br /> +Or dost thou look where niggard Age,<br /> +Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips<br /> +A tumbled top to grind a wolf’s worn tooth;—<br /> +Hoar despot on our final stage,<br /> +<a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>In dotage +of a stunted Youth;—<br /> +Or it may be some venerable sage,<br /> +Not having thee awake in him, compact<br /> +Of wisdom else, the breast’s old tempter trips;<br /> +Or see we ceremonial state,<br /> +Robing the gilded beast, exact<br /> +Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate<br /> +Is used to stamp and hallow printed fact;<br /> +A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips;<br /> +These are thy game wherever men engage:<br /> +These and, majestic in a borrowed shape,<br /> +The major and the minor potentate,<br /> +Creative of their various ape;—<br /> +The tiptoe mortals triumphing to write<br /> +Upon a perishable page<br /> +An inch above their fellows’ height;—<br /> +The criers of foregone wisdom, who impose<br /> +Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed<br /> +Of our first hungry figure wide agape;—<br /> +Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run.<br /> +These, that would have men still of men be foes,<br /> +Eternal fox to prowl and pike to feed;<br /> +Would keep our life the whirly pool<br /> +Of turbid stuff dishonouring History;<br /> +The herd the drover’s herd, the fool the fool,<br /> +Ourself our slavish self’s infernal sun:<br /> +These are the children of the heart untaught<br /> +By thy quick founts to beat abroad, by thee<br /> +Untamed to tone its passions under thought,<br /> +The rich humaneness reading in thy fun.<br /> +Of them a world of coltish heels for school<br /> +We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn.</p> +<p class="poetry">’Tis written of the Gods of human +mould,<br /> +Those Nectar Gods, of glorious stature hewn<br /> +<a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>To quicken +hymns, that they did hear, incensed,<br /> +Satiric comments overbold,<br /> +From one whose part was by decree<br /> +The jester’s; but they boiled to feel him bite.<br /> +Better for them had they with Reason fenced<br /> +Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods’ might<br +/> +Their prober crushed, as fingers flea.<br /> +Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sire<br /> +His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit<br /> +Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire,<br /> +The Satirist pass by on limping feet.<br /> +Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight<br /> +Below had then their last of airy glee;<br /> +They in the cup sought Laughter’s drownèd sprite,<br +/> +Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit.<br /> +Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount,<br /> +And drew them down; to flattest earth they rolled.<br /> +This know we veritable. O Sage of Mirth!<br /> +Can it be true, the story men recount<br /> +Of the fall’n plight of the great Gods on earth?<br /> +How they being deathless, though of human mould,<br /> +With human cravings, undecaying frames,<br /> +Must labour for subsistence; are a band<br /> +Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leads<br /> +At haunts of holiday on summer sand:<br /> +And lightly he will hint to one that heeds<br /> +Names in pained designation of them, names<br /> +Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl<br /> +Our hearing madly from our seeing dazed,<br /> +Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats<br /> +(His baby dimples in maternal chaps<br /> +Running wild labyrinths of line and curl)<br /> +Compassion for his masterful Trombone,<br /> +Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazed<br /> +Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats,<br /> +<a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>Who guts a +drum to fetch a snappish groan:<br /> +For his fierce bugler horning onset, whom<br /> +A truncheon-battered helmet caps . . .<br /> +The creature is of earnest mien<br /> +To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb.<br /> +His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued,<br /> +He names; they are a rayless red and white;<br /> +The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude.<br /> +And, if we recognize his Tambourine,<br /> +He asks; exhausted names her: she has become<br /> +A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen<br /> +Of overflowing dome on dome;<br /> +Redundancy contending with the tight,<br /> +Leaping the dam! He fondly calls, his girl,<br /> +The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile,<br /> +Refreshful. O but now his brows are dun,<br /> +Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile,<br /> +To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames,<br /> +Flower of the world, that honey one,<br /> +She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl,<br /> +To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss;<br /> +He names her, as a worshipper he names,<br /> +And indicates with a contemptuous thumb.<br /> +The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike<br /> +Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum.<br /> +Curtain her close! her open arms<br /> +Have suckers for beholders: she to this?<br /> +For that she could not, save in fury, hear<br /> +A sharp corrective utterance flick<br /> +Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike<br /> +Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer<br /> +Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps<br /> +This mouldy garner of the fatal kick?<br /> +Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms,<br /> +Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign,<br /> +<a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>From Greek +resplendent to Phoenician foul,<br /> +The trader in attractions sinks, all brine<br /> +To thoughts of taste; is ’t love?—bark, dog! hoot, +owl!<br /> +And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps.<br /> +Suicide Graces dangle down the charms<br /> +Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps.<br /> +She stands in her unholy oily leer<br /> +A statue losing feature, weather-sick<br /> +Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere.<br /> +The curtain cried for magnifies to see!—<br /> +We cannot quench our one corrupting glance:<br /> +The vision of the rumour will not flee.<br /> +Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart<br /> +To bring her, countless as the crested deeps,<br /> +Her subjects of the uncorrected heart?<br /> +False is that vision, shrieks the devotee;<br /> +Incredible, we echo; and anew<br /> +Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps.<br /> +Low humourist this leader seems; perchance<br /> +Pitched from his University career,<br /> +Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould<br /> +Human those Gods were: deathless too:<br /> +On high they not as meditatives paced:<br /> +Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh:<br /> +Descending, they would touch the lowest here:<br /> +And she, that lighted form of blue and gold,<br /> +Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced;<br /> +Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh;<br /> +Desired and hated, desperately dear;<br /> +Most human of them was. No more pursue!<br /> +Enough that the black story can be told.<br /> +It preaches to the eminently placed:<br /> +For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due,<br /> +Paints omen. Truly they our throbber had;<br /> +The passions plumping, passions playing leech,<br /> +<a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>Cunning to +trick us for the day’s good cheer.<br /> +Our uncorrected human heart will swell<br /> +To notions monstrous, doings mad<br /> +As billows on a foam-lashed beach;<br /> +Borne on the tides of alternating heats,<br /> +Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well;<br /> +Call the closed mouth of that harsh final Power<br /> +To speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell:<br /> +Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour;<br /> +The last surviving on the upper seats;<br /> +As with men Reason when their hearts rebel.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, what a fruitless breeder is this heart,<br +/> +Full of the mingled seeds, each eating each.<br /> +Not wiser of our mark than at the start,<br /> +It surges like the wrath-faced father Sea<br /> +To countering winds; a force blind-eyed,<br /> +On endless rounds of aimless reach;<br /> +Emotion for the source of pride,<br /> +The grounds of faith in fixity<br /> +Above our flesh; its cravings urging speech,<br /> +Inspiring prayer; by turns a lump<br /> +Swung on a time-piece, and by turns<br /> +A quivering energy to jump<br /> +For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns,<br /> +Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud<br /> +Capping a sullen crater: and mankind<br /> +We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark,<br /> +Because of thy straight leadership declined;<br /> +At heels of this or that delusive spark:<br /> +Now when the multitudinous races press<br /> +Elbow to elbow hourly more,<br /> +A thickened host; when now we hear aloud<br /> +Life for the very life implore<br /> +A signal of a visioned mark;<br /> +<a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>Light of +the mind, the mind’s discourse,<br /> +The rational in graciousness,<br /> +Thee by acknowledgement enthroned,<br /> +To tame and lead that blind-eyed force<br /> +In harmony of harness with the crowd,<br /> +For payment of their dues; as yet disowned,<br /> +Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowed<br /> +To holy work, deems it the heart’s intent;<br /> +Or where a silken circle views it cowled,<br /> +The seeming figure of concordance, bent<br /> +On satiating tyrant lust<br /> +Or barren fits of sentiment.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thou wilt not have our paths befouled<br /> +By simulation; are we vile to view,<br /> +The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust,<br /> +Beneath thy breezy flitting wing:<br /> +They make their mirror upon faces true;<br /> +And where they win reflection, lucid heave<br /> +The under tides of this hot heart seen through.<br /> +Beneficently wilt thou clip<br /> +All oversteppings of the plumed,<br /> +The puffed, and bid the masker strip,<br /> +And into the crowned windbag thrust,<br /> +Tearing the mortal from the vital thing,<br /> +A lightning o’er the half-illumed,<br /> +Who to base brute-dominion cleave,<br /> +Yet mark effects, and shun the flash,<br /> +Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive,<br /> +To spy a wound without a gash,<br /> +The magic in a turn of wrist,<br /> +And how are wedded heart and head regaled<br /> +When Wit o’er Folly blows the mort,<br /> +And their high note of union spreads<br /> +Wide from the timely word with conquest charged;<br /> +<a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>Victorious +laughter, of no loud report,<br /> +If heard; derision as divinely veiled<br /> +As terrible Immortals in rose-mist,<br /> +Given to the vision of arrested men:<br /> +Whereat they feel within them weave<br /> +Community its closer threads,<br /> +And are to our fraternal state enlarged;<br /> +Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken:<br /> +They learn that thou art not of alien sort,<br /> +Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed,<br /> +Or of the frosty heights unsealed,<br /> +Or of the vain who simple speech distort,<br /> +Or of the vapours pointing on to nought<br /> +Along cold skies; though sharp and high thy pitch;<br /> +As when sole homeward the belated treads,<br /> +And hears aloft a clamour wailed,<br /> +That once had seemed the broomstick witch<br /> +Horridly violating cloud for drought:<br /> +He, from the rub of minds dispersing fears,<br /> +Hears migrants marshalling their midnight train;<br /> +Homeliest order in black sky appears,<br /> +Not less than in the lighted village steads.<br /> +So do those half-illumed wax clear to share<br /> +A cry that is our common voice; the note<br /> +Of fellowship upon a loftier plane,<br /> +Above embattled castle-wall and moat;<br /> +And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds.<br /> +So thou for washing a phantasmal air,<br /> +For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise,<br /> +Laughter—the joy of Reason seeing fade<br /> +Obstruction into Earth’s renewing beds,<br /> +Beneath the stroke of her good servant’s blade—<br /> +Thenceforth art as their earth-star hailed;<br /> +Gain of the years, conjunction’s prize.<br /> +The greater heart in thy appeal to heads<br /> +<a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>They see, +thou Captain of our civil Fort!<br /> +By more elusive savages assailed<br /> +On each ascending stage; untired<br /> +Both inner foe and outer to cut short,<br /> +And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist:<br /> +Showing old tiger’s claws, old crocodile’s<br /> +Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight,<br /> +Like forms in running water, oft when smiles,<br /> +When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight:<br /> +But never with the slayer’s malice fired:<br /> +As little as informs an infant’s fist<br /> +Clenched at the sneeze! Thou wouldst but have us be<br /> +Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow<br /> +Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree;<br /> +Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court:<br /> +Which is the tree bound fast to wave its tress;<br /> +Of strength controlled sheer beauty to bestow.<br /> +Ambrosial heights of possible acquist,<br /> +Where souls of men with soul of man consort,<br /> +And all look higher to new loveliness<br /> +Begotten of the look: thy mark is there;<br /> +While on our temporal ground alive,<br /> +Rightly though fearfully thou wieldest sword<br /> +Of finer temper now a numbered learn<br /> +That they resisting thee themselves resist;<br /> +And not thy bigger joy to smite and drive,<br /> +Prompt the dense herd to butt, and set the snare<br /> +Witching them into pitfalls for hoarse shouts.<br /> +More now, and hourly more, and of the Lord<br /> +Thou lead’st to, doth this rebel heart discern,<br /> +When pinched ascetic and red sensualist<br /> +Alternately recurrent freeze or burn,<br /> +And of its old religions it has doubts.<br /> +It fears thee less when thou hast shown it bare;<br /> +Less hates, part understands, nor much resents,<br /> +<a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>When the +prized objects it has raised for prayer,<br /> +For fitful prayer;—repentance dreading fire,<br /> +Impelled by aches; the blindness which repents<br /> +Like the poor trampled worm that writhes in mire;—<br /> +Are sounded by thee, and thou darest probe<br /> +Old institutions and establishments,<br /> +Once fortresses against the floods of sin,<br /> +For what their worth; and questioningly prod<br /> +For why they stand upon a racing globe,<br /> +Impeding blocks, less useful than the clod;<br /> +Their angel out of them, a demon in.</p> +<p class="poetry">This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to +fret,<br /> +To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame<br /> +Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod,<br /> +Shall of predestination wed thee yet.<br /> +Something it gathers of what things should drop<br /> +At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad<br /> +The world of minds communicative; how<br /> +A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored<br /> +With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough<br /> +Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame<br /> +Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop<br /> +Is its most living, in the mind that steers,<br /> +By Reason led, her way of tree and flame,<br /> +Beyond the genuflexions and the tears;<br /> +Upon an Earth that cannot stop,<br /> +Where upward is the visible aim,<br /> +And ever we espy the greater God,<br /> +For simple pointing at a good adored:<br /> +Proof of the closer neighbourhood. Head on,<br /> +Sword of the many, light of the few! untwist<br /> +Or cut our tangles till fair space is won<br /> +Beyond a briared wood of austere brow,<br /> +Believed of discord by thy timely word<br /> +<a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>At +intervals refreshing life: for thou<br /> +Art verify Keeper of the Muse’s Key;<br /> +Thyself no vacant melodist;<br /> +On lower land elective even as she;<br /> +Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred;<br /> +Advising to her measured steps in flow;<br /> +And teaching how for being subjected free<br /> +Past thought of freedom we may come to know<br /> +The music of the meaning of Accord.</p> +<h2><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>YOUTH +IN MEMORY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Days</span>, when the ball +of our vision<br /> +Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;<br /> +When the grasp on the bow was decision,<br /> +And arrow and hand and eye were one;<br /> +When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,<br /> +Came heaving for rapture ahead!—<br /> +Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer<br /> +As lights over mounds of the dead.</p> +<p class="poetry">Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead,<br /> +With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed,<br /> +Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear,<br /> +To bear the golden nectar-cup.<br /> +So flies desire at view of its delight,<br /> +When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight.<br /> +We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year<br /> +The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost,<br /> +Mount but the fatal half way up—<br /> +Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed,<br /> +For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend,<br /> +By passion for the arms’ possession tossed,<br /> +It falls the way of sighs and hath their end;<br /> +A spark gone out to more sepulchral night.<br /> +Good if the arrowy eagle of the height<br /> +Be then the little bird that hops to feed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Lame falls the cry to kindle days<br /> +Of radiant orb and daring gaze.<br /> +It does but clank our mortal chain.<br /> +For Earth reads through her felon old<br /> +<a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>The +many-numbered of her fold,<br /> +Who forward tottering backward strain,<br /> +And would be thieves of treasure spent,<br /> +With their grey season soured.<br /> +She could write out their history in their thirst<br /> +To have again the much devoured,<br /> +And be the bud at burst;<br /> +In honey fancy join the flow,<br /> +Where Youth swims on as once they went,<br /> +All choiric for spontaneous glee<br /> +Of active eager lungs and thews;<br /> +They now bared roots beside the river bent;<br /> +Whose privilege themselves to see;<br /> +Their place in yonder tideway know;<br /> +The current glass peruse;<br /> +The depths intently sound;<br /> +And sapped by each returning flood<br /> +Accept for monitory nourishment<br /> +Those worn roped features under crust of mud,<br /> +Reflected in the silvery smooth around:<br /> +Not less the branching and high singing tree,<br /> +A home of nests, a landmark and a tent,<br /> +Until their hour for losing hold on ground.<br /> +Even such good harvest of the things that flee<br /> +Earth offers her subjected, and they choose<br /> +Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink,<br /> +And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink.<br /> +So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse.</p> +<p class="poetry">Who cheerfully the little bird becomes,<br /> +Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs,<br /> +May have her dolings to the lightest touch;<br /> +As where some cripple muses by his crutch,<br /> +Unwitting that the spirit in him sings:<br /> +‘When I had legs, then had I wings,<br /> +<a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>As good as +any born of eggs,<br /> +To feed on all aërial things,<br /> +When I had legs!’<br /> +And if not to embrace he sighs,<br /> +She gives him breath of Youth awhile,<br /> +Perspective of a breezy mile,<br /> +Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies;<br /> +Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard<br /> +Brooded, or up to empyrean soared:<br /> +Enough to link him with a dotted line.<br /> +But cravings for an eagle’s flight,<br /> +To top white peaks and serve wild wine<br /> +Among the rosy undecayed,<br /> +Bring only flash of shade<br /> +From her full throbbing breast of day in night.<br /> +By what they crave are they betrayed:<br /> +And cavernous is that young dragon’s jaw,<br /> +Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw<br /> +In time now coveted, for teeth to flay,<br /> +Once more consume, were Life recurrent May.<br /> +They to their moment of drawn breath,<br /> +Which is the life that makes the death,<br /> +The death that makes ethereal life would bind:<br /> +The death that breeds the spectre do they find.<br /> +Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets<br /> +Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust,<br /> +By souls no longer dowered to climb<br /> +Beneath their pack of dust,<br /> +Whom envy of a lustrous prime,<br /> +Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets,<br /> +And dooms to sink and water sable flowers,<br /> +That never gladdened eye or loaded bee.<br /> +Strain we the arms for Memory’s hours,<br /> +We are the seized Persephone.<br /> +<a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>Responsive +never to the soft desire<br /> +For one prized tune is this our chord of life.<br /> +’Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife,<br /> +In wishes that for ecstasies aspire.<br /> +Yet have we glad companionship of Youth,<br /> +Elysian meadows for the mind,<br /> +Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb<br /> +Filled with the parti-coloured bloom<br /> +Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth<br /> +Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind.<br /> +To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through:<br /> +Whence comes a line of continuity,<br /> +That brings our middle station into view,<br /> +Between those poles; a novel Earth we see,<br /> +In likeness of us, made of banned and blest;<br /> +The sower’s bed, but not the reaper’s rest:<br /> +An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet<br /> +Buried, and breathing, and to be.<br /> +Then of the junction of the three,<br /> +Even as a heart in brain, full sweet<br /> +May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat.</p> +<p class="poetry">Only the soul can walk the dusty track<br /> +Where hangs our flowering under vapours black,<br /> +And bear to see how these pervade, obscure,<br /> +Quench recollection of a spacious pure.<br /> +They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve,<br /> +Hard at each other point and gape,<br /> +Horrible ghosts! in agony dissolve,<br /> +To reappear with one they drape<br /> +For criminal, and, Father! shrieking name,<br /> +Who such distorted issue did beget.<br /> +Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat<br /> +Off brow on breast, whose furnace flame<br /> +Has eaten, and old Self consumes.<br /> +<a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>Out of the +purification will they leap,<br /> +Thee renovating while new light illumes<br /> +The dusky web of evil, known as pain,<br /> +That heavily up healthward mounts the steep;<br /> +Our fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain:<br /> +Midway the tameless oceanic brute<br /> +Below, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit,<br /> +And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace<br /> +On righteous warfare, that asks not to cease.</p> +<p class="poetry">Forth of such passage through black fire we +win<br /> +Clear hearing of the simple lute,<br /> +Whereon, and not on other, Memory plays<br /> +For them who can in quietness receive<br /> +Her restorative airs: a ditty thin<br /> +As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve,<br /> +Or wave at ebb, the shallow catching rays<br /> +On a transparent sheet, where curves a glass<br /> +To truer heavens than when the breaker neighs<br /> +Loud at the plunge for bubbly wreck in roar.<br /> +Solidity and bulk and martial brass,<br /> +Once tyrants of the senses, faintly score<br /> +A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime,<br /> +While present in the spirit, vital there,<br /> +Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time;<br /> +Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air<br /> +Imperative, refreshful as dawn-dew.<br /> +Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled<br /> +Historic of the soul, and heats anew<br /> +Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald.<br /> +True of the man, and of mankind ’tis true,<br /> +Did we stout battle with the Shade, Despair,<br /> +Our cowardice, it blooms; or haply warred<br /> +Against the primal beast in us, and flung;<br /> +Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred<br /> +<a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>Above +self-pity slain: or it was Prayer<br /> +First taken for Life’s cleanser; or the tongue<br /> +Spake for the world against this heart; or rings<br /> +Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung;<br /> +Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb<br /> +From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob:<br /> +These quickening live. But deepest at her springs,<br /> +Most filial, is an eye to love her young.<br /> +And had we it, to see with it, alive<br /> +Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive.<br /> +Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then<br /> +The green-robed and grey-crested sons of men:<br /> +She tributary to her aged restores<br /> +The living in the dead; she will inspire<br /> +Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores,<br /> +Abhorring these as mire,<br /> +Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes,<br /> +With mortal tremours pricking hopes,<br /> +And, by the final Bacchic of the lusts<br /> +Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts:<br /> +A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants;<br /> +Not utterly misled, though blindly led,<br /> +Led round fermenting eddies. Faith she plants<br /> +In her own firmness as our midway road:<br /> +Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read;<br /> +Her essence reading in her toothsome goad;<br /> +Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants.<br /> +But love we well the young, her road midway<br /> +The darknesses runs consecrated clay.<br /> +Despite our feeble hold on this green home,<br /> +And the vast outer strangeness void of dome,<br /> +Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel,<br /> +Up to the moment of our prostrate fall,<br /> +The life they deem voluptuously real<br /> +Is more than empty echo of a call,<br /> +<a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>Or shadow +of a shade, or swing of tides;<br /> +As brooding upon age, when veins congeal,<br /> +Grey palsy nods to think. With us for guides,<br /> +Another step above the animal,<br /> +To views in Alpine thought are they helped on.<br /> +Good if so far we live in them when gone!</p> +<p class="poetry">And there the arrowy eagle of the height<br /> +Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,<br /> +Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite<br /> +To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed.<br /> +Then Memory strikes on no slack string,<br /> +Nor sectional will varied Life appear:<br /> +Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear<br /> +Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring.<br /> +And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys<br /> +No more subjecting mortals who have learnt<br /> +To build for happiness on equipoise,<br /> +The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt;<br /> +Know in our seasons an integral wheel,<br /> +That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed.<br /> +This, the truistic rubbish under heel<br /> +Of all the world, we peck at and are filled.</p> +<h2><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>PENETRATION AND TRUST</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sleek</span> as a lizard at +round of a stone,<br /> +The look of her heart slipped out and in.<br /> +Sweet on her lord her soft eyes shone,<br /> +As innocents clear of a shade of sin.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">He laid a finger under her chin,<br /> +His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown:<br /> +Now, what will happen and who will win,<br /> +With me in the fight and my lady lone?</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone;<br +/> +Was fire on her eyes till they let him in.<br /> +Her breast to a God of the daybeams shone,<br /> +And never a corner for serpent sin.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Tranced she stood, with a chattering chin;<br +/> +Her shrunken form at his feet was thrown:<br /> +At home to the death my lord shall win,<br /> +When it is no tyrant who leaves me lone!</p> +<h2><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>NIGHT +OF FROST IN MAY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">With</span> splendour of a +silver day,<br /> +A frosted night had opened May:<br /> +And on that plumed and armoured night,<br /> +As one close temple hove our wood,<br /> +Its border leafage virgin white.<br /> +Remote down air an owl hallooed.<br /> +The black twig dropped without a twirl;<br /> +The bud in jewelled grasp was nipped;<br /> +The brown leaf cracked a scorching curl;<br /> +A crystal off the green leaf slipped.<br /> +Across the tracks of rimy tan,<br /> +Some busy thread at whiles would shoot;<br /> +A limping minnow-rillet ran,<br /> +To hang upon an icy foot.</p> +<p class="poetry">In this shrill hush of quietude,<br /> +The ear conceived a severing cry.<br /> +Almost it let the sound elude,<br /> +When chuckles three, a warble shy,<br /> +From hazels of the garden came,<br /> +Near by the crimson-windowed farm.<br /> +They laid the trance on breath and frame,<br /> +A prelude of the passion-charm.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then soon was heard, not sooner heard<br /> +Than answered, doubled, trebled, more,<br /> +Voice of an Eden in the bird<br /> +Renewing with his pipe of four<br /> +<a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>The sob: a +troubled Eden, rich<br /> +In throb of heart: unnumbered throats<br /> +Flung upward at a fountain’s pitch,<br /> +The fervour of the four long notes,<br /> +That on the fountain’s pool subside,<br /> +Exult and ruffle and upspring:<br /> +Endless the crossing multiplied<br /> +Of silver and of golden string.<br /> +There chimed a bubbled underbrew<br /> +With witch-wild spray of vocal dew.</p> +<p class="poetry">It seemed a single harper swept<br /> +Our wild wood’s inner chords and waked<br /> +A spirit that for yearning ached<br /> +Ere men desired and joyed or wept.<br /> +Or now a legion ravishing<br /> +Musician rivals did unite<br /> +In love of sweetness high to sing<br /> +The subtle song that rivals light;<br /> +From breast of earth to breast of sky:<br /> +And they were secret, they were nigh:<br /> +A hand the magic might disperse;<br /> +The magic swung my universe.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream,<br /> +Where all was visionary gleam;<br /> +Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed;<br /> +And feelings, passing joy and woe,<br /> +Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed,<br /> +Nor either was the one we know:<br /> +Nor pregnant of the heart contained<br /> +In us were they, that griefless plained,<br /> +That plaining soared; and through the heart<br /> +Struck to one note the wide apart:—<br /> +<a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>A passion +surgent from despair;<br /> +A paining bliss in fervid cold;<br /> +Off the last vital edge of air,<br /> +Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled,<br /> +For rapture of a wine of tears;<br /> +As had a star among the spheres<br /> +Caught up our earth to some mid-height<br /> +Of double life to ear and sight,<br /> +She giving voice to thought that shines<br /> +Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines;<br /> +While steely drips the rillet clinked,<br /> +And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then was the lyre of earth beheld,<br /> +Then heard by me: it holds me linked;<br /> +Across the years to dead-ebb shores<br /> +I stand on, my blood-thrill restores.<br /> +But would I conjure into me<br /> +Those issue notes, I must review<br /> +What serious breath the woodland drew;<br /> +The low throb of expectancy;<br /> +How the white mother-muteness pressed<br /> +On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook,<br /> +Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest<br /> +Seen spinning on the bracken-crook.</p> +<h2><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>THE +TEACHING OF THE NUDE</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">Satyr</span> spied a +Goddess in her bath,<br /> +Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew.<br /> +Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew,<br /> +And looking backward on the curtained path,<br /> +He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast<br /> +Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers:<br /> +Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears,<br /> +Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed,<br /> +As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes<br /> +For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight<br /> +Through forest-hollows, over rocky height.<br /> +The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons.<br /> +A senatorial Satyr named what herb<br /> +Had hurried him outrunning reason’s curb.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">’Tis told how when that hieaway +unchecked<br /> +To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood:<br /> +Even as the valley of the torrent rude,<br /> +The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked.<br /> +In him, to hale him high or hurl aheap,<br /> +Goddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore;<br /> +Hourly the immortal prevailing more:<br /> +Till one hot noon saw Meliboeus peep<br /> +From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame,<br /> +<a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>In circle +by the lusty friskers gripped,<br /> +Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were +stripped.<br /> +She beckoned to our Satyr, and he came.<br /> +Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms.<br /> +His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms.