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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16973-8.txt b/16973-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b46d27e --- /dev/null +++ b/16973-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3426 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Song, by Algernon Charles Swinburne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 + + +Title: Studies in Song + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: October 31, 2005 [EBook #16973] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +STUDIES IN SONG + +BY + +ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE + + +London +CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY +1880 + +_All rights reserved_ + +LONDON: PRINTED BY +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE +AND PARLIAMENT STREET + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE +SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1 + +GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS FROM ARISTOPHANES 67 + +OFF SHORE 75 + +AFTER NINE YEARS 95 + +FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI 103 + +EVENING ON THE BROADS 107 + +THE EMPEROR'S PROGRESS 125 + +THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA 131 + +THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY 135 + +THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA 139 + +SIX YEARS OLD 145 + +A PARTING SONG 151 + +BY THE NORTH SEA 161 + + + + + +SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR + +BORN JANUARY 30TH, 1775 + +DIED SEPTEMBER 17TH, 1864 + + +There is delight in singing, though none hear +Beside the singer: and there is delight +In praising, though the praiser sit alone +And see the praised far off him, far above. + + LANDOR. + + + + +DEDICATION. + +TO MRS. LYNN LINTON. + + +_Daughter in spirit elect and consecrate + By love and reverence of the Olympian sire +Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great, + And found so gracious toward my long desire +To bid that love in song before his gate + Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre, +To none save one it now may dedicate + Song's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre. + And though the gift be light + As ashes in men's sight, + Left by the flame of no ethereal fire, + Yet, for his worthier sake + Than words are worthless, take + This wreath of words ere yet their hour expire: + So, haply, from some heaven above, +He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love._ + +_May 24, 1880._ + + + + +_SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR._ + + +1. + +Five years beyond an hundred years have seen + Their winters, white as faith's and age's hue, +Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between, + And hope's young conquering colours reared anew, +Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keen + Smote sharper once than ever storm-wind blew, +A head predestined for the girdling green + That laughs at lightning all the seasons through, + Nor frost or change can sunder + Its crown untouched of thunder +Leaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grew + Alone for brows too bold + For storm to sear of old, + Elect to shine in time's eternal view, + Rose on the verge of radiant life +Between the winds and sunbeams mingling love with strife. + + +2. + +The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth + To Milton's white republic undefiled +That might endure so few fleet years on earth + Bore in him likewise as divine a child; +But born not less for crowns of love and mirth, + Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild, +The leaf that girds about with gentler girth + The brow steel-bound in battle, and the wild +Soft spray that flowers above + The flower-soft hair of love; + And the white lips of wayworn winter smiled + And grew serene as spring's + When with stretched clouds like wings + Or wings like drift of snow-clouds massed and piled + The godlike giant, softening, spread +A shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head. + + +3. + +And o'er it brightening bowed the wild-haired hour, + And touched his tongue with honey and with fire, +And breathed between his lips the note of power + That makes of all the winds of heaven a lyre +Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that tower +To softest springs of waters that suspire, +With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower + Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire: + And bright before his face + That Hour became a Grace, + As in the light of their Athenian quire + When the Hours before the sun + And Graces were made one, + Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre + By one dear name of natural joy, +To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy. + + +4. + +Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder + Or love could lift them for the sun to smite, +His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder + Had risen, perplexing the presageful night +With shadow and glory around her sphere and under + And portents prophesying by sound and sight; +And half the sound was song and half was thunder, + And half his life of lightning, half of light: + And in the soft clenched hand + Shone like a burning brand + A shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight, + Wrought only for such lord + As so may wield the sword + That all things ill be put to fear and flight + Even at the flash and sweep and gleam +Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream. + + +5. + +Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beasts + The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings; +From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east's + The splendour of the shadow that it flings +Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts + Of men fulfilled with food of evil things; +Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests, + Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings; + Turns dark the lamp's hot light, + And turns the darkness bright + As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings; + And far before its way + Heaven, yearning toward the day, + Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings; + And never hand yet earlier played +With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade. + + +6. + +As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew + More soft than slumber's, fell the first note's sound +From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier through + Than leaves through calm air wheeling toward the ground +Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue + Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound, +Ere winter loosen all the Æolian crew + With storm unleashed behind them like a hound. + As lightly rose and sank + Beside a green-flowered bank + The clear first notes his burning boyhood found + To sing her sacred praise + Who rode her city's ways + Clothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned; + A song of soft presageful breath, +Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death; + + +7. + +Who should love two things only and only praise + More than all else for ever: even the glory +Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days + Take light whereby death's self seems transitory; +And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise, + Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory +From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways, + And lightens with his light the night of story; + Love that lifts up from dust + Life, and makes darkness just, + And purges as with fire of purgatory + The dense disastrous air, + To burn old falsehood bare + And give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary; + Love, that with eyes of ageless youth +Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth. + + +8. + +For at his birth the sistering stars were one + That flamed upon it as one fiery star; +Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun, + And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are. +Of all that love not liberty let none + Love her that fills our lips with fire from far +To mix with winds and seas in unison + And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar + Out where our songs fly free + Across time's bounded sea, + A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car, + Till all the spheres of night + Chime concord round their flight + Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar, + From stars that sang for Homer's birth +To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth + + +9. + +Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave, + Stars of our worship, lights of our desire! +For never man that heard the world's wind rave + To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre: +Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave + Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher: +Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave + With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire: + No blast of all that blow + Might bid the torch burn low + That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre, + Indomitable of storm, + That now no flaws deform + Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire, + One light of godlike breath and flame, +To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name. + + +10. + +The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew + And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar +Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue + Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car, +That saw how swift a gathering glory grew + About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar +A splendour strong to burn and burst them through + And mix in one sheer light things near and far. + First flew before his path + Light shafts of love and wrath, + But winged and edged as elder warriors' are; + Then rose a light that showed + Across the midsea road + From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar + The way of war and love and fate +Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate. + + +11. + +Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land, + Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved, +By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned, + Flamed on him, and his burning lips were moved +As that live statue's throned on Lybian sand + When morning moves it, ere her light faith roved +From promise, and her tyrant's poisonous hand + Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved + More deadly than despair + And falser even than fair, + Though fairer than all elder hopes removed + As landmarks by the crime + Of inundating time; + Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved: + For even as in some darkling dance +Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France. + + +12. + +But past the snows and summits Pyrenean + Love stronger-winged held more prevailing flight +That o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and Ægean + Shores lightened with one storm of sound and light. +From earliest even to hoariest years one pæan + Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight, +From Nestor's tongue in accents Achillean + On death's blind verge dominant over night + For voice as hand and hand + As voice for one fair land + Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the height + Where darkling pines enrobe + The steel-cold Lake of Gaube, + Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite, + To where on peak or moor or plain +His heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain. + + +13. + +Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand + Pale in the light of war or treacherous fate +Song bade before him all their shadows stand + For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate. +The father by whose wrong revenged his land + Was given for sword and fire to desolate +Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand, + Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great. + Fair as she smiled and died, + Death's crowned and breathless bride + Smiled as one living even on craft and hate: + And pity, a star unrisen, + Scarce lit Ferrante's prison + Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate + That gave their life and love and light +To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight. + + +14. + +Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell + In perfect notes of music-measured pain +On veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewell + Sob through the song that bade them rise again; +Rise in the light of living song, to dwell + With memories crowned of memory: so the strain +Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles hell + And sweet the darkness of the breathless plain, + And with Elysian flowers + Recrowned the wreathless hours + That mused and mourned upon their works in vain; + For all their works of death + Song filled with light and breath, + And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain; + For sweet as all the wide sweet south +She found the song like honey from the lion's mouth. + + +15. + +High from his throne in heaven Simonides, + Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tears +That the everlasting sun of all time sees + All golden, molten from the forge of years, +Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees + Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners' ears, +Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees + And honied as their harvest, that endears + The toil of flowery days; + And smiling perfect praise + Hailed his one brother mateless else of peers: + Whom we that hear not him + For length of date grown dim + Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears; + And harshest heights of sorrowing hours, +Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers. + + +16. + +Therefore to him the shadow of death was none, + The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb: +And multitudinous time for him was one, + Who bade before his equal seat of doom +Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun + The weavers of the world's large-historied loom, +By their own works of light or darkness done + Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom. + In speech of purer gold + Than even they spake of old + He bade the breath of Sidney's lips relume + The fire of thought and love + That made his bright life move + Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom + To blameless music ever, strong +As death and sweet as death-annihilating song. + + +17. + +Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam, + Love gave his thought strength equal to release +From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam + Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease; +So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home + The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease: +And through the trumpet of a child of Rome + Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece. + As though some northern hand + Reft from the Latin land + A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece + To clothe with golden sound + Of old joy newly found + And rapture as of penetrating peace + The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime, +And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time. + + +18. + +He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy + Fade, and the darkness at Oenone's prayer +Close upon her that closed upon her boy, + For all the curse of godhead that she bare; +And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy + With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair; +And his love smitten in their dawn of joy + Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear; + And one in flowery coils + Caught as in fiery toils + Smite Calydon with mourning unaware; + And where her low turf shrine + Showed Modesty divine + The fairest mother's daughter far more fair + Hide on her breast the heavenly shame +That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame. + + +19. + +Nor less the light of story than of song + With graver glories girt his godlike head, +Reverted alway from the temporal throng + Of lives that live not toward the living dead. +The shadows and the splendours of their throng + Made bright and dark about his board and bed +The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong + With sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that led + Forth of the ghostly gate + Opening in spite of fate + Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread, + Divine and direful things, + These foul as priests or kings, + Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, red + With blood and green with palms and white +With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light. + + +20. + +The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray + That keeps the place of Phocion's name serene +And clears the cloud from Kosciusko's day, + Alternate as dark hours with bright between, +Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay + For all stars open that all eyes had seen +Rise on the night or twilight of the way + Where feet of human hopes and fears had been. + Again the sovereign word + On Milton's lips was heard + Living: again the tender three days' queen + Drew bright and gentle breath + On the sharp edge of death: + And, staged again to show of mortal scene, + Tiberius, ere his name grew dire, +Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire. + + +21. + +Most ardent and most awful and most fond, + The fervour of his Apollonian eye +Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond + Of time whose years beheld her and past by +Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned + The casque again of Pallas; for her cry +Forth of the past and future, depths beyond + This where the present and its tyrants lie, + As one great voice of twain + For him had pealed again, + Heard but of hearts high as her own was high, + High as her own and his + And pure as love's heart is, + That lives though hope at once and memory die: + And with her breath his clarion's blast +Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past. + + +22. + +As a wave only obsequious to the wind + Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap, +Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned + By the strong god's breath moving on the deep +From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind + That shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap, +So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned + And pity toward all tears he saw men weep, + Arose to take man's part + His loving lion heart, + Kind as the sun's that has in charge to keep + Earth and the seed thereof + Safe in his lordly love, + Strong as sheer truth and soft as very sleep; + The mightiest heart since Milton's leapt, +The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare slept. + + +23. + +Like the wind's own on her divided sea + His song arose on Corinth, and aloud +Recalled her Isthmian song and strife when she + Was thronged with glories as with gods in crowd +And as the wind's own spirit her breath was free + And as the heaven's own heart her soul was proud, +But freer and prouder stood no son than he + Of all she bare before her heart was bowed; + None higher than he who heard + Medea's keen last word + Transpierce her traitor, and like a rushing cloud + That sundering shows a star + Saw pass her thunderous car + And a face whiter and deadlier than a shroud + That lightened from it, and the brand +Of tender blood that falling seared his suppliant hand. + + +24. + +More fair than all things born and slain of fate, + More glorious than all births of days and nights, +He bade the spirit of man regenerate, + Rekindling, rise and reassume the rights +That in high seasons of his old estate + Clothed him and armed with majesties and mights +Heroic, when the times and hearts were great + And in the depths of ages rose the heights + Radiant of high deeds done + And souls that matched the sun + For splendour with the lightnings of their lights + Whence even their uttered names + Burn like the strong twin flames + Of song that shakes a throne and steel that smites; + As on Thermopylæ when shone +Leonidas, on Syracuse Timoleon. + + +25. + +Or, sweeter than the breathless buds when spring + With smiles and tears and kisses bids them breathe, +Fell with its music from his quiring string + Fragrance of pine-leaves and odorous heath +Twined round the lute whereto he sighed to sing + Of the oak that screened and showed its maid beneath, +Who seeing her bee crawl back with broken wing + Faded, a fairer flower than all her wreath, + And paler, though her oak + Stood scathless of the stroke + More sharp than edge of axe or wolfish teeth, + That mixed with mortals dead + Her own half heavenly head + And life incorporate with a sylvan sheath, + And left the wild rose and the dove +A secret place and sacred from all guests but Love. + + +26. + +But in the sweet clear fields beyond the river + Dividing pain from peace and man from shade +He saw the wings that there no longer quiver + Sink of the hours whose parting footfalls fade +On ears which hear the rustling amaranth shiver + With sweeter sound of wind than ever made +Music on earth: departing, they deliver + The soul that shame or wrath or sorrow swayed; + And round the king of men + Clash the clear arms again, + Clear of all soil and bright as laurel braid, + That rang less high for joy + Through the gates fallen of Troy + Than here to hail the sacrificial maid, + Iphigeneia, when the ford +Fast-flowing of sorrows brought her father and their lord. + + +27. + +And in the clear gulf of the hollow sea + He saw light glimmering through the grave green gloom +That hardly gave the sun's eye leave to see + Cymodameia; but nor tower nor tomb, +No tower on earth, no tomb of waves may be, + That may not sometime by diviner doom +Be plain and pervious to the poet; he + Bids time stand back from him and fate make room + For passage of his feet, + Strong as their own are fleet, + And yield the prey no years may reassume + Through all their clamorous track, + Nor night nor day win back + Nor give to darkness what his eyes illume + And his lips bless for ever: he +Knows what earth knows not, sings truth sung not of the sea. + + +28. + +Before the sentence of a curule chair + More sacred than the Roman, rose and stood +To take their several doom the imperial pair + Diversely born of Venus, and in mood +Diverse as their one mother, and as fair, + Though like two stars contrasted, and as good, +Though different as dark eyes from golden hair; + One as that iron planet red like blood + That bears among the stars + Fierce witness of her Mars + In bitter fire by her sweet light subdued; + One, in the gentler skies + Sweet as her amorous eyes: + One proud of worlds and seas and darkness rude + Composed and conquered; one content +With lightnings from loved eyes of lovers lightly sent. + + +29. + +And where Alpheus and where Ladon ran + Radiant, by many a rushy and rippling cove +More known to glance of god than wandering man, + He sang the strife of strengths divine that strove, +Unequal, one with other, for a span, + Who should be friends for ever in heaven above +And here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan, + And the awless lord of kings and shepherds, Love: + All the sweet strife and strange + With fervid counterchange + Till one fierce wail through many a glade and grove + Rang, and its breath made shiver + The reeds of many a river, + And the warm airs waxed wintry that it clove, + Keen-edged as ice-retempered brand; +Nor might god's hurt find healing save of godlike hand. + + +30. + +As when the jarring gates of thunder ope + Like earthquake felt in heaven, so dire a cry, +So fearful and so fierce--'Give the sword scope!'-- + Rang from a daughter's lips, darkening the sky +To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope + With starless horror: nor the God's own eye +Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope, + Might well endure to see the adulteress die, + The husband-slayer fordone + By swordstroke of her son, + Unutterable, unimaginable on high, + On earth abhorrent, fell + Beyond all scourge of hell, + Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh, + Mute, sister-like, and closer clung +Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue. + + +31. + +All these things heard and seen and sung of old, + He heard and saw and sang them. Once again +Might foot of man tread, eye of man behold + Things unbeholden save of ancient men, +Ways save by gods untrodden. In his hold + The staff that stayed through some Ætnean glen +The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled + And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as then + Became a prophet's rod, + A lyre on fire of God, + Being still the staff of exile: yea, as when + The voice poured forth on us + Was even of Æschylus, + And his one word great as the crying of ten, + Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong, +Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song. + + +32. + +Him too whom none save one before him ever + Beheld, nor since hath man again beholden, +Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giver + Of all gifts back to man by time withholden, +Shakespeare--him too, whom sea-like ages sever, + As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden +To landward, from our songs that find him never, + Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden-- + Him too this one song found, + And raised at its sole sound + Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden + Legends forlorn of breath, + Up from the deeps of death, + Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden, + The wise divine strong soul, whom fate +Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great. + + +33. + +Nor stands the seer who raised him less august + Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe, +Less constant or less loving or less just, + But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith, +Holding all high and gentle names in trust + Of time for honour; so his quickening breath +Called from the darkness of their martyred dust + Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth, + Revived and reinspired + With speech from heavenward fired + By love to say what Love the Archangel saith + Only, nor may such word + Save by such ears be heard + As hear the tongues of angels after death + Descending on them like a dove +Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love. + + +34. + +All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things, + All generous names and loyal, and all wise, +With all his heart in all its wayfarings + He sought, and worshipped, seeing them with his eyes +In very present glory, clothed with wings + Of words and deeds and dreams immortal, rise +Visible more than living slaves and kings, + Audible more than actual vows and lies: + These, with scorn's fieriest rod, + These and the Lord their God, + The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the skies + As they Lord Gods of earth, + These with a rage of mirth + He mocked and scourged and spat on, in such wise + That none might stand before his rod, +And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or God. + + +35. + +For of all souls for all time glorious none + Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best, +Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun + Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest, +Of all words heard on earth the noblest one + That ever spake for souls and left them blest: +GLADLY WE SHOULD REST EVER, HAD WE WON + FREEDOM: WE HAVE LOST, AND VERY GLADLY REST. + O poet hero, lord + And father, we record + Deep in the burning tablets of the breast + Thankfully those divine + And living words of thine + For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest + With strokes engraven past hurt of years +And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears. + + +36. + +But who being less than thou shall sing of thee + Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn? +Who sing the golden garland woven of three, + Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn, +More godlike than the graven gods men see + Made all but all immortal, human born +And heavenly natured? With the first came He, + Led by the living hand, who left forlorn + Life by his death, and time + More by his life sublime + Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn, + And even for mourning praise + Heaven, as for all those days + These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn + By memory till all time lie dead, +And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head. + + +37. + +Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours, + Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace, +And verier daughter of his most perfect hours + Than any of latter time or alien place +Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers + Only, nor wearing on her statelier face +The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers + That graced and guarded round that holiest race, + That heavenliest and most high + Time hath seen live and die, + Poured all their power upon him to retrace + The erased immortal roll + Of Love's most sovereign scroll + And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace, + The scroll that on Aspasia's knees +Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles. + + +38. + +Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air, + Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third, +With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair + Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird +Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair + As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird +The walls engirdling with a circling stair + My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word + Fell from her flowerlike mouth + Not sweet with all the south; + As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred + And spake, as o'er it shone + That bright Pentameron, + And his own vines again and chestnuts heard + Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime +Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme. + + +39. + +No lovelier laughed the garden which receives + Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes +With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves, + Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies, +Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves + The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs, +In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes + What yet the wisest of the starriest wise + Whom Greece might ever hear + Speaks in the gentlest ear + That ever heard love's lips philosophize + With such deep-reasoning words + As blossoms use and birds, + Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise + Far off, in no wise over far, +Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star. + + +40. + +What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire, + Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night, +Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre + That makes time's face pale with its reflex light +And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire, + A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might +Alternating wore ever shapes more dire + Nor manifest in all men's awful sight + In form and face that wore + Heaven's light and likeness more + Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height + More fearful, since man first + Slaked with man's blood his thirst, + Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight, + Till tower on ruining tower was hurled +Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world. + + +41. + +Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand + Who carved their several praise in words of gold +To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand, + Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold +For price of blood or incense, dust or sand, + Triumph or terror. He that sought of old +His father Ammon in a stranger's land, + And shrank before the serpentining fold, + Stood in our seer's wide eye + No higher than man most high, + And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold + Fast as a scripture furled + The scroll of all the world + Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold + First thief of empire, round whose head +Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1] + + +42. + +As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss, + He saw the light of death, riotous and red, +Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis + Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, +Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, + The steely snows of Russia, for the tread +Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss + The snaky lines of blood violently shed. + Like living creeping things + That writhe but have no stings + To scare adulterers from the imperial bed + Bowed with its load of lust, + Or chill the ravenous gusts + That made her body a fire from heel to head; + Or change her high bright spirit and clear, +For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear. + + +43. + +As light that blesses, hallowing with a look; + He saw the godhead in Vittoria's face +Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took, + Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace, +A strength more heavenly to confront and brook + All ill things coiled about his worldly race, +From the bright scripture of that present book + Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace + Comfort more sweet than youth, + And hope whose child was truth, + And love that brought forth sorrow for a space, + Only that she might bear + Joy: these things, written there, + Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place, + Perused with eyes whose glory and glow +Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo. + + +44. + +With balms and dews of blessing he consoled + The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang, +Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold + Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang +On her fair hand, even till the stain of old + Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang +Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold + Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang + From other strings divine + Ere his rekindling line + With yet more piteous and intolerant pang + Pierced all men's hearts anew + That heard her passion through + Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang + Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts, +Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests. + + +45. + +He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth + And majesty of meanest men born free, +That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth + The whole world worthier of the sun to see: +The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth + Wherein souls festered by the servile sea +That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth + Thronged round with worship in Parthenope. + His hand bade Justice guide + Her child Tyrannicide, + Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be; + And pierced with Tyrrel's dart + Again the riotous heart + That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee: + And oped the cell where kinglike death +Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth. + + +46. + +Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind + He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one, +For the base heart that soiled the starry mind + Stern, for the father in his child undone +Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed + With their sweet image visibly set on +As by God's hand, clear as his own designed + The likeness radiant out of ages gone + That none may now destroy + Of that high Roman boy + Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son + True-born of sovereign seed, + Foredoomed even thence to bleed, + The stately grace of bright Cæsarion, + The head unbent, the heart unbowed, +That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud. + + +47. + +With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus + At once by service and similitude, +Service devout and worship emulous + Of the same golden Muses once they wooed, +The names and shades adored of all of us, + The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood, +Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus + First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed + With blessings bright like tears + From the old memorial years, + And loves and lovely laughters, every mood + Sweet as the drops that fell + Of their own oenomel + From living lips to cheer the multitude + That feeds on words divine, and grows +More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose. + + +48. + +Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story, + The silent music that no strange note jars, +Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory + Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars +Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary + With much long warfare, and with gradual bars +Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory, + Broke, and the power came back that passion mars: + And at the lovely last + Above all anguish past + Before his own the sightless eyes like stars + Arose that watched arise + Like stars in other skies + Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars + The Dioscurian songs divine +That lighten all the world with lightning of their line. + + +49. + +He sang the last of Homer, having sung + The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide +For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung + About the day-star, doubtful to divide, +Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue + Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried, +Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung, + Homer, and grey Laertes at his side + Kingly as kings are none + Beneath a later sun, + And the sweet maiden ministering in pride + To sovereign and to sage + In their more sweet old age: + These things he sang, himself as old, and died. + And if death be not, if life be, +As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he. + + +50. + +Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love + Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind +And all bright words and all sweet works thereof; + Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind; +Heart that no fear but every grief might move + Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind; +The purest soul that ever proof could prove + From taint of tortuous or of envious mind; + Whose eyes elate and clear + Nor shame nor ever fear + But only pity or glorious wrath could blind; + Name set for love apart, + Held lifelong in my heart, + Face like a father's toward my face inclined; + No gilts like thine are mine to give, +Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live. + + +[1] Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write? + Time, in his children's blood who takes delight. + + _From the Greek of Landor._ + + +NOTES. + +6. See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the +exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor. + +10. The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully +dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir. + +13. Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este. + +14, 15. Poems 'on the Dead.' + +16. Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. + +17, 18. Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; +Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris Aram. + +19, 20. Imaginary Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; +Æschines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and Marvell; +Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania. + +21, 22, 23. Hellenics: To Corinth. + +24. Hellenics: Regeneration. + +25. The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope. + +26. The Shades of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia. + +27. Enallos and Cymodameia. + +28. The Children of Venus. + +29. Cupid and Pan. + +30. The Death of Clytemnestra; The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of +Orestes. + +32. The Last of Ulysses. + +33. Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt. + +35. _Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos._ + +36. The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. + +37. Pericles and Aspasia. + +38. The Pentameron. + +39. Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. + +40. Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio Æmilianus, Polybius, and Panætius. + +41. Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the +Senate. + +42. The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff. + +43. Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti. + +44. Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five +Scenes (Beatrice Cenci). + +45. Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (_Imaginary Conversations_) +Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge Wolfgang +and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (_The Last Fruit off +an Old Tree_): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne +Boleyn. + +46. Essex and Spenser (_Imaginary Conversations_): Essex and Bacon: +Antony and Octavius (_Scenes for the Study_). + +47. Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus. + +48, 49. Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha. + + 'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or + half our obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible + genius of the great man whose life and whose labour lasted + even from the generation of our fathers' fathers to our own? + Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so deeply as I feel the + inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect gratitude to + the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but + 'such as I had have I given him.' + + + + +GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS + +FROM + +ARISTOPHANES + +_Attempted in English verse after the original metre._ + + +I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a +fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration +by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable +genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with +the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical +invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in +a language to which all variations and combinations of anapæstic, +iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and +spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this +highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to +detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as +it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical +points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the +original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary +makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language; +and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and +undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line +overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees: +and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line--which I +doubt--could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause, +in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper +sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my +main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this +brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the +music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full +gallop as of horses who + + 'dance as 'twere to the music + Their own hoofs make.' + +I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation: +but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at +once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes. + + + + +_THE BIRDS._ + +(685-723.) + + +Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' + generations, +That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and + shadowlike nations, +Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures + fast fleeing, +Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of + our being: +Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts + are eternal; +That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things aright as to + matters supernal, +Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of streams, and the + dark beyond reaching, +Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus pack with his preaching. + + It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and + hell's broad border, +Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb of the + dark without order +First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched + in her bosom, +Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a + blossom, +Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning. +He, after his wedlock with Chaos, whose wings are of darkness, in hell + broad-burning, +For his nestlings begat him the race of us first, and upraised us to + light new-lighted. +And before this was not the race of the gods, until all things by Love + were united; +And of kind united with kind in communion of nature the sky and the sea + are +Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the gods everlasting and + blest. So that we are +Far away the most ancient of all things blest. And that we are of Love's + generation +There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings, and with us have the + Loves habitation; +And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom of + them ended, +Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued, by the help of us + only befriended, +With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb staring + and splendid. + + All best good things that befall men come from us birds, as is plain to + all reason: +For first we proclaim and make known to them spring, and the winter and + autumn in season; +Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric, in shrill-voiced + emigrant number, +And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season, and + slumber; +And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs + if it freezes. +And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the + breezes, +And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. + Then does the swallow +Give you notice to sell your greatcoat, and provide something light for + the heat that's to follow. +Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you, Dodona, nay, Phoebus Apollo. +For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in all + things your carriage, +Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any + one's marriage. +And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to discerning + prediction: +Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon: you sneeze, and the sign's as a + bird for conviction: +All tokens are 'birds' with you--sounds too, and lackeys, and donkeys. + Then must it not follow +That we ARE to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in prophetic + Apollo? + +_October 19, 1880._ + + + + +_OFF SHORE._ + + + When the might of the summer + Is most on the sea; + When the days overcome her + With joy but to be, +With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free, + + But for hours upon hours + As a thrall she remains + Spell-bound as with flowers + And content in their chains, +And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white + manes; + + Then only, far under + In the depths of her hold, + Some gleam of its wonder + Man's eye may behold, +Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold. + + Still deeper and dimmer + And goodlier they glow + For the eyes of the swimmer + Who scans them below +As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and + snow. + + Soft blossomless frondage + And foliage that gleams + As to prisoners in bondage + The light of their dreams, +The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams. + + Not as prisoners entombed + Waxen haggard and wizen, + But consoled and illumed + In the depths of their prison +With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen, + + From the banks and the beds + Of the waters divine + They lift up their heads + And the flowers of them shine +Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them of water that glimmers + like wine. + + Bright bank over bank + Making glorious the gloom, + Soft rank upon rank, + Strange bloom after bloom, +They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea's womb. + + Through the subtle and tangible + Gloom without form, + Their branches, infrangible + Ever of storm +Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the woodland when April is + warm. + + As the flight of the thunder, full + Charged with its word, + Dividing the wonderful + Depths like a bird, +Speaks wrath and delight to the heart of the night that exults to have + heard, + + So swiftly, though soundless + In silence's ear, + Light, winged from the boundless + Blue depths full of cheer, +Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not before him, but hear. + + Light, perfect and visible + Godhead of God, + God indivisible, + Lifts but his rod, +And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness is light at his nod. + + At the touch of his wand, + At the nod of his head + From the spaces beyond + Where the dawn hath her bed, +Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one risen from the + dead. + + He puts forth his hand, + And the mountains are thrilled + To the heart as they stand + In his presence, fulfilled +With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and her sorrows are + stilled. + + The moan of her travail + That groans for the light + Till dayspring unravel + The weft of the night, +At the sound of the strings of the music of morning, falls dumb with + delight. + + He gives forth his word, + And the word that he saith, + Ere well it be heard, + Strikes darkness to death; +For the thought of his heart is the sunrise, and dawn as the sound of his + breath. + + And the strength of its pulses + That passion makes proud + Confounds and convulses + The depths of the cloud +Of the darkness that heaven was engirt with, divided and rent as a shroud, + + As the veil of the shrine + Of the temple of old + When darkness divine + Over noonday was rolled; +So the heart of the night by the pulse of the light is convulsed and + controlled. + + And the sea's heart, groaning + For glories withdrawn, + And the waves' mouths, moaning + All night for the dawn, +Are uplift as the hearts and the mouths of the singers on leaside and lawn. + + And the sound of the quiring + Of all these as one, + Desired and desiring + Till dawn's will be done, +Fills full with delight of them heaven till it burns as the heart of the + sun. + + Till the waves too inherit + And waters take part + In the sense of the spirit + That breathes from his heart, +And are kindled with music as fire when the lips of the morning part, + + With music unheard + In the light of her lips, + In the life-giving word + Of the dewfall that drips +On the grasses of earth, and the wind that enkindles the wings of the + ships. + + White glories of wings + As of seafaring birds + That flock from the springs + Of the sunrise in herds +With the wind for a herdsman, and hasten or halt at the change of his + words. + + As the watchword's change + When the wind's note shifts, + And the skies grow strange, + And the white squall drifts +Up sharp from the sea-line, vexing the sea till the low cloud lifts. + + At the charge of his word + Bidding pause, bidding haste, + When the ranks are stirred + And the lines displaced, +They scatter as wild swans parting adrift on the wan green waste. + + At the hush of his word + In a pause of his breath + When the waters have heard + His will that he saith, +They stand as a flock penned close in its fold for division of death. + + As a flock by division + Of death to be thinned, + As the shades in a vision + Of spirits that sinned; +So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds on the stream of the + wind. + + But the sun stands fast, + And the sea burns bright, + And the flight of them past + Is no more than the flight +Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and afloat in the light. + + Like flowers upon flowers + In a festival way + When hours after hours + Shed grace on the day, +White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through the snows of the + spray. + + Like snow-coloured petals + Of blossoms that flee + From storm that unsettles + The flower as the tree +They flutter, a legion of flowers on the wing, through the field of the + sea. + + Through the furrowless field + Where the foam-blossoms blow + And the secrets are sealed + Of their harvest below +They float in the path of the sunbeams, as flakes or as blossoms of snow. + + Till the sea's ways darken, + And the God, withdrawn, + Give ear not or hearken + If prayer on him fawn, +And the sun's self seem but a shadow, the noon as a ghost of the dawn. + + No shadow, but rather + God, father of song, + Shew grace to me, Father + God, loved of me long, +That I lose not the light of thy face, that my trust in thee work me not + wrong. + + While yet I make forward + With face toward thee + Not turned yet in shoreward, + Be thine upon me; +Be thy light on my forehead or ever I turn it again from the sea. + + As a kiss on my brow + Be the light of thy grace, + Be thy glance on me now + From the pride of thy place: +As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face of thy face. + + Thou wast father of olden + Times hailed and adored, + And the sense of thy golden + Great harp's monochord +Was the joy in the soul of the singers that hailed thee for master and + lord. + + Fair father of all + In thy ways that have trod, + That have risen at thy call, + That have thrilled at thy nod, +Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to be God. + + As my soul has been dutiful + Only to thee, + O God most beautiful, + Lighten thou me, +As I swim through the dim long rollers, with eyelids uplift from the sea. + + Be praised and adored of us + All in accord, + Father and lord of us + Alway adored, +The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light of us all and our lord. + + At the sound of thy lyre, + At the touch of thy rod, + Air quickens to fire + By the foot of thee trod, +The saviour and healer and singer, the living and visible God. + + The years are before thee + As shadows of thee, + As men that adore thee, + As cloudlets that flee: +But thou art the God, and thy kingdom is heaven, and thy shrine is the sea. + + + + +_AFTER NINE YEARS._ + +TO JOSEPH MAZZINI. + +_Primâ dicte mihi, summâ dicende Camenâ._ + + +1. + +The shadows fallen of years are nine +Since heaven grew seven times more divine +With thy soul entering, and the dearth +Of souls on earth +Grew sevenfold sadder, wanting One +Whose light of life, quenched here and done, +Burns there eternal as the sun. + + +2. + +Beyond all word, beyond all deed, +Beyond all thought beloved, what need +Has death or love that speech should be, +Hast thou of me? +I had no word, no prayer, no cry, +To praise or hail or mourn thee by, +As when thou too wast man as I. + + +3. + +Nay, never, nor as any born +Save one whose name priests turn to scorn, +Who haply, though we know not now, +Was man as thou, +A wanderer branded with men's blame, +Loved past man's utterance: yea, the same, +Perchance, and as his name thy name. + + +4. + +Thou wast as very Christ--not he +Degraded into Deity, +And priest-polluted by such prayer +As poisons air, +Tongue-worship of the tongue that slays, +False faith and parricidal praise: +But the man crowned with suffering days. + + +5. + +God only, being of all mankind +Most manlike, of most equal mind +And heart most perfect, more than can +Be heart of man +Once in ten ages, born to be +As haply Christ was, and as we +Knew surely, seeing, and worshipped thee. + + +6. + +To know thee--this at least was ours, +God, clothed upon with human hours, +O face beloved, O spirit adored, +Saviour and lord! +That wast not only for thine own +Redeemer--not of these alone +But all to whom thy word was known. + + +7. + +Ten years have wrought their will with me +Since last my words took wing for thee +Who then wast even as now above +Me, and my love. +As then thou knewest not scorn, so now +With that beloved benignant brow +Take these of him whose light wast thou. + + + + +_FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI._ + + +Steadfast as sorrow, fiery sad, and sweet + With underthoughts of love and faith, more strong + Than doubt and hate and all ill thoughts which throng, +Haply, round hope's or fear's world-wandering feet +That find no rest from wandering till they meet + Death, bearing palms in hand and crowns of song; + His face, who thought to vanquish wrong with wrong, +Erring, and make rage and redemption meet, +Havoc and freedom; weaving in one weft +Good with his right hand, evil with his left; + But all a hero lived and erred and died; +Looked thus upon the living world he left + So bravely that with pity less than pride + Men hail him Patriot and Tyrannicide. + + + + +_EVENING ON THE BROADS._ + + +Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril, + Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light, +Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile + Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night. +Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless + Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep. +Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless + Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep-- +Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow + Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star. +As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow + Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar, +Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom + Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers. +World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom, + Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours. +Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles + Still with itself, being sick of division and dimmed by dismay-- +Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles, + Fearful and fain of the night, lovely with love of the day: +Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death, and begotten + Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the seed of the grave: +Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten, + Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave. +Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon, in a vision + Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts that are tired, and would rest. +But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division, + Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest. +Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season enkindled + Wane, and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them + fade: +Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled, + Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new-made. +New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless, + Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart, +In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless love of the friendless + Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart. +Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden + Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway-- +Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden + Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay. +Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming + Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, +Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming + Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. +Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, + Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: +Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover + Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. +Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward + Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star +Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast-ward + Eagerly, yearning forth of the deeps where the ways of them are, +Glad of the glory of the gift of their life and the wealth of its wonder, + Fain of the night and the sea and the sweet wan face of the earth. +Over them air grows deeper, intense with delight in them: under + Things are thrilled in their sleep as with sense of a sure new birth. +But here by the sand-bank watching, with eyes on the sea-line, stranger + Grows to me also the weight of the sea-ridge gazed on of me, +Heavily heaped up, changefully changeless, void though of danger + Void not of menace, but full of the might of the dense dull sea. +Like as the wave is before me, behind is the bank deep-drifted; + Yellow and thick as the bank is behind me in front is the wave. +As the wall of a prison imprisoning the mere is the girth of it lifted: + But the rampire of water in front is erect as the wall of a grave. +And the crests of it crumble and topple and change, but the wall is not + broken: + Standing still dry-shod, I see it as higher than my head, +Moving inland alway again, reared up as in token + Still of impending wrath still in the foam of it shed. +And even in the pauses between them, dividing the rollers in sunder, + High overhead seems ever the sea-line fixed as a mark, +And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder + Cloud and torrent and storm, darkening the depths of the dark. +Up to the sea, not upon it or over it, upward from under + Seems he to gaze, whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore: +A wall of turbid water, aslope to the wide sky's wonder + Of colour and cloud, it climbs, or spreads as a slanted floor. +And the large lights change on the face of the mere like things that were + living, + Winged and wonderful, beams like as birds are that pass and are free: +But the light is dense as darkness, a gift withheld in the giving, + That lies as dead on the fierce dull face of the landward sea. +Stained and stifled and soiled, made earthier than earth is and duller, + Grimly she puts back light as rejected, a thing put away: +No transparent rapture, a molten music of colour; + No translucent love taken and given of the day. +Fettered and marred and begrimed is the light's live self on her falling, + As the light of a man's life lighted the fume of a dungeon mars: +Only she knows of the wind, when her wrath gives ear to him calling; + The delight of the light she knows not, nor answers the sun or the stars. +Love she hath none to return for the luminous love of their giving: + None to reflect from the bitter and shallow response of her heart +Yearly she feeds on her dead, yet herself seems dead and not living, + Or confused as a soul heavy-laden with trouble that will not depart. +In the sound of her speech to the darkness the moan of her evil remorse is, + Haply, for strong ships gnawed by the dog-toothed sea-bank's fang +And trampled to death by the rage of the feet of her foam-lipped horses + Whose manes are yellow as plague, and as ensigns of pestilence hang, +That wave in the foul faint air of the breath of a death-stricken city; + So menacing heaves she the manes of her rollers knotted with sand, +Discoloured, opaque, suspended in sign as of strength without pity, + That shake with flameless thunder the low long length of the strand. +Here, far off in the farther extreme of the shore as it lengthens + Northward, lonely for miles, ere ever a village begin, +On the lapsing land that recedes as the growth of the strong sea + strengthens + Shoreward, thrusting further and further its outworks in, +Here in Shakespeare's vision, a flower of her kin forsaken, + Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave's edge, +Surely by no shore else, but here on the bank storm-shaken, + Perdita, bright as a dew-drop engilt of the sun on the sedge. +Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her + Outcast, fair as a fairy, the child of a far-off king: +And over the babe-flower gently the head of a pastoral elder + Bowed, compassionate, hoar as the hawthorn-blossom in spring, +And kind as harvest in autumn: a shelter of shade on the lonely + Shelterless unknown shore scourged of implacable waves: +Here, where the wind walks royal, alone in his kingdom, and only + Sounds to the sedges a wail as of triumph that conquers and craves. +All these waters and wastes are his empire of old, and awaken + From barren and stagnant slumber at only the sound of his breath: +Yet the hunger is eased not that aches in his heart, nor the goal overtaken + That his wide wings yearn for and labour as hearts that yearn after + death. +All the solitude sighs and expects with a blind expectation + Somewhat unknown of its own sad heart, grown heart-sick of strife: +Till sometime its wild heart maddens, and moans, and the vast ululation + Takes wing with the clouds on the waters, and wails to be quit of its + life. +For the spirit and soul of the waste is the wind, and his wings with their + waving + Darken and lighten the darkness and light of it thickened or thinned; +But the heart that impels them is even as a conqueror's insatiably craving + That victory can fill not, as power cannot satiate the want of the wind. +All these moorlands and marshes are full of his might, and oppose not + Aught of defence nor of barrier, of forest or precipice piled: +But the will of the wind works ever as his that desires what he knows not, + And the wail of his want unfulfilled is as one making moan for her child. +And the cry of his triumph is even as the crying of hunger that maddens + The heart of a strong man aching in vain as the wind's heart aches +And the sadness itself of the land for its infinite solitude saddens + More for the sound than the silence athirst for the sound that slakes. +And the sunset at last and the twilight are dead: and the darkness is + breathless + With fear of the wind's breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep: +But a sense of the sound of it alway, a spirit unsleeping and deathless, + Ghost or God, evermore moves on the face of the deep. + + + + +_THE EMPEROR'S PROGRESS._ + +A STUDY IN THREE STAGES. + +(On the Busts of Nero in the Uffizj.) + + +I. + + +A child of brighter than the morning's birth + And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled + Save only of little children undefiled, +Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth, +Live rose of love, mute melody of mirth, + Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild, + Adorable as is nothing save a child, +Hails with wide eyes and lips his life on earth, +His lovely life with all its heaven to be. + And whoso reads the name inscribed or hears + Feels his own heart a frozen well of tears, +Child, for deep dread and fearful pity of thee +Whom God would not let rather die than see + The incumbent horror of impending years. + + +II. + +Man, that wast godlike being a child, and now, + No less than kinglike, art no more in sooth + For all thy grace and lordliness of youth, +The crown that bids men's branded foreheads bow +Much more has branded and bowed down thy brow + And gnawn upon it as with fire or tooth + Of steel or snake so sorely, that the truth +Seems here to bear false witness. Is it thou, +Child? and is all the summer of all thy spring + This? are the smiles that drew men's kisses down + All faded and transfigured to the frown +That grieves thy face? Art thou this weary thing? + Then is no slave's load heavier than a crown +And such a thrall no bondman as a king. + + +III. + +Misery, beyond all men's most miserable, + Absolute, whole, defiant of defence, + Inevitable, inexplacable, intense, +More vast than heaven is high, more deep than hell, +Past cure or charm of solace or of spell, + Possesses and pervades the spirit and sense + Whereto the expanse of the earth pays tribute; whence +Breeds evil only, and broods on fumes that swell +Rank from the blood of brother and mother and wife. + 'Misery of miseries, all is misery,' saith +The heavy fair-faced hateful head, at strife + With its own lusts that burn with feverous breath +Lips which the loathsome bitterness of life + Leaves fearful of the bitterness of death. + + + + +_THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA._ + +(Gratefully inscribed to Dr. A.B. Grosart.) + + +Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song, + Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise + To his good hand who travelling on strange ways +Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along +Beneath dead leaves that many a winter's wrong + Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries' maze + Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze +The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong. +For thine have life, while many above thine head +Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead. + So now disburdened of such load above +That lay as death's own dust upon thee shed + By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove + Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love. + + + + +_THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY._ + +(On the refusal by the French Senate of the plenary amnesty +demanded by Victor Hugo, in his speech of July 3rd, for the +surviving exiles of the Commune.) + + +Thou shouldst have risen as never dawn yet rose, + Day of the sunrise of the soul of France, + Dawn of the whole world's morning, when the trance +Of all the world had end, and all its woes +Respite, prophetic of their perfect close. + Light of all tribes of men, all names and clans, + Dawn of the whole world's morning and of man's +Flower of the heart of morning's mystic rose, +Dawn of the very dawn of very day, + When the sun brighter breaks night's ruinous prison, + Thou shouldst have risen as yet no dawn has risen, +Evoked of him whose word puts night away, + Our father, at the music of whose word + Exile had ended, and the world had heard. + +_July 5, 1880._ + + + + +LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA + + +Malâ soluta navis exit alite. + HOR. + + +Rigged with curses dark. + MILTON. + + + + +_THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA._ + + +I. + +Gold, and fair marbles, and again more gold, + And space of halls afloat that glance and gleam + Like the green heights of sunset heaven, or seem +The golden steeps of sunrise red and cold +On deserts where dark exile keeps the fold + Fast of the flocks of torment, where no beam + Falls of kind light or comfort save in dream, +These we far off behold not, who behold +The cordage woven of curses, and the decks + With mortal hate and mortal peril paven; + From stem to stern the lines of doom engraven +That mark for sure inevitable wrecks +Those sails predestinate, though no storm vex, + To miss on earth and find in hell their haven. + + +II. + +All curses be about her, and all ill + Go with her; heaven be dark above her way, + The gulf beneath her glad and sure of prey, +And, wheresoe'er her prow be pointed, still +The winds of heaven have all one evil will + Conspirant even as hearts of kings to slay + With mouths of kings to lie and smile and pray, +And chiefliest his whose wintrier breath makes chill +With more than winter's and more poisonous cold + The horror of his kingdom toward the north, + The deserts of his kingdom toward the east. +And though death hide not in her direful hold + Be all stars adverse toward her that come forth + Nightly, by day all hours till all have ceased: + + +III. + +Till all have ceased for ever, and the sum + Be summed of all the sumless curses told + Out on his head by all dark seasons rolled +Over its cursed and crowned existence, dumb +And blind and stark as though the snows made numb + All sense within it, and all conscience cold, + That hangs round hearts of less imperial mould +Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come. +O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be +All nature's as all true men's hearts to thee, + A two-edged sword of judgment; hope be far +And fear at hand for pilot oversea + With death for compass and despair for star, + And the white foam a shroud for the White Czar. + +_September 30, 1880._ + + + + +_SIX YEARS OLD._ + +To H.W.M. + + +Between the springs of six and seven, + Two fresh years' fountains, clear +Of all but golden sand for leaven, + Child, midway passing here, +As earth for love's sake dares bless heaven, + So dare I bless you, dear. + +Between two bright well-heads, that brighten + With every breath that blows +Too loud to lull, too low to frighten, + But fain to rock, the rose, +Your feet stand fast, your lit smiles lighten, + That might rear flowers from snows. + +You came when winds unleashed were snarling + Behind the frost-bound hours, +A snow-bird sturdier than the starling, + A storm-bird fledged for showers, +That spring might smile to find you, darling, + First born of all the flowers. + +Could love make worthy things of worthless, + My song were worth an ear: +Its note should make the days most mirthless + The merriest of the year, +And wake to birth all buds yet birthless + To keep your birthday, dear. + +But where your birthday brightens heaven + No need has earth, God knows, +Of light or warmth to melt or leaven + The frost or fog that glows +With sevenfold heavenly lights of seven + Sweet springs that cleave the snows. + +Could love make worthy music of you, + And match my Master's powers, +Had even my love less heart to love you, + A better song were ours; +With all the rhymes like stars above you, + And all the words like flowers. + +_September 30, 1880._ + + + + +_A PARTING SONG._ + +(To a friend leaving England for a year's residence in +Australia.) + + + These winds and suns of spring + That warm with breath and wing +The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake +She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break, + For all good gifts they bring + Require one better thing, +For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow +One sharper dole of sorrow, +To sunder soon by half a world of sea +Her son from England and my friend from me. + + Nor hope nor love nor fear + May speed or stay one year, +Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain, +The seasons perish and be born again, + Restoring all we lend, + Reluctant, of a friend, +The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight +That lend their life and light +To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer, +Now lent again for one reluctant year. + + So much we lend indeed, + Perforce, by force of need, +So much we must; even these things and no more +The far sea sundering and the sundered shore + A world apart from ours, + So much the imperious hours, +Exact, and spare not; but no more than these +All earth and all her seas +From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow, +Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow. + + Through bright and dark and bright + Returns of day and night +I bid the swift year speed and change and give +His breath of life to make the next year live + With sunnier suns for us + A life more prosperous, +And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see +A merrier March for me, +A rosier-girdled race of night with day, +A goodlier April and a tenderer May. + + For him the inverted year + Shall mark our seasons here +With alien alternation, and revive +This withered winter, slaying the spring alive + With darts more sharply drawn + As nearer draws the dawn +In heaven transfigured over earth transformed +And with our winters warmed +And wasted with our summers, till the beams +Rise on his face that rose on Dante's dreams. + + Till fourfold morning rise + Of starshine on his eyes, +Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across +At height of night with semblance of a cross + Whose grace and ghostly glory + Poured heaven on purgatory +Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow glad +For love thereof it had +And lovely joy of loving; so may these +Make bright with welcome now their southern seas. + + O happy stars, whose mirth + The saddest soul on earth +That ever soared and sang found strong to bless, +Lightening his life's harsh load of heaviness + With comfort sown like seed + In dream though not in deed +On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine, +Let all your lights now shine +With all as glorious gladness on his eyes +For whom indeed and not in dream they rise. + + As those great twins of air + Hailed once with oldworld prayer +Of all folk alway faring forth by sea, +So now may these for grace and guidance be, + To guard his sail and bring + Again to brighten spring +The face we look for and the hand we lack +Still, till they light him back, +As welcome as to first discovering eyes +Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise. + + As parting now he goes + From snow-time back to snows, +So back to spring from summer may next year +Restore him, and our hearts receive him here, + The best good gift that spring + Had ever grace to bring +At fortune's happiest hour of star-blest birth +Back to love's homebright earth, +To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand, +And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land. + + Earth and sea-wind and sea + And stars and sunlight be +Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours +Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours. + All things as good as strange + Crown all the seasons' change +With changing flower and compensating fruit +From one year's ripening root; +Till next year bring us, roused at spring's recall, +A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than all. + +_March 26, 1880._ + + + + +BY THE NORTH SEA + +TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS. + +'We are what suns and winds and waters make us.'--LANDOR. + + +_Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath + The spirit of man fulfilling--these create + That joy wherewith man's life grown passionate +Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith +To know the secret word our Mother saith + In silence, and to see, though doubt wax great, + Death as the shadow cast by life on fate, +Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death. + +Brother, to whom our Mother as to me + Is dearer than all dreams of days undone, +This song I give you of the sovereign three + That are as life and sleep and death are, one: +A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea, + Where nought of man's endures before the sun._ + + + + +BY THE NORTH SEA + + +I. + +1. + +A land that is lonelier than ruin; + A sea that is stranger than death: +Far fields that a rose never blew in, + Wan waste where the winds lack breath; +Waste endless and boundless and flowerless + But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free: +Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless + To strive with the sea. + +2. + +Far flickers the flight of the swallows, + Far flutters the weft of the grass +Spun dense over desolate hollows + More pale than the clouds as they pass: +Thick woven as the weft of a witch is + Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned, +Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches + Are waifs on the wind. + +3. + +The pastures are herdless and sheepless, + No pasture or shelter for herds: +The wind is relentless and sleepless, + And restless and songless the birds; +Their cries from afar fall breathless, + Their wings are as lightnings that flee; +For the land has two lords that are deathless: + Death's self, and the sea. + +4. + +These twain, as a king with his fellow, + Hold converse of desolate speech: +And her waters are haggard and yellow + And crass with the scurf of the beach: +And his garments are grey as the hoary + Wan sky where the day lies dim; +And his power is to her, and his glory, + As hers unto him. + +5. + +In the pride of his power she rejoices, + In her glory he glows and is glad: +In her darkness the sound of his voice is, + With his breath she dilates and is mad: +'If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me, + Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee.' +'Shall I give thee not back if thou give me, + O sister, O sea?' + +6. + +And year upon year dawns living, + And age upon age drops dead: +And his hand is not weary of giving, + And the thirst of her heart is not fed: +And the hunger that moans in her passion, + And the rage in her hunger that roars, +As a wolf's that the winter lays lash on, + Still calls and implores. + +7. + +Her walls have no granite for girder, + No fortalice fronting her stands: +But reefs the bloodguiltiest of murder + Are less than the banks of her sands: +These number their slain by the thousand; + For the ship hath no surety to be, +When the bank is abreast of her bows and + Aflush with the sea. + +8. + +No surety to stand, and no shelter + To dawn out of darkness but one, +Out of waters that hurtle and welter + No succour to dawn with the sun +But a rest from the wind as it passes, + Where, hardly redeemed from the waves, +Lie thick as the blades of the grasses + The dead in their graves. + +9. + +A multitude noteless of numbers, + As wild weeds cast on an heap: +And sounder than sleep are their slumbers, + And softer than song is their sleep; +And sweeter than all things and stranger + The sense, if perchance it may be, +That the wind is divested of danger + And scatheless the sea. + +10. + +That the roar of the banks they breasted + Is hurtless as bellowing of herds, +And the strength of his wings that invested + The wind, as the strength of a bird's; +As the sea-mew's might or the swallow's + That cry to him back if he cries, +As over the graves and their hollows + Days darken and rise. + +11. + +As the souls of the dead men disburdened + And clean of the sins that they sinned, +With a lovelier than man's life guerdoned + And delight as a wave's in the wind, +And delight as the wind's in the billow, + Birds pass, and deride with their glee +The flesh that has dust for its pillow + As wrecks have the sea. + +12. + +When the ways of the sun wax dimmer, + Wings flash through the dusk like beams; +As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer, + The bird in the graveyard gleams; +As the cloud at its wing's edge whitens + When the clarions of sunrise are heard, +The graves that the bird's note brightens + Grow bright for the bird. + +13. + +As the waves of the numberless waters + That the wind cannot number who guides +Are the sons of the shore and the daughters + Here lulled by the chime of the tides: +And here in the press of them standing + We know not if these or if we +Live truliest, or anchored to landing + Or drifted to sea. + +14. + +In the valley he named of decision + No denser were multitudes met +When the soul of the seer in her vision + Saw nations for doom of them set; +Saw darkness in dawn, and the splendour + Of judgment, the sword and the rod; +But the doom here of death is more tender + And gentler the god. + +15. + +And gentler the wind from the dreary + Sea-banks by the waves overlapped, +Being weary, speaks peace to the weary + From slopes that the tide-stream hath sapped; +And sweeter than all that we call so + The seal of their slumber shall be +Till the graves that embosom them also + Be sapped of the sea. + + +II. + +1. + +For the heart of the waters is cruel, + And the kisses are dire of their lips, +And their waves are as fire is to fuel + To the strength of the sea-faring ships, +Though the sea's eye gleam as a jewel + To the sun's eye back as he dips. + +2. + +Though the sun's eye flash to the sea's + Live light of delight and of laughter, +And her lips breathe back to the breeze + The kiss that the wind's lips waft her +From the sun that subsides, and sees + No gleam of the storm's dawn after. + +3. + +And the wastes of the wild sea-marches + Where the borderers are matched in their might-- +Bleak fens that the sun's weight parches, + Dense waves that reject his light-- +Change under the change-coloured arches + Of changeless morning and night + +4. + +The waves are as ranks enrolled + Too close for the storm to sever: +The fens lie naked and cold, + But their heart fails utterly never: +The lists are set from of old, + And the warfare endureth for ever. + + +III. + +1. + +Miles, and miles, and miles of desolation! + Leagues on leagues on leagues without a change! +Sign or token of some eldest nation + Here would make the strange land not so strange. +Time-forgotten, yea since time's creation, + Seem these borders where the sea-birds range. + +2. + +Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder + Grows his heart who journeys here alone. +Earth and all its thoughts of earth sink under + Deep as deep in water sinks a stone. +Hardly knows it if the rollers thunder, + Hardly whence the lonely wind is blown. + +3. + +Tall the plumage of the rush-flower tosses, + Sharp and soft in many a curve and line +Gleam and glow the sea-coloured marsh-mosses, + Salt and splendid from the circling brine. +Streak on streak of glimmering seashine crosses + All the land sea-saturate as with wine. + +4. + +Far, and far between, in divers orders, + Clear grey steeples cleave the low grey sky; +Fast and firm as time-unshaken warders, + Hearts made sure by faith, by hope made high. +These alone in all the wild sea-borders + Fear no blast of days and nights that die. + +5. + +All the land is like as one man's face is, + Pale and troubled still with change of cares. +Doubt and death pervade her clouded spaces: + Strength and length of life and peace are theirs; +Theirs alone amid these weary places. + Seeing not how the wild world frets and fares. + +6. + +Firm and fast where all is cloud that changes + Cloud-clogged sunlight, cloud by sunlight thinned, +Stern and sweet, above the sand-hill ranges + Watch the towers and tombs of men that sinned +Once, now calm as earth whose only change is + Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud, and wind. + +7. + +Out and in and out the sharp straits wander, + In and out and in the wild way strives, +Starred and paved and lined with flowers that squander + Gold as golden as the gold of hives, +Salt and moist and multiform: but yonder, + See, what sign of life or death survives? + +8. + +Seen then only when the songs of olden + Harps were young whose echoes yet endure, +Hymned of Homer when his years were golden, + Known of only when the world was pure, +Here is Hades, manifest, beholden, + Surely, surely here, if aught be sure! + +9. + +Where the border-line was crossed, that, sundering + Death from life, keeps weariness from rest, +None can tell, who fares here forward wondering; + None may doubt but here might end his quest. +Here life's lightning joys and woes once thundering + Sea-like round him cease like storm suppressed. + +10. + +Here the wise wave-wandering steadfast-hearted + Guest of many a lord of many a land +Saw the shape or shade of years departed, + Saw the semblance risen and hard at hand, +Saw the mother long from love's reach parted, + Anticleia, like a statue stand. + +11. + +Statue? nay, nor tissued image woven + Fair on hangings in his father's hall; +Nay, too fast her faith of heart was proven, + Far too firm her loveliest love of all; +Love wherethrough the loving heart was cloven, + Love that hears not when the loud Fates call. + +12. + +Love that lives and stands up re-created + Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled; +Love more strong than death or all things fated, + Child's and mother's, lit by love and led; +Love that found what life so long awaited + Here, when life came down among the dead. + +13. + +Here, where never came alive another, + Came her son across the sundering tide +Crossed before by many a warrior brother + Once that warred on Ilion at his side; +Here spread forth vain hands to clasp the mother + Dead, that sorrowing for his love's sake died. + +14. + +Parted, though by narrowest of divisions, + Clasp he might not, only might implore, +Sundered yet by bitterest of derisions, + Son, and mother from the son she bore-- +Here? But all dispeopled here of visions + Lies, forlorn of shadows even, the shore. + +15. + +All too sweet such men's Hellenic speech is, + All too fain they lived of light to see, +Once to see the darkness of these beaches, + Once to sing this Hades found of me +Ghostless, all its gulfs and creeks and reaches, + Sky, and shore, and cloud, and waste, and sea. + + +IV. + +1. + +But aloft and afront of me faring + Far forward as folk in a dream +That strive, between doubting and daring + Right on till the goal for them gleam, +Full forth till their goal on them lighten, + The harbour where fain they would be, +What headlands there darken and brighten? + What change in the sea? + +2. + +What houses and woodlands that nestle + Safe inland to lee of the hill +As it slopes from the headlands that wrestle + And succumb to the strong sea's will? +Truce is not, nor respite, nor pity, + For the battle is waged not of hands +Where over the grave of a city + The ghost of it stands. + +3. + +Where the wings of the sea-wind slacken, + Green lawns to the landward thrive, +Fields brighten and pine-woods blacken, + And the heat in their heart is alive; +They blossom and warble and murmur, + For the sense of their spirit is free: +But harder to shoreward and firmer + The grasp of the sea. + +4. + +Like ashes the low cliffs crumble, + The banks drop down into dust, +The heights of the hills are made humble, + As a reed's is the strength of their trust: +As a city's that armies environ, + The strength of their stay is of sand: +But the grasp of the sea is as iron, + Laid hard on the land. + +5. + +A land that is thirstier than ruin; + A sea that is hungrier than death; +Heaped hills that a tree never grew in; + Wide sands where the wave draws breath; +All solace is here for the spirit + That ever for ever may be +For the soul of thy son to inherit, + My mother, my sea. + +6. + +O delight of the headlands and beaches! + O desire of the wind on the wold, +More glad than a man's when it reaches + That end which it sought from of old +And the palm of possession is dreary + To the sense that in search of it sinned; +But nor satisfied ever nor weary + Is ever the wind. + +7. + +The delight that he takes but in living + Is more than of all things that live: +For the world that has all things for giving + Has nothing so goodly to give: +But more than delight his desire is, + For the goal where his pinions would be +Is immortal as air or as fire is, + Immense as the sea. + +8. + +Though hence come the moan that he borrows + From darkness and depth of the night, +Though hence be the spring of his sorrows, + Hence too is the joy of his might; +The delight that his doom is for ever + To seek and desire and rejoice, +And the sense that eternity never + Shall silence his voice. + +9. + +That satiety never may stifle + Nor weariness ever estrange +Nor time be so strong as to rifle + Nor change be so great as to change +His gift that renews in the giving. + The joy that exalts him to be +Alone of all elements living + The lord of the sea. + +10. + +What is fire, that its flame should consume her? + More fierce than all fires are her waves: +What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her? + More deep are her own than their graves. +Life shrinks from his pinions that cover + The darkness by thunders bedinned: +But she knows him, her lord and her lover, + The godhead of wind. + +11. + +For a season his wings are about her, + His breath on her lips for a space; +Such rapture he wins not without her + In the width of his worldwide race. +Though the forests bow down, and the mountains + Wax dark, and the tribes of them flee, +His delight is more deep in the fountains + And springs of the sea. + +12. + +There are those too of mortals that love him, + There are souls that desire and require, +Be the glories of midnight above him + Or beneath him the daysprings of fire: +And their hearts are as harps that approve him + And praise him as chords of a lyre +That were fain with their music to move him + To meet their desire. + +13. + +To descend through the darkness to grace them, + Till darkness were lovelier than light: +To encompass and grasp and embrace them, + Till their weakness were one with his might: +With the strength of his wings to caress them, + With the blast of his breath to set free; +With the mouths of his thunders to bless them + For sons of the sea. + +14. + +For these have the toil and the guerdon + That the wind has eternally: these +Have part in the boon and the burden + Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze, +That finds not, but seeking rejoices + That possession can work him no wrong: +And the voice at the heart of their voice is + The sense of his song. + +15. + +For the wind's is their doom and their blessing; + To desire, and have always above +A possession beyond their possessing, + A love beyond reach of their love. +Green earth has her sons and her daughters, + And these have their guerdons; but we +Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's, + Elect of the sea. + + +V. + +1. + +For the sea too seeks and rejoices, + Gains and loses and gains, +And the joy of her heart's own choice is + As ours, and as ours are her pains: +As the thoughts of our hearts are her voices, + And as hers is the pulse of our veins. + +2. + +Her fields that know not of dearth + Nor lie for their fruit's sake fallow +Laugh large in the depth of their mirth + But inshore here in the shallow, +Embroiled with encumbrance of earth, + Their skirts are turbid and yellow. + +3. + +The grime of her greed is upon her, + The sign of her deed is her soil; +As the earth's is her own dishonour, + And corruption the crown of her toil: +She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour + Is this, to be shamed by her spoil. + +4. + +But afar where pollution is none, + Nor ensign of strife nor endeavour, +Where her heart and the sun's are one, + And the soil of her sin comes never, +She is pure as the wind and the sun, + And her sweetness endureth for ever. + + +VI. + +1. + +Death, and change, and darkness everlasting, + Deaf, that hears not what the daystar saith, +Blind, past all remembrance and forecasting, + Dead, past memory that it once drew breath; +These, above the washing tides and wasting, + Reign, and rule this land of utter death. + +2. + +Change of change, darkness of darkness, hidden, + Very death of very death, begun +When none knows,--the knowledge is forbidden-- + Self-begotten, self-proceeding, one, +Born, not made--abhorred, unchained, unchidden, + Night stands here defiant of the sun. + +3. + +Change of change, and death of death begotten, + Darkness born of darkness, one and three, +Ghostly godhead of a world forgotten, + Crowned with heaven, enthroned on land and sea, +Here, where earth with dead men's bones is rotten, + God of Time, thy likeness worships thee. + +4. + +Lo, thy likeness of thy desolation, + Shape and figure of thy might, O Lord, +Formless form, incarnate miscreation, + Served of all things living and abhorred; +Earth herself is here thine incarnation, + Time, of all things