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diff --git a/18424.txt b/18424.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f3c35fa --- /dev/null +++ b/18424.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3496 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems, 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: A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: May 19, 2006 [EBook #18424] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY AND *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Louise Hope, Thierry Alberto, +Henry Craig and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY + + _AND OTHER POEMS_ + + BY + + ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE + + + _THIRD EDITION_ + + + London + CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY + 1889 + + + + +CONTENTS. + +A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY:-- + + I. THE SEABOARD 3 + II. A HAVEN 6 + III. ON A COUNTRY ROAD 9 + IV. THE MILL GARDEN 12 + V. A SEA-MARK 16 + VI. THE CLIFFSIDE PATH 19 + VII. IN THE WATER 22 + VIII. THE SUNBOWS 27 + IX. ON THE VERGE 31 + +A NEW-YEAR ODE 39 + +LINES ON THE MONUMENT OF GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 66 + +LES CASQUETS 70 + +A BALLAD OF SARK 84 + +NINE YEARS OLD 87 + +AFTER A READING 94 + +MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER 100 + +A DOUBLE BALLAD OF AUGUST 105 + +HEARTSEASE COUNTRY 109 + +A BALLAD OF APPEAL 112 + +CRADLE SONGS 115 + +PELAGIUS 122 + +LOUIS BLANC 125 + +VOS DEOS LAUDAMUS 128 + +ON THE BICENTENARY OF CORNEILLE 132 + +IN SEPULCRETIS 134 + +LOVE AND SCORN 139 + +ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DOYLE 142 + +IN MEMORY OF HENRY A. BRIGHT 143 + +A SOLITUDE 144 + +VICTOR HUGO: L'ARCHIPEL DE LA MANCHE 145 + +THE TWILIGHT OF THE LORDS 147 + +CLEAR THE WAY! 153 + +A WORD FOR THE COUNTRY 156 + +A WORD FOR THE NATION 167 + +A WORD FROM THE PSALMIST 176 + +A BALLAD AT PARTING 185 + + + + +_A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY_ + +TO THEODORE WATTS + + +THE SEABOARD. + +The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word +Is soft as the least wave's lapse in a still small reach. +From bay into bay, on quest of a goal deferred, +From headland ever to headland and breach to breach +Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach +With changes of gladness and sadness that cheer and chide, +The lone way lures me along by a chance untried +That haply, if hope dissolve not and faith be whole, +Not all for nought shall I seek, with a dream for guide. +The goal that is not, and ever again the goal. + +The trackless ways are untravelled of sail or bird; +The hoar wave hardly recedes from the soundless beach. +The silence of instant noon goes nigh to be heard, +The viewless void to be visible: all and each, +A closure of calm no clamour of storm can breach +Concludes and confines and absorbs them on either side, +All forces of light and of life and the live world's pride. +Sands hardly ruffled of ripples that hardly roll +Seem ever to show as in reach of a swift brief stride +The goal that is not, and ever again the goal. + +The waves are a joy to the seamew, the meads to the herd, +And a joy to the heart is a goal that it may not reach. +No sense that for ever the limits of sense engird, +No hearing or sight that is vassal to form or speech, +Learns ever the secret that shadow and silence teach, +Hears ever the notes that or ever they swell subside, +Sees ever the light that lights not the loud world's tide, +Clasps ever the cause of the lifelong scheme's control +Wherethrough we pursue, till the waters of life be dried, +The goal that is not, and ever again the goal. + +Friend, what have we sought or seek we, whate'er betide, +Though the seaboard shift its mark from afar descried, +But aims whence ever anew shall arise the soul? +Love, thought, song, life, but show for a glimpse and hide +The goal that is not, and ever again the goal. + + +A HAVEN. + +East and north a waste of waters, south and west +Lonelier lands than dreams in sleep would feign to be, +When the soul goes forth on travel, and is prest +Round and compassed in with clouds that flash and flee +Dells without a streamlet, downs without a tree, +Cirques of hollow cliff that crumble, give their guest +Little hope, till hard at hand he pause, to see +Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side nest. + +Many a lone long mile, by many a headland's crest, +Down by many a garden dear to bird and bee, +Up by many a sea-down's bare and breezy breast, +Winds the sandy strait of road where flowers run free. +Here along the deep steep lanes by field and lea +Knights have carolled, pilgrims chanted, on their quest, +Haply, ere a roof rose toward the bleak strand's lee, +Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side nest. + +Are the wild lands cursed perchance