</p> +<h2><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>BREATH +OF THE BRIAR</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry">O <span class="smcap">briar-scents</span>, on +yon wet wing<br /> +Of warm South-west wind brushing by,<br /> +You mind me of the sweetest thing<br /> +That ever mingled frank and shy:<br /> +When she and I, by love enticed,<br /> +Beneath the orchard-apples met,<br /> +In equal halves a ripe one sliced,<br /> +And smelt the juices ere we ate.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">That apple of the briar-scent,<br /> +Among our lost in Britain now,<br /> +Was green of rind, and redolent<br /> +Of sweetness as a milking cow.<br /> +The briar gives it back, well nigh<br /> +The damsel with her teeth on it;<br /> +Her twinkle between frank and shy,<br /> +My thirst to bite where she had bit.</p> +<h2><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>EMPEDOCLES</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span class="smcap">He</span> +leaped. With none to hinder,<br /> +Of Aetna’s fiery scoriae<br /> +In the next vomit-shower, made he<br /> + A more peculiar cinder.<br /> +And this great Doctor, can it be,<br /> +He left no saner recipe<br /> +For men at issue with despair?<br /> +Admiring, even his poet owns,<br /> +While noting his fine lyric tones,<br /> +The last of him was heels in air!</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry"> Comes Reverence, her +features<br /> +Amazed to see high Wisdom hear,<br /> +With glimmer of a faunish leer,<br /> + One mock her pride of creatures.<br /> +Shall such sad incident degrade<br /> +A stature casting sunniest shade?<br /> +O Reverence! let Reason swim;<br /> +Each life its critic deed reveals;<br /> +And him reads Reason at his heels,<br /> +If heels in air the last of him!</p> +<h2><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> day that is the +night of days,<br /> +With cannon-fire for sun ablaze<br /> +We spy from any billow’s lift;<br /> +And England still this tidal drift!<br /> +Would she to sainted forethought vow<br /> +A space before the thunders flood,<br /> +That martyr of its hour might now<br /> + Spare her the tears of blood.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">Asleep upon her ancient deeds,<br /> +She hugs the vision plethora breeds,<br /> +And counts her manifold increase<br /> +Of treasure in the fruits of peace.<br /> +What curse on earth’s improvident,<br /> +When the dread trumpet shatters rest,<br /> +Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content<br /> + As cradle rocked from breast.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">She, impious to the Lord of Hosts,<br /> +The valour of her offspring boasts,<br /> +Mindless that now on land and main<br /> +His heeded prayer is active brain.<br /> +No more great heart may guard the home,<br /> +Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave<br /> +Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam,<br /> + We see not distant heave.</p> +<h3><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">They stand to be her sacrifice,<br /> +The sons this mother flings like dice,<br /> +To face the odds and brave the Fates;<br /> +As in those days of starry dates,<br /> +When cannon cannon’s counterblast<br /> +Awakened, muzzle muzzle bowled,<br /> +And high in swathe of smoke the mast<br /> + Its fighting rag outrolled.</p> +<p>1891.</p> +<h2><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>TARDY +SPRING</h2> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Now</span> the North wind ceases,<br /> + The warm South-west awakes;<br /> + Swift fly the fleeces,<br /> + Thick the blossom-flakes.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now hill to hill has made the stride,<br /> +And distance waves the without end:<br /> +Now in the breast a door flings wide;<br /> +Our farthest smiles, our next is friend.<br /> +And song of England’s rush of flowers<br /> +Is this full breeze with mellow stops,<br /> +That spins the lark for shine, for showers;<br /> +He drinks his hurried flight, and drops.<br /> +The stir in memory seem these things,<br /> +Which out of moistened turf and clay<br /> +Astrain for light push patient rings,<br /> +Or leap to find the waterway.<br /> +’Tis equal to a wonder done,<br /> +Whatever simple lives renew<br /> +Their tricks beneath the father sun,<br /> +As though they caught a broken clue;<br /> +So hard was earth an eyewink back:<br /> +But now the common life has come,<br /> +The blotting cloud a dappled pack,<br /> +The grasses one vast underhum.<br /> +A City clothed in snow and soot,<br /> +With lamps for day in ghostly rows,<br /> +Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot,<br /> +The river that reflective flows:<br /> +<a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>And there +did fog down crypts of street<br /> +Play spectre upon eye and mouth:—<br /> +Their faces are a glass to greet<br /> +This magic of the whirl for South.<br /> +A burly joy each creature swells<br /> +With sound of its own hungry quest;<br /> +Earth has to fill her empty wells,<br /> +And speed the service of the nest;<br /> +The phantom of the snow-wreath melt,<br /> +That haunts the farmer’s look abroad,<br /> +Who sees what tomb a white night built,<br /> +Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod.<br /> +For iron Winter held her firm;<br /> +Across her sky he laid his hand;<br /> +And bird he starved, he stiffened worm;<br /> +A sightless heaven, a shaven land.<br /> +Her shivering Spring feigned fast asleep,<br /> +The bitten buds dared not unfold:<br /> +We raced on roads and ice to keep<br /> +Thought of the girl we love from cold.</p> +<p class="poetry"> But now the North wind +ceases,<br /> + The warm South-west awakes,<br /> + The heavens are out in fleeces,<br /> + And earth’s green banner shakes.</p> +<h2><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>THE +LABOURER</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">For</span> a Heracles in +his fighting ire there is never the glory that follows<br /> + When ashen he lies and the poets arise to sing of +the work he has done.<br /> +But to vision alive under shallows of sight, lo, the +Labourer’s crown is Apollo’s,<br /> + While stands he yet in his grime and sweat—to +wrestle for fruits of the Sun.</p> +<p class="poetry">Can an enemy wither his cheer? Not you, +ye fair yellow-flowering ladies,<br /> + Who join with your lords to jar the chords of a +bosom heroic, and clog.<br /> +’Tis the faltering friend, an inanimate land, may drag a +great soul to their Hades,<br /> + And plunge him far from a beam of star till he hears +the deep bay of the Dog.</p> +<p class="poetry">Apparition is then of a monster-task, in a +policy carving new fashions:<br /> + The winninger course than the rule of force, and the +springs lured to run in a stream:<br /> +He would bend tough oak, he would stiffen the reed, point Reason +to swallow the passions,<br /> + Bid Britons awake two steps to take where one is a +trouble extreme!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>Not the less is he nerved with the Labourer’s +resolute hope: that by him shall be written,<br /> + To honour his race, this deed of grace, for the weak +from the strong made just:<br /> +That her sons over seas in a rally of praise may behold a thrice +vitalised Britain,<br /> + Ashine with the light of the doing of right: at the +gates of the Future in trust.</p> +<h2><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sprung</span> of the father +blood, the mother brain,<br /> +Are they who point our pathway and sustain.<br /> +They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.<br /> +When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.</p> +<p class="poetry">To see Life’s formless offspring and +subdue<br /> +Desire of times unripe, we have these two,<br /> +Whose union is right reason: join they hands,<br /> +The world shall know itself and where it stands;<br /> +What cowering angel and what upright beast<br /> +Make man, behold, nor count the low the least,<br /> +Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.<br /> +When these two meet, a point of time is ours.</p> +<p class="poetry">As in a land of waterfalls, that flow<br /> +Smooth for the leap on their great voice below,<br /> +Some eddies near the brink borne swift along<br /> +Will capture hearing with the liquid song,<br /> +So, while the headlong world’s imperious force<br /> +Resounded under, heard I these discourse.</p> +<p class="poetry">First words, where down my woodland walk she +led,<br /> +To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:</p> +<p class="poetry">—Your faith in me appals, to shake my +own,<br /> +When still I find you in this mire alone.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>—The few steps taken at a funeral pace<br /> +By men had slain me but for those you trace.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Look I once back, a broken pinion I:<br +/> +Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!</p> +<p class="poetry">—Needs must you drink of me while here +you live,<br /> +And make me rich in feeling I can give.</p> +<p class="poetry">—A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:<br +/> +Yet must I read my sister for the How.<br /> +My daisy better knows her God of beams<br /> +Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.<br /> +She hath the secret never fieriest reach<br /> +Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Liker the clod flaked by the driving +plough,<br /> +My semblance when I have you not as now.<br /> +The quiet creatures who escape mishap<br /> +Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:<br /> +A picture of the settled peace desired<br /> +By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.<br /> +I listen at their breasts: is there no jar<br /> +Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,<br /> +And such a picture as the piercing mind<br /> +Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned<br /> +Are my true pupils while the world is brute.<br /> +What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,<br /> +Stronger impels the motion of my heart.<br /> +I am not Resignation’s counterpart.<br /> +If that I teach, ’tis little the dry word,<br /> +Content, but how to savour hope deferred.<br /> +We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;<br /> +Soon carrion if very earth are we!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +91</span>The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use<br /> +Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;<br /> +Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,<br /> +And pass despised; ‘a-cold for lack of heat,’<br /> +Like other corpses, but without death’s plea.</p> +<p class="poetry">—My sister calls for battle; is it +she?</p> +<p class="poetry">—Rather a world of pressing men in +arms,<br /> +Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms<br /> +Each drowsy malady and coiling vice<br /> +With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!<br /> +No home is here for peace while evil breeds,<br /> +While error governs, none; and must the seeds<br /> +You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,<br /> +Lie barren at the doorway of the brain,<br /> +Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood<br /> +Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!</p> +<p class="poetry">—My sober little maid, when we meet +first,<br /> +Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.<br /> +So can I not of her till circumstance<br /> +Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance<br /> +A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,<br /> +Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word<br /> +Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,<br /> +As to band-music under Victory’s arch.<br /> +Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then<br /> +The beauty of frank animals had men.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Observe them, and down rearward for a +term,<br /> +Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.<br /> +Thence look this way, across the fields that show<br /> +Men’s early form of speech for Yes and No.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>My sister a bruised infant’s utterance had;<br /> +And issuing stronger, to mankind ’twas mad.<br /> +I knew my home where I had choice to feel<br /> +The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Speak of this Age.</p> +<p class="poetry">—When you it shall discern<br /> +Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.</p> +<p class="poetry">—For neither of us has it any care;<br /> +Its learning is through Science to despair.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Despair lies down and grovels, grapples +not<br /> +With evil, casts the burden of its lot.<br /> +This Age climbs earth.</p> +<p class="poetry">—To challenge heaven.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Not less<br /> +The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!<br /> +That know I, though the echoes of it wail,<br /> +For one step upward on the crags you scale.<br /> +Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,<br /> +Which means our soul asleep or body’s lust,<br /> +Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat<br /> +A temperate common music, sunlike heat<br /> +The happiness not predatory sheds!</p> +<p class="poetry">—But your fierce Yes and No of butting +heads<br /> +Now rages to outdo a horny Past.<br /> +Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast<br /> +Are thrown by every novel light upraised.<br /> +The world’s whole round smokes ominously, amazed<br /> +<a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>And +trembling as its pregnant Aetna swells.<br /> +Combustibles on hot combustibles<br /> +Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire<br /> +The mountain-torrent of infernal ire<br /> +And leave the track of devils where men built.<br /> +Perceptive of a doom, the sinner’s guilt<br /> +Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,<br /> +If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,<br /> +To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:<br /> +None save they but the souls which them contain.<br /> +No extramural God, the God within<br /> +Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.<br /> +A world that for the spur of fool and knave<br /> +Sweats in its laboratory what shall save?<br /> +But men who ply their wits in such a school<br /> +Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Much have I studied hard Necessity!<br +/> +To know her Wisdom’s mother, and that we<br /> +May deem the harshness of her later cries<br /> +In labour a sure goad to prick the wise,<br /> +If men among the warnings which convulse<br /> +Can gravely dread without the craven’s pulse.<br /> +Long ere the rising of this age of ours,<br /> +The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.<br /> +Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,<br /> +And are as lasting as the parent thing.<br /> +Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,<br /> +They might o’ermatch and have mankind at will.<br /> +Behold such army gathering; ours the spur,<br /> +No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer.<br /> +Not fool or knave is now the enemy<br /> +O’ershadowing men, ’tis Folly, Knavery!<br /> +A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.<br /> +Now must the brother soul alive in each<br /> +<a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>His +traitorous individual devildom<br /> +Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.<br /> +Dimly men see it menacing apace<br /> +To overthrow, perchance uproot, the race.<br /> +Within, without, they are a field of tares:<br /> +Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,<br /> +And wherefore warrior service they must yield,<br /> +Shines visible as life on either field.<br /> +That is my comfort, following shock on shock,<br /> +Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.<br /> +Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,<br /> +Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,<br /> +Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,<br /> +The human and Satanic intellect,<br /> +Determined for their uses to control<br /> +What forces on the earth and under roll,<br /> +Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand<br /> +Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.<br /> +They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:<br /> +Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.</p> +<p class="poetry">—My sister, as I read them in my +glass,<br /> +Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.<br /> +How waken them that have not any bent<br /> +Save browsing—the concrete indifferent!<br /> +Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:<br /> +They fear not for the race when full the trough.<br /> +They have much fear of giving up the ghost;<br /> +And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.</p> +<p class="poetry">—If I could see with you, and did not +faint<br /> +In beating wing, the future I would paint.<br /> +Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:<br /> +Now meanwhile is another mass awake,<br /> +<a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>Once +denser than the grunters of the sty.<br /> +If I could see with you! Could I but fly!</p> +<p class="poetry">—The length of days that you with them +have housed,<br /> +An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.</p> +<p class="poetry">—O true, they have a cause, and woe for +us,<br /> +While still they have a cause too piteous!<br /> +Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,<br /> +They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,<br /> +And quicken in the virtue of their cause,<br /> +To think me a poor mouther of old saws!<br /> +I wait the issue of a battling Age;<br /> +The toilers with your ‘troughsters’ now engage;<br /> +Instructing them, through their acutest sense,<br /> +How close the dangers of indifference!<br /> +Already have my people shown their worth,<br /> +More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.<br /> +That love to love of labour leads: thence love<br /> +Of humankind—earth’s incense flung above.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Admit some other features: Faithless, +mean;<br /> +Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;<br /> +Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells<br /> +On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;<br /> +And if I bid it face what <i>I</i> observe,<br /> +Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!</p> +<p class="poetry">—Oft has your prophet, for reward of +toil,<br /> +Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:<br /> +Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,<br /> +Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.<br /> +Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:<br /> +As little as Time’s earliest knew the sky.<br /> +<a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>Perchance +among them shoots a lustrous flame<br /> +At intervals, in proof of whom they came.<br /> +To strengthen our foundations is the task<br /> +Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,<br /> +Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves<br /> +The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.<br /> +My sister sees no round beyond her mood;<br /> +To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.<br /> +Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,<br /> +It moves: O much for me to say it moves!<br /> +About his Æthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,<br /> +Though not the stream of the paternal smile:<br /> +And where his tide of nourishment he drives,<br /> +An Abyssinian wantonness revives.<br /> +Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;<br /> +He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,<br /> +The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;<br /> +Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.<br /> +To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,<br /> +He is the vast Insensate who devours<br /> +His golden promise over leagues of seed,<br /> +Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.<br /> +The races which on barbarous force begin<br /> +Inherit onward of their origin,<br /> +And cancelled blessings will the current length<br /> +Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.<br /> +’Tis not in men to recognize the need<br /> +Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.<br /> +Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;<br /> +Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.<br /> +Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,<br /> +For tens up the safe mountains at his head.<br /> +Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,<br /> +Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.<br /> +<a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>—That rings of truth! More do your people +thrive;<br /> +Your Many are more merrily alive<br /> +Than erewhile when I gloried in the page<br /> +Of radiant singer and anointed sage.<br /> +Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;<br /> +Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!<br /> +All structures built upon a narrow space<br /> +Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.<br /> +O thrice must one be you, to see them shift<br /> +Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;<br /> +With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,<br /> +Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!<br /> +And thrice must one be you, to wait release<br /> +From duress in the swamp of their increase.<br /> +At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,<br /> +A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed<br /> +Philosophers behold; desponding view<br /> +Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;<br /> +Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,<br /> +Dive down the fumy Ætna of their brains.<br /> +Belated vessels on a rising sea,<br /> +They seem: they pass!</p> +<p +class="poetry"> —But +not Philosophy!</p> +<p class="poetry">—Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: +despise<br /> +Nought but the coward in us! That way lies<br /> +The wisdom making passage through our slough.<br /> +Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;<br /> +Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.<br /> +Philosophy is Life’s one match for Fate.<br /> +That photosphere of our high fountain One,<br /> +Our spirit’s Lord and Reason’s fostering sun,<br /> +Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,<br /> +Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.<br /> +<a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,<br /> +Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!<br /> +Advantage to the Many: that we name<br /> +God’s voice; have there the surety in our aim.<br /> +This thought unto my sister do I owe,<br /> +And irony and satire off me throw.<br /> +They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,<br /> +Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.<br /> +Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,<br /> +Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.<br /> +Who never yet of scattered lamps was born<br /> +To speed a world, a marching world to warn,<br /> +But sunward from the vivid Many springs,<br /> +Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.</p> +<h2><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>THE +WARNING</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">We</span> have seen mighty +men ballooning high,<br /> +And in another moment bump the ground.<br /> +He falls; and in his measurement is found<br /> +To count some inches o’er the common fry.<br /> +’Twas not enough to send him climbing sky,<br /> +Yet ’twas enough above his fellows crowned,<br /> +Had he less panted. Let his faithful hound<br /> +Bark at detractors. He may walk or lie.<br /> +Concerns it most ourselves, who with our gas—<br /> +This little Isle’s insatiable greed<br /> +For Continents—filled to inflation burst.<br /> +So do ripe nations into squalor pass,<br /> +When, driven as herds by their old private thirst,<br /> +They scorn the brain’s wild search for virtuous light.</p> +<h2>OUTSIDE THE CROWD</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">To</span> sit on History in +an easy chair,<br /> +Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom ’twas writ!<br /> +Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit,<br /> +Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air.<br /> +If more than hands’ and armsful be our share,<br /> +Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit.<br /> +Have we not heard derision infinite<br /> +When old men play the youth to chase the snare?<br /> +Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes,<br /> +Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent,<br /> +The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex,<br /> +Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent;<br /> +Armed to support her sword;—lest we compose<br /> +That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.</p> +<h2><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +100</span>TRAFALGAR DAY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> leads: we hear +our Seaman’s call<br /> + In the roll of battles won;<br /> +For he is Britain’s Admiral<br /> + Till setting of her sun.</p> +<p class="poetry">When Britain’s life was in her ships,<br +/> + He kept the sea as his own right;<br /> +And saved us from more fell eclipse<br /> + Than drops on day from blackest night.<br /> +Again his battle spat the flame!<br /> + Again his victory flag men saw!<br /> +At sound of Nelson’s chieftain name,<br /> + A deeper breath did Freedom draw.</p> +<p class="poetry">Each trusty captain knew his part:<br /> + They served as men, not marshalled kine:<br /> +The pulses they of his great heart,<br /> + With heads to work his main design.<br /> +Their Nelson’s word, to beat the foe,<br /> + And spare the fall’n, before them shone.<br /> +Good was the hour of blow for blow,<br /> + And clear their course while they fought on.</p> +<p class="poetry">Behold the Envied vanward sweep!—<br /> + A day in mourning weeds adored!<br /> +Then Victory was wrought to weep;<br /> + Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +101</span>A breezeless flag above a shroud<br /> + All Britain was when wind and wave,<br /> +To make her, passing human, proud,<br /> + Brought his last gift from o’er the grave!</p> +<p class="poetry">Uprose the soul of him a star<br /> + On that brave day of Ocean days:<br /> +It rolled the smoke from Trafalgár<br /> + To darken Austerlitz ablaze.<br /> +Are we the men of old, its light<br /> + Will point us under every sky<br /> +The path he took; and must we fight,<br /> + Our Nelson be our battle-cry!</p> +<p class="poetry">He leads: we hear our Seaman’s call<br /> + In the roll of battles won;<br /> +For he is Britain’s Admiral<br /> + Till setting of her sun.</p> +<h2><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>ODES +IN CONTRIBUTION TO THE SONG OF FRENCH HISTORY</h2> +<h3><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>THE +REVOLUTION</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Not</span> yet had +History’s Aetna smoked the skies,<br /> +And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained,<br /> +While overhead in ordered set and rise<br /> +Her kingly crowns immutably defiled;<br /> +Effulgent on funereal piled<br /> +Across the vacant heavens, and distrained<br /> +Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear;<br /> +Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Through marching scores of winters racked she +lay,<br /> +Beneath a hoar-frost’s brilliant crust,<br /> +Whereon the jewelled flies that drained<br /> +Her breasts disported in a glistering spray;<br /> +She, the land’s fount of fruits, enclosed with dust;<br /> +By good and evil angels fed, sustained<br /> +In part to curse, in part to pray,<br /> +Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw<br /> +The throbs of her charged heart before the Just,<br /> +So worn the harrowed surface had become:<br /> +And still they deemed the dance above was Law,<br /> +Amort all passion in a rebel dumb.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then, on the unanticipated day,<br /> +Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound<br /> +<a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>To roar +of the underfloods; and off it sprang,<br /> +Ravishing as red wine in woman’s form,<br /> +A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh,<br /> +Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned;<br /> +She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray,<br /> +Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang<br /> +Intoxication to her swarm,<br /> +Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole,<br /> +As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff,<br /> +Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay<br /> +(O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure,<br /> +If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!)<br /> +And, like a glad releasing of her soul,<br /> +Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue,<br /> +Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined,<br /> +In the face of men they joined: attest it true,<br /> +The million witnesses, that she,<br /> +For ages lying beside the mole,<br /> +Was on the unanticipated miracle day<br /> +Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal,<br /> +Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew<br /> +What Lucifer of the Mint had coined<br /> +His bride’s adulterate currency<br /> +Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate;<br /> +She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate:<br /> +His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed.<br /> +Read backward on the hoar-frost’s brilliant crust;<br /> +Beneath it read.<br /> +Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood,<br /> +A radiance fringed with grim affright;<br /> +For them that hungered, she was nourishing food,<br /> +For those who sparkled, Night.<br /> +Read in her heart, and how before the Just<br /> +Her doings, her misdoings, plead.</p> +<h4><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +107</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Down on her leap for him the young Angelical +broke<br /> +To husband a resurgent France:<br /> +From whom, with her dethroning stroke,<br /> +Dishonour passed; the dalliance,<br /> +That is occasion’s yea or nay,<br /> +In issues for the soul to pay,<br /> +Discarded; and the cleft ’twixt deed and word,<br /> +The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird,<br /> +Wherein we see old Darkness peer,<br /> +Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence;<br /> +And hence the talons and the beak of prey;<br /> +Hence all the lures to silken swine<br /> +Thronging the troughs of indolence;<br /> +With every sleek convolvement serpentine;<br /> +The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer,<br /> +And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay.<br /> +He clasped in this revived, uprisen France,<br /> +A valorous dame, of countenance<br /> +The lightning’s upon cloud: unlit as yet<br /> +On brows and lips the lurid shine<br /> +Of seas in the night-wind’s whirl; unstirred<br /> +Her pouch of the centuries’ injuries compressed;<br /> +The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard:<br /> +Earth’s animate full flower she looked, intense<br /> +For worship, wholly given him, fair<br /> +Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet,<br /> +Earth’s crystal spring to sky: Earth’s warrior +Best<br /> +To win Heaven’s Pure up that midway<br /> +We vision for new ground, where sense<br /> +And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare,<br /> +Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray<br /> +In scorn of the seductive insincere,<br /> +But martially nude for hot Bellona’s play,<br /> +And amorous of the loftiest in her view.</p> +<h4><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">She sprang from dust to drink of earth’s +cool dew,<br /> +The breath of swaying grasses share,<br /> +Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear,<br /> +At wrestle with the tyrannic strong;<br /> +Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew,<br /> +As immortals may be in the mortal sphere.<br /> +Read through her launching heart, who had lain long<br /> +With Earth and heard till it became her own<br /> +Our good Great Mother’s eve and matin song:<br /> +The humming burden of Earth’s toil to feed<br /> +Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth,<br /> +Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown<br /> +Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both,<br /> +Of either aided on their hard ascent.<br /> +Now when she looked, with love’s benign delight<br /> +After great ecstasy, along the plains,<br /> +What foulest impregnation of her sight<br /> +Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops<br /> +Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent,<br /> +As were they winter sedges, broken hoops,<br /> +Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts,<br /> +With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains?<br /> +Recked she that some perverting devil had limned<br /> +Earth’s proudest to spout scorn of the Maker’s +hand,<br /> +Who could a day behold these deathly hosts,<br /> +And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed,<br /> +A ribanded and gemmed elected few,<br /> +Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:—<br /> +Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game<br /> +Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame:<br /> +Beautiful statures; hideous,<br /> +By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains,<br /> +And flexile where is manhood straight;<br /> +Mortuaries where warm should beat<br /> +<a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>The +brotherhood that keeps blood sweet:<br /> +Who dared in cantique impious<br /> +Proclaim the Just, to whom was due<br /> +Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state,<br /> +For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains,<br /> +On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew.<br /> +Surely a devil’s land when that meant death for each!<br /> +Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus,<br /> +With all the body’s life to plump the leech,<br /> +Is Nature’s way, she knew. The abominable scene<br /> +Spat at the skies; and through her veins,<br /> +To cloud celestially sown,<br /> +Ran venom of what nourishment<br /> +Her dark sustainer subterrene<br /> +Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack,<br /> +Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains,<br /> +Under derisive revels, prone<br /> +As one clamped fast, with the interminable senseless blent.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now was her face white waves in the +tempest’s sharp flame-blink;<br /> +Her skies shot black.