born on earth adored. + +5. + +All that worship thee are fearful of thee; + No man may not worship thee for fear: +Prayers nor curses prove not nor disprove thee, + Move nor change thee with our change of cheer: +All at last, though all abhorred thee, love thee, + God, the sceptre of whose throne is here. + +6. + +Here thy throne and sceptre of thy station, + Here the palace paven for thy feet; +Here thy sign from nation unto nation + Passed as watchword for thy guards to greet, +Guards that go before thine exaltation, + Ages, clothed with bitter years and sweet. + +7. + +Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty, + Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm, +Rose triumphal, crowning all a city, + Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm, +Built of holy hands for holy pity, + Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm. + +8. + +Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion, + Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime, +Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion, + Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime, +Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion + Hailed a God more merciful than Time. + +9. + +Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing, + Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his nod, +Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing, + Lies he, stricken by his master's rod. +'Where is man?' the cloister murmurs wailing; + Back the mute shrine thunders--'Where is God?' + +10. + +Here is all the end of all his glory-- + Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones. +Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary + Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans, +Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story: + Here, where earth is dense with dead men's bones. + +11. + +Low and loud and long, a voice for ever, + Sounds the wind's clear story like a song. +Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever, + Dust from dust as years relapse along; +Graves where men made sure to rest, and never + Lie dismantled by the seasons' wrong. + +12. + +Now displaced, devoured and desecrated, + Now by Time's hands darkly disinterred, +These poor dead that sleeping here awaited + Long the archangel's re-creating word, +Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated + Till the blast of judgment should be heard, + +13. + +Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration, + Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves, +Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station, + Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like slaves, +Desolate beyond man's desolation, + Shrink and sink into the waste of waves. + +14. + +Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded, + Shroudless, down the loose collapsing banks, +Crumble, from their constant place detruded, + That the sea devours and gives not thanks. +Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded + Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks. + +15. + +Rows on rows and line by line they crumble, + They that thought for all time through to be. +Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble + Breaks the grim field paced alone of me. +Earth, and man, and all their gods wax humble + Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea. + + +VII. + +1. + +But afar on the headland exalted, + But beyond in the curl of the bay, +From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted + Our father is lord of the day. +Our father and lord that we follow, + For deathless and ageless is he; +And his robe is the whole sky's hollow, + His sandal the sea. + +2. + +Where the horn of the headland is sharper, + And her green floor glitters with fire, +The sea has the sun for a harper, + The sun has the sea for a lyre. +The waves are a pavement of amber, + By the feet of the sea-winds trod +To receive in a god's presence-chamber + Our father, the God. + +3. + +Time, haggard and changeful and hoary, + Is master and God of the land: +But the air is fulfilled of the glory + That is shed from our lord's right hand. +O father of all of us ever, + All glory be only to thee +From heaven, that is void of thee never, + And earth, and the sea. + +4. + +O Sun, whereof all is beholden, + Behold now the shadow of this death, +This place of the sepulchres, olden + And emptied and vain as a breath. +The bloom of the bountiful heather + Laughs broadly beyond in thy light +As dawn, with her glories to gather, + At darkness and night. + +5. + +Though the Gods of the night lie rotten + And their honour be taken away +And the noise of their names forgotten, + Thou, Lord, art God of the day. +Thou art father and saviour and spirit, + O Sun, of the soul that is free +And hath grace of thy grace to inherit + Thine earth and thy sea. + +6. + +The hills and the sands and the beaches, + The waters adrift and afar, +The banks and the creeks and the reaches, + How glad of thee all these are! +The flowers, overflowing, overcrowded, + Are drunk with the mad wind's mirth: +The delight of thy coming unclouded + Makes music of earth. + +7. + +I, last least voice of her voices, + Give thanks that were mute in me long +To the soul in my soul that rejoices + For the song that is over my song. +Time gives what he gains for the giving + Or takes for his tribute of me; +My dreams to the wind everliving, + My song to the sea. + + + + +_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._ + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in Song, by Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG *** + +***** This file should be named 16973-8.txt or 16973-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/9/7/16973/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions 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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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 + + +Title: Studies in Song + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: October 31, 2005 [EBook #16973] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h1>STUDIES IN SONG</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE</h2> + +<hr /> + +<p> </p> + +<p class="centre">London<br /> +CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY<br /> +1880</p> + +<p class="centre"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> + +<p class="centre">LONDON: PRINTED BY<br /> +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br /> +AND PARLIAMENT STREET</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary=""> +<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part1">SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR</a></td><td></td><td +align="right"><a href="#page1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part2">GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS FROM ARISTOPHANES</a></td><td></td><td +align="right"><a href="#page67">67</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part3">OFF SHORE</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part4">AFTER NINE YEARS</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page95">95</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part5">FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI</a></td><td></td><td +align="right"><a href="#page103">103</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part6">EVENING ON THE BROADS</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page107">107</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part7">THE EMPEROR'S PROGRESS</a></td><td></td><td +align="right"><a href="#page125">125</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part8">THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA</a></td><td></td><td +align="right"><a href="#page131">131</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part9">THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page135">135</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part10">THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page139">139</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part11">SIX YEARS OLD</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page145">145</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part12">A PARTING SONG</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page151">151</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#part13">BY THE NORTH SEA</a></td><td></td><td align="right"><a href="#page161">161</a></td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="page1" id="page1"></a><a name="part1" id="part1"></a>SONG FOR THE CENTENARY</h2> +<h3>OF</h3> +<h2>WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR</h2> + +<p class="centre"><span class="smcap">Born January 30th, 1775</span></p> + +<p class="centre"><span class="smcap">Died September 17th, 1864</span></p><p><a name="page2" id="page2"></a></p> + +<hr /> + +<div style="margin-left: 10%;"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There is delight in singing, though none hear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beside the singer: and there is delight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In praising, though the praiser sit alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And see the praised far off him, far above.</span> +</div></div> +<div class="citation"> +<span class="smcap">Landor.<a name="page3" id="page3"></a></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr /> +<h3>DEDICATION.</h3> + +<h4>TO MRS. LYNN LINTON.</h4> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Daughter in spirit elect and consecrate</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>By love and reverence of the Olympian sire</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>And found so gracious toward my long desire</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To bid that love in song before his gate</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To none save one it now may dedicate</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Song's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i6"><i>And though the gift be light</i><br /></span> +<span class="i6"><i>As ashes in men's sight,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Left by the flame of no ethereal fire,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i6"><i>Yet, for his worthier sake</i><br /></span> +<span class="i6"><i>Than words are worthless, take</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>This wreath of words ere yet their hour expire:</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>So, haply, from some heaven above,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><i>May 24, 1880.</i><a name="page4" id="page4"></a><a name="page5" id="page5"></a></p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h3><i>SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</i></h3> + + +<h5><a name="stanza1" id="stanza1"></a>1.</h5> + +<p><a name="page6" id="page6"></a></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Five years beyond an hundred years have seen<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their winters, white as faith's and age's hue,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And hope's young conquering colours reared anew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keen<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Smote sharper once than ever storm-wind blew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A head predestined for the girdling green<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That laughs at lightning all the seasons through,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Nor frost or change can sunder<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Its crown untouched of thunder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grew<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Alone for brows too bold<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For storm to sear of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Elect to shine in time's eternal view,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Rose on the verge of radiant life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Between the winds and sunbeams mingling love with strife.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza2" id="stanza2"></a>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a> +<span class="i0">The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To Milton's white republic undefiled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That might endure so few fleet years on earth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bore in him likewise as divine a child;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But born not less for crowns of love and mirth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The leaf that girds about with gentler girth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The brow steel-bound in battle, and the wild<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Soft spray that flowers above<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The flower-soft hair of love;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the white lips of wayworn winter smiled<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And grew serene as spring's<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When with stretched clouds like wings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or wings like drift of snow-clouds massed and piled<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The godlike giant, softening, spread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza3" id="stanza3"></a>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><a name="page8" id="page8"></a></p> +<span class="i0">And o'er it brightening bowed the wild-haired hour,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And touched his tongue with honey and with fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And breathed between his lips the note of power<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That makes of all the winds of heaven a lyre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that tower<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To softest springs of waters that suspire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And bright before his face<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That Hour became a Grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As in the light of their Athenian quire<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When the Hours before the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And Graces were made one,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre<br /></span> +<span class="i4">By one dear name of natural joy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza4" id="stanza4"></a>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><a name="page9" id="page9"></a></p> +<span class="i0">Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or love could lift them for the sun to smite,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Had risen, perplexing the presageful night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With shadow and glory around her sphere and under<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And portents prophesying by sound and sight;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And half the sound was song and half was thunder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And half his life of lightning, half of light:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And in the soft clenched hand<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Shone like a burning brand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Wrought only for such lord<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As so may wield the sword<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That all things ill be put to fear and flight<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Even at the flash and sweep and gleam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza5" id="stanza5"></a>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><a name="page10" id="page10"></a></p> +<span class="i0">Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beasts<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east's<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The splendour of the shadow that it flings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of men fulfilled with food of evil things;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Turns dark the lamp's hot light,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And turns the darkness bright<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And far before its way<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Heaven, yearning toward the day,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And never hand yet earlier played<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade.<br /></span> +</div><a name="page11" id="page11"></a></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza6" id="stanza6"></a>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More soft than slumber's, fell the first note's sound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier through<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than leaves through calm air wheeling toward the ground<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere winter loosen all the Æolian crew<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With storm unleashed behind them like a hound.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As lightly rose and sank<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Beside a green-flowered bank<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The clear first notes his burning boyhood found<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To sing her sacred praise<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Who rode her city's ways<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned;<br /><a name="page12" id="page12"></a></span> +<span class="i4">A song of soft presageful breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death;<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza7" id="stanza7"></a>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who should love two things only and only praise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More than all else for ever: even the glory<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Take light whereby death's self seems transitory;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lightens with his light the night of story;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Love that lifts up from dust<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Life, and makes darkness just,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And purges as with fire of purgatory<a name="page13" id="page13"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">The dense disastrous air,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To burn old falsehood bare<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Love, that with eyes of ageless youth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza8" id="stanza8"></a>8.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For at his birth the sistering stars were one<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That flamed upon it as one fiery star;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all that love not liberty let none<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love her that fills our lips with fire from far<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To mix with winds and seas in unison<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar<a name="page14" id="page14"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">Out where our songs fly free<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Across time's bounded sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Till all the spheres of night<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Chime concord round their flight<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">From stars that sang for Homer's birth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza9" id="stanza9"></a>9.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stars of our worship, lights of our desire!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For never man that heard the world's wind rave<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher:<a name="page15" id="page15"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">No blast of all that blow<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Might bid the torch burn low<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Indomitable of storm,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That now no flaws deform<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">One light of godlike breath and flame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza10" id="stanza10"></a>10.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car,<a name="page16" id="page16"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">That saw how swift a gathering glory grew<br /></span> +<span class="i2">About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A splendour strong to burn and burst them through<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And mix in one sheer light things near and far.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">First flew before his path<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Light shafts of love and wrath,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But winged and edged as elder warriors' are;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Then rose a light that showed<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Across the midsea road<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The way of war and love and fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza11" id="stanza11"></a>11.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved,<a name="page17" id="page17"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Flamed on him, and his burning lips were moved<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As that live statue's throned on Lybian sand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When morning moves it, ere her light faith roved<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From promise, and her tyrant's poisonous hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved<br /></span> +<span class="i6">More deadly than despair<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And falser even than fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though fairer than all elder hopes removed<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As landmarks by the crime<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of inundating time;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">For even as in some darkling dance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France.<a name="page18" id="page18"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza12" id="stanza12"></a>12.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But past the snows and summits Pyrenean<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love stronger-winged held more prevailing flight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and Ægean<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shores lightened with one storm of sound and light.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From earliest even to hoariest years one pæan<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Nestor's tongue in accents Achillean<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On death's blind verge dominant over night<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For voice as hand and hand<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As voice for one fair land<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the height<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Where darkling pines enrobe<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The steel-cold Lake of Gaube,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite,<a name="page19" id="page19"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i4">To where on peak or moor or plain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza13" id="stanza13"></a>13.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pale in the light of war or treacherous fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Song bade before him all their shadows stand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The father by whose wrong revenged his land<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Was given for sword and fire to desolate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Fair as she smiled and died,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Death's crowned and breathless bride<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Smiled as one living even on craft and hate:<a name="page20" id="page20"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">And pity, a star unrisen,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Scarce lit Ferrante's prison<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That gave their life and love and light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza14" id="stanza14"></a>14.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In perfect notes of music-measured pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sob through the song that bade them rise again;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise in the light of living song, to dwell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With memories crowned of memory: so the strain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles hell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And sweet the darkness of the breathless plain,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And with Elysian flowers<a name="page21" id="page21"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">Recrowned the wreathless hours<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That mused and mourned upon their works in vain;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For all their works of death<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Song filled with light and breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">For sweet as all the wide sweet south<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She found the song like honey from the lion's mouth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza15" id="stanza15"></a>15.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">High from his throne in heaven Simonides,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the everlasting sun of all time sees<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All golden, molten from the forge of years,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners' ears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees<a name="page22" id="page22"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">And honied as their harvest, that endears<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The toil of flowery days;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And smiling perfect praise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hailed his one brother mateless else of peers:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Whom we that hear not him<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For length of date grown dim<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And harshest heights of sorrowing hours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza16" id="stanza16"></a>16.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Therefore to him the shadow of death was none,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And multitudinous time for him was one,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who bade before his equal seat of doom<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun<a name="page23" id="page23"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">The weavers of the world's large-historied loom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By their own works of light or darkness done<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In speech of purer gold<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Than even they spake of old<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He bade the breath of Sidney's lips relume<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The fire of thought and love<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That made his bright life move<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To blameless music ever, strong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As death and sweet as death-annihilating song.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza17" id="stanza17"></a>17.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love gave his thought strength equal to release<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam<a name="page24" id="page24"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And through the trumpet of a child of Rome<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As though some northern hand<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Reft from the Latin land<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To clothe with golden sound<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of old joy newly found<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And rapture as of penetrating peace<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza18" id="stanza18"></a>18.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fade, and the darkness at Œnone's prayer<a name="page25" id="page25"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Close upon her that closed upon her boy,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For all the curse of godhead that she bare;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his love smitten in their dawn of joy<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And one in flowery coils<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Caught as in fiery toils<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Smite Calydon with mourning unaware;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And where her low turf shrine<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Showed Modesty divine<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The fairest mother's daughter far more fair<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Hide on her breast the heavenly shame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame.<a name="page26" id="page26"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza19" id="stanza19"></a>19.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nor less the light of story than of song<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With graver glories girt his godlike head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Reverted alway from the temporal throng<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of lives that live not toward the living dead.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shadows and the splendours of their throng<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Made bright and dark about his board and bed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that led<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Forth of the ghostly gate<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Opening in spite of fate<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Divine and direful things,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">These foul as priests or kings,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, red<a name="page27" id="page27"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i4">With blood and green with palms and white<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza20" id="stanza20"></a>20.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That keeps the place of Phocion's name serene<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And clears the cloud from Kosciusko's day,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Alternate as dark hours with bright between,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For all stars open that all eyes had seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise on the night or twilight of the way<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where feet of human hopes and fears had been.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Again the sovereign word<br /></span> +<span class="i6">On Milton's lips was heard<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Living: again the tender three days' queen<a name="page28" id="page28"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">Drew bright and gentle breath<br /></span> +<span class="i6">On the sharp edge of death:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And, staged again to show of mortal scene,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Tiberius, ere his name grew dire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza21" id="stanza21"></a>21.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Most ardent and most awful and most fond,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The fervour of his Apollonian eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of time whose years beheld her and past by<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The casque again of Pallas; for her cry<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forth of the past and future, depths beyond<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This where the present and its tyrants lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As one great voice of twain<a name="page29" id="page29"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">For him had pealed again,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heard but of hearts high as her own was high,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">High as her own and his<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And pure as love's heart is,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That lives though hope at once and memory die:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And with her breath his clarion's blast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza22" id="stanza22"></a>22.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As a wave only obsequious to the wind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the strong god's breath moving on the deep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned<a name="page30" id="page30"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">And pity toward all tears he saw men weep,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Arose to take man's part<br /></span> +<span class="i6">His loving lion heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Kind as the sun's that has in charge to keep<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Earth and the seed thereof<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Safe in his lordly love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Strong as sheer truth and soft as very sleep;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The mightiest heart since Milton's leapt,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare slept.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza23" id="stanza23"></a>23.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Like the wind's own on her divided sea<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His song arose on Corinth, and aloud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Recalled her Isthmian song and strife when she<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Was thronged with glories as with gods in crowd<a name="page31" id="page31"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And as the wind's own spirit her breath was free<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And as the heaven's own heart her soul was proud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But freer and prouder stood no son than he<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of all she bare before her heart was bowed;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">None higher than he who heard<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Medea's keen last word<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Transpierce her traitor, and like a rushing cloud<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That sundering shows a star<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Saw pass her thunderous car<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And a face whiter and deadlier than a shroud<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That lightened from it, and the brand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of tender blood that falling seared his suppliant hand.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza24" id="stanza24"></a>24.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">More fair than all things born and slain of fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More glorious than all births of days and nights,<a name="page32" id="page32"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">He bade the spirit of man regenerate,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rekindling, rise and reassume the rights<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That in high seasons of his old estate<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clothed him and armed with majesties and mights<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heroic, when the times and hearts were great<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And in the depths of ages rose the heights<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Radiant of high deeds done<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And souls that matched the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For splendour with the lightnings of their lights<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Whence even their uttered names<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Burn like the strong twin flames<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of song that shakes a throne and steel that smites;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">As on Thermopylæ when shone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leonidas, on Syracuse Timoleon.<a name="page33" id="page33"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza25" id="stanza25"></a>25.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Or, sweeter than the breathless buds when spring<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With smiles and tears and kisses bids them breathe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fell with its music from his quiring string<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fragrance of pine-leaves and odorous heath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Twined round the lute whereto he sighed to sing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of the oak that screened and showed its maid beneath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who seeing her bee crawl back with broken wing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Faded, a fairer flower than all her wreath,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And paler, though her oak<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Stood scathless of the stroke<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More sharp than edge of axe or wolfish teeth,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That mixed with mortals dead<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Her own half heavenly head<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And life incorporate with a sylvan sheath,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And left the wild rose and the dove<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A secret place and sacred from all guests but Love.<a name="page34" id="page34"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza26" id="stanza26"></a>26.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But in the sweet clear fields beyond the river<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dividing pain from peace and man from shade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He saw the wings that there no longer quiver<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sink of the hours whose parting footfalls fade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On ears which hear the rustling amaranth shiver<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With sweeter sound of wind than ever made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Music on earth: departing, they deliver<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The soul that shame or wrath or sorrow swayed;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And round the king of men<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Clash the clear arms again,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clear of all soil and bright as laurel braid,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That rang less high for joy<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Through the gates fallen of Troy<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than here to hail the sacrificial maid,<a name="page35" id="page35"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i4">Iphigeneia, when the ford<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fast-flowing of sorrows brought her father and their lord.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza27" id="stanza27"></a>27.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And in the clear gulf of the hollow sea<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He saw light glimmering through the grave green gloom<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That hardly gave the sun's eye leave to see<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cymodameia; but nor tower nor tomb,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No tower on earth, no tomb of waves may be,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That may not sometime by diviner doom<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be plain and pervious to the poet; he<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bids time stand back from him and fate make room<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For passage of his feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Strong as their own are fleet,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And yield the prey no years may reassume<a name="page36" id="page36"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">Through all their clamorous track,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Nor night nor day win back<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor give to darkness what his eyes illume<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And his lips bless for ever: he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Knows what earth knows not, sings truth sung not of the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza28" id="stanza28"></a>28.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Before the sentence of a curule chair<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More sacred than the Roman, rose and stood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To take their several doom the imperial pair<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Diversely born of Venus, and in mood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Diverse as their one mother, and as fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though like two stars contrasted, and as good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though different as dark eyes from golden hair;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">One as that iron planet red like blood<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That bears among the stars<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Fierce witness of her Mars<a name="page37" id="page37"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">In bitter fire by her sweet light subdued;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">One, in the gentler skies<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Sweet as her amorous eyes:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">One proud of worlds and seas and darkness rude<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Composed and conquered; one content<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With lightnings from loved eyes of lovers lightly sent.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza29" id="stanza29"></a>29.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And where Alpheus and where Ladon ran<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Radiant, by many a rushy and rippling cove<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More known to glance of god than wandering man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He sang the strife of strengths divine that strove,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unequal, one with other, for a span,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who should be friends for ever in heaven above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan,<a name="page38" id="page38"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the awless lord of kings and shepherds, Love:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">All the sweet strife and strange<br /></span> +<span class="i6">With fervid counterchange<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till one fierce wail through many a glade and grove<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Rang, and its breath made shiver<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The reeds of many a river,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the warm airs waxed wintry that it clove,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Keen-edged as ice-retempered brand;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor might god's hurt find healing save of godlike hand.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza30" id="stanza30"></a>30.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As when the jarring gates of thunder ope<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like earthquake felt in heaven, so dire a cry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So fearful and so fierce—'Give the sword scope!'—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rang from a daughter's lips, darkening the sky<a name="page39" id="page39"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With starless horror: nor the God's own eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Might well endure to see the adulteress die,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The husband-slayer fordone<br /></span> +<span class="i6">By swordstroke of her son,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Unutterable, unimaginable on high,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">On earth abhorrent, fell<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Beyond all scourge of hell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Mute, sister-like, and closer clung<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza31" id="stanza31"></a>31.