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diff --git a/16973.txt b/16973.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..028a786 --- /dev/null +++ b/16973.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: 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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