<br /> +Now was it visioned infamy to drink<br /> +Of earth’s cool dew, and through the vines<br /> +Frolic in pearly laughter with her young,<br /> +Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs<br /> +Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung,<br /> +After their sly shy ventures from the leaf,<br /> +And promised bunches. Now it seemed<br /> +The world was one malarious mire,<br /> +Crying for purification: chief<br /> +This land of France. It seemed<br /> +A duteous desire<br /> +To drink of life’s hot flood, and the crimson streamed.</p> +<h4><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">She drank what makes man demon at the +draught.<br /> +Her skies lowered black,<br /> +Her lover flew,<br /> +There swept a shudder over men.<br /> +Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed,<br /> +For laughter was her spirit’s weapon then.<br /> +The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">As mighty thews burst manacles, she went +mad:<br /> +Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits.<br /> +Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had!<br /> +To tread her down in her live grave beneath<br /> +Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath,<br /> +They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits.<br /> +Without they girdled her, made nest within.<br /> +There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake.<br /> +They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood;<br /> +Believing it, in the mother’s mind at strain,<br /> +In the mother’s fears, and in young Liberty’s wail<br +/> +Alarmed, for her encompassed children’s sake,<br /> +The sole sure way to save her priceless bud.<br /> +Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail,<br /> +Vengeance appeared as logically akin.<br /> +Insanely rational they; she rationally insane;<br /> +And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Amid the plash of scarlet mud<br /> +Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air,<br /> +Not lack of love was her defect;<br /> +The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France<br /> +Breathing from exultation to despair<br /> +At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance<br /> +<a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>Soaring +at each faint gleam o’er her abyss.<br /> +Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect,<br /> +The frontier march she piped her sons, for where<br /> +Her crouching outer enemy camped,<br /> +Attendant on the deadlier inner’s hiss.<br /> +She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine<br /> +Of martial music, History’s cherished tune;<br /> +And they, the saintliest labourers that aye<br /> +Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped;<br /> +High-breasted to match men or elements,<br /> +Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled:<br /> +War’s ragged pupils; many a wavering line,<br /> +Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled,<br /> +Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon,<br /> +To jest at famine, ply<br /> +The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field;<br /> +Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents;<br /> +Fronting the red artillery straighten spine;<br /> +Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn;<br /> +Over an empty platter affect the merrily filled;<br /> +Die, if the multiple hazards around said die;<br /> +Downward measure a foeman mightily sized;<br /> +Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised;<br /> +Lyrical on into death’s red roaring jaw-gape, steeled<br /> +Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply.<br /> +Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon!</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind +rattle their thunder<br /> +Loud through a night, and at dawn comes change to the great +South-west,<br /> +Hounds are the hounded in clouds, waves, forests, inverted the +race:<br /> +<a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>Lo, in +the day’s young beams the colossal invading pursuers<br /> +Burst upon rocks and were foam;<br /> +Ridged up a torrent crest;<br /> +Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder;<br /> +Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace.<br +/> +Yesterday’s clarion cock scudded hen of the invalid +comb;<br /> +They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under;<br /> +They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home;<br /> +They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers;<br +/> +Quick as the trick of the wrist with the rapier, they the +pursuers.<br /> +Heavens and men amazed heard the arrogant crying for grace;<br /> +Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army +dispieced;<br /> +Saw such a shift of the hunt as when Titan Olympus clomb.<br /> +Fly! was the sportsman’s word; and the note of the quarry +rang, Chase!</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Banners from South, from East,<br /> +Sheaves of pale banners drooping hole and shred;<br /> +The captive brides of valour, Sabine Wives<br /> +Plucked from the foeman’s blushful bed,<br /> +For glorious muted battle-tongues<br /> +Of deeds along the horizon’s red,<br /> +At cost of unreluctant lives;<br /> +Her toilful heroes homeward poured,<br /> +To give their fevered mother air of the lungs.<br /> +<a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>She +breathed, and in the breathing craved.<br /> +Environed as she was, at bay,<br /> +Safety she kissed on her drawn sword,<br /> +And waved for victory, for fresh victory waved:<br /> +She craved for victory as her daily bread;<br /> +For victory as her daily banquet raved.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey<br +/> +Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore<br /> +To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more<br /> +Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray;<br /> +Desired if but to paint her pallid hue.<br /> +The passion for that young horizon red,<br /> +Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame,<br /> +Like dotage of the past-meridian dame<br /> +For some bright Sungod adolescent, swelled<br /> +Insatiate, to the voracious grew,<br /> +The glutton’s inward raveners bred;<br /> +Till she, mankind’s most dreaded, most abhorred,<br /> +Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked,<br /> +As by the weaving Fates impelled,<br /> +To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord,<br /> +Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Banners from East, from South,<br /> +She hugged him in them, feared the scourge they meant,<br /> +Yet blindly hugged, and hungering built his throne.<br /> +So may you see the village innocent,<br /> +With curtsey of shut lids and open mouth,<br /> +In act to beg for sweets expect a loathly stone:<br /> +See furthermore the Just in his measures weigh<br /> +Her sufferings and her sins, dispense her meed.<br /> +False to her bridegroom lord of the miracle day,<br /> +<a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>She +fell: from his ethereal home observed<br /> +Through love, grown alien love, not moved to plead<br /> +Against the season’s fruit for deadly Seed,<br /> +But marking how she had aimed, and where she swerved,<br /> +Why suffered, with a sad consenting thought.<br /> +Nor would he shun her sullen look, nor monstrous hold<br /> +The doer of the monstrous; she aroused,<br /> +She, the long tortured, suddenly freed, distraught,<br /> +More strongly the divine in him than when<br /> +Joy of her as she sprang from mould<br /> +Drew him the midway heavens adown<br /> +To clasp her in his arms espoused<br /> +Before the sight of wondering men,<br /> +And put upon the day a deathless crown.<br /> +The veins and arteries of her, fold in fold,<br /> +His alien love laid open, to divide<br /> +The martyred creature from her crimes; he knew<br /> +What cowardice in her valour could reside;<br /> +What strength her weakness covered; what abased<br /> +Sublimity so illumining, and what raised<br /> +This wallower in old slime to noblest heights,<br /> +Up to the union on the midway blue:—<br /> +Day that the celestial grave Recorder hangs<br /> +Among dark History’s nocturnal lights,<br /> +With vivid beams indicative to the quick<br /> +Of all who have felt the vaulted body’s pangs<br /> +Beneath a mind in hopeless soaring sick.<br /> +She had forgot how, long enslaved, she yearned<br /> +To the one helping hand above;<br /> +Forgot her faith in the Great Undiscerned,<br /> +Whereof she sprang aloft to her Angelical love<br /> +That day: and he, the bright day’s husband, still with +love,<br /> +Though alien, though to an upper seat retired,<br /> +Behold a wrangling heart, as ’twere her soul<br /> +<a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>On +eddies of wild waters cast;<br /> +In wilderness division; fired<br /> +For domination, freedom, lust,<br /> +The Pleasures; lo, a witch’s snaky bowl<br /> +Set at her lips; the blood-drinker’s madness fast<br /> +Upon her; and therewith mistrust,<br /> +Most of herself: a mouth of guile.<br /> +Compassionately could he smile,<br /> +To hear the mouth disclaiming God,<br /> +And clamouring for the Just!<br /> +Her thousand impulses, like torches, coursed<br /> +City and field; and pushed abroad<br /> +O’er hungry waves to thirsty sands,<br /> +Flaring at further; she had grown to be<br /> +The headless with the fearful hands;<br /> +To slaughter, else to suicide, enforced.<br /> +But he, remembering how his love began,<br /> +And of what creature, pitied when was plain<br /> +Another measure of captivity:<br /> +The need for strap and rod;<br /> +The penitential prayers again;<br /> +Again the bitter bowing down to dust;<br /> +The burden on the flesh for who disclaims the God,<br /> +The answer when is call upon the Just.<br /> +Whence her lost virtue had found refuge strode<br /> +Her master, saying, ‘I only; I who can!’<br /> +And echoed round her army, now her chain.<br /> +So learns the nation, closing Anarch’s reign,<br /> +That she had been in travail of a Man.</p> +<h3><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +116</span>NAPOLÉON</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Cannon</span> his name,<br +/> +Cannon his voice, he came.<br /> +Who heard of him heard shaken hills,<br /> +An earth at quake, to quiet stamped;<br /> +Who looked on him beheld the will of wills,<br /> +The driver of wild flocks where lions ramped:<br /> +Beheld War’s liveries flee him, like lumped grass<br /> +Nid-nod to ground beneath the cuffing storm;<br /> +While laurelled over his Imperial form,<br /> +Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass,<br /> +Reverberant notes and long blew volant Fame.<br /> +Incarnate Victory, Power manifest,<br /> +Infernal or God-given to mankind,<br /> +On the quenched volcano’s cusp did he take stand,<br /> +A conquering army’s height above the land,<br /> +Which calls that army offspring of its breast,<br /> +And sees it mid the starry camps enshrined;<br /> +His eye the cannon’s flame,<br /> +The cannon’s cave his mind.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">To weld the nation in a name of dread,<br /> +And scatter carrion flies off wounds unhealed,<br /> +The Necessitated came, as comes from out<br /> +Electric ebon lightning’s javelin-head,<br /> +Threatening agitation in the revealed<br /> +Founts of our being; terrible with doubt,<br /> +<a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>With +radiance restorative. At one stride<br /> +Athwart the Law he stood for sovereign sway.<br /> +That Soliform made featureless beside<br /> +His brilliancy who neighboured: vapour they;<br /> +Vapour what postured statues barred his tread.<br /> +On high in amphitheatre field on field,<br /> +Italian, Egyptian, Austrian,<br /> +Far heard and of the carnage discord clear,<br /> +Bells of his escalading triumphs pealed<br /> +In crashes on a choral chant severe,<br /> +Heraldic of the authentic Charlemagne,<br /> +Globe, sceptre, sword, to enfold, to rule, to smite,<br /> +Make unity of the mass,<br /> +Coherent or refractory, by his might.</p> +<p class="poetry">Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey +brass,<br /> +Fame blew, and tuned the jangles, bent the knees<br /> +Rebellious or submissive; his decrees<br /> +Were thunder in those heavens and compelled:<br /> +Such as disordered earth, eclipsed of stars,<br /> +Endures for sign of Order’s calm return,<br /> +Whereunto she is vowed; and his wreckage-spars,<br /> +His harried ships, old riotous Ocean lifts alight,<br /> +Subdued to splendour in his delirant churn.<br /> +Glory suffused the accordant, quelled,<br /> +By magic of high sovereignty, revolt:<br /> +And he, the reader of men, himself unread;<br /> +The name of hope, the name of dread;<br /> +Bloom of the coming years or blight;<br /> +An arm to hurl the bolt<br /> +With aim Olympian; bore<br /> +Likeness to Godhead. Whither his flashes hied<br /> +Hosts fell; what he constructed held rock-fast.<br /> +So did earth’s abjects deem of him that built and clove.<br +/> +<a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>Torch on +imagination, beams he cast,<br /> +Whereat they hailed him deified:<br /> +If less than an eagle-speeding Jove, than Vulcan more.<br /> +Or it might be a Vulcan-Jove,<br /> +Europe for smithy, Europe’s floor<br /> +Lurid with sparks in evanescent showers,<br /> +Loud echo-clap of hammers at all hours,<br /> +Our skies the reflex of its furnace blast.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">On him the long enchained, released<br /> +For bride of the miracle day up the midway blue;<br /> +She from her heavenly lover fallen to serve for feast<br /> +Of rancours and raw hungers; she, the untrue,<br /> +Yet pitiable, not despicable, gazed.<br /> +Fawning, her body bent, she gazed<br /> +With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart:<br /> +Eyes magnifying through hysteric tears<br /> +This apparition, ghostly for belief;<br /> +Demoniac or divine, but sole<br /> +Over earth’s mightiest written Chief;<br /> +Earth’s chosen, crowned, unchallengeable upstart:<br /> +The trumpet word to awake, transform, renew;<br /> +The arbiter of circumstance;<br /> +High above limitations, as the spheres.<br /> +Nor ever had heroical Romance,<br /> +Never ensanguined History’s lengthened scroll,<br /> +Shown fulminant to shoot the levin dart<br /> +Terrific as this man, by whom upraised,<br /> +Aggrandized and begemmed, she outstripped her peers;<br /> +Like midnight’s levying brazier-beacon blazed<br /> +Defiant to the world, a rally for her sons,<br /> +<a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>Day of +the darkness; this man’s mate; by him,<br /> +Cannon his name,<br /> +Rescued from vivisectionist and knave,<br /> +Her body’s dominators and her shame;<br /> +By him with the rivers of ranked battalions, brave<br /> +Past mortal, girt: a march of swords and guns<br /> +Incessant; his proved warriors; loaded dice<br /> +He flung on the crested board, where chilly Fears<br /> +Behold the Reaper’s ground, Death sitting grim,<br /> +Awatch for his predestined ones,<br /> +Mid shrieks and torrent-hooves; but these,<br /> +Inebriate of his inevitable device,<br /> +Hail it their hero’s wood of lustrous laurel-trees,<br /> +Blossom and fruit of fresh Hesperides,<br /> +The boiling life-blood in their cheers.<br /> +Unequalled since the world was man they pour<br /> +A spiky girdle round her; these, her sons,<br /> +His cataracts at smooth holiday, soon to roar<br /> +Obstruction shattered at his will or whim:<br /> +Kind to her ear as quiring Cherubim,<br /> +And trampling earth like scornful mastodons.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">The flood that swept her to be slave<br /> +Adoring, under thought of being his mate,<br /> +These were, and unto the visibly unexcelled,<br /> +As much of heart as abjects can she gave,<br /> +Or what of heart the body bears for freight<br /> +When Majesty apparent overawes;<br /> +By the flash of his ascending deeds upheld,<br /> +Which let not feminine pride in him have pause<br /> +To question where the nobler pride rebelled.<br /> +She read the hieroglyphic on his brow,<br /> +Felt his firm hand to wield the giant’s mace;<br /> +<a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>Herself +whirled upward in an eagle’s claws,<br /> +Past recollection of her earthly place;<br /> +And if cold Reason pressed her, called him Fate;<br /> +Offering abashed the servile woman’s vow.<br /> +Delirium was her virtue when the look<br /> +At fettered wrists and violated laws<br /> +Faith in a rectitude Supernal shook,<br /> +Till worship of him shone as her last rational state,<br /> +The slave’s apology for gemmed disgrace.<br /> +Far in her mind that leap from earth to the ghost<br /> +Midway on high; or felt as a troubled pool;<br /> +Or as a broken sleep that hunts a dream half lost,<br /> +Arrested and rebuked by the common school<br /> +Of daily things for truancy. She could rejoice<br /> +To know with wakeful eyeballs Violence<br /> +Her crowned possessor, and, on every sense<br /> +Incumbent, Fact, Imperial Fact, her choice,<br /> +In scorn of barren visions, aims at a glassy void.<br /> +Who sprang for Liberty once, found slavery sweet;<br /> +And Tyranny, on alert subservience buoyed,<br /> +Spurred a blood-mare immeasureably fleet<br /> +To shoot the transient leagues in a passing wink,<br /> +Prompt for the glorious bound at the fanged abyss’s +brink.<br /> +Scarce felt she that she bled when battle scored<br /> +On riddled flags the further conjured line;<br /> +From off the meteor gleam of his waved sword<br /> +Reflected bright in permanence: she bled<br /> +As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine<br /> +With whirl o’ the cup before the kiss to lip;<br /> +And bade drudge History in his footprints tread,<br /> +For pride of sword-strokes o’er slow penmanship:<br /> +Each step of his a volume: his sharp word<br /> +The shower of steel and lead<br /> +Or pastoral sunshine.</p> +<h4><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Persistent through the brazen chorus round<br +/> +His thunderous footsteps on the foeman’s ground,<br /> +A broken carol of wild notes was heard,<br /> +As when an ailing infant wails a dream.<br /> +Strange in familiarity it rang:<br /> +And now along the dark blue vault might seem<br /> +Winged migratories having but heaven for home,<br /> +Now the lone sea-bird’s cry down shocks of foam,<br /> +Beneath a ruthless paw the captive’s pang.</p> +<p class="poetry">It sang the gift that comes from God<br /> +To mind of man as air to lung.<br /> +So through her days of under sod<br /> +Her faith unto her heart had sung,<br /> +Like bedded seed by frozen clod,<br /> +With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst,<br /> +And midway up, Earth’s fluttering little lyre.<br /> +Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire<br /> +The vision of it watered thirst.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">But whom those errant moans accused<br /> +As Liberty’s murderous mother, cried accursed,<br /> +France blew to deafness: for a space she mused;<br /> +She smoothed a startled look, and sought,<br /> +From treasuries of the adoring slave,<br /> +Her surest way to strangle thought;<br /> +Picturing her dread lord decree advance<br /> +Into the enemy’s land; artillery, bayonet, lance;<br /> +His ordering fingers point the dial’s to time their +ranks:<br /> +Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest’s +bayonet-glaive.<br /> +Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks,<br /> +<a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>By mount +and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains.<br /> +Shines his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains.<br /> +They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute;<br +/> +He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute;<br /> +Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox.<br /> +From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller +falls;<br /> +From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded balls:<br +/> +He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire shifting blocks;<br +/> +They clash, they are knotted, and now ’tis the deed of the +axe on the log;<br /> +Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep<br /> +Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over +heap<br /> +Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or +shreds, or a fog<br /> +Rolling off sunlight’s arrows. Not mightier Phoebus +in ire,<br /> +Nor deadlier Jove’s avengeing right hand, than he of the +brain<br /> +Keen at an enemy’s mind to encircle and pierce and +constrain,<br /> +Muffling his own for a fate-charged blow very Gods may admire.<br +/> +Sure to behold are his eagles on high where the conflict +raged.<br /> +Rightly, then, should France worship, and deafen the disaccord<br +/> +Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword<br /> +To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe. Let them +submit!<br /> +<a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>She said +it aloud, and heard in her breast, as a singer caged,<br /> +With the beat of wings at bars, Earth’s fluttering little +lyre.<br /> +No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit:<br /> +Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of +pain<br /> +Rather, the drop sheer downward from pressure of merciless +weight.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her strangled thought got breath, with her +worship held debate;<br /> +To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed.<br /> +Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main,<br /> +Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed<br /> +In a flaming pillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road<br +/> +For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist.<br /> +For there ’twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of +sheep;<br /> +Firmly there the banner he first upreared<br /> +Stands to rally; and nourishing grain do his children reap<br /> +From a father beloved in life, in his death revered.<br /> +Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance<br /> +Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain;<br /> +Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France<br /> +Had view of her one-day’s heavenly lover again;<br /> +Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had +erred,<br /> +Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred;<br /> +Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend,<br +/> +Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end.</p> +<h4><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +124</span>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Soon felt she in her shivered frame<br /> +A bodeful drain of blood illume<br /> +Her wits with frosty fire to read<br /> +The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed<br /> +On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom<br /> +For victory that was victory scarce in name.<br /> +Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs<br /> +O’er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize;<br /> +Recalling how he stood by Frederic’s tomb,<br /> +With Frederic’s country underfoot and spurned:<br /> +There meditated; till her hope might guess,<br /> +Albeit his constant star prescribe success,<br /> +The savage strife would sink, the civil aim<br /> +To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous<br /> +Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned;<br /> +And Labour’s lovely peace, and Beauty’s courtly +bloom,<br /> +The mind in strenuous tasks hilarious.<br /> +At such great height, where hero hero topped,<br /> +Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think<br /> +No further leaps at the fanged abyss’s brink<br /> +True Genius takes: be battle’s dice-box dropped!</p> +<p class="poetry">She watched his desert features, hung to +hear<br /> +The honey words desired, and veiled her face;<br /> +Hearing the Seaman’s name recur<br /> +Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse<br /> +Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse<br /> +Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place,<br /> +Conjure a heart into the trebly felled.<br /> +It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled<br /> +To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van<br /> +Were haunted by the amphibious curse;<br /> +<a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>Here +flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout:<br /> +The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout,<br /> +Distracted Europe’s Master, puffed remote<br /> +Those Indies of the swift Macedonian,<br /> +Whereon would Europe’s Master somewhiles doat,<br /> +In dreamings on a docile universe<br /> +Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nor marvel France should veil a seer’s +face,<br /> +And call on darkness as a blest retreat.<br /> +Magnanimously could her iron Emperor<br /> +Confront submission: hostile stirred to heat<br /> +All his vast enginery, allowed no halt<br /> +Up withered avenues of waste-blood war,<br /> +To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume,<br /> +As ’twere the world’s arteries opened! Woe the +race!<br /> +Ask wherefore Fortune’s vile caprice should balk<br /> +His panther spring across the foaming salt,<br /> +From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk!<br /> +There is no answer: seed of black defeat<br /> +She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom.<br /> +See since that Seaman’s epicycle sprite<br /> +Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase<br /> +Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white<br /> +With mother’s tears of France, that he may meet<br /> +Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat<br /> +Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea;<br /> +Earth’s power to baffle Ocean’s power resume;<br /> +Victorious army crown o’er Victory’s fleet;<br /> +And bearing low that Seaman upon knee,<br /> +Stay the vexed question of supremacy,<br /> +Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic’s tomb.</p> +<h4><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +126</span>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Poured streams of Europe’s veins the +flood<br /> +Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide<br /> +Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed:<br /> +And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood<br /> +Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast.<br /> +He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed.<br /> +She drank for dryness thirstily, praised his gifts.<br /> +The blooded frame a powerful draught uplifts<br /> +Writhed the devotedness her voice rang wide<br /> +In cries ecstatic, as of the martyr-Blest,<br /> +Their spirits issuing forth of bodies racked,<br /> +And crazy chuckles, with life’s tears at feud;<br /> +While near her heart the sunken sentinel<br /> +Called Critic marked, and dumb in awe reviewed<br /> +This torture, this anointed, this untracked<br /> +To mortal source, this alien of his kind;<br /> +Creator, slayer, conjuror, Solon-Mars,<br /> +The cataract of the abyss, the star of stars;<br /> +Whose arts to lay the senses under spell<br /> +Aroused an insurrectionary mind.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">He, did he love her? France was his +weapon, shrewd<br /> +At edge, a wind in onset: he loved well<br /> +His tempered weapon, with the which he hewed<br /> +Clean to the ground impediments, or hacked,<br /> +Sure of the blade that served the great man-miracle.<br /> +He raised her, robed her, gemmed her for his bride,<br /> +Did but her blood in blindness given exact.<br /> +Her blood she gave, was blind to him as guide:<br /> +She quivered at his word, and at his touch<br /> +Was hound or steed for any mark he espied.<br /> +He loved her more than little, less than much.<br /> +<a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>The fair +subservient of Imperial Fact<br /> +Next to his consanguineous was placed<br /> +In ranked esteem; above the diurnal meal,<br /> +Vexatious carnal appetites above,<br /> +Above his hoards, while she Imperial Fact embraced,<br /> +And rose but at command from under heel.<br /> +The love devolvent, the ascension love,<br /> +Receptive or profuse, were fires he lacked,<br /> +Whose marrow had expelled their wasteful sparks;<br /> +Whose mind, the vast machine of endless haste,<br /> +Took up but solids for its glowing seal.<br /> +The hungry love, that fish-like creatures feel,<br /> +Impelled for prize of hooks, for prey of sharks,<br /> +His night’s first quarter sicklied to distaste,<br /> +In warm enjoyment barely might distract.<br /> +A head that held an Europe half devoured<br /> +Taste in the blood’s conceit of pleasure soured.<br /> +Nought save his rounding aim, the means he plied,<br /> +Death for his cause, to him could point appeal.<br /> +His mistress was the thing of uses tried.<br /> +Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed,<br /> +But on his Policy his eye was lewd.<br /> +That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked<br /> +No foot across; a shade his ire provoked.<br /> +The blunder or the cruelty of a deed<br /> +His Policy imperative could plead.<br /> +He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he<br /> +Legitimate outside his Policy.<br /> +Men’s lives and works were due, from their birth’s +date,<br /> +To the State’s shield and sword, himself the State.<br /> +He thought for them in mass, as Titan may;<br /> +For their pronounced well-being bade obey;<br /> +O’er each obstructive thicket thunderclapped,<br /> +And straight their easy road to market mapped.<br /> +<a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>Watched +Argus to survey the huge preserves<br /> +He held or coveted; Mars was armed alert<br /> +At sign of motion; yet his brows were murk,<br /> +His gorge would surge, to see the butcher’s work,<br /> +The Reaper’s field; a sensitive in nerves.<br /> +He rode not over men to do them hurt.<br /> +As one who claimed to have for paramour<br /> +Earth’s fairest form, he dealt the cancelling blow;<br /> +Impassioned, still impersonal; to ensure<br /> +Possession; free of rivals, not their foe.</p> +<p class="poetry">The common Tyrant’s frenzies, rancour, +spites,<br /> +He knew as little as men’s claim on rights.<br /> +A kindness for old servants, early friends,<br /> +Was constant in him while they served his ends;<br /> +And if irascible, ’twas the moment’s reek<br /> +From fires diverted by some gusty freak.<br /> +His Policy the act which breeds the act<br /> +Prevised, in issues accurately summed<br /> +From reckonings of men’s tempers, terrors, needs:—<br +/> +That universal army, which he leads<br /> +Who builds Imperial on Imperious Fact.<br /> +Within his hot brain’s hammering workshop hummed<br /> +A thousand furious wheels at whirr, untired<br /> +As Nature in her reproductive throes;<br /> +And did they grate, he spake, and cannon fired:<br /> +The cause being aye the incendiary foes<br /> +Proved by prostration culpable. His dispense<br /> +Of Justice made his active conscience;<br /> +His passive was of ceaseless labour formed.<br /> +So found this Tyrant sanction and repose;<br /> +Humanly just, inhumanly unwarmed.<br /> +<a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>Preventive fencings with the foul intent<br /> +Occult, by him observed and foiled betimes,<br /> +Let fool historians chronicle as crimes.<br /> +His blows were dealt to clear the way he went:<br /> +Too busy sword and mind for needless blows.<br /> +The mighty bird of sky minutest grains<br /> +On ground perceived; in heaven but rays or rains;<br /> +In humankind diversities of masks,<br /> +For rule of men the choice of bait or goads.<br /> +The statesman steered the despot to large tasks;<br /> +The despot drove the statesman on short roads.<br /> +For Order’s cause he laboured, as inclined<br /> +A soldier’s training and his Euclid mind.<br /> +His army unto men he could present<br /> +As model of the perfect instrument.<br /> +That creature, woman, was the sofa soft,<br /> +When warriors their dusty armour doffed,<br /> +And read their manuals for the making truce<br /> +With rosy frailties framed to reproduce.<br /> +He farmed his land, distillingly alive<br /> +For the utmost extract he might have and hive,<br /> +Wherewith to marshal force; and in like scheme,<br /> +Benign shone Hymen’s torch on young love’s dream.<br +/> +Thus to be strong was he beneficent;<br /> +A fount of earth, likewise a firmament.</p> +<p class="poetry">The disputant in words his eye dismayed:<br /> +Opinions blocked his passage. Rent<br /> +Were Councils with a gesture; brayed<br /> +By hoarse camp-phrase what argument<br /> +Dared interpose to waken spleen<br /> +In him whose vision grasped the unseen,<br /> +Whose counsellor was the ready blade,<br /> +Whose argument the cannonade.<br /> +<a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>He +loathed his land’s divergent parties, loth<br /> +To grant them speech, they were such idle troops;<br /> +The friable and the grumous, dizzards both.<br /> +Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops;<br /> +Some serviceable, none credible on oath.<br /> +The silly preference they nursed to die<br /> +In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie.<br /> +If magic made them pliable for his use,<br /> +Magician he could be by planned surprise.<br /> +For do they see the deuce in human guise,<br /> +As men’s acknowledged head appears the deuce,<br /> +And they will toil with devilish craft and zeal.<br /> +Among them certain vagrant wits that had<br /> +Ideas buzzed; they were the feebly mad;<br /> +Pursuers of a film they hailed ideal;<br /> +But could be dangerous fire-flies for a brain<br /> +Subdued by fact, still amorous of the inane.<br /> +With a breath he blew them out, to beat their wings<br /> +The way of such transfeminated things,<br /> +And France had sense of vacancy in Light.</p> +<p class="poetry">That is the soul’s dead darkness, making +clutch<br /> +Wild hands for aid at muscles within touch;<br /> +Adding to slavery’s chain the stringent twist;<br /> +Even when it brings close surety that aright<br /> +She reads her Tyrant through his golden mist;<br /> +Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound;<br /> +Self-ridden, self-hunted, captive of his aim;<br /> +Material grandeur’s ape, the Infernal’s hound;<br /> +Enormous, with no infinite around;<br /> +No starred deep sky, no Muse, or lame<br /> +The dusty pattering pinions,<br /> +The voice as through the brazen tube of Fame.</p> +<h4><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +131</span>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Hugest of engines, a much limited man,<br /> +She saw the Lustrous, her great lord, appear<br /> +Through that smoked glass her last privation brought<br /> +To point her critic eye and spur her thought:<br /> +A heart but to propel Leviathan;<br /> +A spirit that breathed but in earth’s atmosphere.<br /> +Amid the plumed and sceptred ones<br /> +Irradiatingly Jovian,<br /> +The mountain tower capped by the floating cloud;<br /> +A nursery screamer where dialectics ruled:<br /> +Mannerless, graceless, laughterless, unlike<br /> +Herself in all, yet with such power to strike,<br /> +That she the various features she could scan<br /> +Dared not to sum, though seeing: and befooled<br /> +By power which beamed omnipotent, she bowed,<br /> +Subservient as roused echo round his guns.