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All these things heard and seen and sung of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He heard and saw and sang them. Once again<a name="page40" id="page40"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Might foot of man tread, eye of man behold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Things unbeholden save of ancient men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ways save by gods untrodden. In his hold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The staff that stayed through some Ætnean glen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as then<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Became a prophet's rod,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">A lyre on fire of God,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Being still the staff of exile: yea, as when<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The voice poured forth on us<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Was even of Æschylus,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And his one word great as the crying of ten,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song.<a name="page41" id="page41"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza32" id="stanza32"></a>32.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Him too whom none save one before him ever<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Beheld, nor since hath man again beholden,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giver<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of all gifts back to man by time withholden,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shakespeare—him too, whom sea-like ages sever,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To landward, from our songs that find him never,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden—<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Him too this one song found,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And raised at its sole sound<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Legends forlorn of breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Up from the deeps of death,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The wise divine strong soul, whom fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great.<a name="page42" id="page42"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza33" id="stanza33"></a>33.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nor stands the seer who raised him less august<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Less constant or less loving or less just,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holding all high and gentle names in trust<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of time for honour; so his quickening breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Called from the darkness of their martyred dust<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Revived and reinspired<br /></span> +<span class="i6">With speech from heavenward fired<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By love to say what Love the Archangel saith<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Only, nor may such word<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Save by such ears be heard<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As hear the tongues of angels after death<a name="page43" id="page43"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i4">Descending on them like a dove<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza34" id="stanza34"></a>34.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All generous names and loyal, and all wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all his heart in all its wayfarings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He sought, and worshipped, seeing them with his eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In very present glory, clothed with wings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of words and deeds and dreams immortal, rise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Visible more than living slaves and kings,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Audible more than actual vows and lies:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">These, with scorn's fieriest rod,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">These and the Lord their God,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the skies<a name="page44" id="page44"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">As they Lord Gods of earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">These with a rage of mirth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He mocked and scourged and spat on, in such wise<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That none might stand before his rod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or God.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza35" id="stanza35"></a>35.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For of all souls for all time glorious none<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all words heard on earth the noblest one<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That ever spake for souls and left them blest:<br /></span> +<span class="i0 smcap">Gladly we should rest ever, had we won<br /></span> +<span class="i2 smcap">Freedom: we have lost, and very gladly rest.<a name="page45" id="page45"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">O poet hero, lord<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And father, we record<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep in the burning tablets of the breast<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Thankfully those divine<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And living words of thine<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With strokes engraven past hurt of years<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza36" id="stanza36"></a>36.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But who being less than thou shall sing of thee<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who sing the golden garland woven of three,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More godlike than the graven gods men see<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Made all but all immortal, human born<a name="page46" id="page46"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And heavenly natured? With the first came He,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Led by the living hand, who left forlorn<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Life by his death, and time<br /></span> +<span class="i6">More by his life sublime<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And even for mourning praise<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Heaven, as for all those days<br /></span> +<span class="i2">These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn<br /></span> +<span class="i4">By memory till all time lie dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza37" id="stanza37"></a>37.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace,<a name="page47" id="page47"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And verier daughter of his most perfect hours<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than any of latter time or alien place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Only, nor wearing on her statelier face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That graced and guarded round that holiest race,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That heavenliest and most high<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Time hath seen live and die,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Poured all their power upon him to retrace<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The erased immortal roll<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of Love's most sovereign scroll<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The scroll that on Aspasia's knees<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.<a name="page48" id="page48"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza38" id="stanza38"></a>38.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The walls engirdling with a circling stair<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Fell from her flowerlike mouth<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Not sweet with all the south;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And spake, as o'er it shone<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That bright Pentameron,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And his own vines again and chestnuts heard<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme.<a name="page49" id="page49"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza39" id="stanza39"></a>39.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No lovelier laughed the garden which receives<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What yet the wisest of the starriest wise<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Whom Greece might ever hear<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Speaks in the gentlest ear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That ever heard love's lips philosophize<br /></span> +<span class="i6">With such deep-reasoning words<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As blossoms use and birds,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise<a name="page50" id="page50"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i4">Far off, in no wise over far,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza40" id="stanza40"></a>40.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That makes time's face pale with its reflex light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alternating wore ever shapes more dire<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor manifest in all men's awful sight<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In form and face that wore<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Heaven's light and likeness more<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height<a name="page51" id="page51"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">More fearful, since man first<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Slaked with man's blood his thirst,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Till tower on ruining tower was hurled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza41" id="stanza41"></a>41.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who carved their several praise in words of gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For price of blood or incense, dust or sand,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Triumph or terror. He that sought of old<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His father Ammon in a stranger's land,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And shrank before the serpentining fold,<a name="page52" id="page52"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">Stood in our seer's wide eye<br /></span> +<span class="i6">No higher than man most high,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Fast as a scripture furled<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The scroll of all the world<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold<br /></span> +<span class="i4">First thief of empire, round whose head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets +fed.<a name="anchor1" id="anchor1"></a><a href="#footnote1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza42" id="stanza42"></a>42.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He saw the light of death, riotous and red,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,<a name="page53" id="page53"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The steely snows of Russia, for the tread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The snaky lines of blood violently shed.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Like living creeping things<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That writhe but have no stings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To scare adulterers from the imperial bed<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Bowed with its load of lust,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Or chill the ravenous gusts<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That made her body a fire from heel to head;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Or change her high bright spirit and clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza43" id="stanza43"></a>43.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As light that blesses, hallowing with a look;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He saw the godhead in Vittoria's face<a name="page54" id="page54"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A strength more heavenly to confront and brook<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All ill things coiled about his worldly race,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the bright scripture of that present book<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Comfort more sweet than youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And hope whose child was truth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And love that brought forth sorrow for a space,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Only that she might bear<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Joy: these things, written there,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Perused with eyes whose glory and glow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo.<a name="page55" id="page55"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza44" id="stanza44"></a>44.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With balms and dews of blessing he consoled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On her fair hand, even till the stain of old<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang<br /></span> +<span class="i6">From other strings divine<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Ere his rekindling line<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With yet more piteous and intolerant pang<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Pierced all men's hearts anew<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That heard her passion through<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang<a name="page56" id="page56"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i4">Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza45" id="stanza45"></a>45.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And majesty of meanest men born free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The whole world worthier of the sun to see:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wherein souls festered by the servile sea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thronged round with worship in Parthenope.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">His hand bade Justice guide<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Her child Tyrannicide,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be;<a name="page57" id="page57"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">And pierced with Tyrrel's dart<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Again the riotous heart<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And oped the cell where kinglike death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza46" id="stanza46"></a>46.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the base heart that soiled the starry mind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stern, for the father in his child undone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With their sweet image visibly set on<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As by God's hand, clear as his own designed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The likeness radiant out of ages gone<a name="page58" id="page58"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i6">That none may now destroy<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of that high Roman boy<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son<br /></span> +<span class="i6">True-born of sovereign seed,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Foredoomed even thence to bleed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The stately grace of bright Cæsarion,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The head unbent, the heart unbowed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza47" id="stanza47"></a>47.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus<br /></span> +<span class="i2">At once by service and similitude,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Service devout and worship emulous<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of the same golden Muses once they wooed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The names and shades adored of all of us,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood,<a name="page59" id="page59"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus<br /></span> +<span class="i2">First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed<br /></span> +<span class="i6">With blessings bright like tears<br /></span> +<span class="i6">From the old memorial years,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And loves and lovely laughters, every mood<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Sweet as the drops that fell<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of their own œnomel<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From living lips to cheer the multitude<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That feeds on words divine, and grows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza48" id="stanza48"></a>48.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The silent music that no strange note jars,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars<a name="page60" id="page60"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With much long warfare, and with gradual bars<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Broke, and the power came back that passion mars:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And at the lovely last<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Above all anguish past<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Before his own the sightless eyes like stars<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Arose that watched arise<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Like stars in other skies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The Dioscurian songs divine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lighten all the world with lightning of their line.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza49" id="stanza49"></a>49.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He sang the last of Homer, having sung<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide<a name="page61" id="page61"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung<br /></span> +<span class="i2">About the day-star, doubtful to divide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Homer, and grey Laertes at his side<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Kingly as kings are none<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Beneath a later sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the sweet maiden ministering in pride<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To sovereign and to sage<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In their more sweet old age:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">These things he sang, himself as old, and died.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And if death be not, if life be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.<a name="page62" id="page62"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5><a name="stanza50" id="stanza50"></a>50.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all bright words and all sweet works thereof;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heart that no fear but every grief might move<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The purest soul that ever proof could prove<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From taint of tortuous or of envious mind;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Whose eyes elate and clear<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Nor shame nor ever fear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But only pity or glorious wrath could blind;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Name set for love apart,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Held lifelong in my heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Face like a father's toward my face inclined;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">No gilts like thine are mine to give,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p> </p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="footnote1" id="footnote1"></a><a href="#anchor1">[1]</a> +</p> +<div style="margin-left: 5%;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time, in his children's blood who takes delight.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<div class="citation"><i>From the Greek of Landor.</i><a name="page63" id="page63"></a></div> +</div> + +<hr /> + +<h3>NOTES.</h3> + +<table summary="notes"> +<tr><td align="left"><b>Stanza</b></td><td colspan="2"></td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza6">6</a>.</td><td></td><td>See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the +exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza10">10</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Poems +of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl +Stanhope: 1795. Gebir.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza13">13</a>.</td><td></td><td>Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza14">14</a>, <a href="#stanza15">15</a>.</td><td></td><td>Poems 'on the Dead.'</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza16">16</a>.</td><td></td><td>Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza17">17</a>, <a href="#stanza18">18</a>.</td><td></td><td>Idyllia +Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; +Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris +Aram.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza19">19</a>, <a href="#stanza20">20</a>.</td><td></td><td>Imaginary +Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; +Æschines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and +Marvell; Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania.</td></tr> + +<tr><td style="width: 7%;"><a href="#stanza21">21</a>, <a href="#stanza22">22</a>, <a href="#stanza23">23</a>.</td><td></td><td>Hellenics: +To Corinth.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza24">24</a>.</td><td></td><td>Hellenics: Regeneration.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza25">25</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza26">26</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Shades of +Agamemnon and Iphigeneia.<a name="page64" id="page64"></a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza27">27</a>.</td><td></td><td>Enallos and Cymodameia.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza28">28</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Children of Venus.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza29">29</a>.</td><td></td><td>Cupid and Pan.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza30">30</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Death of Clytemnestra; +The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of Orestes.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza32">32</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Last of Ulysses.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza33">33</a>.</td><td></td><td>Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza35">35</a>.</td><td></td><td><i>Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos.</i></td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza36">36</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza37">37</a>.</td><td></td><td>Pericles and Aspasia.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza38">38</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Pentameron.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza39">39</a>.</td><td></td><td>Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza40">40</a>.</td><td></td><td>Marcellus and +Hannibal: P. Scipio Æmilianus, Polybius, and Panætius.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza41">41</a>.</td><td></td><td>Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the +Senate.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza42">42</a>.</td><td></td><td>The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza43">43</a>.</td><td></td><td>Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza44">44</a>.</td><td></td><td>Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five +Scenes (Beatrice Cenci).</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza45">45</a>.</td><td></td><td>Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (<i>Imaginary Conversations</i>) +Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge +Wolfgang and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide +(<i>The Last Fruit off an Old Tree</i>): Walter Tyrrel and +William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn.<a name="page65" id="page65"></a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza46">46</a>.</td><td></td><td>Essex and Spenser (<i>Imaginary Conversations</i>): Essex and Bacon: +Antony and Octavius (<i>Scenes for the Study</i>).</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza47">47</a>.</td><td></td><td>Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#stanza48">48</a>, <a href="#stanza49">49</a>.</td><td></td><td>Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha.</td></tr> +</table> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or half our +obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible genius of the great man +whose life and whose labour lasted even from the generation of our +fathers' fathers to our own? Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so +deeply as I feel the inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect +gratitude to the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but +'such as I had have I given him.'</p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="page67" id="page67"></a><a name="part2" id="part2"></a>GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS</h2> + +<h4>FROM</h4> + +<h2>ARISTOPHANES</h2> + +<p class="centre"><i>Attempted in English verse after the original metre.</i><a name="page68" id="page68"></a></p> + + +<p>I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a +fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration +by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable +genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with +the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical +invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in +a language to which all variations and combinations of anapæstic, +iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and +spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this +highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to +detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as +it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical +points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the +original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary +makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language; +and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and +undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line +overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees: +and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line—which I +doubt—could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause, +in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper +sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my +main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this +brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the +music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full +gallop as of horses who</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">'dance as 'twere to the music<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their own hoofs make.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation: +but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at +once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes.<a name="page69" id="page69"></a></p> + + + +<hr /> + + +<h3><i>THE BIRDS.</i></h3> + +<h4>(685-723.)</h4> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures fast fleeing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being:<br /><a name="page70" id="page70"></a></span> +<span class="i0">Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts are eternal;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things aright as to matters supernal,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of streams, and the dark beyond reaching,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus pack with his preaching.<br /></span> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and hell's broad border,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb of the dark without order<br /></span> +<span class="i0">First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched in her bosom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a blossom,<br /><a name="page71" id="page71"></a></span> +<span class="i0">Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He, after his wedlock with Chaos, whose wings are of darkness, in hell broad-burning,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For his nestlings begat him the race of us first, and upraised us to light new-lighted.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And before this was not the race of the gods, until all things by Love were united;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of kind united with kind in communion of nature the sky and the sea are<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the gods everlasting and blest. So that we are<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far away the most ancient of all things blest. And that we are of Love's generation<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings, and with us have the Loves +habitation;<br /><a name="page72" id="page72"></a></span> +<span class="i0">And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom of them ended,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued, by the help of us only befriended,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb staring and splendid.<br /></span> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">All best good things that befall men come from us birds, as is plain to all reason:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For first we proclaim and make known to them spring, and the winter and autumn in season;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric, in shrill-voiced emigrant number,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season, and slumber;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs if it +freezes.<br /><a name="page73" id="page73"></a></span> +<span class="i0">And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the breezes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. Then does the swallow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give you notice to sell your greatcoat, and provide something light for the heat that's to follow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you, Dodona, nay, Phœbus Apollo.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in all things your carriage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any one's marriage.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to discerning prediction:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon: you sneeze, and the sign's as a bird for +conviction:<br /><a name="page74" id="page74"></a></span> +<span class="i0">All tokens are 'birds' with you—sounds too, and lackeys, and donkeys. Then must it not follow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That we ARE to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in prophetic Apollo?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><i>October 19, 1880.</i><a name="page75" id="page75"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="page77" id="page77"></a><a name="part3" id="part3"></a><i>OFF SHORE.</i></h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">When the might of the summer<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Is most on the sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When the days overcome her<br /></span> +<span class="i8">With joy but to be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">But for hours upon hours<br /></span> +<span class="i8">As a thrall she remains<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Spell-bound as with flowers<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And content in their chains,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>Then only, far under<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In the depths of her hold,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Some gleam of its wonder<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Man's eye may behold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Still deeper and dimmer<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And goodlier they glow<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For the eyes of the swimmer<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Who scans them below<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and snow.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Soft blossomless frondage<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And foliage that gleams<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As to prisoners in bondage<br /></span> +<span class="i8"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>The light of their dreams,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Not as prisoners entombed<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Waxen haggard and wizen,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">But consoled and illumed<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In the depths of their prison<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">From the banks and the beds<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of the waters divine<br /></span> +<span class="i6">They lift up their heads<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the flowers of them shine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them of water that glimmers like wine.<a name="page80" id="page80"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Bright bank over bank<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Making glorious the gloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Soft rank upon rank,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Strange bloom after bloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea's womb.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Through the subtle and tangible<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Gloom without form,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Their branches, infrangible<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Ever of storm<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the woodland when April is warm.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">As the flight of the thunder, full<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Charged with its word,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Dividing the wonderful<a name="page81" id="page81"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i8">Depths like a bird,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Speaks wrath and delight to the heart of the night that exults to have heard,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">So swiftly, though soundless<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In silence's ear,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Light, winged from the boundless<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Blue depths full of cheer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not before him, but hear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Light, perfect and visible<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Godhead of God,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">God indivisible,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Lifts but his rod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness is light at his nod.<a name="page82" id="page82"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">At the touch of his wand,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">At the nod of his head<br /></span> +<span class="i6">From the spaces beyond<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Where the dawn hath her bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one risen from the dead.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">He puts forth his hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the mountains are thrilled<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To the heart as they stand<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In his presence, fulfilled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and her sorrows are stilled.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">The moan of her travail<br /></span> +<span class="i8">That groans for the light<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Till dayspring unravel<br /></span> +<span class="i8"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>The weft of the night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At the sound of the strings of the music of morning, falls dumb with delight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">He gives forth his word,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the word that he saith,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Ere well it be heard,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Strikes darkness to death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the thought of his heart is the sunrise, and dawn as the sound of his breath.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">And the strength of its pulses<br /></span> +<span class="i8">That passion makes proud<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Confounds and convulses<br /></span> +<span class="i8">The depths of the cloud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the darkness that heaven was engirt with, divided and rent as a shroud,<a name="page84" id="page84"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">As the veil of the shrine<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of the temple of old<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When darkness divine<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Over noonday was rolled;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So the heart of the night by the pulse of the light is convulsed and controlled.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">And the sea's heart, groaning<br /></span> +<span class="i8">For glories withdrawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the waves' mouths, moaning<br /></span> +<span class="i8">All night for the dawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are uplift as the hearts and the mouths of the singers on leaside and lawn.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">And the sound of the quiring<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of all these as one,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Desired and desiring<a name="page85" id="page85"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i8">Till dawn's will be done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fills full with delight of them heaven till it burns as the heart of the sun.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Till the waves too inherit<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And waters take part<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the sense of the spirit<br /></span> +<span class="i8">That breathes from his heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And are kindled with music as fire when the lips of the morning part,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">With music unheard<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In the light of her lips,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the life-giving word<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of the dewfall that drips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the grasses of earth, and the wind that enkindles the wings of the ships.<a name="page86" id="page86"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">White glories of wings<br /></span> +<span class="i8">As of seafaring birds<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That flock from the springs<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of the sunrise in herds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the wind for a herdsman, and hasten or halt at the change of his words.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">As the watchword's change<br /></span> +<span class="i8">When the wind's note shifts,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the skies grow strange,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the white squall drifts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up sharp from the sea-line, vexing the sea till the low cloud lifts.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">At the charge of his word<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Bidding pause, bidding haste,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When the ranks are stirred<a name="page87" id="page87"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the lines displaced,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They scatter as wild swans parting adrift on the wan green waste.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">At the hush of his word<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In a pause of his breath<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When the waters have heard<br /></span> +<span class="i8">His will that he saith,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They stand as a flock penned close in its fold for division of death.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">As a flock by division<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of death to be thinned,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As the shades in a vision<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of spirits that sinned;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds on the stream of the wind.<a name="page88" id="page88"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">But the sun stands fast,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the sea burns bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the flight of them past<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Is no more than the flight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and afloat in the light.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Like flowers upon flowers<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In a festival way<br /></span> +<span class="i6">When hours after hours<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Shed grace on the day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through the snows of the spray.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Like snow-coloured petals<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of blossoms that flee<br /></span> +<span class="i6">From storm that unsettles<a name="page89" id="page89"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i8">The flower as the tree<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They flutter, a legion of flowers on the wing, through the field of the sea.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Through the furrowless field<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Where the foam-blossoms blow<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the secrets are sealed<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of their harvest below<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They float in the path of the sunbeams, as flakes or as blossoms of snow.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Till the sea's ways darken,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And the God, withdrawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Give ear not or hearken<br /></span> +<span class="i8">If prayer on him fawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the sun's self seem but a shadow, the noon as a ghost of the dawn.<a name="page90" id="page90"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">No shadow, but rather<br /></span> +<span class="i8">God, father of song,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Shew grace to me, Father<br /></span> +<span class="i8">God, loved of me long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I lose not the light of thy face, that my trust in thee work me not wrong.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">While yet I make forward<br /></span> +<span class="i8">With face toward thee<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Not turned yet in shoreward,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Be thine upon me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be thy light on my forehead or ever I turn it again from the sea.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">As a kiss on my brow<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Be the light of thy grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Be thy glance on me now<a name="page91" id="page91"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i8">From the pride of thy place:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face of thy face.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Thou wast father of olden<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Times hailed and adored,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the sense of thy golden<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Great harp's monochord<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was the joy in the soul of the singers that hailed thee for master and lord.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Fair father of all<br /></span> +<span class="i8">In thy ways that have trod,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That have risen at thy call,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">That have thrilled at thy nod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to be God.<a name="page92" id="page92"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">As my soul has been dutiful<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Only to thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">O God most beautiful,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Lighten thou me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I swim through the dim long rollers, with eyelids uplift from the sea.