of time, or blest, +Sad with fear or glad with comfort of the sea? +Are the ruinous towers of churches fallen on rest +Watched of wanderers woful now, glad once as we, +When the night has all men's eyes and hearts in fee, +When the soul bows down dethroned and dispossest? +Yet must peace keep guard, by day's and night's decree, +Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side nest. + +Friend, the lonely land is bright for you and me +All its wild ways through: but this methinks is best, +Here to watch how kindly time and change agree +Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side nest. + + +ON A COUNTRY ROAD. + +Along these low pleached lanes, on such a day, +So soft a day as this, through shade and sun, +With glad grave eyes that scanned the glad wild way, +And heart still hovering o'er a song begun, +And smile that warmed the world with benison, +Our father, lord long since of lordly rhyme, +Long since hath haply ridden, when the lime +Bloomed broad above him, flowering where he came. +Because thy passage once made warm this clime, +Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name. + +Each year that England clothes herself with May, +She takes thy likeness on her. Time hath spun +Fresh raiment all in vain and strange array +For earth and man's new spirit, fain to shun +Things past for dreams of better to be won, +Through many a century since thy funeral chime +Rang, and men deemed it death's most direful crime +To have spared not thee for very love or shame; +And yet, while mists round last year's memories climb, +Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name. + +Each turn of the old wild road whereon we stray, +Meseems, might bring us face to face with one +Whom seeing we could not but give thanks, and pray +For England's love our father and her son +To speak with us as once in days long done +With all men, sage and churl and monk and mime, +Who knew not as we know the soul sublime +That sang for song's love more than lust of fame. +Yet, though this be not, yet, in happy time, +Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name. + +Friend, even as bees about the flowering thyme, +Years crowd on years, till hoar decay begrime +Names once beloved; but, seeing the sun the same, +As birds of autumn fain to praise the prime, +Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name. + + +THE MILL GARDEN. + +Stately stand the sunflowers, glowing down the garden-side, +Ranged in royal rank arow along the warm grey wall, +Whence their deep disks burn at rich midnoon afire with pride, +Even as though their beams indeed were sunbeams, and the tall +Sceptral stems bore stars whose reign endures, not flowers that fall. +Lowlier laughs and basks the kindlier flower of homelier fame, +Held by love the sweeter that it blooms in Shakespeare's name, +Fragrant yet as though his hand had touched and made it thrill, +Like the whole world's heart, with warm new life and gladdening flame. +Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill! + +Softlier here the flower-soft feet of refluent seasons glide, +Lightlier breathes the long low note of change's gentler call. +Wind and storm and landslip feed the lone sea's gulf outside, +Half a seamew's first flight hence; but scarce may these appal +Peace, whose perfect seal is set for signet here on all. +Steep and deep and sterile, under fields no plough can tame, +Dip the cliffs full-fledged with poppies red as love or shame, +Wide wan daisies bleak and bold, or herbage harsh and chill; +Here the full clove pinks and wallflowers crown the love they claim. +Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill! + +All the place breathes low, but not for fear lest ill betide, +Soft as roses answering roses, or a dove's recall. +Little heeds it how the seaward banks may stoop and slide, +How the winds and years may hold all outer things in thrall, +How their wrath may work on hoar church tower and boundary wall. +Far and wide the waste and ravin of their rule proclaim +Change alone the changeless lord of things, alone the same: +Here a flower is stronger than the winds that work their will, +Or the years that wing their way through darkness toward their aim. +Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill! + +Friend, the home that smiled us welcome hither when we came, +When we pass again with summer, surely should reclaim +Somewhat given of heart's thanksgiving more than words fulfil-- +More than song, were song more sweet than all but love, might frame. +Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill! + + +A SEA-MARK. + +Rains have left the sea-banks ill to climb: +Waveward sinks the loosening seaboard's floor: +Half the sliding cliffs are mire and slime. +Earth, a fruit rain-rotted to the core, +Drops dissolving down in flakes, that pour +Dense as gouts from eaves grown foul with grime. +One sole rock