<br /> +Invulnerable Prince of Myrmidons,<br /> +He sparkled, by no sage Athene schooled.<br /> +Partly she read her riddle, stricken and pained;<br /> +But irony, her spirit’s tongue, restrained.<br /> +The Critic, last of vital in the proud<br /> +Enslaved, when most detectively endowed,<br /> +Admired how irony’s venom off him ran,<br /> +Like rain-drops down a statue cast in bronze:<br /> +Whereby of her keen rapier disarmed,<br /> +Again her chant of eulogy began,<br /> +Protesting, but with slavish senses charmed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her warrior, chief among the valorous great<br +/> +In arms he was, dispelling shades of blame,<br /> +With radiance palpable in fruit and weight.<br /> +Heard she reproach, his victories blared response;<br /> +His victories bent the Critic to acclaim,<br /> +As with fresh blows upon a ringing sconce.<br /> +<a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>Or heard +she from scarred ranks of jolly growls<br /> +His veterans dwarf their reverence and, like owls,<br /> +Laugh in the pitch of discord, to exalt<br /> +Their idol for some genial trick or fault,<br /> +She, too, became his marching veteran.<br /> +Again she took her breath from them who bore<br /> +His eagles through the tawny roar,<br /> +And murmured at a peaceful state,<br /> +That bred the title charlatan,<br /> +As missile from the mouth of hate,<br /> +For one the daemon fierily filled and hurled,<br /> +Cannon his name,<br /> +Shattering against a barrier world;<br /> +Her supreme player of man’s primaeval game.</p> +<p class="poetry">The daemon filled him, and he filled her +sons;<br /> +Strung them to stature over human height,<br /> +As march the standards down the smoky fight;<br /> +Her cherubim, her towering mastodons!<br /> +Directed vault or breach, break through<br /> +Earth’s toughest, seasons, elements, tame;<br /> +Dash at the bulk the sharpened few;<br /> +Count death the smallest of their debts:<br /> +Show that the will to do<br /> +Is masculine and begets!</p> +<p class="poetry">These princes unto him the mother owed;<br /> +These jewels of manhood that rich hand bestowed.<br /> +What wonder, though with wits awake<br /> +To read her riddle, for these her offspring’s +sake;—<br /> +And she, before high heaven adulteress,<br /> +The lost to honour, in his glory clothed,<br /> +Else naked, shamed in sight of men, self-loathed;—<br /> +That she should quench her thought, nor worship less<br /> +Than ere she bled on sands or snows and knew<br /> +The slave’s alternative, to worship or to rue!</p> +<h4><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +133</span>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Bright from the shell of that much limited +man,<br /> +Her hero, like the falchion out of sheath,<br /> +Like soul that quits the tumbled body, soared:<br /> +And France, impulsive, nuptial with his plan,<br /> +Albeit the Critic fretting her, adored<br /> +Once more. Exultingly her heart went forth,<br /> +Submissive to his mind and mood,<br /> +The way of those pent-eyebrows North;<br /> +For now was he to win the wreath<br /> +Surpassing sunniest in camp or Court;<br /> +Next, as the blessed harvest after years of blight,<br /> +Sit, the Great Emperor, to be known the Good!</p> +<p class="poetry">Now had the Seaman’s volvent sprite,<br +/> +Lean from the chase that barked his contraband,<br /> +A beggared applicant at every port,<br /> +To strew the profitless deeps and rot beneath,<br /> +Slung northward, for a hunted beast’s retort<br /> +On sovereign power; there his final stand,<br /> +Among the perjured Scythian’s shaggy horde,<br /> +The hydrocephalic aërolite<br /> +Had taken; flashing thence repellent teeth,<br /> +Though Europe’s Master Europe’s Rebel banned<br /> +To be earth’s outcast, ocean’s lord and sport.</p> +<p class="poetry">Unmoved might seem the Master’s taunted +sword.<br /> +Northward his dusky legions nightly slipped,<br /> +As on the map of that all-provident head;<br /> +He luting Peace the while, like morning’s cock<br /> +The quiet day to round the hours for bed;<br /> +No pastoral shepherd sweeter to his flock.<br /> +Then Europe first beheld her Titan stripped.<br /> +To what vast length of limb and mounds of thews,<br /> +<a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>How +trained to scale the eminences, pluck<br /> +The hazards for new footing, how compel<br /> +Those timely incidents by men named luck,<br /> +Through forethought that defied the Fates to choose,<br /> +Her grovelling admiration had not yet<br /> +Imagined of the great man-miracle;<br /> +And France recounted with her comic smile<br /> +Duplicities of Court and Cabinet,<br /> +The silky female of his male in guile,<br /> +Wherewith her two-faced Master could amuse<br /> +A dupe he charmed in sunny beams to bask,<br /> +Before his feint for camisado struck<br /> +The lightning moment of the cast-off mask.</p> +<p class="poetry">Splendours of earth repeating heaven’s at +set<br /> +Of sun down mountain cloud in masses arched;<br /> +Since Asia upon Europe marched,<br /> +Unmatched the copious multitudes; unknown<br /> +To Gallia’s over-runner, Rome’s inveterate foe,<br /> +Such hosts; all one machine for overthrow,<br /> +Coruscant from the Master’s hand, compact<br /> +As reasoned thoughts in the Master’s head; were shown<br /> +Yon lightning moment when his acme might<br /> +Blazed o’er the stream that cuts the sandy tract<br /> +Borussian from Sarmatia’s famished flat;<br /> +The century’s flower; and off its pinnacled throne,<br /> +Rayed servitude on Europe’s ball of sight.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Behind the Northern curtain-folds he passed.<br +/> +There heard hushed France her muffled heart beat fast<br /> +Against the hollow ear-drum, where she sat<br /> +In expectation’s darkness, until cracked<br /> +<a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>The +straining curtain-seams: a scaly light<br /> +Was ghost above an army under shroud.<br /> +Imperious on Imperial Fact<br /> +Incestuously the incredible begat.<br /> +His veterans and auxiliaries,<br /> +The trained, the trustful, sanguine, proud,<br /> +Princely, scarce numerable to recite,—<br /> +Titanic of all Titan tragedies!—<br /> +That Northern curtain took them, as the seas<br /> +Gulp the great ships to give back shipmen white.</p> +<p class="poetry">Alive in marble, she conceived in soul,<br /> +With barren eyes and mouth, the mother’s loss;<br /> +The bolt from her abandoned heaven sped;<br /> +The snowy army rolling knoll on knoll<br /> +Beyond horizon, under no blest Cross:<br /> +By the vulture dotted and engarlanded.</p> +<p class="poetry">Was it a necromancer lured<br /> +To weave his tense betraying spell?<br /> +A Titan whom our God endured<br /> +Till he of his foul hungers fell,<br /> +By all his craft and labour scourged?<br /> +A deluge Europe’s liberated wave,<br /> +Pæan to sky, leapt over that vast grave.<br /> +Its shadow-points against her sacred land converged.<br /> +And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate,<br /> +In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate,<br /> +That tore her old credulity to strips,<br /> +Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips,<br /> +His withered slave for foregone miracles urged.<br /> +And he, whom now his ominous halo’s round,<br /> +A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned,<br /> +Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear<br /> +The realm of Darkness with its Prince’s air;<br /> +<a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>Assume +in mien the resolute pretence<br /> +To satiate an hungered confidence,<br /> +Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower<br /> +Beside the generous face of that frail flower.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Desire and terror then had each of each:<br /> +His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke;<br /> +Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech;<br /> +And both did barter under union’s cloak.<br /> +An union in hot fever and fierce need<br /> +Of either’s aid, distrust in trust did breed.<br /> +Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits<br /> +To issues. Never human fortune throve<br /> +On such alliance. Viewed by fits,<br /> +From Vulcan’s forge a hovering Jove<br /> +Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove.<br /> +Her awe of him his dread of her invoked:<br /> +His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked.<br /> +What wisdom counselled, Policy declined;<br /> +All perils dared he save the step behind.<br /> +Ahead his grand initiative becked:<br /> +One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked.<br /> +Stripped to the despot upstart, for success<br /> +He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness.<br /> +He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught,<br /> +While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught<br /> +He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance,<br /> +Pricked for her lees the veins of wasted France;<br /> +Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun<br /> +The strength he taxed unripened for his throw,<br /> +In vengeful casts calamitous,<br /> +On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow,<br /> +The luminous the ruinous.<br /> +An incalescent scorpion,<br /> +<a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>And +fierier for the mounded cirque<br /> +That narrowed at him thick and murk,<br /> +This gambler with his genius<br /> +Flung lives in angry volleys, bloody lightnings, flung<br /> +His fortunes to the hosts he stung,<br /> +With victories clipped his eagle’s wings.<br /> +By the hands that built him up was he undone:<br /> +By the star aloft, which was his ram’s-head will<br /> +Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won;<br /> +By the yeasty ferment of what once had been,<br /> +To cloud a rational mind for present things;<br /> +By his own force, the suicide in his mill.<br /> +Needs never God of Vengeance intervene<br /> +When giants their last lesson have to learn.<br /> +Fighting against an end he could discern,<br /> +The chivalry whereof he had none<br /> +He called from his worn slave’s abundant springs:<br /> +Not deigning spousally entreat<br /> +That ever blinded by his martial skill,<br /> +But harsh to have her worship counted out<br /> +In human coin, her vital rivers drained,<br /> +Her infant forests felled, commanded die<br /> +The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat,<br /> +Where throning he her faith in him maintained;<br /> +Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat<br /> +Was triumph; and what strength in her remained<br /> +To head against the ultimate foreseen rout,<br /> +Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will,<br /> +Servant and sycophant: without ally,<br /> +In Python’s coils, the Master Craftsman still;<br /> +The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly,<br /> +The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout,<br /> +The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers,<br /> +Striking from black disaster starry showers.<br /> +Her supreme player of man’s primaeval game,<br /> +<a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>He won +his harnessed victim’s rapturous shout,<br /> +When every move was mortal to her frame,<br /> +Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie,<br /> +She to exchange his laurels for earth’s flowers.</p> +<p class="poetry">The innumerable whelmed him, and he fell:<br /> +A vessel in mid-ocean under storm.<br /> +Ere ceased the lullaby of his passing bell,<br /> +He sprang to sight, in human form<br /> +Revealed, from no celestial aids:<br /> +The shades enclosed him, and he fired the shades.</p> +<p class="poetry">Cannon his name,<br /> +Cannon his voice, he came.<br /> +The fount of miracles from drought-dust arose,<br /> +Amazing even on his Imperial stage,<br /> +Where marvels lightened through the alternate hours<br /> +And winged o’er human earth’s heroical shone.<br /> +Into the press of cumulative foes,<br /> +Across the friendly fields of smoke and rage,<br /> +A broken structure bore his furious powers;<br /> +The man no more, the Warrior Chief the same;<br /> +Match for all rivals; in himself but flame<br /> +Of an outworn lamp, to illumine nought anon.<br /> +Yet loud as when he first showed War’s effete<br /> +Their Schoolman off his eagre mounted high,<br /> +And summoned to subject who dared compete,<br /> +The cannon in the name Napoleon<br /> +Discoursed of sulphur earth to curtained sky.<br /> +So through a tropic day a regnant sun,<br /> +Where armies of assailant vapours thronged,<br /> +His glory’s trappings laid on them: comes night,<br /> +Enwraps him in a bosom quick of heat<br /> +From his anterior splendours, and shall seem<br /> +Day instant, Day’s own lord in the furnace gleam,<br /> +The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged,<br /> +<a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>When +severed darkness, all flaminical bright,<br /> +Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight;<br /> +Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar,<br /> +As wrestled he with manacles and gags,<br /> +To speed across a cowering world once more,<br /> +Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags.<br /> +His name on silence thundered, on the obscure<br /> +Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song:<br /> +Earth of her prodigy’s extinction long,<br /> +With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure.</p> +<p class="poetry">Snapped was the chord that made the resonant +bow,<br /> +In France, abased and like a shrunken corse;<br /> +Amid the weakest weak, the lowest low,<br /> +From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source;<br /> +Condemned to hear the nations’ hostile mirth;<br /> +See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth;<br /> +Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force<br /> +Beget the greater for its overthrow.<br /> +The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke<br /> +A foreign tongue; Earth’s fluttering little lyre<br /> +Unlike, but like the raven’s ravening croak.<br /> +Not till her breath of being could aspire<br /> +Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found<br /> +Our common brotherhood in sight and sound:<br /> +When mellow rang the name Napoleon,<br /> +And dim aloft her young Angelical waved.<br /> +Between ethereal and gross to choose,<br /> +She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved.<br /> +They pricked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun<br /> +Behind o’ershadowing foemen: on a tide<br /> +They drew the nature having need of pride<br /> +Among her fellows for its vital dues:<br /> +He seen like some rare treasure-galleon,<br /> +Hull down, with masts against the Western hues.</p> +<h3><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +140</span>FRANCE<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">DECEMBER 1870</span> <a +name="citation140"></a><a href="#footnote140" +class="citation">[140]</a></h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">We</span> look for her that +sunlike stood<br /> +Upon the forehead of our day,<br /> +An orb of nations, radiating food<br /> +For body and for mind alway.<br /> +Where is the Shape of glad array;<br /> +The nervous hands, the front of steel,<br /> +The clarion tongue? Where is the bold proud face?<br /> +We see a vacant place;<br /> +We hear an iron heel.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">O she that made the brave appeal<br /> +For manhood when our time was dark,<br /> +And from our fetters drove the spark<br /> +Which was as lightning to reveal<br /> +New seasons, with the swifter play<br /> +Of pulses, and benigner day;<br /> +She that divinely shook the dead<br /> +From living man; that stretched ahead<br /> +Her resolute forefinger straight,<br /> +And marched toward the gloomy gate<br /> +Of earth’s Untried, gave note, and in<br /> +The good name of Humanity<br /> +Called forth the daring vision! she,<br /> +She likewise half corrupt of sin,<br /> +Angel and Wanton! can it be?<br /> +<a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>Her star +has foundered in eclipse,<br /> +The shriek of madness on her lips;<br /> +Shreds of her, and no more, we see.<br /> +There is horrible convulsion, smothered din,<br /> +As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to be free.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Look not for spreading boughs<br /> +On the riven forest tree.<br /> +Look down where deep in blood and mire<br /> +Black thunder plants his feet and ploughs<br /> +The soil for ruin: that is France:<br /> +Still thrilling like a lyre,<br /> +Amazed to shivering discord from a fall<br /> +Sudden as that the lurid hosts recall<br /> +Who met in heaven the irreparable mischance.<br /> +O that is France!<br /> +The brilliant eyes to kindle bliss,<br /> +The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss,<br /> +Breasts that a sighing world inspire,<br /> +And laughter-dimpled countenance<br /> +Where soul and senses caught desire!</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Ever invoking fire from heaven, the fire<br /> +Has grasped her, unconsumable, but framed<br /> +For all the ecstasies of suffering dire.<br /> +Mother of Pride, her sanctuary shamed:<br /> +Mother of Delicacy, and made a mark<br /> +For outrage: Mother of Luxury, stripped stark:<br /> +Mother of Heroes, bondsmen: thro’ the rains,<br /> +Across her boundaries, lo the league-long chains!<br /> +Fond Mother of her martial youth; they pass,<br /> +Are spectres in her sight, are mown as grass!<br /> +<a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>Mother +of Honour, and dishonoured: Mother<br /> +Of Glory, she condemned to crown with bays<br /> +Her victor, and be fountain of his praise.<br /> +Is there another curse? There is another:<br /> +Compassionate her madness: is she not<br /> +Mother of Reason? she that sees them mown<br /> +Like grass, her young ones! Yea, in the low groan<br /> +And under the fixed thunder of this hour<br /> +Which holds the animate world in one foul blot<br /> +Tranced circumambient while relentless Power<br /> +Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs down-thrown,<br /> +She, with the plungeing lightnings overshot,<br /> +With madness for an armour against pain,<br /> +With milkless breasts for little ones athirst,<br /> +And round her all her noblest dying in vain,<br /> +Mother of Reason is she, trebly cursed,<br /> +To feel, to see, to justify the blow;<br /> +Chamber to chamber of her sequent brain<br /> +Gives answer of the cause of her great woe,<br /> +Inexorably echoing thro’ the vaults,<br /> +‘’Tis thus they reap in blood, in blood who sow:<br +/> +‘This is the sum of self-absolvëd faults.’<br /> +Doubt not that thro’ her grief, with sight supreme,<br /> +Thro’ her delirium and despair’s last dream,<br /> +Thro’ pride, thro’ bright illusion and the brood<br +/> +Bewildering of her various Motherhood,<br /> +The high strong light within her, tho’ she bleeds,<br /> +Traces the letters of returned misdeeds.<br /> +She sees what seed long sown, ripened of late,<br /> +Bears this fierce crop; and she discerns her fate<br /> +From origin to agony, and on<br /> +As far as the wave washes long and wan<br /> +Off one disastrous impulse: for of waves<br /> +Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant graves<br /> +Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn.</p> +<h4><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Ah, what a dawn of splendour, when her +sowers<br /> +Went forth and bent the necks of populations<br /> +And of their terrors and humiliations<br /> +Wove her the starry wreath that earthward lowers<br /> +Now in the figure of a burning yoke!<br /> +Her legions traversed North and South and East,<br /> +Of triumph they enjoyed the glutton’s feast:<br /> +They grafted the green sprig, they lopped the oak.<br /> +They caught by the beard the tempests, by the scalp<br /> +The icy precipices, and clove sheer through<br /> +The heart of horror of the pinnacled Alp,<br /> +Emerging not as men whom mortals knew.<br /> +They were the earthquake and the hurricane,<br /> +The lightnings and the locusts, plagues of blight,<br /> +Plagues of the revel: they were Deluge rain,<br /> +And dreaded Conflagration; lawless Might.<br /> +Death writes a reeling line along the snows,<br /> +Where under frozen mists they may be tracked,<br /> +Who men and elements provoked to foes,<br /> +And Gods: they were of god and beast compact:<br /> +Abhorred of all. Yet, how they sucked the teats<br /> +Of Carnage, thirsty issue of their dam,<br /> +Whose eagles, angrier than their oriflamme,<br /> +Flushed the vext earth with blood, green earth forgets.<br /> +The gay young generations mask her grief;<br /> +Where bled her children hangs the loaded sheaf.<br /> +Forgetful is green earth; the Gods alone<br /> +Remember everlastingly: they strike<br /> +Remorselessly, and ever like for like.<br /> +By their great memories the Gods are known.</p> +<h4><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">They are with her now, and in her ears, and +known.<br /> +’Tis they that cast her to the dust for Strength,<br /> +Their slave, to feed on her fair body’s length,<br /> +That once the sweetest and the proudest shone;<br /> +Scoring for hideous dismemberment<br /> +Her limbs, as were the anguish-taking breath<br /> +Gone out of her in the insufferable descent<br /> +From her high chieftainship; as were she death,<br /> +Who hears a voice of justice, feels the knife<br /> +Of torture, drinks all ignominy of life.<br /> +They are with her, and the painful Gods might weep,<br /> +If ever rain of tears came out of heaven<br /> +To flatter Weakness and bid conscience sleep,<br /> +Viewing the woe of this Immortal, driven<br /> +For the soul’s life to drain the maddening cup<br /> +Of her own children’s blood implacably:<br /> +Unsparing even as they to furrow up<br /> +The yellow land to likeness of a sea:<br /> +The bountiful fair land of vine and grain,<br /> +Of wit and grace and ardour, and strong roots,<br /> +Fruits perishable, imperishable fruits;<br /> +Furrowed to likeness of the dim grey main<br /> +Behind the black obliterating cyclone.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Behold, the Gods are with her, and are +known.<br /> +Whom they abandon misery persecutes<br /> +No more: them half-eyed apathy may loan<br /> +The happiness of pitiable brutes.<br /> +Whom the just Gods abandon have no light,<br /> +No ruthless light of introspective eyes<br /> +That in the midst of misery scrutinize<br /> +The heart and its iniquities outright.<br /> +<a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>They +rest, they smile and rest; have earned perchance<br /> +Of ancient service quiet for a term;<br /> +Quiet of old men dropping to the worm;<br /> +And so goes out the soul. But not of France.<br /> +She cries for grief, and to the Gods she cries,<br /> +For fearfully their loosened hands chastize,<br /> +And icily they watch the rod’s caress<br /> +Ravage her flesh from scourges merciless,<br /> +But she, inveterate of brain, discerns<br /> +That Pity has as little place as Joy<br /> +Among their roll of gifts; for Strength she yearns.<br /> +For Strength, her idol once, too long her toy.<br /> +Lo, Strength is of the plain root-Virtues born:<br /> +Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn,<br /> +Train by endurance, by devotion shape.<br /> +Strength is not won by miracle or rape.<br /> +It is the offspring of the modest years,<br /> +The gift of sire to son, thro’ those firm laws<br /> +Which we name Gods; which are the righteous cause,<br /> +The cause of man, and manhood’s ministers.<br /> +Could France accept the fables of her priests,<br /> +Who blest her banners in this game of beasts,<br /> +And now bid hope that heaven will intercede<br /> +To violate its laws in her sore need,<br /> +She would find comfort in their opiates:<br /> +Mother of Reason! can she cheat the Fates?<br /> +Would she, the champion of the open mind,<br /> +The Omnipotent’s prime gift—the gift of +growth—<br /> +Consent even for a night-time to be blind,<br /> +And sink her soul on the delusive sloth,<br /> +For fruits ethereal and material, both,<br /> +In peril of her place among mankind?<br /> +The Mother of the many Laughters might<br /> +Call one poor shade of laughter in the light<br /> +<a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>Of her +unwavering lamp to mark what things<br /> +The world puts faith in, careless of the truth:<br /> +What silly puppet-bodies danced on strings,<br /> +Attached by credence, we appear in sooth,<br /> +Demanding intercession, direct aid,<br /> +When the whole tragic tale hangs on a broken blade!</p> +<p class="poetry">She swung the sword for centuries; in a day<br +/> +It slipped her, like a stream cut off from source.<br /> +She struck a feeble hand, and tried to pray,<br /> +Clamoured of treachery, and had recourse<br /> +To drunken outcries in her dream that Force<br /> +Needed but hear her shouting to obey.<br /> +Was she not formed to conquer? The bright plumes<br /> +Of crested vanity shed graceful nods:<br /> +Transcendent in her foundries, Arts and looms,<br /> +Had France to fear the vengeance of the Gods?<br /> +Her faith was on her battle-roll of names<br /> +Sheathed in the records of old war; with dance<br /> +And song she thrilled her warriors and her dames,<br /> +Embracing her Dishonour: gave him France<br /> +From head to foot, France present and to come,<br /> +So she might hear the trumpet and the drum—<br /> +Bellona and Bacchante! rushing forth<br /> +On yon stout marching Schoolmen of the North.</p> +<p class="poetry">Inveterate of brain, well knows she why<br /> +Strength failed her, faithful to himself the first:<br /> +Her dream is done, and she can read the sky,<br /> +And she can take into her heart the worst<br /> +Calamity to drug the shameful thought<br /> +Of days that made her as the man she served<br /> +A name of terror, but a thing unnerved:<br /> +Buying the trickster, by the trickster bought,<br /> +She for dominion, he to patch a throne.</p> +<h4><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +147</span>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Henceforth of her the Gods are known,<br /> +Open to them her breast is laid.<br /> +Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant,<br /> +Never did fairer creature pant<br /> +Before the altar and the blade!</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Swift fall the blows, and men upbraid,<br /> +And friends give echo blunt and cold,<br /> +The echo of the forest to the axe.<br /> +Within her are the fires that wax<br /> +For resurrection from the mould.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">She snatched at heaven’s flame of old,<br +/> +And kindled nations: she was weak:<br /> +Frail sister of her heroic prototype,<br /> +The Man; for sacrifice unripe,<br /> +She too must fill a Vulture’s beak.<br /> +Deride the vanquished, and acclaim<br /> +The conqueror, who stains her fame,<br /> +Still the Gods love her, for that of high aim<br /> +Is this good France, the bleeding thing they stripe.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">She shall rise worthier of her prototype<br /> +Thro’ her abasement deep; the pain that runs<br /> +From nerve to nerve some victory achieves.<br /> +They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves<br /> +Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons!<br /> +And of their death her life is: of their blood<br /> +From many streams now urging to a flood,<br /> +<a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>No more +divided, France shall rise afresh.<br /> +Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh:—<br /> +The lesson writ in red since first Time ran,<br /> +A hunter hunting down the beast in man:<br /> +That till the chasing out of its last vice,<br /> +The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.</p> +<p class="poetry">Immortal Mother of a mortal host!<br /> +Thou suffering of the wounds that will not slay,<br /> +Wounds that bring death but take not life away!—<br /> +Stand fast and hearken while thy victors boast:<br /> +Hearken, and loathe that music evermore.<br /> +Slip loose thy garments woven of pride and shame:<br /> +The torture lurks in them, with them the blame<br /> +Shall pass to leave thee purer than before.<br /> +Undo thy jewels, thinking whence they came,<br /> +For what, and of the abominable name<br /> +Of her who in imperial beauty wore.</p> +<p class="poetry">O Mother of a fated fleeting host<br /> +Conceived in the past days of sin, and born<br /> +Heirs of disease and arrogance and scorn,<br /> +Surrender, yield the weight of thy great ghost,<br /> +Like wings on air, to what the heavens proclaim<br /> +With trumpets from the multitudinous mounds<br /> +Where peace has filled the hearing of thy sons:<br /> +Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds<br /> +Each new discernment of the undying ones,<br /> +Do thou stoop to these graves here scattered wide<br /> +Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll;<br /> +These ashes have the lesson for the soul.<br /> +‘Die to thy Vanity, and strain thy Pride,<br /> +Strip off thy Luxury: that thou may’st live,<br /> +Die to thyself,’ they say, ‘as we have died<br /> +From dear existence and the foe forgive,<br /> +<a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>Nor pray +for aught save in our little space<br /> +To warn good seed to greet the fair earth’s face.’<br +/> +O Mother! take their counsel, and so shall<br /> +The broader world breathe in on this thy home,<br /> +Light clear for thee the counter-changing dome,<br /> +Strength give thee, like an ocean’s vast expanse<br /> +Off mountain cliffs, the generations all,<br /> +Not whirling in their narrow rings of foam,<br /> +But as a river forward. Soaring France!<br /> +Now is Humanity on trial in thee:<br /> +Now may’st thou gather humankind in fee:<br /> +Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll;<br /> +Make of calamity thine aureole,<br /> +And bleeding head us thro’ the troubles of the sea.</p> +<h3><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +150</span>ALSACE-LORRAINE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> sister Hours in +circles linked,<br /> +Daughters of men, of men the mates,<br /> +Are gone on flow with the day that winked,<br /> +With the night that spanned at golden gates.<br /> +Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed;<br /> +They bear us grain or flower or weed,<br /> +As we have sown; is nought extinct<br /> +For them we fill to be our Fates.<br /> +Life of the breath is but the loan;<br /> +Passing death what we have sown.</p> +<p class="poetry">Pearly are they till the pale inherited +stain<br /> +Deepens in us, and the mirrors they form on their flow<br /> +Darken to feature and nature: a volumed chain,<br /> +Sequent of issue, in various eddies they show.<br /> +Theirs is the Book of the River of Life, to read<br /> +Leaf by leaf by reapers of long-sown seed:<br /> +There doth our shoot up to light from a spiriting sane<br /> +Stand as a tree whereon numberless clusters grow:<br /> +Legible there how the heart, with its one false move<br /> +Cast Eurydice pallor on all we love.</p> +<p class="poetry">Our fervid heart has filled that Book in +chief;<br /> +Our fitful heart a wild reflection views;<br /> +Our craving heart of passion suckling grief<br /> +Disowns the author’s work it must peruse;<br /> +Inconscient in its leap to wreak the deed,<br /> +A round of harvests red from crimson seed,<br /> +<a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 151</span>It marks +the current Hours show leaf by leaf,<br /> +And rails at Destiny; nor traces clues;<br /> +Though sometimes it may think what novel light<br /> +Will strike their faces when the mind shall write.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Succourful daughters of men are the rosed and +starred<br /> +Revolving Twelves in their fluent germinal rings,<br /> +Despite the burden to chasten, abase, depose.<br /> +Fallen on France, as the sweep of scythe over sward,<br /> +They breathed in her ear their voice of the crystal springs,<br +/> +That run from a twilight rise, from a twilight close,<br /> +Through alternate beams and glooms, rejoicingly young.<br /> +Only to Earth’s best loved, at the breathless turns<br /> +Where Life in fold of the Shadow reclines unstrung,<br /> +And a ghostly lamp of their moment’s union burns,<br /> +Will such pure notes from the fountain-head be sung.</p> +<p class="poetry">Voice of Earth’s very soul to the soul +she would see renewed:<br /> +A song that sought no tears, that laid not a touch on the +breast<br /> +Sobbing aswoon and, like last foxgloves’ bells upon +ferns<br /> +In sandy alleys of woodland silence, shedding to bare.<br /> +Daughters of Earth and men, they piped of her natural brood;<br +/> +Her patient helpful four-feet; wings on the flit or in nest;<br +/> +Paws at our old-world task to scoop a defensive lair;<br /> +Snouts at hunt through the scented grasses; enhavened scuts<br /> +Flashing escape under show of a laugh nigh the mossed +burrow-mouth.<br /> +Sack-like droop bronze pears on the nailed branch-frontage of +huts,<br /> +<a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>To greet +those wedded toilers from acres where sweat is a shower.<br /> +Snake, cicada, lizard, on lavender slopes up South,<br /> +Pant for joy of a sunlight driving the fielders to bower.<br /> +Sharpened in silver by one chance breeze is the olive’s +grey;<br /> +A royal-mantle floats, a red fritillary hies;<br /> +The bee, for whom no flower of garden or wild has nay,<br /> +Noises, heard if but named, so hot is the trade he plies.<br /> +Processions beneath green arches of herbage, the long +colonnades;<br /> +Laboured mounds that a foot or a wanton stick may subvert;<br /> +Homely are they for a lowly look on bedewed grass-blades,<br /> +On citied fir-droppings, on twisted wreaths of the worm in +dirt.<br /> +Does nought so loosen our sight from the despot heart, to +receive<br /> +Balm of a sound Earth’s primary heart at its active +beat:<br /> +The motive, yet servant, of energy; simple as morn and eve;<br /> +Treasureless, fetterless; free of the bonds of a great +conceit:<br /> +Unwounded even by cruel blows on a body that writhes;<br /> +Nor whimpering under misfortune; elusive of obstacles; prompt<br +/> +To quit any threatened familiar domain seen doomed by the +scythes;<br /> +Its day’s hard business done, the score to the good +accompt.<br /> +<a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>Creatures of forest and mead, Earth’s essays in +being, all kinds<br /> +Bound by the navel-knot to the Mother, never astray,<br /> +They in the ear upon ground will pour their intuitive minds,<br +/> +Cut man’s tangles for Earth’s first broad rectilinear +way:<br /> +Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots,<br /> +Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air;<br /> +Not always the sprouts of Earth’s root-Laws preserving her +brutes;<br /> +Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in fine and fair.