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Be praised and adored of us<br /></span> +<span class="i8">All in accord,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Father and lord of us<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Alway adored,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light of us all and our lord.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">At the sound of thy lyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">At the touch of thy rod,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Air quickens to fire<a name="page93" id="page93"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i8">By the foot of thee trod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The saviour and healer and singer, the living and visible God.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">The years are before thee<br /></span> +<span class="i8">As shadows of thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As men that adore thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">As cloudlets that flee:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But thou art the God, and thy kingdom is heaven, and thy shrine is the sea.<a name="page94" id="page94"></a><br /></span> +<a name="page95" id="page95"></a></div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="page97" id="page97"></a><a name="part4" id="part4"></a><i>AFTER NINE YEARS.</i></h2> + +<h3>TO JOSEPH MAZZINI.</h3> + +<p class="centre"><i>Primâ dicte mihi, summâ dicende Camenâ.</i></p> + + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The shadows fallen of years are nine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since heaven grew seven times more divine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With thy soul entering, and the dearth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of souls on earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grew sevenfold sadder, wanting One<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose light of life, quenched here and done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burns there eternal as the sun.<a name="page98" id="page98"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Beyond all word, beyond all deed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beyond all thought beloved, what need<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has death or love that speech should be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hast thou of me?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I had no word, no prayer, no cry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To praise or hail or mourn thee by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As when thou too wast man as I.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nay, never, nor as any born<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save one whose name priests turn to scorn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who haply, though we know not now,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was man as thou,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A wanderer branded with men's blame,<a name="page99" id="page99"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Loved past man's utterance: yea, the same,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perchance, and as his name thy name.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thou wast as very Christ—not he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Degraded into Deity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And priest-polluted by such prayer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As poisons air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tongue-worship of the tongue that slays,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">False faith and parricidal praise:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the man crowned with suffering days.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">God only, being of all mankind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Most manlike, of most equal mind<a name="page100" id="page100"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And heart most perfect, more than can<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be heart of man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Once in ten ages, born to be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As haply Christ was, and as we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Knew surely, seeing, and worshipped thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To know thee—this at least was ours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God, clothed upon with human hours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O face beloved, O spirit adored,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Saviour and lord!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That wast not only for thine own<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Redeemer—not of these alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all to whom thy word was known.<a name="page101" id="page101"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ten years have wrought their will with me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since last my words took wing for thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who then wast even as now above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Me, and my love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As then thou knewest not scorn, so now<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With that beloved benignant brow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take these of him whose light wast thou.<a name="page102" id="page102"></a><a name="page103" id="page103"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="page105" id="page105"></a><a name="part5" id="part5"></a><i>FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI.</i></h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Steadfast as sorrow, fiery sad, and sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With underthoughts of love and faith, more strong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than doubt and hate and all ill thoughts which throng,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Haply, round hope's or fear's world-wandering feet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That find no rest from wandering till they meet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Death, bearing palms in hand and crowns of song;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His face, who thought to vanquish wrong with wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Erring, and make rage and redemption meet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Havoc and freedom; weaving in one weft<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Good with his right hand, evil with his left;<a name="page106" id="page106"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all a hero lived and erred and died;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Looked thus upon the living world he left<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So bravely that with pity less than pride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men hail him Patriot and Tyrannicide.<a name="page107" id="page107"></a><br /></span> +<a name="page109" id="page109"></a></div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="part6" id="part6"></a><i>EVENING ON THE BROADS.</i></h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep—<a name="page110" id="page110"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours.<a name="page111" id="page111"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Still with itself, being sick of division and dimmed by dismay—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fearful and fain of the night, lovely with love of the day:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death, and begotten<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the seed of the grave:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave.<a name="page112" id="page112"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon, in a vision<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts that are tired, and would rest.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season enkindled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wane, and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them fade:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new-made.<a name="page113" id="page113"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless love of the friendless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Waste of the water without, waste of the water within,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin.<a name="page114" id="page114"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast-ward<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Eagerly, yearning forth of the deeps where the ways of them are,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glad of the glory of the gift of their life and the wealth of its wonder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fain of the night and the sea and the sweet wan face of the earth.<a name="page115" id="page115"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over them air grows deeper, intense with delight in them: under<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Things are thrilled in their sleep as with sense of a sure new birth.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But here by the sand-bank watching, with eyes on the sea-line, stranger<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Grows to me also the weight of the sea-ridge gazed on of me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heavily heaped up, changefully changeless, void though of danger<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Void not of menace, but full of the might of the dense dull sea.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like as the wave is before me, behind is the bank deep-drifted;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yellow and thick as the bank is behind me in front is the wave.<a name="page116" id="page116"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the wall of a prison imprisoning the mere is the girth of it lifted:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But the rampire of water in front is erect as the wall of a grave.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the crests of it crumble and topple and change, but the wall is not broken:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Standing still dry-shod, I see it as higher than my head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moving inland alway again, reared up as in token<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Still of impending wrath still in the foam of it shed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And even in the pauses between them, dividing the rollers in sunder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">High overhead seems ever the sea-line fixed as a mark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder<a name="page117" id="page117"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cloud and torrent and storm, darkening the depths of the dark.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up to the sea, not upon it or over it, upward from under<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seems he to gaze, whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A wall of turbid water, aslope to the wide sky's wonder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of colour and cloud, it climbs, or spreads as a slanted floor.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the large lights change on the face of the mere like things that were living,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Winged and wonderful, beams like as birds are that pass and are free:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the light is dense as darkness, a gift withheld in the giving,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That lies as dead on the fierce dull face of the landward sea.<a name="page118" id="page118"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stained and stifled and soiled, made earthier than earth is and duller,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Grimly she puts back light as rejected, a thing put away:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No transparent rapture, a molten music of colour;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No translucent love taken and given of the day.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fettered and marred and begrimed is the light's live self on her falling,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the light of a man's life lighted the fume of a dungeon mars:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only she knows of the wind, when her wrath gives ear to him calling;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The delight of the light she knows not, nor answers the sun or the stars.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love she hath none to return for the luminous love of their giving:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">None to reflect from the bitter and shallow response of her heart<a name="page119" id="page119"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yearly she feeds on her dead, yet herself seems dead and not living,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or confused as a soul heavy-laden with trouble that will not depart.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the sound of her speech to the darkness the moan of her evil remorse is,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Haply, for strong ships gnawed by the dog-toothed sea-bank's fang<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And trampled to death by the rage of the feet of her foam-lipped horses<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whose manes are yellow as plague, and as ensigns of pestilence hang,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That wave in the foul faint air of the breath of a death-stricken city;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So menacing heaves she the manes of her rollers knotted with sand,<a name="page120" id="page120"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Discoloured, opaque, suspended in sign as of strength without pity,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That shake with flameless thunder the low long length of the strand.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here, far off in the farther extreme of the shore as it lengthens<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Northward, lonely for miles, ere ever a village begin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the lapsing land that recedes as the growth of the strong sea strengthens<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shoreward, thrusting further and further its outworks in,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here in Shakespeare's vision, a flower of her kin forsaken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave's edge,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Surely by no shore else, but here on the bank storm-shaken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Perdita, bright as a dew-drop engilt of the sun on the sedge.<a name="page121" id="page121"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Outcast, fair as a fairy, the child of a far-off king:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And over the babe-flower gently the head of a pastoral elder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bowed, compassionate, hoar as the hawthorn-blossom in spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And kind as harvest in autumn: a shelter of shade on the lonely<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shelterless unknown shore scourged of implacable waves:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here, where the wind walks royal, alone in his kingdom, and only<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sounds to the sedges a wail as of triumph that conquers and craves.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All these waters and wastes are his empire of old, and awaken<a name="page122" id="page122"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">From barren and stagnant slumber at only the sound of his breath:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet the hunger is eased not that aches in his heart, nor the goal overtaken<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That his wide wings yearn for and labour as hearts that yearn after death.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the solitude sighs and expects with a blind expectation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Somewhat unknown of its own sad heart, grown heart-sick of strife:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till sometime its wild heart maddens, and moans, and the vast ululation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Takes wing with the clouds on the waters, and wails to be quit of its life.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the spirit and soul of the waste is the wind, and his wings with their waving<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Darken and lighten the darkness and light of it thickened or thinned;<a name="page123" id="page123"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the heart that impels them is even as a conqueror's insatiably craving<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That victory can fill not, as power cannot satiate the want of the wind.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All these moorlands and marshes are full of his might, and oppose not<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Aught of defence nor of barrier, of forest or precipice piled:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the will of the wind works ever as his that desires what he knows not,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the wail of his want unfulfilled is as one making moan for her child.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the cry of his triumph is even as the crying of hunger that maddens<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The heart of a strong man aching in vain as the wind's heart aches<a name="page124" id="page124"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the sadness itself of the land for its infinite solitude saddens<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More for the sound than the silence athirst for the sound that slakes.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the sunset at last and the twilight are dead: and the darkness is breathless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With fear of the wind's breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But a sense of the sound of it alway, a spirit unsleeping and deathless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ghost or God, evermore moves on the face of the +deep.<a name="page125" id="page125"></a><a name="page127" id="page127"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="part7" id="part7"></a><i>THE EMPEROR'S PROGRESS.</i></h2> + +<h3>A STUDY IN THREE STAGES.</h3> + +<p class="centre">(On the Busts of Nero in the Uffizj.)</p> + + +<h5>I.</h5> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A child of brighter than the morning's birth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Save only of little children undefiled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Live rose of love, mute melody of mirth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Adorable as is nothing save a child,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hails with wide eyes and lips his life on earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>His lovely life with all its heaven to be.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And whoso reads the name inscribed or hears<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Feels his own heart a frozen well of tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Child, for deep dread and fearful pity of thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom God would not let rather die than see<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The incumbent horror of impending years.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>II.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Man, that wast godlike being a child, and now,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No less than kinglike, art no more in sooth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For all thy grace and lordliness of youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The crown that bids men's branded foreheads bow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Much more has branded and bowed down thy brow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And gnawn upon it as with fire or tooth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of steel or snake so sorely, that the truth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seems here to bear false witness. Is it thou,<a name="page129" id="page129"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Child? and is all the summer of all thy spring<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This? are the smiles that drew men's kisses down<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All faded and transfigured to the frown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That grieves thy face? Art thou this weary thing?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then is no slave's load heavier than a crown<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And such a thrall no bondman as a king.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>III.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Misery, beyond all men's most miserable,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Absolute, whole, defiant of defence,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Inevitable, inexplacable, intense,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More vast than heaven is high, more deep than hell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Past cure or charm of solace or of spell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Possesses and pervades the spirit and sense<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whereto the expanse of the earth pays tribute; whence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breeds evil only, and broods on fumes that swell<a name="page130" id="page130"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rank from the blood of brother and mother and wife.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Misery of miseries, all is misery,' saith<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The heavy fair-faced hateful head, at strife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With its own lusts that burn with feverous breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lips which the loathsome bitterness of life<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leaves fearful of the bitterness of death.<a name="page131" id="page131"></a><a name="page133" id="page133"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="part8" id="part8"></a><i>THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA.</i></h2> + +<p class="centre">(Gratefully inscribed to Dr. A.B. Grosart.)</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To his good hand who travelling on strange ways<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath dead leaves that many a winter's wrong<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries' maze<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For thine have life, while many above thine head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead.<a name="page134" id="page134"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i2">So now disburdened of such load above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lay as death's own dust upon thee shed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love.<a name="page135" id="page135"></a><a name="page137" id="page137"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="part9" id="part9"></a><i>THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY.</i></h2> + +<div class="centre"> +<p>(On the refusal by the French Senate of the plenary amnesty demanded +by Victor Hugo, in his speech of July 3rd, for the +surviving exiles of the Commune.)</p> +</div> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thou shouldst have risen as never dawn yet rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Day of the sunrise of the soul of France,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dawn of the whole world's morning, when the trance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all the world had end, and all its woes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Respite, prophetic of their perfect close.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Light of all tribes of men, all names and clans,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dawn of the whole world's morning and of man's<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flower of the heart of morning's mystic rose,<a name="page138" id="page138"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dawn of the very dawn of very day,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When the sun brighter breaks night's ruinous prison,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou shouldst have risen as yet no dawn has risen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Evoked of him whose word puts night away,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our father, at the music of whose word<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Exile had ended, and the world had heard.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><i>July 5, 1880.</i><a name="page139" id="page139"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="part10" id="part10"></a>LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA</h2> +<p><a name="page140" id="page140"></a></p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="centre"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Malâ soluta navis exit alite.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span></p> + + +<div class="centre"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rigged with curses dark.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><span class="smcap">Milton.</span><a name="page141" id="page141"></a></p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h3><i>THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA.</i></h3> + + +<h5>I.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Gold, and fair marbles, and again more gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And space of halls afloat that glance and gleam<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like the green heights of sunset heaven, or seem<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The golden steeps of sunrise red and cold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On deserts where dark exile keeps the fold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fast of the flocks of torment, where no beam<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Falls of kind light or comfort save in dream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These we far off behold not, who behold<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>The cordage woven of curses, and the decks<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With mortal hate and mortal peril paven;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From stem to stern the lines of doom engraven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That mark for sure inevitable wrecks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those sails predestinate, though no storm vex,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To miss on earth and find in hell their haven.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>II.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a> +<span class="i0">All curses be about her, and all ill<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Go with her; heaven be dark above her way,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The gulf beneath her glad and sure of prey,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, wheresoe'er her prow be pointed, still<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The winds of heaven have all one evil will<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Conspirant even as hearts of kings to slay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With mouths of kings to lie and smile and pray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And chiefliest his whose wintrier breath makes chill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With more than winter's and more poisonous cold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The horror of his kingdom toward the north,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The deserts of his kingdom toward the east.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though death hide not in her direful hold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be all stars adverse toward her that come forth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nightly, by day all hours till all have ceased:<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h5>III.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a> +<span class="i0">Till all have ceased for ever, and the sum<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be summed of all the sumless curses told<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Out on his head by all dark seasons rolled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over its cursed and crowned existence, dumb<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blind and stark as though the snows made numb<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All sense within it, and all conscience cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That hangs round hearts of less imperial mould<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All nature's as all true men's hearts to thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A two-edged sword of judgment; hope be far<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fear at hand for pilot oversea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With death for compass and despair for star,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the white foam a shroud for the White Czar.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><i>September 30, 1880.</i><a name="page145" id="page145"></a><a name="page147" id="page147"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="part11" id="part11"></a><i>SIX YEARS OLD.</i></h2> + +<h4>To H.W.M.</h4> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Between the springs of six and seven,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Two fresh years' fountains, clear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all but golden sand for leaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Child, midway passing here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As earth for love's sake dares bless heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So dare I bless you, dear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Between two bright well-heads, that brighten<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With every breath that blows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Too loud to lull, too low to frighten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But fain to rock, the rose,<a name="page148" id="page148"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your feet stand fast, your lit smiles lighten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That might rear flowers from snows.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You came when winds unleashed were snarling<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Behind the frost-bound hours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A snow-bird sturdier than the starling,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A storm-bird fledged for showers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That spring might smile to find you, darling,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">First born of all the flowers.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Could love make worthy things of worthless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My song were worth an ear:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its note should make the days most mirthless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The merriest of the year,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wake to birth all buds yet birthless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To keep your birthday, dear.<a name="page149" id="page149"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But where your birthday brightens heaven<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No need has earth, God knows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of light or warmth to melt or leaven<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The frost or fog that glows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With sevenfold heavenly lights of seven<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sweet springs that cleave the snows.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Could love make worthy music of you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And match my Master's powers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had even my love less heart to love you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A better song were ours;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all the rhymes like stars above you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And all the words like flowers.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><i>September 30, 1880.</i><a name="page151" id="page151"></a><a name="page153" id="page153"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="part12" id="part12"></a><i>A PARTING SONG.</i></h2> + +<p class="centre">(To a friend leaving England for a year's residence in Australia.)</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">These winds and suns of spring<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That warm with breath and wing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">For all good gifts they bring<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Require one better thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One sharper dole of sorrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sunder soon by half a world of sea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her son from England and my friend from me.<a name="page154" id="page154"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Nor hope nor love nor fear<br /></span> +<span class="i4">May speed or stay one year,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The seasons perish and be born again,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Restoring all we lend,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Reluctant, of a friend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lend their life and light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now lent again for one reluctant year.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">So much we lend indeed,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Perforce, by force of need,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So much we must; even these things and no more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The far sea sundering and the sundered shore<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A world apart from ours,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">So much the imperious hours,<a name="page155" id="page155"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Exact, and spare not; but no more than these<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All earth and all her seas<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Through bright and dark and bright<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Returns of day and night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I bid the swift year speed and change and give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His breath of life to make the next year live<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With sunnier suns for us<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A life more prosperous,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A merrier March for me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A rosier-girdled race of night with day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A goodlier April and a tenderer May.<a name="page156" id="page156"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">For him the inverted year<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Shall mark our seasons here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With alien alternation, and revive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This withered winter, slaying the spring alive<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With darts more sharply drawn<br /></span> +<span class="i4">As nearer draws the dawn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In heaven transfigured over earth transformed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with our winters warmed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wasted with our summers, till the beams<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise on his face that rose on Dante's dreams.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Till fourfold morning rise<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of starshine on his eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At height of night with semblance of a cross<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Whose grace and ghostly glory<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Poured heaven on purgatory<a name="page157" id="page157"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow glad<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For love thereof it had<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lovely joy of loving; so may these<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make bright with welcome now their southern seas.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">O happy stars, whose mirth<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The saddest soul on earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ever soared and sang found strong to bless,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lightening his life's harsh load of heaviness<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With comfort sown like seed<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In dream though not in deed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let all your lights now shine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all as glorious gladness on his eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For whom indeed and not in dream they rise.<a name="page158" id="page158"></a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">As those great twins of air<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Hailed once with oldworld prayer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all folk alway faring forth by sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So now may these for grace and guidance be,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To guard his sail and bring<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Again to brighten spring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The face we look for and the hand we lack<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still, till they light him back,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As welcome as to first discovering eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">As parting now he goes<br /></span> +<span class="i4">From snow-time back to snows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So back to spring from summer may next year<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Restore him, and our hearts receive him here,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The best good gift that spring<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Had ever grace to bring<a name="page159" id="page159"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">At fortune's happiest hour of star-blest birth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Back to love's homebright earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Earth and sea-wind and sea<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And stars and sunlight be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">All things as good as strange<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Crown all the seasons' change<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With changing flower and compensating fruit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From one year's ripening root;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till next year bring us, roused at spring's recall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than all.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="citation"><i>March 26, 1880.</i><a name="page161" id="page161"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="page163" id="page163"></a><a name="part13" id="part13"></a>BY THE NORTH SEA</h2> + +<h4>TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS.</h4> + +<div class="centre"><div class="stanza"> +'We are what suns and winds and waters make us.'—<span class="smcap">Landor.</span> +</div></div> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>The spirit of man fulfilling—these create</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>That joy wherewith man's life grown passionate</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To know the secret word our Mother saith</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>In silence, and to see, though doubt wax great,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Death as the shadow cast by life on fate,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Brother, to whom our Mother as to me</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Is dearer than all dreams of days undone,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>This song I give you of the sovereign three</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>That are as life and sleep and death are, one:</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Where nought of man's endures before the sun.</i><a name="page165" id="page165"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr /> + +<h3>BY THE NORTH SEA</h3> + + +<h4>I.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A land that is lonelier than ruin;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A sea that is stranger than death:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far fields that a rose never blew in,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wan waste where the winds lack breath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Waste endless and boundless and flowerless<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To strive with the sea.<a name="page166" id="page166"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Far flickers the flight of the swallows,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Far flutters the weft of the grass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spun dense over desolate hollows<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More pale than the clouds as they pass:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thick woven as the weft of a witch is<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Are waifs on the wind.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The pastures are herdless and sheepless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No pasture or shelter for herds:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wind is relentless and sleepless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And restless and songless the birds;<a name="page167" id="page167"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their cries from afar fall breathless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their wings are as lightnings that flee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the land has two lords that are deathless:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Death's self, and the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">These twain, as a king with his fellow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hold converse of desolate speech:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her waters are haggard and yellow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And crass with the scurf of the beach:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his garments are grey as the hoary<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wan sky where the day lies dim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his power is to her, and his glory,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As hers unto him.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In the pride of his power she rejoices,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In her glory he glows and is glad:<a name="page168" id="page168"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">In her darkness the sound of his voice is,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With his breath she dilates and is mad:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Shall I give thee not back if thou give me,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">O sister, O sea?'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And year upon year dawns living,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And age upon age drops dead:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his hand is not weary of giving,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the thirst of her heart is not fed:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the hunger that moans in her passion,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the rage in her hunger that roars,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As a wolf's that the winter lays lash on,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Still calls and implores.<a name="page169" id="page169"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her walls have no granite for girder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No fortalice fronting her stands:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But reefs the bloodguiltiest of murder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are less than the banks of her sands:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These number their slain by the thousand;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the ship hath no surety to be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the bank is abreast of her bows and<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Aflush with the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>8.