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet the like aërial growths may chance be +the delicate sprays,<br /> +Infant of Earth’s most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal<br +/> +For entry on Life’s upper fields: and soul thus flourishing +pays<br /> +The martyr’s penance, mark for brutish in man to heel.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her, from a nerveless well among stagnant pools +of the dry,<br /> +Through her good aim at divine, shall commune with Earth +remake;<br /> +Fraternal unto sororial, her, where abashed she may lie,<br /> +Divinest of man shall clasp; a world out of darkness awake,<br /> +As it were with the Resurrection’s eyelids uplifted, to +see<br /> +Honour in shame, in substance the spirit, in that dry fount<br /> +Jets of the songful ascending silvery-bright water-tree<br /> +Spout, with our Earth’s unbaffled resurgent desire for the +mount,<br /> +Though broken at intervals, clipped, and barren in seeming it +be.<br /> +<a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>For this +at our nature arises rejuvenescent from Earth,<br /> +However respersive the blow and nigh on infernal the fall,<br /> +The chastisement drawn down on us merited: are we of worth<br /> +Amid our satanic excrescences, this, for the less than a call,<br +/> +Will Earth reprime, man cherish; the God who is in us and +round,<br /> +Consenting, the God there seen. Impiety speaks despair;<br +/> +Religion the virtue of serving as things of the furrowy +ground,<br /> +Debtors for breath while breath with our fellows in service we +share.<br /> +Not such of the crowned discrowned<br /> +Can Earth or humanity spare;<br /> +Such not the God let die.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Eastward of Paris morn is high;<br /> +And darkness on that Eastward side<br /> +The heart of France beholds: a thorn<br /> +Is in her frame where shines the morn:<br /> +A rigid wave usurps her sky,<br /> +With eagle crest and eagle-eyed<br /> +To scan what wormy wrinkles hint<br /> +Her forces gathering: she the thrown<br /> +From station, lopped of an arm, astounded, lone,<br /> +Reading late History as a foul misprint:<br /> +Imperial, Angelical,<br /> +At strife commingled in her frame convulsed;<br /> +Shame of her broken sword, a ravening gall;<br /> +Pain of the limb where once her warm blood pulsed;<br /> +<a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>These +tortures to distract her underneath<br /> +Her whelmed Aurora’s shade. But in that space<br /> +When lay she dumb beside her trampled wreath,<br /> +Like an unburied body mid the tombs,<br /> +Feeling against her heart life’s bitter probe<br /> +For life, she saw how children of her race,<br /> +The many sober sons and daughters, plied,<br /> +By cottage lamplight through the water-globe,<br /> +By simmering stew-pots, by the serious looms,<br /> +Afield, in factories, with the birds astir,<br /> +Their nimble feet and fingers; not denied<br /> +Refreshful chatter, laughter, galliard songs.<br /> +So like Earth’s indestructible they were,<br /> +That wrestling with its anguish rose her pride,<br /> +To feel where in each breast the thought of her,<br /> +On whom the circle Hours laid leaded thongs,<br /> +Was constant; spoken sometimes in low tone<br /> +At lip or in a fluttered look,<br /> +A shortened breath: and they were her loved own;<br /> +Nor ever did they waste their strength with tears,<br /> +For pity of the weeper, nor rebuke,<br /> +Though mainly they were charged to pay her debt,<br /> +The Mother having conscience in arrears;<br /> +Ready to gush the flood of vain regret,<br /> +Else hearken to her weaponed children’s moan<br /> +Of stifled rage invoking vengeance: hell’s,<br /> +If heaven should fail the counter-wave that swells<br /> +In blood and brain for retribution swift.<br /> +Those helped not: wings to her soul were these who yet<br /> +Could welcome day for labour, night for rest,<br /> +Enrich her treasury, built of cheerful thrift,<br /> +Of honest heart, beyond all miracles;<br /> +And likened to Earth’s humblest were Earth’s +best.</p> +<h4><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Brooding on her deep fall, the many strings<br +/> +Which formed her nature set a thought on Kings,<br /> +As aids that might the low-laid cripple lift;<br /> +And one among them hummed devoutly leal,<br /> +While passed the sighing breeze along her breast.<br /> +Of Kings by the festive vanquishers rammed down<br /> +Her gorge since fell the Chief, she knew their crown;<br /> +Upon her through long seasons was its grasp,<br /> +For neither soul’s nor body’s weal;<br /> +As much bestows the robber wasp,<br /> +That in the hanging apple makes a meal,<br /> +And carves a face of abscess where was fruit<br /> +Ripe ruddy. They would blot<br /> +Her radiant leap above the slopes acute,<br /> +Of summit to celestial; impute<br /> +The wanton’s aim to her divinest shot;<br /> +Bid her walk History backward over gaps;<br /> +Abhor the day of Phrygian caps;<br /> +Abjure her guerdon, execrate herself;<br /> +The Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Guelph,<br /> +Admire repentant; reverently prostrate<br /> +Her person unto the belly-god; of whom<br /> +Is inward plenty and external bloom;<br /> +Enough of pomp and state<br /> +And carnival to quench<br /> +The breast’s desires of an intemperate wench,<br /> +The head’s ideas beyond legitimate.</p> +<p class="poetry">She flung them: she was France: nor with far +frown<br /> +Her lover from the embrace of her refrained:<br /> +But in her voice an interwoven wire,<br /> +The exultation of her gross renown,<br /> +Struck deafness at her heavens, and they waned<br /> +Over a look ill-gifted to aspire.<br /> +<a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>Wherefore, as an abandonment, irate,<br /> +The intemperate summoned up her trumpet days,<br /> +Her treasure-galleon’s wondrous freight.<br /> +The cannon-name she sang and shrieked; transferred<br /> +Her soul’s allegiance; o’er the Tyrant slurred,<br /> +Tranced with the zeal of her first fawning gaze,<br /> +To clasp his trophy flags and hail him Saint.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">She hailed him Saint:<br /> +And her Jeanne unsainted, foully sung!<br /> +The virgin who conceived a France when funeral glooms<br /> +Across a land aquake with sharp disseverance hung:<br /> +Conceived, and under stress of battle brought her forth;<br /> +Crowned her in purification of feud and foeman’s taint;<br +/> +Taught her to feel her blood her being, know her worth,<br /> +Have joy of unity: the Jeanne bescreeched, bescoffed,<br /> +Who flamed to ashes, flew up wreaths of faggot fumes;<br /> +Through centuries a star in vapour-folds aloft.</p> +<p class="poetry">For her people to hail her Saint,<br /> +Were no lifting of her, Earth’s gem,<br /> +Earth’s chosen, Earth’s throb on divine:<br /> +In the ranks of the starred she is one,<br /> +While man has thought on our line:<br /> +No lifting of her, but for them,<br /> +Breath of the mountain, beam of the sun<br /> +Through mist, out of swamp-fires’ lures release,<br /> +Youth on the forehead, the rough right way<br /> +Seen to be footed: for them the heart’s peace,<br /> +By the mind’s war won for a permanent miracle day.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her arms below her sword-hilt crossed,<br /> +The heart of that high-hallowed Jeanne<br /> +Into the furnace-pit she tossed<br /> +<a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>Before +her body knew the flame,<br /> +And sucked its essence: warmth for righteous work,<br /> +An undivided power to speed her aim.<br /> +She had no self but France: the sainted man<br /> +No France but self. Him warrior and clerk,<br /> +Free of his iron clutch; and him her young,<br /> +In whirled imagination mastodonized;<br /> +And him her penmen, him her poets; all<br /> +For the visioned treasure-galleon astrain;<br /> +Sent zenithward on bass and treble tongue,<br /> +Till solely through his glory France was prized.<br /> +She who had her Jeanne;<br /> +The child of her industrious;<br /> +Earth’s truest, earth’s pure fount from the main;<br +/> +And she who had her one day’s mate,<br /> +In the soul’s view illustrious<br /> +Past blazonry, her Immaculate,<br /> +Those hours of slavish Empire would recall;<br /> +Thrill to the rattling anchor-chain<br /> +She heard upon a day in ‘I who can’;<br /> +Start to the softened, tremulous bugle-blare<br /> +Of that Caesarean Italian<br /> +Across the storied fields of trampled grain,<br /> +As to a Vercingetorix of old Gaul<br /> +Blowing the rally against a Caesar’s reign.<br /> +Her soul’s protesting sobs she drowned to swear<br /> +Fidelity unto the sainted man,<br /> +Whose nimbus was her crown; and be again<br /> +The foreigner in Europe, known of none,<br /> +None knowing; sight to dazzle, voice to stun.<br /> +Rearward she stepped, with thirst for Europe’s van;<br /> +The dream she nursed a snare,<br /> +The flag she bore a pall.</p> +<h4><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +159</span>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">In Nature is no rearward step allowed.<br /> +Hard on the rock Reality do we dash<br /> +To be shattered, if the material dream propels.<br /> +The worship to departed splendour vowed<br /> +Conjured a simulacrum, wove her lash,<br /> +For the slow measure timed her peal of bells.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thereof was the cannon-name a mockery round her +hills;<br /> +For the will of wills,<br /> +Its flaccid ape,<br /> +Weak as the final echo off a giant’s bawl:<br /> +Napoleon for disdain,<br /> +His banner steeped in crape.<br /> +Thereof the barrier of Alsace-Lorraine;<br /> +The frozen billow crested to its fall;<br /> +Dismemberment; disfigurement;<br /> +Her history blotted; her proud mantle rent;<br /> +And ever that one word to reperuse,<br /> +With eyes behind a veil of fiery dews;<br /> +Knelling the spot where Gallic soil defiled<br /> +Showed her sons’ valour as a frenzied child<br /> +In arms of the mailed man.<br /> +Word that her mind must bear, her heart put under ban,<br /> +Lest burst it: unto her eyes a ghost,<br /> +Incredible though manifest: a scene<br /> +Stamped with her new Saint’s name: and all his host<br /> +A wattled flock the foeman’s dogs between!</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Mark where a credible ghost pulls bridle to +view that bare<br /> +Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its +throes<br /> +Beneath her Purgatorial Saint’s evocative stare:<br /> +<a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>Brand on +his name, the gulf of his glory, his Legend’s close.<br /> +A lustreless Phosphor heading for daybeam Night’s +dead-born,<br /> +His underworld eyeballs grip the cast of the land for a fray<br +/> +Expugnant; swift up the heights, with the Victor’s +instinctive scorn<br /> +Of the trapped below, he rides; he beholds, and a two-fold +grey,<br /> +Even as the misty sun growing moon that a frost enrings,<br /> +Is shroud on the shrouded; he knows him there in the helmeted +ranks.<br /> +The golden eagles flap lame wings,<br /> +The black double-headed are round their flanks.<br /> +He is there in midst of the pupils he harried to brains awake, +trod into union; lo,<br /> +These are his Epic’s tutored Dardans, yon that +Rhapsode’s Achaeans to know.<br /> +Nor is aught of an equipollent conflict seen, nor the +weaker’s flashed device;<br /> +Headless is offered a breast to beaks deliberate, formal, +assured, precise.<br /> +Ruled by the mathematician’s hand, they solve their +problem, as on a slate.<br /> +This is the ground foremarked, and the day; their leader modestly +hazarded date.<br /> +His helmeted ranks might be draggers of pools or reapers of +plains for the warrior’s guile<br /> +Displayed; they haul, they rend, as in some orderly office +mercantile.<br /> +And a timed artillery speaks full-mouthed on a stuttering feeble +reduced to nought.<br /> +Can it be France, an army of France, tricked, netted, convulsive, +all writhen caught?<br /> +<a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>Arterial +blood of an army’s heart outpoured the Grey Observer +sees:<br /> +A forest of France in thunder comes, like a landslide hurled off +her Pyrenees.<br /> +Torrent and forest ramp, roll, sling on for a charge against +iron, reason, Fate;<br /> +It is gapped through the mass midway, bare ribs and dust ere the +helmeted feel its weight.<br /> +So the blue billow white-plumed is plunged upon shingle to +screaming withdrawal, but snatched,<br /> +Waved is the laurel eternal yielded by Death o’er the waste +of brave men outmatched.<br /> +The France of the fury was there, the thing he had wielded, whose +honour was dearer than life;<br /> +The Prussia despised, the harried, the trodden, was here; his +pupil, the scholar in strife.</p> +<p class="poetry">He hated to heel, in a spasm of will,<br /> +From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire<br /> +With head of a merlin hawk and quill<br /> +Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire<br /> +From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech,<br /> +To say what a deadly poison stuffed<br /> +The France here laid in her bloody ditch,<br /> +Through the Legend passing human puffed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Credible ghost of the field which from him +descends,<br /> +Each dark anniversary day will its father return,<br /> +Haling his shadow to spy where the Legend ends,<br /> +That penman trumpeter’s part in the wreck discern.</p> +<p class="poetry">There, with the cup it presents at her lips, +she stands,<br /> +France, with her future staked on the word it may pledge.<br /> +The vengeance urged of desire a reserve countermands;<br /> +The patience clasped totters hard on the precipice edge.<br /> +<a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>Lopped +of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick,<br /> +To curdle the milk in her breasts for the young they feed,<br /> +At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh.<br /> +Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick<br /> +Nigh death, and would in like fountains fruitlessly bleed,<br /> +Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of love is wisdom. Is it great love, then +wise<br /> +Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto madness more<br /> +By its mentor’s counselling voice than thoughtfully +reined.<br /> +Desire of the wave for the shore,<br /> +Passion for one last agony under skies,<br /> +To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">On her lost arm love bade her look;<br /> +On her one hand to meditate;<br /> +The tumult of her blood abate;<br /> +Disaster face, derision brook:<br /> +Forbade the page of her Historic Muse,<br /> +Until her demon his last hold forsook,<br /> +And smoothly, with no countenance of hate,<br /> +Her conqueror she could scan to measure. Thence<br /> +The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense,<br /> +Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse,<br /> +Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid;<br /> +From the top billow of victorious War,<br /> +Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow;<br /> +A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade.<br /> +<a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>She read +the things that are;<br /> +Reality unaccepted read<br /> +For sign of the distraught, and took her blow<br /> +To brain; herself read through;<br /> +Wherefore her predatory Glory paid<br /> +Napoleon ransom knew.<br /> +Her nature’s many strings hot gusts did jar<br /> +Against the note of reason uttered low,<br /> +Ere passionate with duty she might wed,<br /> +Compel the bride’s embrace of her stern groom,<br /> +Joined at an altar liker to the tomb,<br /> +Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed,<br /> +They not the less were mated and proclaimed<br /> +The rational their issue. Then she rose.</p> +<p class="poetry">See how the rush of southern Springtide +glows<br /> +Oceanic in the chariot-wheel’s ascent,<br /> +Illuminated with one breath. The maimed,<br /> +Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly<br /> +Had stature; to the world’s wonderment,<br /> +Fair features, grace of mien, nor least<br /> +The comic dimples round her April mouth,<br /> +Sprung of her intimate humanity.<br /> +She stood before mankind the very South<br /> +Rapt out of frost to flowery drapery;<br /> +Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Let but the rational prevail,<br /> +Our footing is on ground though all else fail:<br /> +Our kiss of Earth is then a plight<br /> +To walk within her Laws and have her light.<br /> +Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves;<br /> +There is no fate but when unreason lours.<br /> +<a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>This +Land the cheerful toiler delves,<br /> +The thinker brightens with fine wit,<br /> +The lovelier grace as lyric flowers,<br /> +Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves<br /> +Shall nurse for effort infinite<br /> +While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair<br /> +Beats tempered music and its lead subserves.<br /> +Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare,<br /> +Divinely raised by that in her divine,<br /> +Not the clear sight of Earth’s blunt actual swerves<br /> +When her lost look, as on a wave of wine,<br /> +Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries<br /> +Caress with folds and curves<br /> +The fortress over Rhine,<br /> +Beneath the one tall spire.<br /> +Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs,<br /> +Her anguish in desire,<br /> +She sees, above the brutish paw<br /> +Alert on her still quivering limb—<br /> +As little in past time she saw,<br /> +Nor when dispieced as prey,<br /> +As victrix when abhorred—<br /> +A Grand Germania, stout on soil;<br /> +Audacious up the ethereal dim;<br /> +The forest’s Infant; the strong hand for toil;<br /> +The patient brain in twilights when astray;<br /> +Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil;<br /> +The sceptic and devout; the potent sword;<br /> +With will and armed to help in hewing way<br /> +For Europe’s march; and of the most golden chord<br /> +Of the Heliconian lyre<br /> +Excellent mistress. Yea, she sees, and can admire;<br /> +Still seeing in what walks the Gallia leads;<br /> +And with what shield upon Alsace-Lorraine<br /> +Her wary sister’s doubtful look misreads<br /> +<a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>A +mother’s throbs for her lost: so loved: so near:<br /> +Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer,<br /> +The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain.<br /> +For the belted Overshadower hard the course,<br /> +On whom devolves the spirit’s touchstone, Force:<br /> +Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined,<br /> +That too much adamantine makes the mind;<br /> +Forgets it coin of Nature’s rich Exchange;<br /> +Contracts horizons within present sight:<br /> +Amalekite to-day, across its range<br /> +Indisputable; to-morrow Simeonite.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">The mother who gave birth to Jeanne;<br /> +Who to her young Angelical sprang;<br /> +Who lay with Earth and heard the notes she sang,<br /> +And heard her truest sing them; she may reach<br /> +Heights yet unknown of nations; haply teach<br /> +A thirsting world to learn ’tis ‘she who +can.’</p> +<p class="poetry">She that in History’s Heliaea pleads<br +/> +The nation flowering conscience o’er the beast;<br /> +With heart expurged of rancour, tame of greeds;<br /> +With the winged mind from fang and claw released;—<br /> +Will such a land be seen? It will be seen;—<br /> +Shall stand adjudged our foremost and Earth’s Queen.<br /> +Acknowledgement that she of God proceeds<br /> +The invisible makes visible, as his priest,<br /> +To her is yielded by a world reclaimed.<br /> +And stands she mutilated, fancy-shamed,<br /> +Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control,<br /> +Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed,<br /> +Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul;—<br /> +<a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>My faith +in her when she lay low<br /> +Was fountain; now as wave at flow<br /> +Beneath the lights, my faith in God is best;—<br /> +On France has come the test<br /> +Of what she holds within<br /> +Responsive to Life’s deeper springs.<br /> +She above the nations blest<br /> +In fruitful and in liveliest,<br /> +In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings,<br /> +The devotee of Glory, she may win<br /> +Glory despoiling none, enrich her kind,<br /> +Illume her land, and take the royal seat<br /> +Unto the strong self-conqueror assigned.<br /> +But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name,<br /> +Humanity’s old Foeman winks agrin.<br /> +Her constant Angel eyes her heart’s quick beat,<br /> +The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame.<br /> +Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat.<br /> +Our Europe, vowed to unity or torn,<br /> +Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn,<br /> +And in a ruddy beacon mark an end<br /> +That for the flock in their grave hearing rings.<br /> +Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings<br /> +At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet,<br /> +Sprung from the Aetna passions’ mad revolts,<br /> +Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend;<br /> +And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat<br /> +Anticipating tempest and the bolts,<br /> +Hangs curtained terrors round her next day’s door,<br /> +Death’s emblems for the breast of Europe flings;<br /> +The breast that waits a spark to fire her store.<br /> +Shall, then, the great vitality, France,<br /> +Signal the backward step once more;<br /> +<a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>Again a +Goddess Fortune trace<br /> +Amid the Deities, and pledge to chance<br /> +One whom we never could replace?<br /> +Now may she tune her nature’s many strings<br /> +To noble harmony, be seen, be known.</p> +<p class="poetry">It was the foreign France, the unruly, +feared;<br /> +Little for all her witcheries endeared;<br /> +Theatrical of arrogance, a sprite<br /> +With gaseous vapours overblown,<br /> +In her conceit of power ensphered,<br /> +Foredoomed to violate and atone;<br /> +Her the grim conqueror’s iron might<br /> +Avengeing clutched, distrusting rent;<br /> +Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed<br /> +To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud;<br /> +Not virtual France, the France benevolent,<br /> +The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime<br /> +At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime;<br /> +Though perilously instrument,<br /> +A breast for any having godlike gleam.<br /> +This France could no antagonist disesteem,<br /> +To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood.<br /> +Albeit a waverer between heart and mind,<br /> +And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood,<br /> +Which wither all the wreath when intertwined,<br /> +This cherishable France she may redeem.<br /> +Beloved of Earth, her heart should feel at length<br /> +How much unto Earth’s offspring it doth owe.<br /> +Obstructions are for levelling, have we strength;<br /> +’Tis poverty of soul conceived a foe.<br /> +Rejected be the wrath that keeps unhealed<br /> +Her panting wound; to higher Courts appealed<br /> +The wrongs discerned of higher: Europe waits:<br /> +She chooses God or gambles with the Fates.<br /> +<a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>Shines +the new Helen in Alsace-Lorraine,<br /> +A darker river severs Rhine and Rhone,<br /> +Is heard a deadlier Epic of the twain;<br /> +We see a Paris burn<br /> +Or France Napoleon.</p> +<p class="poetry">For yet he breathes whom less her heart +forswears<br /> +While trembles its desire to thwart her mind:<br /> +The Tyrant lives in Victory’s return.<br /> +What figure with recurrent footstep fares<br /> +Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud,<br /> +To sow her future from an ashen urn<br /> +By lantern-light, as dragons’ teeth are sown?<br /> +Of bleeding pride the piercing seër is blind.<br /> +But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud<br /> +Distorting her true features, to be shown<br /> +Benignly luminous, one who bears<br /> +Humanity at breast, and she might learn<br /> +How surely the excelling generous find<br /> +Renouncement is possession. Sure<br /> +As light enkindles light when heavenly earthly mates,<br /> +The flame of pure immits the flame of pure,<br /> +Magnanimous magnanimous creates.<br /> +So to majestic beauty stricken rears<br /> +Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow;<br /> +And men are in the secret with the spheres,<br /> +Whose glory is celestially to bestow.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now nation looks to nation, that may live<br /> +Their common nurseling, like the torrent’s flower,<br /> +Shaken by foul Destruction’s fast-piled heap.<br /> +On France is laid the proud initiative<br /> +Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour,<br /> +Whereby more than her lost one will she reap;<br /> +<a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>Perchance the very lost regain,<br /> +To count it less than her superb reward.<br /> +Our Europe, where is debtor each to each,<br /> +Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain,<br /> +Fraternal from the Seaman’s beach,<br /> +From answering Rhine in grand accord,<br /> +From Neva beneath Northern cloud,<br /> +And from our Transatlantic Europe loud,<br /> +Will hail the rare example for their theme;<br /> +Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze;<br /> +In their entrusted nurseling know them one:<br /> +Like a brave vessel under press of steam,<br /> +Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas,<br /> +Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun,<br /> +Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme,<br /> +Have sight of haven and the crowded quays.</p> +<h2><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>THE +CAGEING OF ARES<br /> +<span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, v. 385</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">[DEDICATED +TO THE COUNCIL AT THE HAGUE, 1899]</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">How</span> big of breast +our Mother Gaea laughed<br /> +At sight of her boy Giants on the leap<br /> +Each over other as they neighboured home,<br /> +Fronting the day’s descent across green slopes,<br /> +And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.<br /> +Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,<br /> +Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,<br /> +It signalled some adventurous master-trick<br /> +To set Olympians buzzing in debate,<br /> +Lest it might be their godhead undermined,<br /> +The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high<br /> +On shoulders of his brother Otos waved<br /> +For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,<br /> +Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar<br /> +While Otos aped the prisoner’s wrists and knees,<br /> +With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;<br /> +Till Gaea’s lap receiving them, they stretched,<br /> +And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,<br /> +Burst the hot story out of throats of both,<br /> +Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut<br /> +The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm<br /> +Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon<br /> +A peak, a forest mound, a valley’s gleam<br /> +Of grass and the river’s crooks and snaky coils,<br /> +Signification marvellous she caught,<br /> +Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,<br /> +Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last<br /> +<a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +171</span>Subsided, and the serious naked deed,<br /> +With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,<br /> +Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe<br /> +That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,<br /> +These two made up of lion, bear and fox,<br /> +Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,<br /> +Still by the reckoning infants among men,<br /> +Had done the deed to strike the Titan host<br /> +In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:<br /> +These two combining strength and craft had snared,<br /> +Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged<br /> +The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;<br /> +Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;<br /> +The barren furrower of anointed fields;<br /> +The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,<br /> +Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:<br /> +Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth<br /> +When they had seized on his implacable spear,<br /> +Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite<br /> +His godlike fury startled from amaze.<br /> +For he had eyed them nearing him in play,<br /> +The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,<br /> +Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount<br /> +Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there<br /> +On Earth’s original fisticuffs they called<br /> +For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,<br /> +Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,<br /> +Good servitors of Ares they would be,<br /> +And ply the pointed spear to dominate<br /> +Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood<br /> +Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced<br /> +Amusedly he watched them, and as one<br /> +The lusty twain were on him and they had him.<br /> +Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!<br /> +Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!<br /> +<a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>Bound +like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!<br /> +Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,<br /> +Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;<br /> +A desolating fire to blind the sight<br /> +With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;<br /> +The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;<br /> +Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,<br /> +Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.<br /> +Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,<br /> +And tumbled down the cave. But rather look—<br /> +Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,<br /> +Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,<br /> +Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!<br /> +Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,<br /> +And shatter earth’s delirious holiday,<br /> +Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,<br /> +Resolving to composure on its throbs.<br /> +But see her in the Seasons through that year;<br /> +That one glad year and the fair opening month.<br /> +Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!<br /> +War with her, gentle war with her, each day<br /> +Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,<br /> +On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength<br /> +Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,<br /> +From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,<br /> +Her ready secret: the abounding life<br /> +Returned for valiant labour: she and they<br /> +Defeated and victorious turn by turn;<br /> +By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.<br /> +Exchange of powers of this conflict came;<br /> +Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.<br /> +Is battle nature’s mandate, here it reigned,<br /> +As music unto the hand that smote the strings;<br /> +And she the rosier from their showery brows,<br /> +They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.<br /> +<a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>Back to +the primal rational of those<br /> +Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp<br /> +Stability in hatred of the insane,<br /> +Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce<br /> +The mortal mind’s concept of earth’s divorced<br /> +Above; those beautiful, those masterful,<br /> +Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend,<br /> +Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?<br /> +Earth in her happy children asked that word,<br /> +Whereto within their breast was her reply.<br /> +Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,<br /> +Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;<br /> +Yet they (’twas the Great Mother’s voice inspired<br +/> +The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,<br /> +Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,<br /> +To meet the certain fate of earth’s divorced,<br /> +And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,<br /> +Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still,<br /> +Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled<br /> +The Tyranny. This her voice within them told,<br /> +When softly the Great Mother chid her sons<br /> +Not of the giant brood, who did create<br /> +Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain<br /> +Set moving by an abject blood, that waked<br /> +To wanton under elements more benign,<br /> +And planted aliens on Olympian heights;—<br /> +Imagination’s cradle poesy<br /> +Become a monstrous pressure upon men;—<br /> +Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed<br /> +By light from her, born of the love of her,<br /> +Their lordship the illumined brain rejects<br /> +For earth’s beneficent, the sons of Law,<br /> +Her other name. So spake she in their heart,<br /> +Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath<br /> +Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,<br /> +<a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +174</span>Confidently to cling. And when brown corn<br /> +Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,<br /> +With gold necks bent for any zephyr’s kiss;<br /> +When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil<br /> +Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;<br /> +When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,<br /> +Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;<br /> +The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,<br /> +And yet a burning lion for the spring;<br /> +Then in that time of general cherishment,<br /> +Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,<br /> +He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,<br /> +Then did good Gaea’s children gratefully<br /> +Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,<br /> +Delightful Peace, that answers Reason’s call<br /> +Harmoniously and images her Law;<br /> +Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,<br /> +In memories made present on the brain<br /> +By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;<br /> +The picture of an earth allied to heaven;<br /> +Between them the known smile behind black masks;<br /> +Rightly their various moods interpreted;<br /> +And frolic because toilful children borne<br /> +With larger comprehension of Earth’s aim<br /> +At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.