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No surety to stand, and no shelter<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To dawn out of darkness but one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Out of waters that hurtle and welter<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No succour to dawn with the sun<a name="page170" id="page170"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">But a rest from the wind as it passes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where, hardly redeemed from the waves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lie thick as the blades of the grasses<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The dead in their graves.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>9.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A multitude noteless of numbers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As wild weeds cast on an heap:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sounder than sleep are their slumbers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And softer than song is their sleep;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sweeter than all things and stranger<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sense, if perchance it may be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the wind is divested of danger<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And scatheless the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>10.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That the roar of the banks they breasted<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is hurtless as bellowing of herds,<a name="page171" id="page171"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the strength of his wings that invested<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wind, as the strength of a bird's;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the sea-mew's might or the swallow's<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That cry to him back if he cries,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As over the graves and their hollows<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Days darken and rise.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>11.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As the souls of the dead men disburdened<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And clean of the sins that they sinned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a lovelier than man's life guerdoned<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And delight as a wave's in the wind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And delight as the wind's in the billow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Birds pass, and deride with their glee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The flesh that has dust for its pillow<br /></span> +<span class="i6">As wrecks have the sea.<a name="page172" id="page172"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>12.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the ways of the sun wax dimmer,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wings flash through the dusk like beams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The bird in the graveyard gleams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the cloud at its wing's edge whitens<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When the clarions of sunrise are heard,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The graves that the bird's note brightens<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Grow bright for the bird.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>13.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As the waves of the numberless waters<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That the wind cannot number who guides<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are the sons of the shore and the daughters<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here lulled by the chime of the tides:<a name="page173" id="page173"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here in the press of them standing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We know not if these or if we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Live truliest, or anchored to landing<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Or drifted to sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>14.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In the valley he named of decision<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No denser were multitudes met<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the soul of the seer in her vision<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Saw nations for doom of them set;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Saw darkness in dawn, and the splendour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of judgment, the sword and the rod;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the doom here of death is more tender<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And gentler the god.<a name="page174" id="page174"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>15.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And gentler the wind from the dreary<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sea-banks by the waves overlapped,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Being weary, speaks peace to the weary<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From slopes that the tide-stream hath sapped;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sweeter than all that we call so<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The seal of their slumber shall be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the graves that embosom them also<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Be sapped of the sea.<a name="page175" id="page175"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>II.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For the heart of the waters is cruel,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the kisses are dire of their lips,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And their waves are as fire is to fuel<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the strength of the sea-faring ships,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though the sea's eye gleam as a jewel<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the sun's eye back as he dips.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though the sun's eye flash to the sea's<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Live light of delight and of laughter,<a name="page176" id="page176"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her lips breathe back to the breeze<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The kiss that the wind's lips waft her<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the sun that subsides, and sees<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No gleam of the storm's dawn after.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And the wastes of the wild sea-marches<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where the borderers are matched in their might—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bleak fens that the sun's weight parches,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dense waves that reject his light—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Change under the change-coloured arches<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of changeless morning and night<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The waves are as ranks enrolled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Too close for the storm to sever:<a name="page177" id="page177"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">The fens lie naked and cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But their heart fails utterly never:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lists are set from of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the warfare endureth for ever.<a name="page178" id="page178"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>III.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Miles, and miles, and miles of desolation!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leagues on leagues on leagues without a change!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sign or token of some eldest nation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here would make the strange land not so strange.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time-forgotten, yea since time's creation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seem these borders where the sea-birds range.<a name="page179" id="page179"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Grows his heart who journeys here alone.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth and all its thoughts of earth sink under<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep as deep in water sinks a stone.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hardly knows it if the rollers thunder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hardly whence the lonely wind is blown.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Tall the plumage of the rush-flower tosses,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sharp and soft in many a curve and line<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gleam and glow the sea-coloured marsh-mosses,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Salt and splendid from the circling brine.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Streak on streak of glimmering seashine crosses<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All the land sea-saturate as with wine.<a name="page180" id="page180"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Far, and far between, in divers orders,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clear grey steeples cleave the low grey sky;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fast and firm as time-unshaken warders,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hearts made sure by faith, by hope made high.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These alone in all the wild sea-borders<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fear no blast of days and nights that die.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All the land is like as one man's face is,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pale and troubled still with change of cares.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Doubt and death pervade her clouded spaces:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Strength and length of life and peace are theirs;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Theirs alone amid these weary places.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seeing not how the wild world frets and fares.<a name="page181" id="page181"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Firm and fast where all is cloud that changes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cloud-clogged sunlight, cloud by sunlight thinned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stern and sweet, above the sand-hill ranges<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Watch the towers and tombs of men that sinned<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Once, now calm as earth whose only change is<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud, and wind.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Out and in and out the sharp straits wander,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In and out and in the wild way strives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Starred and paved and lined with flowers that squander<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gold as golden as the gold of hives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Salt and moist and multiform: but yonder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">See, what sign of life or death survives?<a name="page182" id="page182"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>8.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Seen then only when the songs of olden<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Harps were young whose echoes yet endure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hymned of Homer when his years were golden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Known of only when the world was pure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here is Hades, manifest, beholden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Surely, surely here, if aught be sure!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>9.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Where the border-line was crossed, that, sundering<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Death from life, keeps weariness from rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">None can tell, who fares here forward wondering;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">None may doubt but here might end his quest.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here life's lightning joys and woes once thundering<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sea-like round him cease like storm suppressed.<a name="page183" id="page183"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>10.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here the wise wave-wandering steadfast-hearted<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Guest of many a lord of many a land<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Saw the shape or shade of years departed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Saw the semblance risen and hard at hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Saw the mother long from love's reach parted,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Anticleia, like a statue stand.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>11.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Statue? nay, nor tissued image woven<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fair on hangings in his father's hall;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nay, too fast her faith of heart was proven,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Far too firm her loveliest love of all;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love wherethrough the loving heart was cloven,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love that hears not when the loud Fates call.<a name="page184" id="page184"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>12.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Love that lives and stands up re-created<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love more strong than death or all things fated,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Child's and mother's, lit by love and led;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love that found what life so long awaited<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here, when life came down among the dead.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>13.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here, where never came alive another,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Came her son across the sundering tide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crossed before by many a warrior brother<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once that warred on Ilion at his side;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here spread forth vain hands to clasp the mother<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dead, that sorrowing for his love's sake died.<a name="page185" id="page185"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>14.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Parted, though by narrowest of divisions,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clasp he might not, only might implore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sundered yet by bitterest of derisions,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Son, and mother from the son she bore—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here? But all dispeopled here of visions<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lies, forlorn of shadows even, the shore.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>15.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All too sweet such men's Hellenic speech is,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All too fain they lived of light to see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Once to see the darkness of these beaches,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once to sing this Hades found of me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ghostless, all its gulfs and creeks and reaches,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sky, and shore, and cloud, and waste, and sea.<a name="page186" id="page186"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>IV.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But aloft and afront of me faring<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Far forward as folk in a dream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That strive, between doubting and daring<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Right on till the goal for them gleam,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full forth till their goal on them lighten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The harbour where fain they would be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What headlands there darken and brighten?<br /></span> +<span class="i4">What change in the sea?<a name="page187" id="page187"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What houses and woodlands that nestle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Safe inland to lee of the hill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As it slopes from the headlands that wrestle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And succumb to the strong sea's will?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truce is not, nor respite, nor pity,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the battle is waged not of hands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where over the grave of a city<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The ghost of it stands.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Where the wings of the sea-wind slacken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Green lawns to the landward thrive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fields brighten and pine-woods blacken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the heat in their heart is alive;<a name="page188" id="page188"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">They blossom and warble and murmur,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the sense of their spirit is free:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But harder to shoreward and firmer<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The grasp of the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Like ashes the low cliffs crumble,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The banks drop down into dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heights of the hills are made humble,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As a reed's is the strength of their trust:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As a city's that armies environ,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The strength of their stay is of sand:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the grasp of the sea is as iron,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Laid hard on the land.<a name="page189" id="page189"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A land that is thirstier than ruin;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A sea that is hungrier than death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heaped hills that a tree never grew in;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wide sands where the wave draws breath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All solace is here for the spirit<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That ever for ever may be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the soul of thy son to inherit,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">My mother, my sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O delight of the headlands and beaches!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O desire of the wind on the wold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More glad than a man's when it reaches<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That end which it sought from of old<a name="page190" id="page190"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the palm of possession is dreary<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the sense that in search of it sinned;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But nor satisfied ever nor weary<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Is ever the wind.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The delight that he takes but in living<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is more than of all things that live:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the world that has all things for giving<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Has nothing so goodly to give:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But more than delight his desire is,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the goal where his pinions would be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is immortal as air or as fire is,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Immense as the sea.<a name="page191" id="page191"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>8.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though hence come the moan that he borrows<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From darkness and depth of the night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though hence be the spring of his sorrows,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hence too is the joy of his might;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The delight that his doom is for ever<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To seek and desire and rejoice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the sense that eternity never<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Shall silence his voice.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>9.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That satiety never may stifle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor weariness ever estrange<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor time be so strong as to rifle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor change be so great as to change<a name="page192" id="page192"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">His gift that renews in the giving.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The joy that exalts him to be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alone of all elements living<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The lord of the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>10.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What is fire, that its flame should consume her?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More fierce than all fires are her waves:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More deep are her own than their graves.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life shrinks from his pinions that cover<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The darkness by thunders bedinned:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But she knows him, her lord and her lover,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The godhead of wind.<a name="page193" id="page193"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>11.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For a season his wings are about her,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His breath on her lips for a space;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such rapture he wins not without her<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the width of his worldwide race.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though the forests bow down, and the mountains<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wax dark, and the tribes of them flee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His delight is more deep in the fountains<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And springs of the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>12.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There are those too of mortals that love him,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">There are souls that desire and require,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be the glories of midnight above him<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or beneath him the daysprings of fire:<a name="page194" id="page194"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And their hearts are as harps that approve him<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And praise him as chords of a lyre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That were fain with their music to move him<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To meet their desire.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>13.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To descend through the darkness to grace them,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till darkness were lovelier than light:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To encompass and grasp and embrace them,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till their weakness were one with his might:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the strength of his wings to caress them,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With the blast of his breath to set free;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the mouths of his thunders to bless them<br /></span> +<span class="i6">For sons of the sea.<a name="page195" id="page195"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>14.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For these have the toil and the guerdon<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That the wind has eternally: these<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have part in the boon and the burden<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That finds not, but seeking rejoices<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That possession can work him no wrong:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the voice at the heart of their voice is<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The sense of his song.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>15.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For the wind's is their doom and their blessing;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To desire, and have always above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A possession beyond their possessing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A love beyond reach of their love.<a name="page196" id="page196"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Green earth has her sons and her daughters,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And these have their guerdons; but we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Elect of the sea.<a name="page197" id="page197"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>V.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For the sea too seeks and rejoices,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gains and loses and gains,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the joy of her heart's own choice is<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As ours, and as ours are her pains:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the thoughts of our hearts are her voices,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And as hers is the pulse of our veins.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her fields that know not of dearth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor lie for their fruit's sake fallow<a name="page198" id="page198"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laugh large in the depth of their mirth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But inshore here in the shallow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Embroiled with encumbrance of earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their skirts are turbid and yellow.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The grime of her greed is upon her,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sign of her deed is her soil;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the earth's is her own dishonour,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And corruption the crown of her toil:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is this, to be shamed by her spoil.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But afar where pollution is none,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor ensign of strife nor endeavour,<a name="page199" id="page199"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where her heart and the sun's are one,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the soil of her sin comes never,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She is pure as the wind and the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And her sweetness endureth for ever.<a name="page200" id="page200"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>VI.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Death, and change, and darkness everlasting,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deaf, that hears not what the daystar saith,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blind, past all remembrance and forecasting,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dead, past memory that it once drew breath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These, above the washing tides and wasting,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Reign, and rule this land of utter death.<a name="page201" id="page201"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Change of change, darkness of darkness, hidden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Very death of very death, begun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When none knows,—the knowledge is forbidden—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Self-begotten, self-proceeding, one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Born, not made—abhorred, unchained, unchidden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Night stands here defiant of the sun.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Change of change, and death of death begotten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Darkness born of darkness, one and three,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ghostly godhead of a world forgotten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Crowned with heaven, enthroned on land and sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here, where earth with dead men's bones is rotten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">God of Time, thy likeness worships thee.<a name="page202" id="page202"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lo, thy likeness of thy desolation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shape and figure of thy might, O Lord,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Formless form, incarnate miscreation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Served of all things living and abhorred;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth herself is here thine incarnation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Time, of all things born on earth adored.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All that worship thee are fearful of thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No man may not worship thee for fear:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Prayers nor curses prove not nor disprove thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Move nor change thee with our change of cheer:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All at last, though all abhorred thee, love thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">God, the sceptre of whose throne is here.<a name="page203" id="page203"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here thy throne and sceptre of thy station,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here the palace paven for thy feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here thy sign from nation unto nation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Passed as watchword for thy guards to greet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Guards that go before thine exaltation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ages, clothed with bitter years and sweet.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rose triumphal, crowning all a city,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Built of holy hands for holy pity,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm.<a name="page204" id="page204"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>8.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hailed a God more merciful than Time.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>9.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his nod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lies he, stricken by his master's rod.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Where is man?' the cloister murmurs wailing;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Back the mute shrine thunders—'Where is God?'<a name="page205" id="page205"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>10.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here is all the end of all his glory—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here, where earth is dense with dead men's bones.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>11.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Low and loud and long, a voice for ever,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sounds the wind's clear story like a song.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dust from dust as years relapse along;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Graves where men made sure to rest, and never<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lie dismantled by the seasons' wrong.<a name="page206" id="page206"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>12.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now displaced, devoured and desecrated,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now by Time's hands darkly disinterred,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These poor dead that sleeping here awaited<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Long the archangel's re-creating word,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till the blast of judgment should be heard,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>13.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like slaves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Desolate beyond man's desolation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shrink and sink into the waste of waves.<a name="page207" id="page207"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>14.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shroudless, down the loose collapsing banks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crumble, from their constant place detruded,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That the sea devours and gives not thanks.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>15.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rows on rows and line by line they crumble,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They that thought for all time through to be.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Breaks the grim field paced alone of me.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth, and man, and all their gods wax humble<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea.<a name="page208" id="page208"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4>VII.</h4> + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But afar on the headland exalted,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But beyond in the curl of the bay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our father is lord of the day.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our father and lord that we follow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For deathless and ageless is he;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his robe is the whole sky's hollow,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">His sandal the sea.<a name="page209" id="page209"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Where the horn of the headland is sharper,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And her green floor glitters with fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sea has the sun for a harper,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sun has the sea for a lyre.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The waves are a pavement of amber,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the feet of the sea-winds trod<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To receive in a god's presence-chamber<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Our father, the God.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Time, haggard and changeful and hoary,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is master and God of the land:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the air is fulfilled of the glory<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That is shed from our lord's right hand.<a name="page210" id="page210"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">O father of all of us ever,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All glory be only to thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From heaven, that is void of thee never,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And earth, and the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O Sun, whereof all is beholden,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Behold now the shadow of this death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This place of the sepulchres, olden<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And emptied and vain as a breath.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bloom of the bountiful heather<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Laughs broadly beyond in thy light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As dawn, with her glories to gather,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">At darkness and night.<a name="page211" id="page211"></a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though the Gods of the night lie rotten<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And their honour be taken away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the noise of their names forgotten,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou, Lord, art God of the day.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art father and saviour and spirit,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O Sun, of the soul that is free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hath grace of thy grace to inherit<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Thine earth and thy sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The hills and the sands and the beaches,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The waters adrift and afar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The banks and the creeks and the reaches,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">How glad of thee all these are!<a name="page212" id="page212"></a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">The flowers, overflowing, overcrowded,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are drunk with the mad wind's mirth:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The delight of thy coming unclouded<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Makes music of earth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h5>7.</h5> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I, last least voice of her voices,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Give thanks that were mute in me long<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the soul in my soul that rejoices<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the song that is over my song.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time gives what he gains for the giving<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or takes for his tribute of me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My dreams to the wind everliving,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">My song to the sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr /> +<p class="centre"><i>Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.</i></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in Song, by Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN 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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 + + +Title: Studies in Song + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: October 31, 2005 [EBook #16973] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +STUDIES IN SONG + +BY + +ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE + + +London +CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY +1880 + +_All rights reserved_ + +LONDON: PRINTED BY +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE +AND PARLIAMENT STREET + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE +SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1 + +GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS FROM ARISTOPHANES 67 + +OFF SHORE 75 + +AFTER NINE YEARS 95 + +FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI 103 + +EVENING ON THE BROADS 107 + +THE EMPEROR'S PROGRESS 125 + +THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA 131 + +THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY 135 + +THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA 139 + +SIX YEARS OLD 145 + +A PARTING SONG 151 + +BY THE NORTH SEA 161 + + + + + +SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR + +BORN JANUARY 30TH, 1775 + +DIED SEPTEMBER 17TH, 1864 + + +There is delight in singing, though none hear +Beside the singer: and there is delight +In praising, though the praiser sit alone +And see the praised far off him, far above. + + LANDOR. + + + + +DEDICATION. + +TO MRS. LYNN LINTON. + + +_Daughter in spirit elect and consecrate + By love and reverence of the Olympian sire +Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great, + And found so gracious toward my long desire +To bid that love in song before his gate + Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre, +To none save one it now may dedicate + Song's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre. + And though the gift be light + As ashes in men's sight, + Left by the flame of no ethereal fire, + Yet, for his worthier sake + Than words are worthless, take + This wreath of words ere yet their hour expire: + So, haply, from some heaven above, +He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love._ + +_May 24, 1880._ + + + + +_SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR._ + + +1. + +Five years beyond an hundred years have seen + Their winters, white as faith's and age's hue, +Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between, + And hope's young conquering colours reared anew, +Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keen + Smote sharper once than ever storm-wind blew, +A head predestined for the girdling green + That laughs at lightning all the seasons through, + Nor frost or change can sunder + Its crown untouched of thunder +Leaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grew + Alone for brows too bold + For storm to sear of old, + Elect to shine in time's eternal view, + Rose on the verge of radiant life +Between the winds and sunbeams mingling love with strife. + + +2. + +The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth + To Milton's white republic undefiled +That might endure so few fleet years on earth + Bore in him likewise as divine a child; +But born not less for crowns of love and mirth, + Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild, +The leaf that girds about with gentler girth + The brow steel-bound in battle, and the wild +Soft spray that flowers above + The flower-soft hair of love; + And the white lips of wayworn winter smiled + And grew serene as spring's + When with stretched clouds like wings + Or wings like drift of snow-clouds massed and piled + The godlike giant, softening, spread +A shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head. + + +3. + +And o'er it brightening bowed the wild-haired hour, + And touched his tongue with honey and with fire, +And breathed between his lips the note of power + That makes of all the winds of heaven a lyre +Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that tower +To softest springs of waters that suspire, +With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower + Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire: + And bright before his face + That Hour became a Grace, + As in the light of their Athenian quire + When the Hours before the sun + And Graces were made one, + Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre + By one dear name of natural joy, +To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy. + + +4. + +Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder + Or love could lift them for the sun to smite, +His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder + Had risen, perplexing the presageful night +With shadow and glory around her sphere and under + And portents prophesying by sound and sight; +And half the sound was song and half was thunder, + And half his life of lightning, half of light: + And in the soft clenched hand + Shone like a burning brand + A shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight, + Wrought only for such lord + As so may wield the sword + That all things ill be put to fear and flight + Even at the flash and sweep and gleam +Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream. + + +5. + +Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beasts + The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings; +From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east's + The splendour of the shadow that it flings +Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts + Of men fulfilled with food of evil things; +Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests, + Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings; + Turns dark the lamp's hot light, + And turns the darkness bright + As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings; + And far before its way + Heaven, yearning toward the day, + Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings; + And never hand yet earlier played +With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade. + + +6. + +As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew + More soft than slumber's, fell the first note's sound +From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier through + Than leaves through calm air wheeling toward the ground +Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue + Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound, +Ere winter loosen all the AEolian crew + With storm unleashed behind them like a hound. + As lightly rose and sank + Beside a green-flowered bank + The clear first notes his burning boyhood found + To sing her sacred praise + Who rode her city's ways + Clothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned; + A song of soft presageful breath, +Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death; + + +7. + +Who should love two things only and only praise + More than all else for ever: even the glory +Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days + Take light whereby death's self seems transitory; +And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise, + Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory +From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways, + And lightens with his light the night of story; + Love that lifts up from dust + Life, and makes darkness just, + And purges as with fire of purgatory + The dense disastrous air, + To burn old falsehood bare + And give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary; + Love, that with eyes of ageless youth +Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth. + + +8. + +For at his birth the sistering stars were one + That flamed upon it as one fiery star; +Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun, + And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are. +Of all that love not liberty let none + Love her that fills our lips with fire from far +To mix with winds and seas in unison + And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar + Out where our songs fly free + Across time's bounded sea, + A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car, + Till all the spheres of night + Chime concord round their flight + Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar, + From stars that sang for Homer's birth +To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth + + +9. + +Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave, + Stars of our worship, lights of our desire! +For never man that heard the world's wind rave + To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre: +Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave + Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher: +Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave + With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire: + No blast of all that blow + Might bid the torch burn low + That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre, + Indomitable of storm, + That now no flaws deform + Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire, + One light of godlike breath and flame, +To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name. + + +10. + +The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew + And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar +Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue + Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car, +That saw how swift a gathering glory grew + About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar +A splendour strong to burn and burst them through + And mix in one sheer light things near and far. + First flew before his path + Light shafts of love and wrath, + But winged and edged as elder warriors' are; + Then rose a light that showed + Across the midsea road + From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar + The way of war and love and fate +Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate. + + +11. + +Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land, + Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved, +By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned, + Flamed on him, and his burning lips were moved +As that live statue's throned on Lybian sand + When morning moves it, ere her light faith roved +From promise, and her tyrant's poisonous hand + Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved + More deadly than despair + And falser even than fair, + Though fairer than all elder hopes removed + As landmarks by the crime + Of inundating time; + Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved: + For even as in some darkling dance +Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France. + + +12. + +But past the snows and summits Pyrenean + Love stronger-winged held more prevailing flight +That o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and AEgean + Shores lightened with one storm of sound and light. +From earliest even to hoariest years one paean + Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight, +From Nestor's tongue in accents Achillean + On death's blind verge dominant over night + For voice as hand and hand + As voice for one fair land + Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the height + Where darkling pines enrobe + The steel-cold Lake of Gaube, + Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite, + To where on peak or moor or plain +His heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain. + + +13. + +Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand + Pale in the light of war or treacherous fate +Song bade before him all their shadows stand + For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate. +The father by whose wrong revenged his land + Was given for sword and fire to desolate +Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand, + Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great. + Fair as she smiled and died, + Death's crowned and breathless bride + Smiled as one living even on craft and hate: + And pity, a star unrisen, + Scarce lit Ferrante's prison + Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate + That gave their life and love and light +To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight. + + +14. + +Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell + In perfect notes of music-measured pain +On veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewell + Sob through the song that bade them rise again; +Rise in the light of living song, to dwell + With memories crowned of memory: so the strain +Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles hell + And sweet the darkness of the breathless plain, + And with Elysian flowers + Recrowned the wreathless hours + That mused and mourned upon their works in vain; + For all their works of death + Song filled with light and breath, + And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain; + For sweet as all the wide sweet south +She found the song like honey from the lion's mouth. + + +15. + +High from his throne in heaven Simonides, + Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tears +That the everlasting sun of all time sees + All golden, molten from the forge of years, +Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees + Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners' ears, +Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees + And honied as their harvest, that endears + The toil of flowery days; + And smiling perfect praise + Hailed his one brother mateless else of peers: + Whom we that hear not him + For length of date grown dim + Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears; + And harshest heights of sorrowing hours, +Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers. + + +16. + +Therefore to him the shadow of death was none, + The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb: +And multitudinous time for him was one, + Who bade before his equal seat of doom +Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun + The weavers of the world's large-historied loom, +By their own works of light or darkness done + Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom. + In speech of purer gold + Than even they spake of old + He bade the breath of Sidney's lips relume + The fire of thought and love + That made his bright life move + Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom + To blameless music ever, strong +As death and sweet as death-annihilating song. + + +17. + +Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam, + Love gave his thought strength equal to release +From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam + Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease; +So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home + The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease: +And through the trumpet of a child of Rome + Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece. + As though some northern hand + Reft from the Latin land + A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece + To clothe with golden sound + Of old joy newly found + And rapture as of penetrating peace + The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime, +And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time. + + +18. + +He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy + Fade, and the darkness at Oenone's prayer +Close upon her that closed upon her boy, + For all the curse of godhead that she bare; +And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy + With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair; +And his love smitten in their dawn of joy + Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear; + And one in flowery coils + Caught as in fiery toils + Smite Calydon with mourning unaware; + And where her low turf shrine + Showed Modesty divine + The fairest mother's daughter far more fair + Hide on her breast the heavenly shame +That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame. + + +19. + +Nor less the light of story than of song + With graver glories girt his godlike head, +Reverted alway from the temporal throng + Of lives that live not toward the living dead. +The shadows and the splendours of their throng + Made bright and dark about his board and bed +The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong + With sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that led + Forth of the ghostly gate + Opening in spite of fate + Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread, + Divine and direful things, + These foul as priests or kings, + Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, red + With blood and green with palms and white +With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light. + + +20. + +The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray + That keeps the place of Phocion's name serene +And clears the cloud from Kosciusko's day, + Alternate as dark hours with bright between, +Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay + For all stars open that all eyes had seen +Rise on the night or twilight of the way + Where feet of human hopes and fears had been. + Again the sovereign word + On Milton's lips was heard + Living: again the tender three days' queen + Drew bright and gentle breath + On the sharp edge of death: + And, staged again to show of mortal scene, + Tiberius, ere his name grew dire, +Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire. + + +21. + +Most ardent and most awful and most fond, + The fervour of his Apollonian eye +Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond + Of time whose years beheld her and past by +Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned + The casque again of Pallas; for her cry +Forth of the past and future, depths beyond + This where the present and its tyrants lie, + As one great voice of twain + For him had pealed again, + Heard but of hearts high as her own was high, + High as her own and his + And pure as love's heart is, + That lives though hope at once and memory die: + And with her breath his clarion's blast +Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past. + + +22. + +As a wave only obsequious to the wind + Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap, +Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned + By the strong god's breath moving on the deep +From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind + That shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap, +So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned + And pity toward all tears he saw men weep, + Arose to take man's part + His loving lion heart, + Kind as the sun's that has in charge to keep + Earth and the seed thereof + Safe in his lordly love, + Strong as sheer truth and soft as very sleep; + The mightiest heart since Milton's leapt, +The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare slept. + + +23. + +Like the wind's own on her divided sea + His song arose on Corinth, and aloud +Recalled her Isthmian song and strife when she + Was thronged with glories as with gods in crowd +And as the wind's own spirit her breath was free + And as the heaven's own heart her soul was proud, +But freer and prouder stood no son than he + Of all she bare before her heart was bowed; + None higher than he who heard + Medea's keen last word + Transpierce her traitor, and like a rushing cloud + That sundering shows a star + Saw pass her thunderous car + And a face whiter and deadlier than a shroud + That lightened from it, and the brand +Of tender blood that falling seared his suppliant hand. + + +24. + +More fair than all things born and slain of fate, + More glorious than all births of days and nights, +He bade the spirit of man regenerate, + Rekindling, rise and reassume the rights +That in high seasons of his old estate + Clothed him and armed with majesties and mights +Heroic, when the times and hearts were great + And in the depths of ages rose the heights + Radiant of high deeds done + And souls that matched the sun + For splendour with the lightnings of their lights + Whence even their uttered names + Burn like the strong twin flames + Of song that shakes a throne and steel that smites; + As on Thermopylae when shone +Leonidas, on Syracuse Timoleon. + + +25. + +Or, sweeter than the breathless buds when spring + With smiles and tears and kisses bids them breathe, +Fell with its music from his quiring string + Fragrance of pine-leaves and odorous heath +Twined round the lute whereto he sighed to sing + Of the oak that screened and showed its maid beneath, +Who seeing her bee crawl back with broken wing + Faded, a fairer flower than all her wreath, + And paler, though her oak + Stood scathless of the stroke + More sharp than edge of axe or wolfish teeth, + That mixed with mortals dead + Her own half heavenly head + And life incorporate with a sylvan sheath, + And left the wild rose and the dove +A secret place and sacred from all guests but Love. + + +26. + +But in the sweet clear fields beyond the river + Dividing pain from peace and man from shade +He saw the wings that there no longer quiver + Sink of the hours whose parting footfalls fade +On ears which hear the rustling amaranth shiver + With sweeter sound of wind than ever made +Music on earth: departing, they deliver + The soul that shame or wrath or sorrow swayed; + And round the king of men + Clash the clear arms again, + Clear of all soil and bright as laurel braid, + That rang less high for joy + Through the gates fallen of Troy + Than here to hail the sacrificial maid, + Iphigeneia, when the ford +Fast-flowing of sorrows brought her father and their lord. + + +27. + +And in the clear gulf of the hollow sea + He saw light glimmering through the grave green gloom +That hardly gave the sun's eye leave to see + Cymodameia; but nor tower nor tomb, +No tower on earth, no tomb of waves may be, + That may not sometime by diviner doom +Be plain and pervious to the poet; he + Bids time stand back from him and fate make room + For passage of his feet, + Strong as their own are fleet, + And yield the prey no years may reassume + Through all their clamorous track, + Nor night nor day win back + Nor give to darkness what his eyes illume + And his lips bless for ever: he +Knows what earth knows not, sings truth sung not of the sea. + + +28. + +Before the sentence of a curule chair + More sacred than the Roman, rose and stood +To take their several doom the imperial pair + Diversely born of Venus, and in mood +Diverse as their one mother, and as fair, + Though like two stars contrasted, and as good, +Though different as dark eyes from golden hair; + One as that iron planet red like blood + That bears among the stars + Fierce witness of her Mars + In bitter fire by her sweet light subdued; + One, in the gentler skies + Sweet as her amorous eyes: + One proud of worlds and seas and darkness rude + Composed and conquered; one content +With lightnings from loved eyes of lovers lightly sent. + + +29. + +And where Alpheus and where Ladon ran + Radiant, by many a rushy and rippling cove +More known to glance of god than wandering man, + He sang the strife of strengths divine that strove, +Unequal, one with other, for a span, + Who should be friends for ever in heaven above +And here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan, + And the awless lord of kings and shepherds, Love: + All the sweet strife and strange + With fervid counterchange + Till one fierce wail through many a glade and grove + Rang, and its breath made shiver + The reeds of many a river, + And the warm airs waxed wintry that it clove, + Keen-edged as ice-retempered brand; +Nor might god's hurt find healing save of godlike hand. + + +30. + +As when the jarring gates of thunder ope + Like earthquake felt in heaven, so dire a cry, +So fearful and so fierce--'Give the sword scope!'-- + Rang from a daughter's lips, darkening the sky +To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope + With starless horror: nor the God's own eye +Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope, + Might well endure to see the adulteress die, + The husband-slayer fordone + By swordstroke of her son, + Unutterable, unimaginable on high, + On earth abhorrent, fell + Beyond all scourge of hell, + Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh, + Mute, sister-like, and closer clung +Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue. + + +31. + +All these things heard and seen and sung of old, + He heard and saw and sang them. Once again +Might foot of man tread, eye of man behold + Things unbeholden save of ancient men, +Ways save by gods untrodden. In his hold + The staff that stayed through some AEtnean glen +The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled + And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as then + Became a prophet's rod, + A lyre on fire of God, + Being still the staff of exile: yea, as when + The voice poured forth on us + Was even of AEschylus, + And his one word great as the crying of ten, + Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong, +Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song. + + +32. + +Him too whom none save one before him ever + Beheld, nor since hath man again beholden, +Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giver + Of all gifts back to man by time withholden, +Shakespeare--him too, whom sea-like ages sever, + As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden +To landward, from our songs that find him never, + Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden-- + Him too this one song found, + And raised at its sole sound + Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden + Legends forlorn of breath, + Up from the deeps of death, + Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden, + The wise divine strong soul, whom fate +Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great. + + +33. + +Nor stands the seer who raised him less august + Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe, +Less constant or less loving or less just, + But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith, +Holding all high and gentle names in trust + Of time for honour; so his quickening breath +Called from the darkness of their martyred dust + Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth, + Revived and reinspired + With speech from heavenward fired + By love to say what Love the Archangel saith + Only, nor may such word + Save by such ears be heard + As hear the tongues of angels after death + Descending on them like a dove +Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love. + + +34. + +All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things, + All generous names and loyal, and all wise, +With all his heart in all its wayfarings + He sought, and worshipped, seeing them with his eyes +In very present glory, clothed with wings + Of words and deeds and dreams immortal, rise +Visible more than living slaves and kings, + Audible more than actual vows and lies: + These, with scorn's fieriest rod, + These and the Lord their God, + The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the skies + As they Lord Gods of earth, + These with a rage of mirth + He mocked and scourged and spat on, in such wise + That none might stand before his rod, +And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or God. + + +35. + +For of all souls for all time glorious none + Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best, +Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun + Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest, +Of all words heard on earth the noblest one + That ever spake for souls and left them blest: +GLADLY WE SHOULD REST EVER, HAD WE WON + FREEDOM: WE HAVE LOST, AND VERY GLADLY REST. + O poet hero, lord + And father, we record + Deep in the burning tablets of the breast + Thankfully those divine + And living words of thine + For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest + With strokes engraven past hurt of years +And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears. + + +36. + +But who being less than thou shall sing of thee + Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn? +Who sing the golden garland woven of three, + Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn, +More godlike than the graven gods men see + Made all but all immortal, human born +And heavenly natured? With the first came He, + Led by the living hand, who left forlorn + Life by his death, and time + More by his life sublime + Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn, + And even for mourning praise + Heaven, as for all those days + These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn + By memory till all time lie dead, +And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head. + + +37. + +Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours, + Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace, +And verier daughter of his most perfect hours + Than any of latter time or alien place +Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers + Only, nor wearing on her statelier face +The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers + That graced and guarded round that holiest race, + That heavenliest and most high + Time hath seen live and die, + Poured all their power upon him to retrace + The erased immortal roll + Of Love's most sovereign scroll + And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace, + The scroll that on Aspasia's knees +Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles. + + +38. + +Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air, + Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third, +With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair + Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird +Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair + As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird +The walls engirdling with a circling stair + My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word + Fell from her flowerlike mouth + Not sweet with all the south; + As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred + And spake, as o'er it shone + That bright Pentameron, + And his own vines again and chestnuts heard + Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime +Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme. + + +39. + +No lovelier laughed the garden which receives + Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes +With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves, + Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies, +Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves + The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs, +In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes + What yet the wisest of the starriest wise + Whom Greece might ever hear + Speaks in the gentlest ear + That ever heard love's lips philosophize + With such deep-reasoning words + As blossoms use and birds, + Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise + Far off, in no wise over far, +Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star. + + +40. + +What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire, + Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night, +Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre + That makes time's face pale with its reflex light +And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire, + A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might +Alternating wore ever shapes more dire + Nor manifest in all men's awful sight + In form and face that wore + Heaven's light and likeness more + Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height + More fearful, since man first + Slaked with man's blood his thirst, + Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight, + Till tower on ruining tower was hurled +Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world. + + +41. + +Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand + Who carved their several praise in words of gold +To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand, + Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold +For price of blood or incense, dust or sand, + Triumph or terror. He that sought of old +His father Ammon in a stranger's land, + And shrank before the serpentining fold, + Stood in our seer's wide eye + No higher than man most high, + And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold + Fast as a scripture furled + The scroll of all the world + Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold + First thief of empire, round whose head +Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1] + + +42. + +As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss, + He saw the light of death, riotous and red, +Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis + Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, +Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, + The steely snows of Russia, for the tread +Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss + The snaky lines of blood violently shed. + Like living creeping things + That writhe but have no stings + To scare adulterers from the imperial bed + Bowed with its load of lust, + Or chill the ravenous gusts + That made her body a fire from heel to head; + Or change her high bright spirit and clear, +For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear. + + +43. + +As light that blesses, hallowing with a look; + He saw the godhead in Vittoria's face +Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took, + Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace, +A strength more heavenly to confront and brook + All ill things coiled about his worldly race, +From the bright scripture of that present book + Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace + Comfort more sweet than youth, + And hope whose child was truth, + And love that brought forth sorrow for a space, + Only that she might bear + Joy: these things, written there, + Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place, + Perused with eyes whose glory and glow +Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo. + + +44. + +With balms and dews of blessing he consoled + The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang, +Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold + Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang +On her fair hand, even till the stain of old + Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang +Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold + Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang + From other strings divine + Ere his rekindling line + With yet more piteous and intolerant pang + Pierced all men's hearts anew + That heard her passion through + Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang + Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts, +Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests. + + +45. + +He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth + And majesty of meanest men born free, +That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth + The whole world worthier of the sun to see: +The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth + Wherein souls festered by the servile sea +That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth + Thronged round with worship in Parthenope. + His hand bade Justice guide + Her child Tyrannicide, + Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be; + And pierced with Tyrrel's dart + Again the riotous heart + That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee: + And oped the cell where kinglike death +Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth. + + +46. + +Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind + He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one, +For the base heart that soiled the starry mind + Stern, for the father in his child undone +Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed + With their sweet image visibly set on +As by God's hand, clear as his own designed + The likeness radiant out of ages gone + That none may now destroy + Of that high Roman boy + Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son + True-born of sovereign seed, + Foredoomed even thence to bleed, + The stately grace of bright Caesarion, + The head unbent, the heart unbowed, +That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud. + + +47. + +With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus + At once by service and similitude, +Service devout and worship emulous + Of the same golden Muses once they wooed, +The names and shades adored of all of us, + The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood, +Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus + First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed + With blessings bright like tears + From the old memorial years, + And loves and lovely laughters, every mood + Sweet as the drops that fell + Of their own oenomel + From living lips to cheer the multitude + That feeds on words divine, and grows +More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose. + + +48. + +Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story, + The silent music that no strange note jars, +Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory + Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars +Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary + With much long warfare, and with gradual bars +Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory, + Broke, and the power came back that passion mars: + And at the lovely last + Above all anguish past + Before his own the sightless eyes like stars + Arose that watched arise + Like stars in other skies + Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars + The Dioscurian songs divine +That lighten all the world with lightning of their line. + + +49. + +He sang the last of Homer, having sung + The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide +For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung + About the day-star, doubtful to divide, +Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue + Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried, +Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung, + Homer, and grey Laertes at his side + Kingly as kings are none + Beneath a later sun, + And the sweet maiden ministering in pride + To sovereign and to sage + In their more sweet old age: + These things he sang, himself as old, and died. + And if death be not, if life be, +As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he. + + +50. + +Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love + Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind +And all bright words and all sweet works thereof; + Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind; +Heart that no fear but every grief might move + Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind; +The purest soul that ever proof could prove + From taint of tortuous or of envious mind; + Whose eyes elate and clear + Nor shame nor ever fear + But only pity or glorious wrath could blind; + Name set for love apart, + Held lifelong in my heart, + Face like a father's toward my face inclined; + No gilts like thine are mine to give, +Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live. + + +[1] Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write? + Time, in his children's blood who takes delight. + + _From the Greek of Landor._ + + +NOTES. + +6. See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the +exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor. + +10. The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully +dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir. + +13. Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este. + +14, 15. Poems 'on the Dead.' + +16. Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. + +17, 18. Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; +Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris Aram. + +19, 20. Imaginary Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; +AEschines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and Marvell; +Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania. + +21, 22, 23. Hellenics: To Corinth. + +24. Hellenics: Regeneration. + +25. The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope. + +26. The Shades of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia. + +27. Enallos and Cymodameia. + +28. The Children of Venus. + +29. Cupid and Pan. + +30. The Death of Clytemnestra; The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of +Orestes. + +32. The Last of Ulysses. + +33. Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt. + +35. _Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos._ + +36. The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. + +37. Pericles and Aspasia. + +38. The Pentameron. + +39. Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. + +40. Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio AEmilianus, Polybius, and Panaetius. + +41. Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the +Senate. + +42. The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff. + +43. Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti. + +44. Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five +Scenes (Beatrice Cenci). + +45. Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (_Imaginary Conversations_) +Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge Wolfgang +and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (_The Last Fruit off +an Old Tree_): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne +Boleyn. + +46. Essex and Spenser (_Imaginary Conversations_): Essex and Bacon: +Antony and Octavius (_Scenes for the Study_). + +47. Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus. + +48, 49. Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha. + + 'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or + half our obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible + genius of the great man whose life and whose labour lasted + even from the generation of our fathers' fathers to our own? + Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so deeply as I feel the + inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect gratitude to + the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but + 'such as I had have I given him.' + + + + +GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS + +FROM + +ARISTOPHANES + +_Attempted in English verse after the original metre._ + + +I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a +fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration +by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable +genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with +the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical +invention of the anapaestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in +a language to which all variations and combinations of anapaestic, +iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and +spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this +highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to +detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as +it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical +points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the +original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary +makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language; +and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and +undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line +overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees: +and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line--which I +doubt--could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause, +in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper +sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my +main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this +brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the +music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full +gallop as of horses who + + 'dance as 'twere to the music + Their own hoofs make.' + +I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation: +but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at +once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes. + + + + +_THE BIRDS._ + +(685-723.) + + +Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' + generations, +That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and + shadowlike nations, +Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures + fast fleeing, +Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of + our being: +Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts + are eternal; +That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things aright as to + matters supernal, +Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of streams, and the + dark beyond reaching, +Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus pack with his preaching. + + It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and + hell's broad border, +Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb of the + dark without order +First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched + in her bosom, +Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a + blossom, +Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning. +He, after his wedlock with Chaos, whose wings are of darkness, in hell + broad-burning, +For his nestlings begat him the race of us first, and upraised us to + light new-lighted. +And before this was not the race of the gods, until all things by Love + were united; +And of kind united with kind in communion of nature the sky and the sea + are +Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the gods everlasting and + blest. So that we are +Far away the most ancient of all things blest. And that we are of Love's + generation +There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings, and with us have the + Loves habitation; +And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom of + them ended, +Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued, by the help of us + only befriended, +With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb staring + and splendid. + + All best good things that befall men come from us birds, as is plain to + all reason: +For first we proclaim and make known to them spring, and the winter and + autumn in season; +Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric, in shrill-voiced + emigrant number, +And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season, and + slumber; +And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs + if it freezes. +And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the + breezes, +And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. + Then does the swallow +Give you notice to sell your greatcoat, and provide something light for + the heat that's to follow. +Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you, Dodona, nay, Phoebus Apollo. +For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in all + things your carriage, +Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any + one's marriage. +And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to discerning + prediction: +Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon: you sneeze, and the sign's as a + bird for conviction: +All tokens are 'birds' with you--sounds too, and lackeys, and donkeys. + Then must it not follow +That we ARE to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in prophetic + Apollo? + +_October 19, 1880._ + + + + +_OFF SHORE._ + + + When the might of the summer + Is most on the sea; + When the days overcome her + With joy but to be, +With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free, + + But for hours upon hours + As a thrall she remains + Spell-bound as with flowers + And content in their chains, +And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white + manes; + + Then only, far under + In the depths of her hold, + Some gleam of its wonder + Man's eye may behold, +Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold. + + Still deeper and dimmer + And goodlier they glow + For the eyes of the swimmer + Who scans them below +As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and + snow. + + Soft blossomless frondage + And foliage that gleams + As to prisoners in bondage + The light of their dreams, +The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams. + + Not as prisoners entombed + Waxen haggard and wizen, + But consoled and illumed + In the depths of their prison +With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen, + + From the banks and the beds + Of the waters divine + They lift up their heads + And the flowers of them shine +Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them of water that glimmers + like wine. + + Bright bank over bank + Making glorious the gloom, + Soft rank upon rank, + Strange bloom after bloom, +They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea's womb. + + Through the subtle and tangible + Gloom without form, + Their branches, infrangible + Ever of storm +Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the woodland when April is + warm. + + As the flight of the thunder, full + Charged with its word, + Dividing the wonderful + Depths like a bird, +Speaks wrath and delight to the heart of the night that exults to have + heard, + + So swiftly, though soundless + In silence's ear, + Light, winged from the boundless + Blue depths full of cheer, +Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not before him, but hear. + + Light, perfect and visible + Godhead of God, + God indivisible, + Lifts but his rod, +And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness is light at his nod. + + At the touch of his wand, + At the nod of his head + From the spaces beyond + Where the dawn hath her bed, +Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one risen from the + dead. + + He puts forth his hand, + And the mountains are thrilled + To the heart as they stand + In his presence, fulfilled +With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and her sorrows are + stilled. + + The moan of her travail + That groans for the light + Till dayspring unravel + The weft of the night, +At the sound of the strings of the music of morning, falls dumb with + delight. + + He gives forth his word, + And the word that he saith, + Ere well it be heard, + Strikes darkness to death; +For the thought of his heart is the sunrise, and dawn as the sound of his + breath. + + And the strength of its pulses + That passion makes proud + Confounds and convulses + The depths of the cloud +Of the darkness that heaven was engirt with, divided and rent as a shroud, + + As the veil of the shrine + Of the temple of old + When darkness divine + Over noonday was rolled; +So the heart of the night by the pulse of the light is convulsed and + controlled. + + And the sea's heart, groaning + For glories withdrawn, + And the waves' mouths, moaning + All night for the dawn, +Are uplift as the hearts and the mouths of the singers on leaside and lawn. + + And the sound of the quiring + Of all these as one, + Desired and desiring + Till dawn's will be done, +Fills full with delight of them heaven till it burns as the heart of the + sun. + + Till the waves too inherit + And waters take part + In the sense of the spirit + That breathes from his heart, +And are kindled with music as fire when the lips of the morning part, + + With music unheard + In the light of her lips, + In the life-giving word + Of the dewfall that drips +On the grasses of earth, and the wind that enkindles the wings of the + ships. + + White glories of wings + As of seafaring birds + That flock from the springs + Of the sunrise in herds +With the wind for a herdsman, and hasten or halt at the change of his + words. + + As the watchword's change + When the wind's note shifts, + And the skies grow strange, + And the white squall drifts +Up sharp from the sea-line, vexing the sea till the low cloud lifts. + + At the charge of his word + Bidding pause, bidding haste, + When the ranks are stirred + And the lines displaced, +They scatter as wild swans parting adrift on the wan green waste. + + At the hush of his word + In a pause of his breath + When the waters have heard + His will that he saith, +They stand as a flock penned close in its fold for division of death. + + As a flock by division + Of death to be thinned, + As the shades in a vision + Of spirits that sinned; +So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds on the stream of the + wind. + + But the sun stands fast, + And the sea burns bright, + And the flight of them past + Is no more than the flight +Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and afloat in the light. + + Like flowers upon flowers + In a festival way + When hours after hours + Shed grace on the day, +White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through the snows of the + spray. + + Like snow-coloured petals + Of blossoms that flee + From storm that unsettles + The flower as the tree +They flutter, a legion of flowers on the wing, through the field of the + sea. + + Through the furrowless field + Where the foam-blossoms blow + And the secrets are sealed + Of their harvest below +They float in the path of the sunbeams, as flakes or as blossoms of snow. + + Till the sea's ways darken, + And the God, withdrawn, + Give ear not or hearken + If prayer on him fawn, +And the sun's self seem but a shadow, the noon as a ghost of the dawn. + + No shadow, but rather + God, father of song, + Shew grace to me, Father + God, loved of me long, +That I lose not the light of thy face, that my trust in thee work me not + wrong. + + While yet I make forward + With face