</p> +<h2><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>THE +NIGHT-WALK</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Awakes</span> for me and +leaps from shroud<br /> +All radiantly the moon’s own night<br /> +Of folded showers in streamer cloud;<br /> +Our shadows down the highway white<br /> +Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,<br /> +With yon and yon a stem alight.</p> +<p class="poetry">I see marauder runagates<br /> +Across us shoot their dusky wink;<br /> +I hear the parliament of chats<br /> +In haws beside the river’s brink;<br /> +And drops the vole off alder-banks,<br /> +To push his arrow through the stream.<br /> +These busy people had our thanks<br /> +For tickling sight and sound, but theme<br /> +They were not more than breath we drew<br /> +Delighted with our world’s embrace:<br /> +The moss-root smell where beeches grew,<br /> +And watered grass in breezy space;<br /> +The silken heights, of ghostly bloom<br /> +Among their folds, by distance draped.<br /> +’Twas Youth, rapacious to consume,<br /> +That cried to have its chaos shaped:<br /> +Absorbing, little noting, still<br /> +Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;<br /> +With wistful looks on each far hill<br /> +For something hidden, something owed.<br /> +Unto his mantled sister, Day<br /> +Had given the secret things we sought<br /> +<a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>And she +was grave and saintly gay;<br /> +At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;<br /> +She flew on it, then folded wings,<br /> +In meditation passing lone,<br /> +To breathe around the secret things,<br /> +Which have no word, and yet are known;<br /> +Of thirst for them are known, as air<br /> +Is health in blood: we gained enough<br /> +By this to feel it honest fare;<br /> +Impalpable, not barren, stuff.</p> +<p class="poetry">A pride of legs in motion kept<br /> +Our spirits to their task meanwhile,<br /> +And what was deepest dreaming slept:<br /> +The posts that named the swallowed mile;<br /> +Beside the straight canal the hut<br /> +Abandoned; near the river’s source<br /> +Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;<br /> +The roadway missed; were our discourse;<br /> +At times dear poets, whom some view<br /> +Transcendent or subdued evoked<br /> +To speak the memorable, the true,<br /> +The luminous as a moon uncloaked;<br /> +For proof that there, among earth’s dumb,<br /> +A soul had passed and said our best.<br /> +Or it might be we chimed on some<br /> +Historic favourite’s astral crest,<br /> +With part to reverence in its gleam,<br /> +And part to rivalry the shout:<br /> +So royal, unuttered, is youth’s dream<br /> +Of power within to strike without.<br /> +But most the silences were sweet,<br /> +Like mothers’ breasts, to bid it feel<br /> +It lived in such divine conceit<br /> +As envies aught we stamp for real.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +177</span>To either then an untold tale<br /> +Was Life, and author, hero, we.<br /> +The chapters holding peaks to scale,<br /> +Or depths to fathom, made our glee;<br /> +For we were armed of inner fires,<br /> +Unbled in us the ripe desires;<br /> +And passion rolled a quiet sea,<br /> +Whereon was Love the phantom sail.</p> +<h2><a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>AT +THE CLOSE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">To</span> Thee, dear God of +Mercy, both appeal,<br /> +Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou +know’st;<br /> +And that black spot in each embattled host,<br /> +Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.<br /> +Now is it red artillery and white steel;<br /> +Till on a day will ring the victor’s boast,<br /> +That ’tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,<br /> +Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.<br /> +So in all times of man’s descent insane<br /> +To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,<br /> +Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.<br /> +But at the close he entered Thy domain,<br /> +Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like<br /> +He tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe.</p> +<h2><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>A +GARDEN IDYL</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">With</span> sagest craft +Arachne worked<br /> +Her web, and at a corner lurked,<br /> +Awaiting what should plump her soon,<br /> +To case it in the death-cocoon.<br /> +Sagaciously her home she chose<br /> +For visits that would never close;<br /> +Inside my chalet-porch her feast<br /> +Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.</p> +<p class="poetry">The finished structure, bar on bar,<br /> +Had snatched from light to form a star,<br /> +And struck on sight, when quick with dews,<br /> +Like music of the very Muse.<br /> +Great artists pass our single sense;<br /> +We hear in seeing, strung to tense;<br /> +Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,<br /> +To think such beauty means a trap.<br /> +But Nature’s genius, even man’s<br /> +At best, is practical in plans;<br /> +Subservient to the needy thought,<br /> +However rare the weapon wrought.<br /> +As long as Nature holds it good<br /> +To urge her creatures’ quest for food<br /> +Will beauty stamp the just intent<br /> +Of weapons upon service bent.<br /> +For beauty is a flower of roots<br /> +Embedded lower than our boots;<br /> +Out of the primal strata springs,<br /> +And shows for crown of useful things.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +180</span>Arachne’s dream of prey to size<br /> +Aspired; so she could nigh despise<br /> +The puny specks the breezes round<br /> +Supplied, and let them shake unwound;<br /> +Assured of her fat fly to come;<br /> +Perhaps a blue, the spider’s plum;<br /> +Who takes the fatal odds in fight,<br /> +And gives repast an appetite,<br /> +By plunging, whizzing, till his wings<br /> +Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,<br /> +A shrouded lump, for her to see<br /> +Her banquet in her victory.</p> +<p class="poetry">This matron of the unnumbered threads,<br /> +One day of dandelions’ heads<br /> +Distributing their gray perruques<br /> +Up every gust, I watched with looks<br /> +Discreet beside the chalet-door;<br /> +And gracefully a light wind bore,<br /> +Direct upon my webster’s wall,<br /> +A monster in the form of ball;<br /> +The mildest captive ever snared,<br /> +That neither struggled nor despaired,<br /> +On half the net invading hung,<br /> +And plain as in her mother tongue,<br /> +While low the weaver cursed her lures,<br /> +Remarked, “You have me; I am yours.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,<br /> +Her dream of size she saw, agape.<br /> +Midway the vast round-raying beard<br /> +A desiccated midge appeared;<br /> +Whose body pricked the name of meal,<br /> +Whose hair had growth in earth’s unreal;<br /> +Provocative of dread and wrath,<br /> +Contempt and horror, in one froth,<br /> +<a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +181</span>Inextricable, insensible,<br /> +His poison presence there would dwell,<br /> +Declaring him her dream fulfilled,<br /> +A catch to compliment the skilled;<br /> +And she reduced to beaky skin,<br /> +Disgraceful among kith and kin</p> +<p class="poetry">Against her corner, humped and aged,<br /> +Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,<br /> +Beyond disgust or hope in guile.<br /> +Ridiculously volatile<br /> +He seemed to her last spark of mind;<br /> +And that in pallid ash declined<br /> +Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,<br /> +Wherein throughout her frame she felt<br /> +That he, the light wind’s libertine,<br /> +Without a scoff, without a grin,<br /> +And mannered like the courtly few,<br /> +Who merely danced when light winds blew,<br /> +Impervious to beak and claws,<br /> +Tradition’s ruinous Whitebeard was;<br /> +Of whom, as actors in old scenes,<br /> +Had grannam weavers warned their weans,<br /> +With word, that less than feather-weight,<br /> +He smote the web like bolt of Fate.</p> +<p class="poetry">This muted drama, hour by hour,<br /> +I watched amid a world in flower,<br /> +Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid<br /> +Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s blade,<br /> +And still along the garden-run<br /> +The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.<br /> +Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance<br /> +Her visitor performed a dance;<br /> +<a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>She +puckered thinner; he the same<br /> +As when on that light wind he came.</p> +<p class="poetry">Next day was told what deeds of night<br /> +Were done; the web had vanished quite;<br /> +With it the strange opposing pair;<br /> +And listless waved on vacant air,<br /> +For her adieu to heart’s content,<br /> +A solitary filament.</p> +<h2><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>A +READING OF LIFE</h2> +<h3><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>THE +VITAL CHOICE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Or</span> shall we run with +Artemis<br /> +Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?<br /> +Both are mighty;<br /> +Both give bliss;<br /> +Each can torture if divided;<br /> +Each claims worship undivided,<br /> +In her wake would have us wallow.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Youth must offer on bent knees<br /> +Homage unto one or other;<br /> +Earth, the mother,<br /> +This decrees;<br /> +And unto the pallid Scyther<br /> +Either points us shun we either<br /> +Shun or too devoutly follow.</p> +<h3><a name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>WITH +THE HUNTRESS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Through</span> the +water-eye of night,<br /> +Midway between eve and dawn,<br /> +See the chase, the rout, the flight<br /> +In deep forest; oread, faun,<br /> +Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;<br /> +Ravenous all the line for speed.<br /> +See yon wavy sparkle beck<br /> +Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead.<br /> +Down her course a serpent star<br /> +Coils and shatters at her heels;<br /> +Peals the horn exulting, peals<br /> +Plaintive, is it near or far.<br /> +Huntress, arrowy to pursue,<br /> +In and out of woody glen,<br /> +Under cliffs that tear the blue,<br /> +Over torrent, over fen,<br /> +She and forest, where she skims<br /> +Feathery, darken and relume:<br /> +Those are her white-lightning limbs<br /> +Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.<br /> +Mountains hear her and call back,<br /> +Shrewd with night: a frosty wail<br /> +Distant: her the emerald vale<br /> +Folds, and wonders in her track.<br /> +Now her retinue is lean,<br /> +Many rearward; streams the chase<br /> +Eager forth of covert; seen<br /> +One hot tide the rapturous race.<br /> +Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,<br /> +Up on a flash the lighted mound<br /> +<a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>Leaps +she, bow to shoulder, shaft<br /> +Strung to barb with archer’s craft,<br /> +Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet<br /> +Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.<br /> +Fearful swiftness they outrun,<br /> +Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,<br /> +Challenge, charge of tusks elude:<br /> +Theirs the dance to tame the rude;<br /> +Beast, and beast in manhood tame,<br /> +Follow we their silver flame.<br /> +Pride of flesh from bondage free,<br /> +Reaping vigour of its waste,<br /> +Marks her servitors, and she<br /> +Sanctifies the unembraced.<br /> +Nought of perilous she reeks;<br /> +Valour clothes her open breast;<br /> +Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;<br /> +Hallowed by the sex confessed.<br /> +Huntress arrowy to pursue,<br /> +Colder she than sunless dew,<br /> +She, that breath of upper air;<br /> +Ay, but never lyrist sang,<br /> +Draught of Bacchus never sprang<br /> +Blood the bliss of Gods to share,<br /> +High o’er sweep of eagle wings,<br /> +Like the run with her, when rings<br /> +Clear her rally, and her dart,<br /> +In the forest’s cavern heart,<br /> +Tells of her victorious aim.<br /> +Then is pause and chatter, cheer,<br /> +Laughter at some satyr lame,<br /> +Looks upon the fallen deer,<br /> +Measuring his noble crest;<br /> +Here a favourite in her train,<br /> +Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;<br /> +<a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>All +applauded. Shall she reign<br /> +Worshipped? O to be with her there!<br /> +She, that breath of nimble air,<br /> +Lifts the breast to giant power.<br /> +Maid and man, and man and maid,<br /> +Who each other would devour<br /> +Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,<br /> +There are comrades, led by her,<br /> +Maid-preserver, man-maker.</p> +<h3><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>WITH +THE PERSUADER</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Who</span> murmurs, hither, +hither: who<br /> +Where nought is audible so fills the ear?<br /> +Where nought is visible can make appear<br /> +A veil with eyes that waver through,<br /> +Like twilight’s pledge of blessed night to come,<br /> +Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb,<br /> +She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,<br /> +Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire<br /> +To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,<br /> +Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,<br /> +Flame in a crystal vessel sails<br /> +Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,<br /> +For land that drops the rosy day<br /> +On nights of throbbing nightingales.</p> +<p class="poetry">Landward did the wonder flit,<br /> +Or heart’s desire of her, all earth in it.<br /> +We saw the heavens fling down their rose;<br /> +On rapturous waves we saw her glide;<br /> +The pearly sea-shell half enclose;<br /> +The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;<br /> +And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more<br /> +Behold than tracks along a startled shore,<br /> +With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign<br /> +An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.</p> +<p class="poetry">More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,<br +/> +The very she called forth by ripened blood<br /> +<a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 190</span>For its +next breath of being, murmurs; she,<br /> +Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,<br /> +The stream within us urged to flood;<br /> +Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O +she,<br /> +Maid, woman and divinity;<br /> +Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate<br /> +Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit<br /> +Untasted; she our written fate<br /> +Unread; Life’s flowering, Life’s root:<br /> +Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;<br /> +The evanescent, ever-present she,<br /> +Great Nature’s stern necessity<br /> +In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;<br /> +With a sword’s edge of sweetness keen to take<br /> +Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.</p> +<p class="poetry">The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.<br /> +Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent,<br +/> +Her form is given to pardoned sight,<br /> +And lets our mortal eyes receive<br /> +The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;<br /> +Adored by them who solitarily pace,<br /> +In dusk of the underworld’s perpetual eve,<br /> +The paths among the meadow asphodel,<br /> +Remembering. Never there her face<br /> +Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell<br /> +Around such whiteness the enamoured air<br /> +Of noon that clothes her, never there.<br /> +Daughter of light, the joyful light,<br /> +She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,<br /> +Sweet in her disregard of aid<br /> +Divine to conquer or persuade.<br /> +A fountain jets from moss; a flower<br /> +Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.<br /> +By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen<br /> +With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +191</span>Shorn of attendant Graces she can use<br /> +Her natural snares to make her will supreme.<br /> +A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse<br /> +Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:<br /> +One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;<br /> +Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way<br /> +A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,<br /> +Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.<br /> +The bud of fresh virginity awaits<br /> +The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:<br /> +She touches on the hour of happy mates;<br /> +Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.</p> +<p class="poetry">And while commanding blissful sight believe<br +/> +It holds her as a body strained to breast,<br /> +Down on the underworld’s perpetual eve<br /> +She plunges the possessor dispossessed;<br /> +And bids believe that image, heaving warm,<br /> +Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;<br /> +The phantom any breeze blows out of form;<br /> +A thirst’s delusion, a defeated aim.</p> +<p class="poetry">The rapture shed the torture weaves;<br /> +The direst blow on human heart she deals:<br /> +The pain to know the seen deceives;<br /> +Nought true but what insufferably feels.<br /> +And stabs of her delicious note,<br /> +That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard<br /> +Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,<br /> +We answer as the midnight’s morning’s bird.</p> +<p class="poetry">She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;<br /> +In her delicious laughter part revealed;<br /> +Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,<br /> +For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.<br /> +<a name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 192</span>Yet +would she bless, it is her task to bless:<br /> +Yon folded couples, passing under shade,<br /> +Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,<br /> +Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.<br /> +We dolorous complainers had a dream,<br /> +Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,<br /> +We saw stand bare of her celestial beam<br /> +The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips<br +/> +Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;<br /> +And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips<br /> +She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.<br /> +Blush of our being between birth and death:<br /> +Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:<br /> +Her wily semblance nought of her denies;<br /> +Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,<br /> +The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm<br /> +Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;<br /> +Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.<br /> +Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.<br /> +But scorn she has for them that walk alone;<br /> +Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.<br /> +The men as chief of criminals she disdains,<br /> +And holds the reason in perceptive thought.<br /> +More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,<br /> +Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.<br /> +Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,<br /> +Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,<br /> +In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:<br /> +Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes<br /> +For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.<br /> +Comes there a tremor of night’s forest horn<br /> +Across her garden from the insaner crew,<br /> +She darkens to malignity of scorn.<br /> +<a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>A shiver +courses through her garden-grounds:<br /> +Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,<br /> +The hunter’s shouts, are heard afar, and bring<br /> +Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.<br /> +These, the irreverent of Life’s design,<br /> +Division between natural and divine<br /> +Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,<br /> +In veins of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest;<br /> +And these because the roses flood their cheeks,<br /> +Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.<br /> +With them is war; and well the Goddess knows<br /> +What undermines the race who mount the rose;<br /> +How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,<br /> +Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:<br /> +Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,<br /> +The strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs,<br +/> +And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.<br /> +They who her sway withstand a sea defy,<br /> +At every point of juncture must be proof;<br /> +Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge<br /> +Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge<br /> +For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.<br /> +She, tenderness, is pitiless to them<br /> +Resisting in her godhead nature’s truth.<br /> +No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;<br /> +Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.<br /> +These miserably disinclined,<br /> +The lamentably unembraced,<br /> +Insult the Pleasures Earth designed<br /> +To people and beflower the waste.<br /> +Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:<br /> +For death they live, in life they die.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her head the Goddess from them turns,<br /> +As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.<br /> +<a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>She +views her quivering couples unconsoled,<br /> +And of her beauty mirror they become,<br /> +Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,<br /> +Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.<br /> +Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,<br /> +Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,<br /> +Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,<br /> +They play the music made of two:<br /> +Oldest of earth, earth’s youngest till earth’s +end:<br /> +Cunninger than the numbered strings,<br /> +For melodies, for harmonies,<br /> +For mastered discords, and the things<br /> +Not vocable, whose mysteries<br /> +Are inmost Love’s, Life’s reach of Life extend.</p> +<p class="poetry">Is it an anguish overflowing shame<br /> +And the tongue’s pudency confides to her,<br /> +With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,<br /> +The woman’s marrow in some dear youth’s name,<br /> +Then is the Goddess tenderness<br /> +Maternal, and she has a sister’s tones<br /> +Benign to soothe intemperate distress,<br /> +Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.<br /> +Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease<br /> +To those of her milk-bearer votaries<br /> +As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source<br /> +Direct; erratic but in heart’s excess;<br /> +Being mortal and ill-matched for Love’s great force;<br /> +Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.<br /> +And pray they under skies less overcast,<br /> +That swiftly may her star of eve descend,<br /> +Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,<br /> +To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.</p> +<p class="poetry">Unfailing her reply to woman’s voice<br +/> +In supplication instant. Is it man’s,<br /> +<a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>She +hears, approves his words, her garden scans,<br /> +And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.<br /> +Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;<br /> +Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;<br /> +And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise<br /> +Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.</p> +<p class="poetry">She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps<br +/> +To her invoked: distraction is implored.<br /> +A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps<br /> +Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.<br /> +His tales of her declare she condescends;<br /> +Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:<br /> +Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose<br /> +A queenlier gem than woman’s wayside rose.<br /> +She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs<br /> +Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;<br /> +Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.<br /> +’Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse<br /> +Rarely the music made of two ascends,<br /> +And Beauty’s Queen some other way is won.<br /> +Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends<br /> +Herself to all, and yields herself to none,<br /> +Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised<br /> +In hot assurance under shade of doubt:<br /> +And numerous are the images bepraised<br /> +As Beauty’s Queen, should passion head the rout.</p> +<p class="poetry">Be sure the ruddy hue is Love’s: to +woo<br /> +Love’s Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.<br /> +That is her garden’s precept, seen where shines<br /> +Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.<br /> +Daughter of light, the joyful light,<br /> +She bids her couples face full East,<br /> +Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast<br /> +<a name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>Their +outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,<br /> +The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.<br /> +In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;<br /> +High confidence in her whose aid is lent<br /> +To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,<br /> +Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.<br /> +And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,<br /> +Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,<br /> +Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun’s.</p> +<p class="poetry">Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe<br +/> +He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.<br /> +For him requiring woman’s arts to please<br /> +Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,<br /> +No race of giants! In the woman’s veins<br /> +Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.<br /> +Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,<br /> +Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;<br /> +Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss<br /> +In her high Lady’s mandate, yields the kiss;<br /> +And is it needed that Love’s daintier brute<br /> +Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.<br /> +She is great Nature’s ever intimate<br /> +In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,<br /> +Until perverted by her senseless male,<br /> +She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,<br /> +The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,<br /> +Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hence has the Goddess, Nature’s earliest +Power,<br /> +And greatest and most present, with her dower<br /> +Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute<br /> +For meditated guile. She laughs to hear<br /> +A charge her garden’s labyrinths scarce confute,<br /> +Her garden’s histories tell of to all near.<br /> +<a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>Let it +be said, But less upon her guile<br /> +Doth she rely for her immortal smile.<br /> +Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens<br /> +To push her conquests by the simplest means.<br /> +While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves<br /> +From earth’s good labours, Beauty’s Queen he +serves.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her spacious garden and her garden’s +grant<br /> +She offers in reward for handsome cheer:<br /> +Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant<br /> +The secret down a dewy leer<br /> +Of corner eyelids into haze:<br /> +Many a fair Aphrosyne<br /> +Like flower-bell to honey-bee:<br /> +And here they flicker round the maze<br /> +Bewildering him in heart and head:<br /> +And here they wear the close demure,<br /> +With subtle peeps to reassure:<br /> +Others parade where love has bled,<br /> +And of its crimson weave their mesh:<br /> +Others to snap of fingers leap,<br /> +As bearing breast with love asleep.<br /> +These are her laughters in the flesh.<br /> +Or would she fit a warrior mood,<br /> +She lights her seeming unsubdued,<br /> +And indicates the fortress-key.<br /> +Or is it heart for heart that craves,<br /> +She flecks along a run of waves<br /> +The one to promise deeper sea.</p> +<p class="poetry">Bands of her limpid primitives,<br /> +Or patterned in the curious braid,<br /> +Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,<br /> +For what he gives is he repaid.<br /> +<a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 198</span>Good is +it if by him ’tis held<br /> +He wins the fairest ever welled<br /> +From Nature’s founts: she whispers it: Even I<br /> +Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,<br /> +Else little is he lover. Those he clasps,<br /> +Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,—<br /> +And be they doves or be they asps,—<br /> +Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;<br /> +Else counts he soon among life’s wholly tamed.<br /> +Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,<br /> +Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned<br /> +The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,<br /> +He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,<br /> +Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.<br /> +Doth man divide divine Necessity<br /> +From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s breasts<br /> +A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain<br /> +Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.<br /> +Of this he perishes; not she, the throned<br /> +On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.<br /> +A loftier Reason out of deeper founts<br /> +Earth’s chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned<br /> +While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,<br /> +And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;<br /> +Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s +cry,<br /> +Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.</p> +<p class="poetry">Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear,<br /> +When the wild sap at high tide smites<br /> +Within us; or benignly clear<br /> +To vision; or as the iris lights<br /> +On fluctuant waters; she is ours<br /> +Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;<br /> +Flushing the world with odorous flowers:<br /> +<a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>A soft +compulsion on terrene<br /> +By heavenly: and the world is hers<br /> +While hunger after Beauty spurs.</p> +<p class="poetry">So is it sung in any space<br /> +She fills, with laugh at shallow laws<br /> +Forbidding love’s devised embrace,<br /> +The music Beauty from it draws.</p> +<h3><a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>THE +TEST OF MANHOOD</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Like</span> a flood river +whirled at rocky banks,<br /> +An army issues out of wilderness,<br /> +With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;<br /> +Obstruction in the van; insane excess<br /> +Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress<br /> +Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,<br /> +And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,<br /> +The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.<br /> +They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;<br /> +A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.<br /> +Then was the gracious birth of man’s new day;<br /> +Divided from the haunted night it shone.</p> +<p class="poetry">That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof +sprang<br /> +Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.<br /> +Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:<br /> +It was another earth unto him sang.</p> +<p class="poetry">Came Reverence from the Huntress on her +heights?<br /> +From the Persuader came it, in those vales<br /> +Whereunto she melodiously invites,<br /> +Her troops of eager servitors regales?<br /> +Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed<br /> +Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;<br /> +Nor either points for us the way of flame.<br /> +From him predestined mightier it came;<br /> +His task to hold them both in breast, and yield<br /> +Their dues to each, and of their war be field.</p> +<p class="poetry">The foes that in repulsion never ceased,<br /> +Must he, who once has been the goodly beast<br /> +<a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>Of one +or other, at whose beck he ran,<br /> +Constrain to make him serviceable man;<br /> +Offending neither, nor the natural claim<br /> +Each pressed, denying, for his true man’s name.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife<br +/> +To hold them fast conjoined within him still;<br /> +Submissive to his will<br /> +Along the road of life!<br /> +And marvel not he wavered if at whiles<br /> +The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.<br /> +For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;<br /> +Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.<br /> +Delicious licence called it Nature’s cry;<br /> +Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;<br /> +A tread on shingle timed his lame advance<br /> +Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,<br /> +He of the troubled marching army leaned<br /> +On godhead visible, on godhead screened;<br /> +The radiant roseate, the curtained white;<br /> +Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.</p> +<p class="poetry">He drank of fictions, till celestial aid<br /> +Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;<br /> +Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,<br /> +To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;<br /> +And ever that imagined succour slew<br /> +The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.</p> +<p class="poetry">In fellowship religion has its founts:<br /> +The solitary his own God reveres:<br /> +Ascend no sacred Mounts<br /> +Our hungers or our fears.<br /> +<a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>As only +for the numbers Nature’s care<br /> +Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,<br /> +So to Divinity the spring of prayer<br /> +From brotherhood the one way upward leads.<br /> +Like the sustaining air<br /> +Are both for flowers and weeds.<br /> +But he who claims in spirit to be flower,<br /> +Will find them both an air that doth devour.</p> +<p class="poetry">Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored<br +/> +External gifts bestowed but on the sword;<br /> +Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,<br /> +Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,<br /> +His army’s foe, condemned to strive and fail;<br /> +See a black adversary’s ghost prevail;<br /> +Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win<br /> +While still the conflict tore his breast within.</p> +<p class="poetry">Out of that agony, misread for those<br /> +Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased,<br /> +The ghost of his black adversary rose,<br /> +To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.<br /> +And long with him was wrestling ere emerged<br /> +A mind to read in him the reflex shade<br /> +Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;<br /> +By craven compromises hourly swayed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Crouched as a nestling, still its wings +untried,<br /> +The man’s mind opened under weight of cloud.<br /> +To penetrate the dark was it endowed;<br /> +Stood day before a vision shooting wide.<br /> +Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;<br /> +The traversed wilderness exposed its track.<br /> +He felt the far advance in looking back;<br /> +Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +203</span>Under the low-browed tempest’s eye of ire,<br /> +That ere it lightened smote a coward heart,<br /> +Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart<br /> +All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;<br /> +A stranger still, religiously divined;<br /> +Not yet with understanding read aright.<br /> +But when the mind, the cherishable mind,<br /> +The multitude’s grave shepherd, took full flight,<br /> +Himself as mirror raised among his kind,<br /> +He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:<br /> +Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,<br /> +His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,<br /> +Had come of many a grip in mastery,<br /> +Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,<br /> +And of his bosom made him lord, to keep<br /> +The starry roof of his unruffled frame<br /> +Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep<br /> +Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.</p> +<p class="poetry">The mastering mind in him, by tempests +blown,<br /> +By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;<br /> +Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,<br /> +The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.<br /> +To whom unwittingly did he aspire<br /> +In wilderness, where bitter was his need:<br /> +To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed<br /> +For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.<br /> +But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,<br /> +And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed,<br /> +All choral in its fruitful garden camp,<br /> +The spiritual the palpable illumed.</p> +<p class="poetry">This gift of penetration and embrace,<br /> +His prize from tidal battles lost or won,<br /> +Reveals the scheme to animate his race:<br /> +<a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 204</span>How that +it is a warfare but begun;<br /> +Unending; with no Power to interpose;<br /> +No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground,<br /> +Heard of the Highest; never battle’s close,<br /> +The victory complete and victor crowned:<br /> +Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense<br /> +Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed.<br /> +In manhood must he find his competence;<br /> +In his clear mind the spiritual food:<br /> +God being there while he his fight maintains;<br /> +Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,<br /> +While he rejects the suicide despair;<br /> +Accepts the spur of explicable pains;<br /> +Obedient to Nature, not her slave:<br /> +Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows;<br /> +Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave,<br /> +And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:—<br /> +Whence Evil in a world unread before;<br /> +That mystery to simple springs resolved.<br /> +His God the Known, diviner to adore,<br /> +Shows Nature’s savage riddles kindly solved.<br /> +Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns<br /> +In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face.<br /> +Back to the primal brute shall he retrace<br /> +His path, doth he permit to force her chains<br /> +A soft Persuader coursing through his veins,<br /> +An icy Huntress stringing to the chase:<br /> +What one the flash disdains;<br /> +What one so gives it grace.</p> +<p class="poetry">But is he rightly manful in her eyes,<br /> +A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies,<br /> +A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,<br /> +Desireing and desireable he shines;<br /> +As peaches, that have caught the sun’s uprise<br /> +And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.<br /> +<a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>Earth +fills him with her juices, without fear<br /> +That she will cast him drunken down the steeps.<br /> +All woman is she to this man most dear;<br /> +He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:<br /> +She conscient, she sensitive, in him;<br /> +With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:<br /> +By him humaner made; by his keen spurs<br /> +Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb,<br /> +Her crazy adoration of big thews,<br /> +Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled,<br /> +Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world<br /> +In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.</p> +<p class="poetry">This man, this hero, works not to destroy;<br +/> +This godlike—as the rock in ocean stands;—<br /> +He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands<br /> +Creative; in his edifice has joy.<br /> +How strength may serve for purity is shown<br /> +When he himself can scourge to make it clean.<br /> +Withal his pitch of pride would not disown<br /> +A sober world that walks the balanced mean<br /> +Between its tempters, rarely overthrown:<br /> +And such at times his army’s march has been.</p> +<p class="poetry">Near is he to great Nature in the thought<br /> +Each changing Season intimately saith,<br /> +That nought save apparition knows the death;<br /> +To the God-lighted mind of man ’tis nought.<br /> +She counts not loss a word of any weight;<br /> +It may befal his passions and his greeds<br /> +To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,<br /> +But life gone breathless will she reinstate.</p> +<p class="poetry">Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,<br +/> +When he the mandate lodged in it obeys,<br /> +<a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>Alive to +breast a future wrapped in haze,<br /> +Strike camp, and onward, like the wind’s cloud-fleets.<br +/> +Unresting she, unresting he, from change<br /> +To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain;<br /> +She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,<br /> +Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.</p> +<p class="poetry">No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,<br /> +She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute;<br /> +But he, the flower at head and soil at root,<br /> +Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.<br /> +And that way seems he bound; that way the road,<br /> +With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone,<br /> +Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,<br /> +He travels, urged by some internal goad.</p> +<p class="poetry">Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing<br +/> +He would become is in his mind its child;<br /> +Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;<br /> +For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.<br /> +So moves he forth in faith, if he has made<br /> +His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth.<br /> +Earth’s nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,<br /> +He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.<br /> +Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;<br /> +The star of sky upon his footway cast;<br /> +Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,<br /> +The body’s love and mind’s, whereof the +soul’s.<br /> +Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,<br /> +To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.</p> +<p class="poetry">Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her +new mate?<br /> +Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;<br /> +The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;<br /> +With her the barren Huntress alternate;<br /> +<a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>His +rough refractory off on kicking heels<br /> +To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;<br /> +And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed,<br /> +His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?<br /> +May not his aspect, like her own so fair<br /> +Reflexively, the central force belie,<br /> +And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,<br /> +Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?</p> +<p class="poetry">’Tis that in each recovery he +preserves,<br /> +Between his upper and his nether wit,<br /> +Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;<br /> +He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;<br /> +With such a grasp upon his brute as tells<br /> +Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.<br /> +A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun<br /> +Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.</p> +<h3><a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>THE +HUELESS LOVE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Unto</span> that love must +we through fire attain,<br /> + Which those two held as breath of common air;<br /> + The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;<br +/> +Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.</p> +<p class="poetry">Midway the road of our life’s term they +met,<br /> + And one another knew without surprise;<br /> + Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;<br /> +Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.</p> +<p class="poetry">To them it was revealed how they had found<br +/> + The kindred nature and the needed mind;<br /> + The mate by long conspiracy designed;<br /> +The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.</p> +<p class="poetry">Avowed in vigilant solicitude<br /> + For either, what most lived within each breast<br /> + They let be seen: yet every human test<br /> +Demanding righteousness approved them good.</p> +<p class="poetry">She leaned on a strong arm, and little +feared<br /> + Abandonment to help if heaved or sank<br /> + Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,<br +/> +Life rosier were she but less revered.</p> +<p class="poetry">An arm that never shook did not obscure<br /> + Her woman’s intuition of the bliss—<br +/> + Their tempter’s moment o’er the black +abyss,<br /> +Across the narrow plank—he could abjure.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +209</span>Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,<br /> + And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,<br /> + Was all of earthly in their love untold,<br /> +Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.</p> +<p class="poetry">So has there come the gust at South-west +flung<br /> + By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,<br /> + When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,<br /> +And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.</p> +<h3>UNION IN DISSEVERANCE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sunset</span> worn to its +last vermilion he;<br /> +She that star overhead in slow descent:<br /> +That white star with the front of angel she;<br /> +He undone in his rays of glory spent</p> +<p class="poetry">Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,<br /> +He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest<br /> +Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,<br /> +Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.</p> +<p class="poetry">Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;<br +/> +Life’s full throb over breathless and abased:<br /> +Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,<br /> +One, more one than the bridally embraced.</p> +<h3><a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>SONG +IN THE SONGLESS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> have no song, +the sedges dry,<br /> + And still they sing.<br /> +It is within my breast they sing,<br /> + As I pass by.<br /> +Within my breast they touch a string,<br /> + They wake a sigh.<br /> +There is but sound of sedges dry;<br /> + In me they sing.</p> +<h3>THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">If</span> that thou hast +the gift of strength, then know<br /> +Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;<br /> +Else in a giant’s grasp until the end<br /> +A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.</p> +<h3><a name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>THE +MAIN REGRET<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS +ALBUM</span></h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Seen</span>, too clear and +historic within us, our sins of omission<br /> + Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly +bare.<br /> +They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;<br /> + Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to +repair.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sunshine might we have been unto seed under +soil, or have scattered<br /> + Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that +shone.<br /> +Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered<br /> + Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere +human tone.</p> +<h3>ALTERNATION</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Between</span> the fountain +and the rill<br /> +I passed, and saw the mighty will<br /> +To leap at sky; the careless run,<br /> +As earth would lead her little son.</p> +<p class="poetry">Beneath them throbs an urgent well,<br /> +That here is play, and there is war.<br /> +I know not which had most to tell<br /> +Of whence we spring and what we are.</p> +<h3><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>FOREST HISTORY</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Beneath</span> the vans of +doom did men pass in.<br /> + Heroic who came out; for round them hung<br /> + A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue,<br /> +With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Old Earth’s original Dragon; there +retired<br /> + To his last fastness; overthrown by few.<br /> + Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.<br /> +Then man to play devorant straight was fired.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">More intimate became the forest fear<br /> + While pillared darkness hatched malicious life<br /> + At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife<br /> +And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,<br /> + The forest’s heart of fog on mossed morass,<br +/> + On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,<br /> +Revealed where lured the swallower byway.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Dead outlook, flattened back with hard +rebound<br /> + Off walls of distance, left each mounted height.<br +/> + It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite<br /> +Of humble human being, held the ground.</p> +<h4><a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +213</span>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Through friendless wastes, through treacherous +woodland, slow<br /> + The feet sustained by track of feet pursued<br /> + Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood<br /> +By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight,<br +/> + And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there +abode.<br /> + They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;<br +/> +Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">What words they taught were nails to scratch +the head.<br /> + Benignant works explained the chanting brood.<br /> + Their monastery lit black solitude,<br /> +As one might think a star that heavenward led.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,<br /> + Like some gold flower nightly inward curled,<br /> + Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,<br /> +Or played with it, and had their white retreat.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Into big books of metal clasps they pored.<br +/> + They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays.<br +/> + The treasures women are whose aim is praise,<br /> +Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.</p> +<h4><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +214</span>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,<br +/> + With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam.<br /> + For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home,<br /> +The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Whence reverence round grey-haired story +grew:<br /> + And inmost spots of ancient horror shone<br /> + As temples under beams of trials bygone;<br /> +For in them sang brave times with God in view.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces +green,<br /> + Like night’s first little stars through +clearing showers.<br /> + Was rumoured how a castle’s falcon towers<br +/> +The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;<br /> + For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout.<br +/> + Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,<br /> +Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">It might be that two errant lords across<br /> + The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry<br /> + They charged forthwith, the better man to try.<br /> +One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.</p> +<h4><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +215</span>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay +slain,<br /> + The robbers into gruesome durance drew.<br /> + Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s +blue!<br /> +She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,<br /> + Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:<br /> + A toady cave beside an ague fen,<br /> +Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">By daylight now the forest fear could read<br +/> + Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went.<br /> + Straight for the roebuck’s neck the bowman +spent<br /> +A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate<br +/> + Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;<br /> + And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,<br /> +But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.</p> +<h4>XX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Before the blackbird pecked the turf they +woke;<br /> + At dawn the deer’s wet nostrils blew their +last.<br /> + To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,<br /> +With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.</p> +<h4><a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +216</span>XXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">The city urchin mooned on forest air,<br /> + On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick<br /> + As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed +him sick<br /> +For thinking that his dearer home was there.</p> +<h4>XXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang<br +/> + An old-world echo, like no mortal thing.<br /> + The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund ring,<br +/> +But held in ear it had a chilly clang.</p> +<h4>XXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;<br /> + Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,<br /> + As though the leagues of woodland held them +wronged<br /> +To hear an axe and see a township climb.</p> +<h4>XXIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve<br +/> + Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales.<br +/> + At midnight a small people danced the dales,<br /> +So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve</p> +<h4>XXV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their +throats,<br /> + Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much.<br +/> + The pensioned forester beside his crutch,<br /> +Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.</p> +<h4><a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +217</span>XXVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all +heart;<br /> + Devourer, and insensibly devoured;<br /> + In whom the city over forest flowered,<br /> +The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.</p> +<h4>XXVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">There found he in new form that Dragon old,<br +/> + From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught<br /> + How blindly each its antidote besought;<br /> +For either’s breath the needs of either told.</p> +<h4>XXVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s +drone,<br /> + He showed what charm the human concourse works:<br +/> + Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks<br /> +Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.</p> +<h4>XXIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Our conquest these: if haply we retain<br /> + The reverence that ne’er will overrun<br /> + Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,<br /> +Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.</p> +<h2><a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +219</span>FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE</h2> +<h3><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +221</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, i. 149<br /> +THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Heigh</span> me! +brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,<br /> +Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,<br /> +Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?<br +/> +I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armèd +Trojans,<br /> +Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm +done;<br /> +Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;<br +/> +Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests<br +/> +Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome<br +/> +Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy +sea-waters.<br /> +O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, +justice<br /> +Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou +dog-eyed!<br /> +Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest.<br +/> +<a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>Worse, +it is thou whose threat ’tis to ravish my prize from me, +portion<br /> +Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of +Achaia.<br /> +Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when +Achaians<br /> +Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage.<br /> +Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the +combat,<br /> +Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,<br /> +Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessèd +thing bore<br /> +Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the +bloodshed!<br /> +So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me<br /> +Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in +prospect,<br /> +I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and +wealth-store.”</p> +<h4><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +223</span>Iliad, i. 225</h4> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Bibber</span> +besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou!<br +/> +Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the +conflict,<br /> +Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia<br /> +Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a +death-stroke.<br /> +Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of +Achaians,<br /> +Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted +against thee.<br /> +Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over +abjects;<br /> +Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.<br +/> +Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it +likewise:<br /> +Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and +leaf-buds<br /> +Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the +mountains,<br /> +No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal +clipped off<br /> +Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,<br /> +Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the +judgement,<br /> +Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its +portent;<br /> +Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia<br +/> +<a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +224</span>Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though +in an anguish,<br /> +How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying +Hector<br /> +Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy +heart-strings,<br /> +Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of +Achaians.”</p> +<h3><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, ii 455<br /> +MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Like</span> as a terrible +fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,<br /> +Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round +far,<br /> +So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the +splendour<br /> +Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the +sky-vault.<br /> +They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged +flocks,<br /> +Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the +wild-swans,<br /> +Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of +Kaïstros;<br /> +Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their +pinions,<br /> +Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them +resoundeth;<br /> +So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings +poured forth<br /> +On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them<br +/> +Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the +horse-hooves.<br /> +Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d field of Scamander, +their thousands<br /> +Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.<br +/> +Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes +traverse,<br /> +<a name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>Clouds +of them, under some herdsman’s wonning, where then are the +milk-pails<br /> +Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of +spring-time;<br /> +Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,<br +/> +Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush +them.<br /> +Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of +goats, know<br /> +Easily one from the other when all get mixed o’er the +pasture,<br /> +So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for +onslaught,<br /> +Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,<br +/> +He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his +thunder,<br /> +He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.</p> +<h3><a name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +227</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, xi, 148<br /> +AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">These</span>, then, he +left, and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest,<br /> +Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved +Achaians.<br /> +Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful +compulsion,<br /> +Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the +dust-cloud,<br /> +Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering +horse-hooves)<br /> +Hewed with the sword’s sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord +Agamemnon<br /> +Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the +Argives.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now, as when fire voracious catches the +unclippèd wood-land,<br /> +This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the +scrubwood<br /> +Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire’s fury +rageing,<br /> +So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered<br /> +Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,<br +/> +Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the +war-field,<br /> +Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were +outstretched<br /> +Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their +home-mates.</p> +<h3><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +228</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, xi, 378<br /> +PARIS AND DIOMEDES</h3> +<p +class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">So</span> he, with a clear shout of laughter,<br /> +Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering +thiswise:<br /> +“Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it +had pierced thee<br /> +Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of +life-breath!<br /> +Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their +direst,<br /> +They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a +lion.”<br /> +Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:<br /> +“Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at +virgins!<br /> +If that thou dared’st face me here out in the open with +weapons,<br /> +Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of +arrows.<br /> +Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my +footsole;<br /> +Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish +infant.<br /> +Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, +noughtworth!<br /> +Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the +slightest,<br /> +My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen +straightway.<br /> +<a name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>Torn, +troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen +slaughtered,<br /> +Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his +blood-drops,<br /> +Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the +women.”</p> +<h3><a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +230</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, xiv, 283<br /> +HYPNOS ON IDA</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> then to +fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,<br /> +Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at +Lektos,<br /> +Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the +woodland.<br /> +There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,<br +/> +Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida<br /> +Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.<br /> +There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for +concealment,<br /> +That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the +mountains,<br /> +Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as +Kymindis.</p> +<h3><a name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +231</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, xvii, 426<br /> +CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Not</span> the sea-wave so +bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,<br /> +Whipped from the sea’s deeps up by the terrible blast of +the Northwind;<br /> +Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire’s rush so +arousing,<br /> +Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a +woodland;<br /> +Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the +oak-trees’<br /> +Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;<br /> +As rose then stupendous the Trojan’s cry and +Achaians’,<br /> +Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the +conflict.</p> +<h3><a name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +232</span><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, xvii, 426<br /> +THE HORSES OF ACHILLES</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">So</span> now the horses of +Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,<br /> +Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown +there,<br /> +Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying +Hector.<br /> +Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,<br /> +Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, +and oft, too,<br /> +Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.<br +/> +Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont +spacious,<br /> +Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the +Achaians.<br /> +Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,<br /> +Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;<br /> +Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious +war-car,<br /> +Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting +incessant<br /> +Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their +eyelids,<br /> +Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes +dusty-clotted,<br /> +Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of +the yoke-bow.<br /> + <a name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +233</span>Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his +head shook<br /> +Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his +bosom;<br /> +“Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal<br /> +Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!<br /> +Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have +heart-grief?<br /> +’Tis most true, than the race of these men is there +wretcheder nowhere<br /> +Aught over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath +and has movement.”</p> +<h2><a name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 234</span>THE +MARES OF THE CAMARGUE<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">FROM THE ‘MIRÈIO’ OF +MISTRAL</span></h2> +<p class="poetry"> A <span +class="smcap">hundred</span> mares, all white! their manes<br /> + Like mace-reed of the marshy plains<br /> + Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ the shears:<br /> + And when the fiery squadron rears<br /> + Bursting at speed, each mane appears<br /> + Even as the white scarf of a fay<br /> +Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.</p> +<p class="poetry"> O race of humankind, take +shame!<br /> + For never yet a hand could tame,<br /> + Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue<br /> + The mares of the Camargue. I have known,<br /> + By treason snared, some captives shown;<br /> + Expatriate from their native Rhone,<br /> +Led off, their saline pastures far from view:</p> +<p class="poetry"> And on a day, with prompt +rebound,<br /> + They have flung their riders to the ground,<br /> + And at a single gallop, scouring free,<br /> + Wide-nostril’d to the wind, twice ten<br /> + Of long marsh-leagues devour’d, and then,<br +/> + Back to the Vacarés again,<br /> +After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea</p> +<p class="poetry"> For of this savage race +unbent,<br /> + The ocean is the element.