toward thee + Not turned yet in shoreward, + Be thine upon me; +Be thy light on my forehead or ever I turn it again from the sea. + + As a kiss on my brow + Be the light of thy grace, + Be thy glance on me now + From the pride of thy place: +As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face of thy face. + + Thou wast father of olden + Times hailed and adored, + And the sense of thy golden + Great harp's monochord +Was the joy in the soul of the singers that hailed thee for master and + lord. + + Fair father of all + In thy ways that have trod, + That have risen at thy call, + That have thrilled at thy nod, +Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to be God. + + As my soul has been dutiful + Only to thee, + O God most beautiful, + Lighten thou me, +As I swim through the dim long rollers, with eyelids uplift from the sea. + + Be praised and adored of us + All in accord, + Father and lord of us + Alway adored, +The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light of us all and our lord. + + At the sound of thy lyre, + At the touch of thy rod, + Air quickens to fire + By the foot of thee trod, +The saviour and healer and singer, the living and visible God. + + The years are before thee + As shadows of thee, + As men that adore thee, + As cloudlets that flee: +But thou art the God, and thy kingdom is heaven, and thy shrine is the sea. + + + + +_AFTER NINE YEARS._ + +TO JOSEPH MAZZINI. + +_Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena._ + + +1. + +The shadows fallen of years are nine +Since heaven grew seven times more divine +With thy soul entering, and the dearth +Of souls on earth +Grew sevenfold sadder, wanting One +Whose light of life, quenched here and done, +Burns there eternal as the sun. + + +2. + +Beyond all word, beyond all deed, +Beyond all thought beloved, what need +Has death or love that speech should be, +Hast thou of me? +I had no word, no prayer, no cry, +To praise or hail or mourn thee by, +As when thou too wast man as I. + + +3. + +Nay, never, nor as any born +Save one whose name priests turn to scorn, +Who haply, though we know not now, +Was man as thou, +A wanderer branded with men's blame, +Loved past man's utterance: yea, the same, +Perchance, and as his name thy name. + + +4. + +Thou wast as very Christ--not he +Degraded into Deity, +And priest-polluted by such prayer +As poisons air, +Tongue-worship of the tongue that slays, +False faith and parricidal praise: +But the man crowned with suffering days. + + +5. + +God only, being of all mankind +Most manlike, of most equal mind +And heart most perfect, more than can +Be heart of man +Once in ten ages, born to be +As haply Christ was, and as we +Knew surely, seeing, and worshipped thee. + + +6. + +To know thee--this at least was ours, +God, clothed upon with human hours, +O face beloved, O spirit adored, +Saviour and lord! +That wast not only for thine own +Redeemer--not of these alone +But all to whom thy word was known. + + +7. + +Ten years have wrought their will with me +Since last my words took wing for thee +Who then wast even as now above +Me, and my love. +As then thou knewest not scorn, so now +With that beloved benignant brow +Take these of him whose light wast thou. + + + + +_FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI._ + + +Steadfast as sorrow, fiery sad, and sweet + With underthoughts of love and faith, more strong + Than doubt and hate and all ill thoughts which throng, +Haply, round hope's or fear's world-wandering feet +That find no rest from wandering till they meet + Death, bearing palms in hand and crowns of song; + His face, who thought to vanquish wrong with wrong, +Erring, and make rage and redemption meet, +Havoc and freedom; weaving in one weft +Good with his right hand, evil with his left; + But all a hero lived and erred and died; +Looked thus upon the living world he left + So bravely that with pity less than pride + Men hail him Patriot and Tyrannicide. + + + + +_EVENING ON THE BROADS._ + + +Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril, + Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light, +Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile + Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night. +Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless + Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep. +Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless + Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep-- +Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow + Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star. +As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow + Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar, +Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom + Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers. +World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom, + Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours. +Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles + Still with itself, being sick of division and dimmed by dismay-- +Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles, + Fearful and fain of the night, lovely with love of the day: +Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death, and begotten + Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the seed of the grave: +Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten, + Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave. +Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon, in a vision + Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts that are tired, and would rest. +But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division, + Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest. +Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season enkindled + Wane, and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them + fade: +Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled, + Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new-made. +New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless, + Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart, +In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless love of the friendless + Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart. +Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden + Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway-- +Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden + Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay. +Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming + Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, +Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming + Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. +Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, + Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: +Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover + Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. +Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward + Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star +Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast-ward + Eagerly, yearning forth of the deeps where the ways of them are, +Glad of the glory of the gift of their life and the wealth of its wonder, + Fain of the night and the sea and the sweet wan face of the earth. +Over them air grows deeper, intense with delight in them: under + Things are thrilled in their sleep as with sense of a sure new birth. +But here by the sand-bank watching, with eyes on the sea-line, stranger + Grows to me also the weight of the sea-ridge gazed on of me, +Heavily heaped up, changefully changeless, void though of danger + Void not of menace, but full of the might of the dense dull sea. +Like as the wave is before me, behind is the bank deep-drifted; + Yellow and thick as the bank is behind me in front is the wave. +As the wall of a prison imprisoning the mere is the girth of it lifted: + But the rampire of water in front is erect as the wall of a grave. +And the crests of it crumble and topple and change, but the wall is not + broken: + Standing still dry-shod, I see it as higher than my head, +Moving inland alway again, reared up as in token + Still of impending wrath still in the foam of it shed. +And even in the pauses between them, dividing the rollers in sunder, + High overhead seems ever the sea-line fixed as a mark, +And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder + Cloud and torrent and storm, darkening the depths of the dark. +Up to the sea, not upon it or over it, upward from under + Seems he to gaze, whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore: +A wall of turbid water, aslope to the wide sky's wonder + Of colour and cloud, it climbs, or spreads as a slanted floor. +And the large lights change on the face of the mere like things that were + living, + Winged and wonderful, beams like as birds are that pass and are free: +But the light is dense as darkness, a gift withheld in the giving, + That lies as dead on the fierce dull face of the landward sea. +Stained and stifled and soiled, made earthier than earth is and duller, + Grimly she puts back light as rejected, a thing put away: +No transparent rapture, a molten music of colour; + No translucent love taken and given of the day. +Fettered and marred and begrimed is the light's live self on her falling, + As the light of a man's life lighted the fume of a dungeon mars: +Only she knows of the wind, when her wrath gives ear to him calling; + The delight of the light she knows not, nor answers the sun or the stars. +Love she hath none to return for the luminous love of their giving: + None to reflect from the bitter and shallow response of her heart +Yearly she feeds on her dead, yet herself seems dead and not living, + Or confused as a soul heavy-laden with trouble that will not depart. +In the sound of her speech to the darkness the moan of her evil remorse is, + Haply, for strong ships gnawed by the dog-toothed sea-bank's fang +And trampled to death by the rage of the feet of her foam-lipped horses + Whose manes are yellow as plague, and as ensigns of pestilence hang, +That wave in the foul faint air of the breath of a death-stricken city; + So menacing heaves she the manes of her rollers knotted with sand, +Discoloured, opaque, suspended in sign as of strength without pity, + That shake with flameless thunder the low long length of the strand. +Here, far off in the farther extreme of the shore as it lengthens + Northward, lonely for miles, ere ever a village begin, +On the lapsing land that recedes as the growth of the strong sea + strengthens + Shoreward, thrusting further and further its outworks in, +Here in Shakespeare's vision, a flower of her kin forsaken, + Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave's edge, +Surely by no shore else, but here on the bank storm-shaken, + Perdita, bright as a dew-drop engilt of the sun on the sedge. +Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her + Outcast, fair as a fairy, the child of a far-off king: +And over the babe-flower gently the head of a pastoral elder + Bowed, compassionate, hoar as the hawthorn-blossom in spring, +And kind as harvest in autumn: a shelter of shade on the lonely + Shelterless unknown shore scourged of implacable waves: +Here, where the wind walks royal, alone in his kingdom, and only + Sounds to the sedges a wail as of triumph that conquers and craves. +All these waters and wastes are his empire of old, and awaken + From barren and stagnant slumber at only the sound of his breath: +Yet the hunger is eased not that aches in his heart, nor the goal overtaken + That his wide wings yearn for and labour as hearts that yearn after + death. +All the solitude sighs and expects with a blind expectation + Somewhat unknown of its own sad heart, grown heart-sick of strife: +Till sometime its wild heart maddens, and moans, and the vast ululation + Takes wing with the clouds on the waters, and wails to be quit of its + life. +For the spirit and soul of the waste is the wind, and his wings with their + waving + Darken and lighten the darkness and light of it thickened or thinned; +But the heart that impels them is even as a conqueror's insatiably craving + That victory can fill not, as power cannot satiate the want of the wind. +All these moorlands and marshes are full of his might, and oppose not + Aught of defence nor of barrier, of forest or precipice piled: +But the will of the wind works ever as his that desires what he knows not, + And the wail of his want unfulfilled is as one making moan for her child. +And the cry of his triumph is even as the crying of hunger that maddens + The heart of a strong man aching in vain as the wind's heart aches +And the sadness itself of the land for its infinite solitude saddens + More for the sound than the silence athirst for the sound that slakes. +And the sunset at last and the twilight are dead: and the darkness is + breathless + With fear of the wind's breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep: +But a sense of the sound of it alway, a spirit unsleeping and deathless, + Ghost or God, evermore moves on the face of the deep. + + + + +_THE EMPEROR'S PROGRESS._ + +A STUDY IN THREE STAGES. + +(On the Busts of Nero in the Uffizj.) + + +I. + + +A child of brighter than the morning's birth + And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled + Save only of little children undefiled, +Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth, +Live rose of love, mute melody of mirth, + Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild, + Adorable as is nothing save a child, +Hails with wide eyes and lips his life on earth, +His lovely life with all its heaven to be. + And whoso reads the name inscribed or hears + Feels his own heart a frozen well of tears, +Child, for deep dread and fearful pity of thee +Whom God would not let rather die than see + The incumbent horror of impending years. + + +II. + +Man, that wast godlike being a child, and now, + No less than kinglike, art no more in sooth + For all thy grace and lordliness of youth, +The crown that bids men's branded foreheads bow +Much more has branded and bowed down thy brow + And gnawn upon it as with fire or tooth + Of steel or snake so sorely, that the truth +Seems here to bear false witness. Is it thou, +Child? and is all the summer of all thy spring + This? are the smiles that drew men's kisses down + All faded and transfigured to the frown +That grieves thy face? Art thou this weary thing? + Then is no slave's load heavier than a crown +And such a thrall no bondman as a king. + + +III. + +Misery, beyond all men's most miserable, + Absolute, whole, defiant of defence, + Inevitable, inexplacable, intense, +More vast than heaven is high, more deep than hell, +Past cure or charm of solace or of spell, + Possesses and pervades the spirit and sense + Whereto the expanse of the earth pays tribute; whence +Breeds evil only, and broods on fumes that swell +Rank from the blood of brother and mother and wife. + 'Misery of miseries, all is misery,' saith +The heavy fair-faced hateful head, at strife + With its own lusts that burn with feverous breath +Lips which the loathsome bitterness of life + Leaves fearful of the bitterness of death. + + + + +_THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA._ + +(Gratefully inscribed to Dr. A.B. Grosart.) + + +Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song, + Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise + To his good hand who travelling on strange ways +Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along +Beneath dead leaves that many a winter's wrong + Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries' maze + Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze +The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong. +For thine have life, while many above thine head +Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead. + So now disburdened of such load above +That lay as death's own dust upon thee shed + By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove + Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love. + + + + +_THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY._ + +(On the refusal by the French Senate of the plenary amnesty +demanded by Victor Hugo, in his speech of July 3rd, for the +surviving exiles of the Commune.) + + +Thou shouldst have risen as never dawn yet rose, + Day of the sunrise of the soul of France, + Dawn of the whole world's morning, when the trance +Of all the world had end, and all its woes +Respite, prophetic of their perfect close. + Light of all tribes of men, all names and clans, + Dawn of the whole world's morning and of man's +Flower of the heart of morning's mystic rose, +Dawn of the very dawn of very day, + When the sun brighter breaks night's ruinous prison, + Thou shouldst have risen as yet no dawn has risen, +Evoked of him whose word puts night away, + Our father, at the music of whose word + Exile had ended, and the world had heard. + +_July 5, 1880._ + + + + +LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA + + +Mala soluta navis exit alite. + HOR. + + +Rigged with curses dark. + MILTON. + + + + +_THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA._ + + +I. + +Gold, and fair marbles, and again more gold, + And space of halls afloat that glance and gleam + Like the green heights of sunset heaven, or seem +The golden steeps of sunrise red and cold +On deserts where dark exile keeps the fold + Fast of the flocks of torment, where no beam + Falls of kind light or comfort save in dream, +These we far off behold not, who behold +The cordage woven of curses, and the decks + With mortal hate and mortal peril paven; + From stem to stern the lines of doom engraven +That mark for sure inevitable wrecks +Those sails predestinate, though no storm vex, + To miss on earth and find in hell their haven. + + +II. + +All curses be about her, and all ill + Go with her; heaven be dark above her way, + The gulf beneath her glad and sure of prey, +And, wheresoe'er her prow be pointed, still +The winds of heaven have all one evil will + Conspirant even as hearts of kings to slay + With mouths of kings to lie and smile and pray, +And chiefliest his whose wintrier breath makes chill +With more than winter's and more poisonous cold + The horror of his kingdom toward the north, + The deserts of his kingdom toward the east. +And though death hide not in her direful hold + Be all stars adverse toward her that come forth + Nightly, by day all hours till all have ceased: + + +III. + +Till all have ceased for ever, and the sum + Be summed of all the sumless curses told + Out on his head by all dark seasons rolled +Over its cursed and crowned existence, dumb +And blind and stark as though the snows made numb + All sense within it, and all conscience cold, + That hangs round hearts of less imperial mould +Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come. +O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be +All nature's as all true men's hearts to thee, + A two-edged sword of judgment; hope be far +And fear at hand for pilot oversea + With death for compass and despair for star, + And the white foam a shroud for the White Czar. + +_September 30, 1880._ + + + + +_SIX YEARS OLD._ + +To H.W.M. + + +Between the springs of six and seven, + Two fresh years' fountains, clear +Of all but golden sand for leaven, + Child, midway passing here, +As earth for love's sake dares bless heaven, + So dare I bless you, dear. + +Between two bright well-heads, that brighten + With every breath that blows +Too loud to lull, too low to frighten, + But fain to rock, the rose, +Your feet stand fast, your lit smiles lighten, + That might rear flowers from snows. + +You came when winds unleashed were snarling + Behind the frost-bound hours, +A snow-bird sturdier than the starling, + A storm-bird fledged for showers, +That spring might smile to find you, darling, + First born of all the flowers. + +Could love make worthy things of worthless, + My song were worth an ear: +Its note should make the days most mirthless + The merriest of the year, +And wake to birth all buds yet birthless + To keep your birthday, dear. + +But where your birthday brightens heaven + No need has earth, God knows, +Of light or warmth to melt or leaven + The frost or fog that glows +With sevenfold heavenly lights of seven + Sweet springs that cleave the snows. + +Could love make worthy music of you, + And match my Master's powers, +Had even my love less heart to love you, + A better song were ours; +With all the rhymes like stars above you, + And all the words like flowers. + +_September 30, 1880._ + + + + +_A PARTING SONG._ + +(To a friend leaving England for a year's residence in +Australia.) + + + These winds and suns of spring + That warm with breath and wing +The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake +She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break, + For all good gifts they bring + Require one better thing, +For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow +One sharper dole of sorrow, +To sunder soon by half a world of sea +Her son from England and my friend from me. + + Nor hope nor love nor fear + May speed or stay one year, +Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain, +The seasons perish and be born again, + Restoring all we lend, + Reluctant, of a friend, +The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight +That lend their life and light +To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer, +Now lent again for one reluctant year. + + So much we lend indeed, + Perforce, by force of need, +So much we must; even these things and no more +The far sea sundering and the sundered shore + A world apart from ours, + So much the imperious hours, +Exact, and spare not; but no more than these +All earth and all her seas +From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow, +Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow. + + Through bright and dark and bright + Returns of day and night +I bid the swift year speed and change and give +His breath of life to make the next year live + With sunnier suns for us + A life more prosperous, +And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see +A merrier March for me, +A rosier-girdled race of night with day, +A goodlier April and a tenderer May. + + For him the inverted year + Shall mark our seasons here +With alien alternation, and revive +This withered winter, slaying the spring alive + With darts more sharply drawn + As nearer draws the dawn +In heaven transfigured over earth transformed +And with our winters warmed +And wasted with our summers, till the beams +Rise on his face that rose on Dante's dreams. + + Till fourfold morning rise + Of starshine on his eyes, +Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across +At height of night with semblance of a cross + Whose grace and ghostly glory + Poured heaven on purgatory +Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow glad +For love thereof it had +And lovely joy of loving; so may these +Make bright with welcome now their southern seas. + + O happy stars, whose mirth + The saddest soul on earth +That ever soared and sang found strong to bless, +Lightening his life's harsh load of heaviness + With comfort sown like seed + In dream though not in deed +On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine, +Let all your lights now shine +With all as glorious gladness on his eyes +For whom indeed and not in dream they rise. + + As those great twins of air + Hailed once with oldworld prayer +Of all folk alway faring forth by sea, +So now may these for grace and guidance be, + To guard his sail and bring + Again to brighten spring +The face we look for and the hand we lack +Still, till they light him back, +As welcome as to first discovering eyes +Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise. + + As parting now he goes + From snow-time back to snows, +So back to spring from summer may next year +Restore him, and our hearts receive him here, + The best good gift that spring + Had ever grace to bring +At fortune's happiest hour of star-blest birth +Back to love's homebright earth, +To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand, +And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land. + + Earth and sea-wind and sea + And stars and sunlight be +Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours +Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours. + All things as good as strange + Crown all the seasons' change +With changing flower and compensating fruit +From one year's ripening root; +Till next year bring us, roused at spring's recall, +A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than all. + +_March 26, 1880._ + + + + +BY THE NORTH SEA + +TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS. + +'We are what suns and winds and waters make us.'--LANDOR. + + +_Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath + The spirit of man fulfilling--these create + That joy wherewith man's life grown passionate +Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith +To know the secret word our Mother saith + In silence, and to see, though doubt wax great, + Death as the shadow cast by life on fate, +Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death. + +Brother, to whom our Mother as to me + Is dearer than all dreams of days undone, +This song I give you of the sovereign three + That are as life and sleep and death are, one: +A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea, + Where nought of man's endures before the sun._ + + + + +BY THE NORTH SEA + + +I. + +1. + +A land that is lonelier than ruin; + A sea that is stranger than death: +Far fields that a rose never blew in, + Wan waste where the winds lack breath; +Waste endless and boundless and flowerless + But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free: +Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless + To strive with the sea. + +2. + +Far flickers the flight of the swallows, + Far flutters the weft of the grass +Spun dense over desolate hollows + More pale than the clouds as they pass: +Thick woven as the weft of a witch is + Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned, +Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches + Are waifs on the wind. + +3. + +The pastures are herdless and sheepless, + No pasture or shelter for herds: +The wind is relentless and sleepless, + And restless and songless the birds; +Their cries from afar fall breathless, + Their wings are as lightnings that flee; +For the land has two lords that are deathless: + Death's self, and the sea. + +4. + +These twain, as a king with his fellow, + Hold converse of desolate speech: +And her waters are haggard and yellow + And crass with the scurf of the beach: +And his garments are grey as the hoary + Wan sky where the day lies dim; +And his power is to her, and his glory, + As hers unto him. + +5. + +In the pride of his power she rejoices, + In her glory he glows and is glad: +In her darkness the sound of his voice is, + With his breath she dilates and is mad: +'If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me, + Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee.' +'Shall I give thee not back if thou give me, + O sister, O sea?' + +6. + +And year upon year dawns living, + And age upon age drops dead: +And his hand is not weary of giving, + And the thirst of her heart is not fed: +And the hunger that moans in her passion, + And the rage in her hunger that roars, +As a wolf's that the winter lays lash on, + Still calls and implores. + +7. + +Her walls have no granite for girder, + No fortalice fronting her stands: +But reefs the bloodguiltiest of murder + Are less than the banks of her sands: +These number their slain by the thousand; + For the ship hath no surety to be, +When the bank is abreast of her bows and + Aflush with the sea. + +8. + +No surety to stand, and no shelter + To dawn out of darkness but one, +Out of waters that hurtle and welter + No succour to dawn with the sun +But a rest from the wind as it passes, + Where, hardly redeemed from the waves, +Lie thick as the blades of the grasses + The dead in their graves. + +9. + +A multitude noteless of numbers, + As wild weeds cast on an heap: +And sounder than sleep are their slumbers, + And softer than song is their sleep; +And sweeter than all things and stranger + The sense, if perchance it may be, +That the wind is divested of danger + And scatheless the sea. + +10. + +That the roar of the banks they breasted + Is hurtless as bellowing of herds, +And the strength of his wings that invested + The wind, as the strength of a bird's; +As the sea-mew's might or the swallow's + That cry to him back if he cries, +As over the graves and their hollows + Days darken and rise. + +11. + +As the souls of the dead men disburdened + And clean of the sins that they sinned, +With a lovelier than man's life guerdoned + And delight as a wave's in the wind, +And delight as the wind's in the billow, + Birds pass, and deride with their glee +The flesh that has dust for its pillow + As wrecks have the sea. + +12. + +When the ways of the sun wax dimmer, + Wings flash through the dusk like beams; +As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer, + The bird in the graveyard gleams; +As the cloud at its wing's edge whitens + When the clarions of sunrise are heard, +The graves that the bird's note brightens + Grow bright for the bird. + +13. + +As the waves of the numberless waters + That the wind cannot number who guides +Are the sons of the shore and the daughters + Here lulled by the chime of the tides: +And here in the press of them standing + We know not if these or if we +Live truliest, or anchored to landing + Or drifted to sea. + +14. + +In the valley he named of decision + No denser were multitudes met +When the soul of the seer in her vision + Saw nations for doom of them set; +Saw darkness in dawn, and the splendour + Of judgment, the sword and the rod; +But the doom here of death is more tender + And gentler the god. + +15. + +And gentler the wind from the dreary + Sea-banks by the waves overlapped, +Being weary, speaks peace to the weary + From slopes that the tide-stream hath sapped; +And sweeter than all that we call so + The seal of their slumber shall be +Till the graves that embosom them also + Be sapped of the sea. + + +II. + +1. + +For the heart of the waters is cruel, + And the kisses are dire of their lips, +And their waves are as fire is to fuel + To the strength of the sea-faring ships, +Though the sea's eye gleam as a jewel + To the sun's eye back as he dips. + +2. + +Though the sun's eye flash to the sea's + Live light of delight and of laughter, +And her lips breathe back to the breeze + The kiss that the wind's lips waft her +From the sun that subsides, and sees + No gleam of the storm's dawn after. + +3. + +And the wastes of the wild sea-marches + Where the borderers are matched in their might-- +Bleak fens that the sun's weight parches, + Dense waves that reject his light-- +Change under the change-coloured arches + Of changeless morning and night + +4. + +The waves are as ranks enrolled + Too close for the storm to sever: +The fens lie naked and cold, + But their heart fails utterly never: +The lists are set from of old, + And the warfare endureth for ever. + + +III. + +1. + +Miles, and miles, and miles of desolation! + Leagues on leagues on leagues without a change! +Sign or token of some eldest nation + Here would make the strange land not so strange. +Time-forgotten, yea since time's creation, + Seem these borders where the sea-birds range. + +2. + +Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder + Grows his heart who journeys here alone. +Earth and all its thoughts of earth sink under + Deep as deep in water sinks a stone. +Hardly knows it if the rollers thunder, + Hardly whence the lonely wind is blown. + +3. + +Tall the plumage of the rush-flower tosses, + Sharp and soft in many a curve and line +Gleam and glow the sea-coloured marsh-mosses, + Salt and splendid from the circling brine. +Streak on streak of glimmering seashine crosses + All the land sea-saturate as with wine. + +4. + +Far, and far between, in divers orders, + Clear grey steeples cleave the low grey sky; +Fast and firm as time-unshaken warders, + Hearts made sure by faith, by hope made high. +These alone in all the wild sea-borders + Fear no blast of days and nights that die. + +5. + +All the land is like as one man's face is, + Pale and troubled still with change of cares. +Doubt and death pervade her clouded spaces: + Strength and length of life and peace are theirs; +Theirs alone amid these weary places. + Seeing not how the wild world frets and fares. + +6. + +Firm and fast where all is cloud that changes + Cloud-clogged sunlight, cloud by sunlight thinned, +Stern and sweet, above the sand-hill ranges + Watch the towers and tombs of men that sinned +Once, now calm as earth whose only change is + Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud, and wind. + +7. + +Out and in and out the sharp straits wander, + In and out and in the wild way strives, +Starred and paved and lined with flowers that squander + Gold as golden as the gold of hives, +Salt and moist and multiform: but yonder, + See, what sign of life or death survives? + +8. + +Seen then only when the songs of olden + Harps were young whose echoes yet endure, +Hymned of Homer when his years were golden, + Known of only when the world was pure, +Here is Hades, manifest, beholden, + Surely, surely here, if aught be sure! + +9. + +Where the border-line was crossed, that, sundering + Death from life, keeps weariness from rest, +None can tell, who fares here forward wondering; + None may doubt but here might end his quest. +Here life's lightning joys and woes once thundering + Sea-like round him cease like storm suppressed. + +10. + +Here the wise wave-wandering steadfast-hearted + Guest of many a lord of many a land +Saw the shape or shade of years departed, + Saw the semblance risen and hard at hand, +Saw the mother long from love's reach parted, + Anticleia, like a statue stand. + +11. + +Statue? nay, nor tissued image woven + Fair on hangings in his father's hall; +Nay, too fast her faith of heart was proven, + Far too firm her loveliest love of all; +Love wherethrough the loving heart was cloven, + Love that hears not when the loud Fates call. + +12. + +Love that lives and stands up re-created + Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled; +Love more strong than death or all things fated, + Child's and mother's, lit by love and led; +Love that found what life so long awaited + Here, when life came down among the dead. + +13. + +Here, where never came alive another, + Came her son across the sundering tide +Crossed before by many a warrior brother + Once that warred on Ilion at his side; +Here spread forth vain hands to clasp the mother + Dead, that sorrowing for his love's sake died. + +14. + +Parted, though by narrowest of divisions, + Clasp he might not, only might implore, +Sundered yet by bitterest of derisions, + Son, and mother from the son she bore-- +Here? But all dispeopled here of visions + Lies, forlorn of shadows even, the shore. + +15. + +All too sweet such men's Hellenic speech is, + All too fain they lived of light to see, +Once to see the darkness of these beaches, + Once to sing this Hades found of me +Ghostless, all its gulfs and creeks and reaches, + Sky, and shore, and cloud, and waste, and sea. + + +IV. + +1. + +But aloft and afront of me faring + Far forward as folk in a dream +That strive, between doubting and daring + Right on till the goal for them gleam, +Full forth till their goal on them lighten, + The harbour where fain they would be, +What headlands there darken and brighten? + What change in the sea? + +2. + +What houses and woodlands that nestle + Safe inland to lee of the hill +As it slopes from the headlands that wrestle + And succumb to the strong sea's will? +Truce is not, nor respite, nor pity, + For the battle is waged not of hands +Where over the grave of a city + The ghost of it stands. + +3. + +Where the wings of the sea-wind slacken, + Green lawns to the landward thrive, +Fields brighten and pine-woods blacken, + And the heat in their heart is alive; +They blossom and warble and murmur, + For the sense of their spirit is free: +But harder to shoreward and firmer + The grasp of the sea. + +4. + +Like ashes the low cliffs crumble, + The banks drop down into dust, +The heights of the hills are made humble, + As a reed's is the strength of their trust: +As a city's that armies environ, + The strength of their stay is of sand: +But the grasp of the sea is as iron, + Laid hard on the land. + +5. + +A land that is thirstier than ruin; + A sea that is hungrier than death; +Heaped hills that a tree never grew in; + Wide sands where the wave draws breath; +All solace is here for the spirit + That ever for ever may be +For the soul of thy son to inherit, + My mother, my sea. + +6. + +O delight of the headlands and beaches! + O desire of the wind on the wold, +More glad than a man's when it reaches + That end which it sought from of old +And the palm of possession is dreary + To the sense that in search of it sinned; +But nor satisfied ever nor weary + Is ever the wind. + +7. + +The delight that he takes but in living + Is more than of all things that live: +For the world that has all things for giving + Has nothing so goodly to give: +But more than delight his desire is, + For the goal where his pinions would be +Is immortal as air or as fire is, + Immense as the sea. + +8. + +Though hence come the moan that he borrows + From darkness and depth of the night, +Though hence be the spring of his sorrows, + Hence too is the joy of his might; +The delight that his doom is for ever + To seek and desire and rejoice, +And the sense that eternity never + Shall silence his voice. + +9. + +That satiety never may stifle + Nor weariness ever estrange +Nor time be so strong as to rifle + Nor change be so great as to change +His gift that renews in the giving. + The joy that exalts him to be +Alone of all elements living + The lord of the sea. + +10. + +What is fire, that its flame should consume her? + More fierce than all fires are her waves: +What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her? + More deep are her own than their graves. +Life shrinks from his pinions that cover + The darkness by thunders bedinned: +But she knows him, her lord and her lover, + The godhead of wind. + +11. + +For a season his wings are about her, + His breath on her lips for a space; +Such rapture he wins not without her + In the width of his worldwide race. +Though the forests bow down, and the mountains + Wax dark, and the tribes of them flee, +His delight is more deep in the fountains + And springs of the sea. + +12. + +There are those too of mortals that love him, + There are souls that desire and require, +Be the glories of midnight above him + Or beneath him the daysprings of fire: +And their hearts are as harps that approve him + And praise him as chords of a lyre +That were fain with their music to move him + To meet their desire. + +13. + +To descend through the darkness to grace them, + Till darkness were lovelier than light: +To encompass and grasp and embrace them, + Till their weakness were one with his might: +With the strength of his wings to caress them, + With the blast of his breath to set free; +With the mouths of his thunders to bless them + For sons of the sea. + +14. + +For these have the toil and the guerdon + That the wind has eternally: these +Have part in the boon and the burden + Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze, +That finds not, but seeking rejoices + That possession can work him no wrong: +And the voice at the heart of their voice is + The sense of his song. + +15. + +For the wind's is their doom and their blessing; + To desire, and have always above +A possession beyond their possessing, + A love beyond reach of their love. +Green earth has her sons and her daughters, + And these have their guerdons; but we +Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's, + Elect of the sea. + + +V. + +1. + +For the sea too seeks and rejoices, + Gains and loses and gains, +And the joy of her heart's own choice is + As ours, and as ours are her pains: +As the thoughts of our hearts are her voices, + And as hers is the pulse of our veins. + +2. + +Her fields that know not of dearth + Nor lie for their fruit's sake fallow +Laugh large in the depth of their mirth + But inshore here in the shallow, +Embroiled with encumbrance of earth, + Their skirts are turbid and yellow. + +3. + +The grime of her greed is upon her, + The sign of her deed is her soil; +As the earth's is her own dishonour, + And corruption the crown of her toil: +She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour + Is this, to be shamed by her spoil. + +4. + +But afar where pollution is none, + Nor ensign of strife nor endeavour, +Where her heart and the sun's are one, + And the soil of her sin comes never, +She is pure as the wind and the sun, + And her sweetness endureth for ever. + + +VI. + +1. + +Death, and change, and darkness everlasting, + Deaf, that hears not what the daystar saith, +Blind, past all remembrance and forecasting, + Dead, past memory that it once drew breath; +These, above the washing tides and wasting, + Reign, and rule this land of utter death. + +2. + +Change of change, darkness of darkness, hidden, + Very death of very death, begun +When none knows,--the knowledge is forbidden-- + Self-begotten, self-proceeding, one, +Born, not made--abhorred, unchained, unchidden, + Night stands here defiant of the sun. + +3. + +Change of change, and death of death begotten, + Darkness born of darkness, one and three, +Ghostly godhead of a world forgotten, + Crowned with heaven, enthroned on land and sea, +Here, where earth with dead men's bones is rotten, + God of Time, thy likeness worships thee. + +4. + +Lo, thy likeness of thy desolation, + Shape and figure of thy might, O Lord, +Formless form, incarnate miscreation, + Served of all things living and abhorred; +Earth herself is here thine incarnation, + Time, of all things born on earth adored. + +5. + +All that worship thee are fearful of thee; + No man may not worship thee for fear: +Prayers nor curses prove not nor disprove thee, + Move nor change thee with our change of cheer: +All at last, though all abhorred thee, love thee, + God, the sceptre of whose throne is here. + +6. + +Here thy throne and sceptre of thy station, + Here the palace paven for thy feet; +Here thy sign from nation unto nation + Passed as watchword for thy guards to greet, +Guards that go before thine exaltation, + Ages, clothed with bitter years and sweet. + +7. + +Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty, + Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm, +Rose triumphal, crowning all a city, + Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm, +Built of holy hands for holy pity, + Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm. + +8. + +Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion, + Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime, +Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion, + Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime, +Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion + Hailed a God more merciful than Time. + +9. + +Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing, + Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his nod, +Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing, + Lies he, stricken by his master's rod. +'Where is man?' the cloister murmurs wailing; + Back the mute shrine thunders--'Where is God?' + +10. + +Here is all the end of all his glory-- + Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones. +Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary + Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans, +Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story: + Here, where earth is dense with dead men's bones. + +11. + +Low and loud and long, a voice for ever, + Sounds the wind's clear story like a song. +Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever, + Dust from dust as years relapse along; +Graves where men made sure to rest, and never + Lie dismantled by the seasons' wrong. + +12. + +Now displaced, devoured and desecrated, + Now by Time's hands darkly disinterred, +These poor dead that sleeping here awaited + Long the archangel's re-creating word, +Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated + Till the blast of judgment should be heard, + +13. + +Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration, + Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves, +Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station, + Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like slaves, +Desolate beyond man's desolation, + Shrink and sink into the waste of waves. + +14. + +Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded, + Shroudless, down the loose collapsing banks, +Crumble, from their constant place detruded, + That the sea devours and gives not thanks. +Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded + Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks. + +15. + +Rows on rows and line by line they crumble, + They that thought for all time through to be. +Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble + Breaks the grim field paced alone of me. +Earth, and man, and all their gods wax humble + Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea. + + +VII. + +1. + +But afar on the headland exalted, + But beyond in the curl of the bay, +From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted + Our father is lord of the day. +Our father and lord that we follow, + For deathless and ageless is he; +And his robe is the whole sky's hollow, + His sandal the sea. + +2. + +Where the horn of the headland is sharper, + And her green floor glitters with fire, +The sea has the sun for a harper, + The sun has the sea for a lyre. +The waves are a pavement of amber, + By the feet of the sea-winds trod +To receive in a god's presence-chamber + Our father, the God. + +3. + +Time, haggard and changeful and hoary, + Is master and God of the land: +But the air is fulfilled of the glory + That is shed from our lord's right hand. +O father of all of us ever, + All glory be only to thee +From heaven, that is void of thee never, + And earth, and the sea. + +4. + +O Sun, whereof all is beholden, + Behold now the shadow of this death, +This place of the sepulchres, olden + And emptied and vain as a breath. +The bloom of the bountiful heather + Laughs broadly beyond in thy light +As dawn, with her glories to gather, + At darkness and night. + +5. + +Though the Gods of the night lie rotten + And their honour be taken away +And the noise of their names forgotten, + Thou, Lord, art God of the day. +Thou art father and saviour and spirit, + O Sun, of the soul that is free +And hath grace of thy grace to inherit + Thine earth and thy sea. + +6. + +The hills and the sands and the beaches, + The waters adrift and afar, +The banks and the creeks and the reaches, + How glad of thee all these are! +The flowers, overflowing, overcrowded, + Are drunk with the mad wind's mirth: +The delight of thy coming unclouded + Makes music of earth. + +7. + +I, last least voice of her voices, + Give thanks that were mute in me long +To the soul in my soul that rejoices + For the song that is over my song. +Time gives what he gains for the giving + Or takes for his tribute of me; +My dreams to the wind everliving, + My song to the sea. + + + + +_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._ + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in Song, by Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG *** + +***** This file should be named 16973.txt or 16973.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/9/7/16973/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions 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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