<br /> + Of old escaped from Neptune’s car, full +sure,<br /> + <a name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +235</span>Still with the white foam fleck’d are they,<br /> + And when the sea puffs black from grey,<br /> + And ships part cables, loudly neigh<br /> +The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;</p> +<p class="poetry"> And keen as a whip they lash +and crack<br /> + Their tails that drag the dust, and back<br /> + Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their +flesh, where he,<br /> + The God, drives deep his trident teeth,<br /> + Who in one horror, above, beneath,<br /> + Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,<br /> +And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Cant.</i> iv.</p> +<h2><a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +236</span>‘ATKINS’</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Yonder’s</span> the +man with his life in his hand,<br /> +Legs on the march for whatever the land,<br /> + Or to the slaughter, or to the maiming,<br /> + Getting the dole of a dog for +pay.<br /> +Laurels he clasps in the words ‘duty done,’<br /> +England his heart under every sun:—<br /> + Exquisite humour! that gives him a naming<br /> + Base to the ear as an ass’s +bray.</p> +<h2><a name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 237</span>THE +VOYAGE OF THE ‘OPHIR’</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Men</span> of our race, we +send you one<br /> +Round whom Victoria’s holy name<br /> +Is halo from the sunken sun<br /> +Of her grand Summer’s day aflame.<br /> +The heart of your loved Motherland,<br /> +To them she loves as her own blood,<br /> +This Flower of Ocean bears in hand,<br /> + Assured of gift as good.</p> +<p class="poetry">Forth for our Southern shores the fleet<br /> +Which crowns a nation’s wisdom steams,<br /> +That there may Briton Briton greet,<br /> +And stamp as fact Imperial dreams.<br /> +Across the globe, from sea to sea,<br /> +The long smoke-pennon trails above,<br /> +Writes over sky how wise will be<br /> + The Power that trusts to love.</p> +<p class="poetry">A love that springs from heart and brain<br /> +In union gives for ripest fruit<br /> +The concord Kings and States in vain<br /> +Have sought, who played the lofty brute,<br /> +And fondly deeming they possessed,<br /> +On force relied, and found it break:<br /> +That truth once scored on Britain’s breast<br /> + Now keeps her mind awake.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page238"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +238</span>Australian, Canadian,<br /> +To tone old veins with streams of youth,<br /> +Our trust be on the best in man<br /> +Henceforth, and we shall prove that truth.<br /> +Prove to a world of brows down-bent<br /> +That in the Britain thus endowed,<br /> +Imperial means beneficent,<br /> + And strength to service vowed.</p> +<h2><a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 239</span>THE +CRISIS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Spirit</span> of Russia, +now has come<br /> +The day when thou canst not be dumb.<br /> +Around thee foams the torrent tide,<br /> +Above thee its fell fountain, Pride.<br /> +The senseless rock awaits thy word<br /> +To crumble; shall it be unheard?<br /> +Already, like a tempest-sun,<br /> +That shoots the flare and shuts to dun,<br /> +Thy land ’twixt flame and darkness heaves,<br /> +Showing the blade wherewith Fate cleaves,<br /> +If mortals in high courage fail<br /> +At the one breath before the gale.<br /> +Those rulers in all forms of lust,<br /> +Who trod thy children down to dust<br /> +On the red Sunday, know right well<br /> +What word for them thy voice would spell,<br /> +What quick perdition for them weave,<br /> +Did they in such a voice believe.<br /> +Not thine to raise the avenger’s shriek,<br /> +Nor turn to them a Tolstoi cheek;<br /> +Nor menace him, the waverer still,<br /> +Man of much heart and little will,<br /> +The criminal of his high seat,<br /> +Whose plea of Guiltless judges it.<br /> +For him thy voice shall bring to hand<br /> +Salvation, and to thy torn land,<br /> +Seen on the breakers. Now has come<br /> +The day when thou canst not be dumb,<br /> +<a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 240</span>Spirit +of Russia:—those who bind<br /> +Thy limbs and iron-cap thy mind,<br /> +Take thee for quaking flesh, misdoubt<br /> +That thou art of the rabble rout<br /> +Which cries and flees, with whimpering lip,<br /> +From reckless gun and brutal whip;<br /> +But he who has at heart the deeds<br /> +Of thy heroic offspring reads<br /> +In them a soul; not given to shrink<br /> +From peril on the abyss’s brink;<br /> +With never dread of murderous power;<br /> +With view beyond the crimson hour;<br /> +Neither an instinct-driven might,<br /> +Nor visionary erudite;<br /> +A soul; that art thou. It remains<br /> +For thee to stay thy children’s veins,<br /> +The countertides of hate arrest,<br /> +Give to thy sons a breathing breast,<br /> +And Him resembling, in His sight,<br /> +Say to thy land, Let there be Light.</p> +<h2><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +241</span>OCTOBER 21, 1905</h2> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">The</span> hundred years have passed, and he<br /> + Whose name appeased a nation’s fears,<br /> + As with a hand laid over sea;<br /> + To thunder through the foeman’s ears<br /> + Defeat before his blast of fire;<br /> + Lives in the immortality<br /> +That poets dream and noblest souls desire.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Never did nation’s need +evoke<br /> + Hero like him for aid, the while<br /> + A Continent was cannon-smoke<br /> + Or peace in slavery: this one Isle<br /> + Reflecting Nature: this one man<br /> + Her sea-hound and her mortal stroke,<br /> +With war-worn body aye in battle’s van.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And do we love him well, as +well<br /> + As he his country, we may greet,<br /> + With hand on steel, our passing bell<br /> + Nigh on the swing, for prelude sweet<br /> + To the music heard when his last breath<br /> + Hung on its ebb beside the knell,<br /> +And <span class="smcap">Victory</span> in his ear sang gracious +Death.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Ah, day of glory! day of +tears!<br /> + Day of a people bowed as one!<br /> + Behold across those hundred years<br /> + <a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +242</span>The lion flash of gun at gun:<br /> + Our bitter pride; our love bereaved;<br /> + What pall of cloud o’ercame our sun<br /> +That day, to bear his wreath, the end achieved.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Joy that no more with +murder’s frown<br /> + The ancient rivals bark apart.<br /> + Now Nelson to brave France is shown<br /> + A hero after her own heart:<br /> + And he now scanning that quick race,<br /> + To whom through life his glove was thrown,<br /> +Would know a sister spirit to embrace.</p> +<h2><a name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>THE +CENTENARY OF GARIBALDI</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">We</span> who have seen +Italia in the throes,<br /> +Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now<br /> +Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough<br /> +All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those<br /> +Who blew the breath of life into her frame:<br /> +Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three:<br /> +Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free<br /> +From ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim.</p> +<p class="poetry">That aim, albeit they were of minds diverse,<br +/> +Conjoined them, not to strive without surcease;<br /> +For them could be no babblement of peace<br /> +While lay their country under Slavery’s curse.</p> +<p class="poetry">The set of torn Italia’s glorious day<br +/> +Was ever sunrise in each filial breast.<br /> +Of eagle beaks by righteousness unblest<br /> +They felt her pulsing body made the prey.</p> +<p class="poetry">Wherefore they struck, and had to count their +dead.<br /> +With bitter smile of resolution nerved<br /> +To try new issues, holding faith unswerved,<br /> +Promise they gathered from the rich blood shed.</p> +<p class="poetry">In them Italia, visible to us then<br /> +As living, rose; for proof that huge brute Force<br /> +Has never being from celestial source,<br /> +And is the lord of cravens, not of men.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +244</span>Now breaking up the crust of temporal strife,<br /> +Who reads their acts enshrined in History, sees<br /> +That Tyrants were the Revolutionaries,<br /> +The Rebels men heart-vowed to hallowed life.</p> +<p class="poetry">Pure as the Archangel’s cleaving Darkness +thro’,<br /> +The Sword he sees, the keen unwearied Sword,<br /> +A single blade against a circling horde,<br /> +And aye for Freedom and the trampled few.</p> +<p class="poetry">The cry of Liberty from dungeon cell,<br /> +From exile, was his God’s command to smite,<br /> +As for a swim in sea he joined the fight,<br /> +With radiant face, full sure that he did well.</p> +<p class="poetry">Behold a warrior dealing mortal strokes,<br /> +Whose nature was a child’s: amid his foes<br /> +A wary trickster: at the battle’s close,<br /> +No gentler friend this leopard dashed with fox.</p> +<p class="poetry">Down the long roll of History will run<br /> +The story of these deeds, and speed his race<br /> +Beneath defeat more hotly to embrace<br /> +The noble cause and trust to another sun.</p> +<p class="poetry">And lo, that sun is in Italia’s skies<br +/> +This day, by grace of his good sword in part.<br /> +It beckons her to keep a warrior heart<br /> +For guard of beauty, all too sweet a prize.</p> +<p class="poetry">Earth gave him: blessèd be the Earth +that gave.<br /> +Earth’s Master crowned his honest work on earth:<br /> +Proudly Italia names his place of birth:<br /> +The bosom of Humanity his grave.</p> +<h2><a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 245</span>THE +WILD ROSE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">High</span> climbs +June’s wild rose,<br /> +Her bush all blooms in a swarm;<br /> +And swift from the bud she blows,<br /> +In a day when the wooer is warm;<br /> +Frank to receive and give,<br /> +Her bosom is open to bee and sun:<br /> +Pride she has none,<br /> +Nor shame she knows;<br /> +Happy to live.</p> +<p class="poetry">Unlike those of the garden nigh,<br /> +Her queenly sisters enthroned by art;<br /> +Loosening petals one by one<br /> +To the fiery Passion’s dart<br /> +Superbly shy.<br /> +For them in some glory of hair,<br /> +Or nest of the heaving mounds to lie,<br /> +Or path of the bride bestrew.<br /> +Ever are they the theme for song.<br /> +But nought of that is her share.<br /> +Hardly from wayfarers tramping along,<br /> +A glance they care not to renew.</p> +<p class="poetry">And she at a word of the claims of kin<br /> +Shrinks to the level of roads and meads:<br /> +She is only a plain princess of the weeds,<br /> +As an outcast witless of sin:<br /> +Much disregarded, save by the few<br /> +<a name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 246</span>Who love +her, that has not a spot of deceit,<br /> +No promise of sweet beyond sweet,<br /> +Often descending to sour.<br /> +On any fair breast she would die in an hour.<br /> +Praises she scarce could bear,<br /> +Were any wild poet to praise.<br /> +Her aim is to rise into light and air.<br /> +One of the darlings of Earth, no more,<br /> +And little it seems in the dusty ways,<br /> +Unless to the grasses nodding beneath;<br /> +The bird clapping wings to soar,<br /> +The clouds of an evetide’s wreath.</p> +<h2><a name="page247"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 247</span>THE +CALL</h2> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Under</span> what spell are we debased<br /> + By fears for our inviolate +Isle,<br /> + Whose record is of dangers faced<br /> + And flung to heel with even +smile?<br /> +Is it a vaster force, a subtler guile?</p> +<p class="poetry"> They say Exercitus designs<br +/> + To match the famed Salsipotent<br +/> + Where on her sceptre she reclines;<br /> + Awake: but were a slumber sent<br +/> +By guilty gods, more fell his foul intent.</p> +<p class="poetry"> The subtler web, the vaster +foe,<br /> + Well may we meet when drilled for +deeds:<br /> + But in these days of wealth at flow,<br /> + A word of breezy warning breeds<br +/> +The pained responses seen in lakeside reeds.</p> +<p class="poetry"> We fain would stand +contemplative,<br /> + All innocent as meadow grass;<br +/> + In human goodness fain believe,<br /> + Believe a cloud is formed to +pass;<br /> +Its shadows chase with draughts of hippocras.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Others have gone; the way +they went<br /> + Sweet sunny now, and safe our +nest.<br /> + Humanity, enlightenment,<br /> + Against the warning hum +protest:<br /> +Let the world hear that we know what is best.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page248"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 248</span>So do the beatific speak;<br /> + Yet have they ears, and eyes as +well;<br /> + And if not with a paler cheek,<br /> + They feel the shivers in them +dwell,<br /> +That something of a dubious future tell.</p> +<p class="poetry"> For huge possessions render +slack<br /> + The power we need to hold them +fast;<br /> + Save when a quickened heart shall make<br /> + Our people one, to meet what +blast<br /> +May blow from temporal heavens overcast.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Our people one! Nor +they with strength<br /> + Dependent on a single arm:<br /> + Alert, and braced the whole land’s length,<br +/> + Rejoicing in their manhood’s +charm<br /> +For friend or foe; to succour, not to harm.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Has ever weakness won +esteem?<br /> + Or counts it as a prized ally?<br +/> + They who have read in History deem<br /> + It ranks among the slavish fry,<br +/> +Whose claim to live justiciary Fates deny.</p> +<p class="poetry"> It can not be declared we +are<br /> + A nation till from end to end<br +/> + The land can show such front to war<br /> + As bids a crouching foe expend <br +/> +His ire in air, and preferably be friend.</p> +<p class="poetry"> We dreading him, we do him +wrong;<br /> + For fears discolour, fears +invite.<br /> + Like him, our task is to be strong;<br /> + Unlike him, claiming not by +might<br /> +To snatch an envied treasure as a right.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page249"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 249</span>So may a stouter brotherhood<br /> + At home be signalled over sea<br +/> + For righteous, and be understood,<br /> + Nay, welcomed, when ’tis +shown that we<br /> +All duties have embraced in being free.</p> +<p class="poetry"> This Britain slumbering, she +is rich;<br /> + Lies placid as a cradled child;<br +/> + At times with an uneasy twitch,<br /> + That tells of dreams unduly +wild.<br /> +Shall she be with a foreign drug defiled?</p> +<p class="poetry"> The grandeur of her deeds +recall;<br /> + Look on her face so kindly +fair:<br /> + This Britain! and were she to fall,<br /> + Mankind would breathe a harsher +air,<br /> +The nations miss a light of leading rare.</p> +<h2><a name="page250"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 250</span>ON +COMO</h2> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">rainless</span> darkness +drew o’er the lake<br /> +As we lay in our boat with oars unshipped.<br /> +It seemed neither cloud nor water awake,<br /> +And forth of the low black curtain slipped<br /> +Thunderless lightning. Scoff no more<br /> +At angels imagined in downward flight<br /> +For the daughters of earth as fabled of yore:<br /> +Here was beauty might well invite<br /> +Dark heavens to gleam with the fire of a sun<br /> +Resurgent; here the exchanged embrace<br /> +Worthy of heaven and earth made one.</p> +<p class="poetry">And witness it, ye of the privileged space,<br +/> +Said the flash; and the mountains, as from an abyss<br /> +For quivering seconds leaped up to attest<br /> +That given, received, renewed was the kiss;<br /> +The lips to lips and the breast to breast;<br /> +All in a glory of ecstasy, swift<br /> +As an eagle at prey, and pure as the prayer<br /> +Of an infant bidden joined hands uplift<br /> +To be guarded through darkness by spirits of air,<br /> +Ere setting the sails of sleep till day.<br /> +Slowly the low cloud swung, and far<br /> +It panted along its mirrored way;<br /> +Above loose threads one sanctioning star,<br /> +The wonder of what had been witnessed, sealed,<br /> +And with me still as in crystal glassed<br /> +Are the depths alight, the heavens revealed,<br /> +Where on to the Alps the muteness passed.</p> +<h2><a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +251</span>MILTON<br /> +DECEMBER 9, 1608: DECEMBER 9, 1908</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">What</span> splendour of +imperial station man,<br /> +The Tree of Life, may reach when, rooted fast,<br /> +His branching stem points way to upper air<br /> +And skyward still aspires, we see in him<br /> +Who sang for us the Archangelical host,<br /> +Made Morning, by old Darkness urged to the abyss;<br /> +A voice that down three centuries onward rolls;<br /> +Onward will roll while lives our English tongue,<br /> +In the devout of music unsurpassed<br /> +Since Piety won Heaven’s ear on Israel’s harp.</p> +<p class="poetry">The face of Earth, the soul of Earth, her +charm,<br /> +Her dread austerity; the quavering fate<br /> +Of mortals with blind hope by passion swayed,<br /> +His mind embraced, the while on trodden soil,<br /> +Defender of the Commonwealth, he joined<br /> +Our temporal fray, whereof is vital fruit,<br /> +And, choosing armoury of the Scholar, stood<br /> +Beside his peers to raise the voice for Freedom:<br /> +Nor has fair Liberty a champion armed<br /> +To meet on heights or plains the Sophister<br /> +Throughout the ages, equal to this man,<br /> +Whose spirit breathed high Heaven, and drew thence<br /> +The ethereal sword to smite.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> Were +England sunk<br /> +Beneath the shifting tides, her heart, her brain,<br /> +The smile she wears, the faith she holds, her best,<br /> +<a name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>Would +live full-toned in the grand delivery<br /> +Of his cathedral speech: an utterance<br /> +Almost divine, and such as Hellespont,<br /> +Crashing its breakers under Ida’s frown,<br /> +Inspired: yet worthier he, whose instrument<br /> +Was by comparison the coarse reed-pipe;<br /> +Whereof have come the marvellous harmonies,<br /> +Which, with his lofty theme, of infinite range,<br /> +Abash, entrance, exalt.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> We +need him now,<br /> +This latest Age in repetition cries:<br /> +For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst;<br /> +Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat<br /> +From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly<br /> +(Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask<br /> +Of hypocritical Peace,) inveterate Moloch<br /> +Remains the great example.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> Homage +to him<br /> +His debtor band, innumerable as waves<br /> +Running all golden from an eastern sun,<br /> +Joyfully render, in deep reverence<br /> +Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton’s name,<br /> +Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear.</p> +<h2><a name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +253</span>IRELAND</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Fire</span> in her ashes +Ireland feels<br /> + And in her veins a glow of heat.<br /> +To her the lost old time, appeals<br /> + For resurrection, good to greet:<br /> +Not as a shape with spectral eyes,<br /> + But humanly maternal, young<br /> +In all that quickens pride, and wise<br /> + To speak the best her bards have sung.</p> +<p class="poetry">You read her as a land distraught,<br /> + Where bitterest rebel passions seethe.<br /> +Look with a core of heart in thought,<br /> + For so is known the truth beneath.<br /> +She came to you a loathing bride,<br /> + And it has been no happy bed.<br /> +Believe in her as friend, allied<br /> + By bonds as close as those who wed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her speech is held for hatred’s cry;<br +/> + Her silence tells of treason hid:<br /> +Were it her aim to burst the tie,<br /> + She sees what iron laws forbid.<br /> +Excess of heart obscures from view<br /> + A head as keen as yours to count.<br /> +Trust her, that she may prove her true<br /> + In links whereof is love the fount.</p> +<p class="poetry">May she not call herself her own?<br /> + That is her cry, and thence her spits<br /> +Of fury, thence her graceless tone<br /> + At justice given in bits and bits.<br /> +<a name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 254</span>The +limbs once raw with gnawing chains<br /> + Will fret at silken when God’s beams<br /> +Of Freedom beckon o’er the plains<br /> + From mounts that show it more than dreams.</p> +<p class="poetry">She, generous, craves your generous dole;<br /> + That will not rouse the crack of doom.<br /> +It ends the blundering past control<br /> + Simply to give her elbow-room.<br /> +Her offspring feels they are a race,<br /> + To be a nation is their claim;<br /> +Yet stronger bound in your embrace<br /> + Than when the tie was but a name.</p> +<p class="poetry">A nation she, and formed to charm,<br /> + With heart for heart and hands all round.<br /> +No longer England’s broken arm,<br /> + Would England know where strength is found.<br /> +And strength to-day is England’s need;<br /> + To-morrow it may be for both<br /> +Salvation: heed the portents, heed<br /> + The warnings; free the mind from sloth.</p> +<p class="poetry">Too long the pair have danced in mud,<br /> + With no advance from sun to sun.<br /> +Ah, what a bounding course of blood<br /> + Has England with an Ireland one!<br /> +Behold yon shadow cross the downs,<br /> + And off away to yeasty seas.<br /> +Lightly will fly old rancour’s frowns<br /> + When solid with high heart stand these.</p> +<h2><a name="page255"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 255</span>THE +YEARS HAD WORN THEIR SEASONS’ BELT</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> years had worn +their seasons’ belt,<br /> + From bud to rosy prime,<br /> +Since Nellie by the larch-pole knelt<br /> + And helped the hop to climb.</p> +<p class="poetry">Most diligent of teachers then,<br /> + But now with all to learn,<br /> +She breathed beyond a thought of men,<br /> + Though formed to make men burn.</p> +<p class="poetry">She dwelt where ’twixt low-beaten +thorns<br /> + Two mill-blades, like a snail,<br /> +Enormous, with inquiring horns,<br /> + Looked down on half the vale.</p> +<p class="poetry">You know the grey of dew on grass<br /> + Ere with the young sun fired,<br /> +And you know well the thirst one has<br /> + For the coming and desired.</p> +<p class="poetry">Quick in our ring she leapt, and gave<br /> + Her hand to left, to right.<br /> +No claim on her had any, save<br /> + To feed the joy of sight.</p> +<p class="poetry">For man and maid a laughing word<br /> + She tossed, in notes as clear<br /> +As when the February bird<br /> + Sings out that Spring is near.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +256</span>Of what befell behind that scone,<br /> + Let none who knows reveal.<br /> +In ballad days she might have been<br /> + A heroine rousing steel.</p> +<p class="poetry">On us did she bestow the hour,<br /> + And fixed it firm in thought;<br /> +Her spirit like a meadow flower<br /> + That gives, and asks for nought.</p> +<p class="poetry">She seemed to make the sunlight stay<br /> + And show her in its pride.<br /> +O she was fair as a beech in May<br /> + With the sun on the yonder side.</p> +<p class="poetry">There was more life than breath can give,<br /> + In the looks in her fair form;<br /> +For little can we say we live<br /> + Until the heart is warm.</p> +<h2><a name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +257</span>FRAGMENTS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Open</span> horizons +round,<br /> +O mounting mind, to scenes unsung,<br /> +Wherein shall walk a lusty Time:<br /> +Our Earth is young;<br /> +Of measure without bound;<br /> +Infinite are the heights to climb,<br /> +The depths to sound.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">wilding</span> little +stubble flower<br /> +The sickle scorned which cut for wheat,<br /> +Such was our hope in that dark hour<br /> +When nought save uses held the street,<br /> +And daily pleasures, daily needs,<br /> +With barren vision, looked ahead.<br /> +And still the same result of seeds<br /> +Gave likeness ’twixt the live and dead.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +258</span><span class="smcap">From</span> labours through the +night, outworn,<br /> +Above the hills the front of morn<br /> +We see, whose eyes to heights are raised,<br /> +And the world’s wise may deem us crazed.<br /> +While yet her lord lies under seas,<br /> +She takes us as the wind the trees’<br /> +Delighted leafage; all in song<br /> +We mount to her, to her belong.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">This</span> love of nature, +that allures to take<br /> +Irregularity for harmony<br /> +Of larger scope than our hard measures make,<br /> +Cherish it as thy school for when on thee<br /> +The ills of life descend.</p> +<h2><a name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 259</span>IL Y +A CENT ANS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">That</span> march of the +funereal Past behold;<br /> + How Glory sat on Bondage for its throne;<br /> +How men, like dazzled insects, through the mould<br /> + Still worked their way, and bled to keep their +own.</p> +<p class="poetry">We know them, as they strove and wrought and +yearned;<br /> + Their hopes, their fears; what page of Life they +wist:<br /> +At whiles their vision upon us was turned,<br /> + Baffled by shapes limmed loosely on thick mist.</p> +<p class="poetry">Beneath the fortress bulk of Power they bent<br +/> + Blunt heads, adoring or in shackled hate,<br /> +All save the rebel hymned him; and it meant<br /> + A world submitting to incarnate Fate.</p> +<p class="poetry">From this he drew fresh appetite for sway,<br +/> + And of it fell: whereat was chorus raised,<br /> +How surely shall a mad ambition pay<br /> + Dues to Humanity, erewhile amazed.</p> +<p class="poetry">’Twas dreamed by some the deluge would +ensue,<br /> + So trembling was the tension long constrained;<br /> +A spirit of faith was in the chosen few,<br /> + That steps to the millennium had been gained.</p> +<p class="poetry">But mainly the rich business of the hour,<br /> + Their sight, made blind by urgency of blood,<br /> +Embraced; and facts, the passing sweet or sour,<br /> + To them were solid things that nought withstood.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +260</span>Their facts are going headlong on the tides,<br /> + Like commas on a line of History’s page;<br /> +Nor that which once they took for Truth abides,<br /> + Save in the form of youth enlarged from age.</p> +<p class="poetry">Meantime give ear to woodland notes around,<br +/> + Look on our Earth full-breasted to our sun:<br /> +So was it when their poets heard the sound,<br /> + Beheld the scene: in them our days are one.</p> +<p class="poetry">What figures will be shown the century +hence?<br /> + What lands intact? We do but know that +Power<br /> +From piety divorced, though seen immense,<br /> + Shall sink on envy of the humblest flower.</p> +<p class="poetry">Our cry for cradled Peace, while men are +still<br /> + The three-parts brute which smothers the divine,<br +/> +Heaven answers: Guard it with forethoughtful will,<br /> + Or buy it; all your gains from War resign.</p> +<p class="poetry">A land, not indefensibly alarmed,<br /> + May see, unwarned by hint of friendly gods,<br /> +Between a hermit crab at all points armed,<br /> + And one without a shell, decisive odds.</p> +<h2><a name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +261</span>YOUTH IN AGE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Once</span> I was part of +the music I heard<br /> + On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky,<br /> +For joy of the beating of wings on high<br /> + My heart shot into the breast of the bird.</p> +<p class="poetry">I hear it now and I see it fly,<br /> + And a life in wrinkles again is stirred,<br /> +My heart shoots into the breast of the bird,<br /> + As it will for sheer love till the last long +sigh.</p> +<h2><a name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +263</span>EPITAPHS</h2> +<h3><a name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 265</span>TO A +FRIEND LOST<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">(TOM TAYLOR)</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> I remember, +friend, whom lost I call,<br /> +Because a man beloved is taken hence,<br /> +The tender humour and the fire of sense<br /> +In your good eyes; how full of heart for all,<br /> +And chiefly for the weaker by the wall,<br /> +You bore that lamp of sane benevolence;<br /> +Then see I round you Death his shadows dense<br /> +Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall.<br /> +For surely are you one with the white host,<br /> +Spirits, whose memory is our vital air,<br /> +Through the great love of Earth they had: lo, these,<br /> +Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas,<br /> +Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost,<br /> +Partakers of a strife they joyed to share.</p> +<h3>M. M.</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Who</span> call her Mother +and who calls her Wife<br /> +Look on her grave and see not Death but Life.</p> +<h3><a name="page266"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 266</span>THE +LADY C. M.</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">To</span> them that knew +her, there is vital flame<br /> +In these the simple letters of her name.<br /> +To them that knew her not, be it but said,<br /> +So strong a spirit is not of the dead.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">ON THE TOMBSTONE OF</span><br /> +JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">(d. APRIL 11, 1884)</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">IN HEADLEY CHURCHYARD, SURREY</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Thou</span> our beloved and +light of Earth hast crossed<br /> +The sea of darkness to the yonder shore.<br /> +There dost thou shine a light transferred, not lost,<br /> +Through love to kindle in our souls the more.</p> +<h3>GORDON OF KHARTOUM</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Of</span> men he would have +raised to light he fell:<br /> +In soul he conquered with those nerveless hands.<br /> +His country’s pride and her abasement knell<br /> +The Man of England circled by the sands.</p> +<h3><a name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 267</span>J. +C. M.</h3> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">fountain</span> of our +sweetest, quick to spring<br /> +In fellowship abounding, here subsides:<br /> +And never passage of a cloud on wing<br /> +To gladden blue forgets him; near he hides.</p> +<h3>THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">With</span> Alfred and St. +Louis he doth win<br /> +Grander than crowned head’s mortuary dome:<br /> +His gentle heroic manhood enters in<br /> +The ever-flowering common heart for home.</p> +<h3>ISLET THE DACHS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Our</span> Islet out of +Helgoland, dismissed<br /> +From his quaint tenement, quits hates and loves.<br /> +There lived with us a wagging humourist<br /> +In that hound’s arch dwarf-legged on boxing-gloves.</p> +<h3><a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 268</span>ON +HEARING THE NEWS FROM VENICE<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">(THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING)</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Now</span> dumb is he who +waked the world to speak,<br /> +And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier.<br /> +Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear:<br /> +We are the smitten mortal, we the weak.<br /> +We see a spirit on Earth’s loftiest peak<br /> +Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear:<br /> +See a great Tree of Life that never sere<br /> +Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak.<br /> +Such ending is not Death: such living shows<br /> +What wide illumination brightness sheds<br /> +From one big heart, to conquer man’s old foes:<br /> +The coward, and the tyrant, and the force<br /> +Of all those weedy monsters raising heads<br /> +When Song is murk from springs of turbid source.</p> +<p><i>December</i> 13, 1889.</p> +<h3><a name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +269</span>HAWARDEN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> comes the +lighted day for men to read<br /> +Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands<br /> +Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,<br /> +Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands<br /> +Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;<br /> +Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.<br /> +The sun that dropped down our horizon’s verge<br /> +Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,<br /> +Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known<br /> +By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.<br /> +A splendid image built of man has flown;<br /> +His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.<br /> +Ours the great privilege to have had one<br /> +Among us who celestial tasks has done.</p> +<h3><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 270</span>AT +THE FUNERAL<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">FEBRUARY 2, 1901</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Her</span> sacred body +bear: the tenement<br /> + Of that strong soul now ranked with God’s +Elect<br /> +Her heart upon her people’s heart she spent;<br /> + Hence is she Royalty’s lodestar to direct.</p> +<p class="poetry">The peace is hers, of whom all lands have +praised<br /> + Majestic virtues ere her day unseen.<br /> +Aloft the name of Womanhood she raised,<br /> + And gave new readings to the Title, Queen.</p> +<h3>ANGELA BURDETT-COUTTS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Long</span> with us, now +she leaves us; she has rest<br /> + Beneath our sacred sod:<br /> +A woman vowed to Good, whom all attest,<br /> + The daylight gift of God.</p> +<h3>THE YEAR’S SHEDDINGS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> varied colours +are a fitful heap:<br /> +They pass in constant service though they sleep;<br /> +The self gone out of them, therewith the pain:<br /> +Read that, who still to spell our earth remain.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote140"></a><a href="#citation140" +class="footnote">[140]</a> Written in December 1870, +printed in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ and published in +the volume ‘Ballads and Poems.’</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 3 [OF 3]***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1383-h.htm or 1383-h.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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