which years that scathe not score +Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time. + +Time were even as even the rainiest clime, +Life were even as even this lapsing shore, +Might not aught outlive their trustless prime: +Vainly fear would wail or hope implore, +Vainly grief revile or love adore +Seasons clothed in sunshine, rain, or rime +Now for me one comfort held in store +Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time. + +Once, by fate's default or chance's crime, +Each apart, our burdens each we bore; +Heard, in monotones like bells that chime, +Chime the sounds of sorrows, float and soar +Joy's full carols, near or far before; +Heard not yet across the alternate rhyme +Time's tongue tell what sign set fast of yore +Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time. + +Friend, the sign we knew not heretofore +Towers in sight here present and sublime. +Faith in faith established evermore +Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time. + + +THE CLIFFSIDE PATH. + +Seaward goes the sun, and homeward by the down +We, before the night upon his grave be sealed. +Low behind us lies the bright steep murmuring town, +High before us heaves the steep rough silent field. +Breach by ghastlier breach, the cliffs collapsing yield: +Half the path is broken, half the banks divide; +Flawed and crumbled, riven and rent, they cleave and slide +Toward the ridged and wrinkled waste of girdling sand +Deep beneath, whose furrows tell how far and wide +Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand. + +Star by star on the unsunned waters twiring down. +Golden spear-points glance against a silver shield. +Over banks and bents, across the headland's crown, +As by pulse of gradual plumes through twilight wheeled, +Soft as sleep, the waking wind awakes the weald. +Moor and copse and fallow, near or far descried. +Feel the mild wings move, and gladden where they glide: +Silence, uttering love that all things understand, +Bids the quiet fields forget that hard beside +Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand. + +Yet may sight, ere all the hoar soft shade grow brown, +Hardly reckon half the lifts and rents unhealed +Where the scarred cliffs downward sundering drive and drown, +Hewn as if with stroke of swords in tempest steeled, +Wielded as the night's will and the wind's may wield. +Crowned and zoned in vain with flowers of autumn-tide, +Soon the blasts shall break them, soon the waters hide, +Soon, where late we stood, shall no man ever stand. +Life and love seek harbourage on the landward side: +Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand. + +Friend, though man be less than these, for all his pride, +Yet, for all his weakness, shall not hope abide? +Wind and change can wreck but life and waste but land: +Truth and trust are sure, though here till all subside +Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand. + + +IN THE WATER. + +The sea is awake, and the sound of the song + of the joy of her waking is rolled +From afar to the star that recedes, from anear + to the wastes of the wild wide shore. +Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward: + if dawn in her east be acold, +From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle + the life that it kindled before, +Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us, + her kisses to bless as of yore? +For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause + in the sky, neither fettered nor free, +Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter + and fain would the twain of us be +Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under + the curve of the deep dawn's dome, +And, full of the morning and fired with the pride + of the glory thereof and the glee, +Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids + and beseeches, athirst for the foam. + +Life holds not an hour that is better to live in: + the past is a tale that is told, +The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, + with a blessing in store. +As we give us again to the waters, the rapture + of limbs that the waters enfold +Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby, + though the burden it quits were sore, +Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will + are absorbed in the life they adore-- +In the life that endures no burden, and bows not + the forehead, and bends not the knee-- +In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven, + in the laws that atone and agree, +In the measureless music of things, in the fervour + of forces that rest or that roam, +That cross and return and reissue, as I + after you and as you after me +Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids + and beseeches, athirst for the foam. + +For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply + the heart of a man may be bold +To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother's + that saith to the son she bore, +Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit + the breath in thy lips from of old? +Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength, + and thy foolishness learn of my lore? +Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or made not + the might of thy gladness more? +And surely his heart should answer, The light + of the love of my life is in thee. +She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not fairer, + the wind is not blither than she: +From my youth hath she shown me the joy of her bays + that I crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb, +Till now that the twain of us here, in desire + of the dawn and in trust of the sea, +Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids + and beseeches, athirst for the foam. + +Friend, earth is a harbour of refuge for winter, + a covert whereunder to flee +When day is the vassal of night, and the strength + of the hosts of her mightier than he; +But here is the presence adored of me, here + my desire is at rest and at home. +There are cliffs to be climbed upon land, there are ways + to be trodden and ridden, but we +Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids + and beseeches, athirst for the foam. + + +THE SUNBOWS. + +Spray of song that springs in April, + light of love that laughs through May, +Live and die and live for ever: + nought of all thing far less fair +Keeps a surer life than these + that seem to pass like fire away. +In the souls they live which are + but all the brighter that they were; +In the hearts that kindle, thinking + what delight of old was there. +Wind that shapes and lifts and shifts them + bids perpetual memory play +Over dreams and in and out + of deeds and thoughts which seem to wear +Light that leaps and runs and revels + through the springing flames of spray. + +Dawn is wild upon the waters + where we drink of dawn to-day: +Wide, from wave to wave rekindling + in rebound through radiant air, +Flash the fires unwoven and woven + again of wind that works in play, +Working wonders more than heart + may note or sight may wellnigh dare, +Wefts of rarer light than colours + rain from heaven, though this be rare. +Arch on arch unbuilt in building, + reared and ruined ray by ray, +Breaks and brightens, laughs and lessens, + even till eyes may hardly bear +Light that leaps and runs and revels + through the springing flames of spray. + +Year on year sheds light and music + rolled and flashed from bay to bay +Round the summer capes of time + and winter headlands keen and bare +Whence the soul keeps watch, and bids + her vassal memory watch and pray, +If perchance the dawn may quicken, + or perchance the midnight spare. +Silence quells not music, darkness + takes not sunlight in her snare; +Shall not joys endure that perish? + Yea, saith dawn, though night say nay: +Life on life goes out, but very + life enkindles everywhere +Light that leaps and runs and revels + through the springing flames of spray. + +Friend, were life no more than this is, + well would yet the living fare. +All aflower and all afire + and all flung heavenward, who shall say +Such a flash of life were worthless? + This is worth a world of care-- +Light that leaps and runs and revels + through the springing flames of spray. + + +ON THE VERGE. + +Here begins the sea that ends not + till the world's end. Where we stand, +Could we know the next high sea-mark + set beyond these waves that gleam, +We should know what never man hath + known, nor eye of man hath scanned. +Nought beyond these coiling clouds + that melt like fume of shrines that steam +Breaks or stays the strength of waters + till they pass our bounds of dream. +Where the waste Land's End leans westward, + all the seas it watches roll +Find their border fixed beyond them, + and a worldwide shore's control: +These whereby we stand no shore + beyond us limits: these are free. +Gazing hence, we see the water + that grows iron round the Pole, +From the shore that hath no shore + beyond it set in all the sea. + +Sail on sail along the sea-line + fades and flashes; here on land +Flash and fade the wheeling wings + on wings of mews that plunge and scream. +Hour on hour along the line + of life and time's evasive strand +Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes, + slays and dies: and scarce they seem +More than motes that thronged and trembled + in the brief noon's breath and beam. +Some with crying and wailing, some + with notes like sound of bells that toll, +Some with sighing and laughing, some + with words that blessed and made us whole, +Passed, and left us, and we know not + what they were, nor what were we. +Would we know, being mortal? Never + breath of answering whisper stole +From the shore that hath no shore + beyond it set in all the sea. + +Shadows, would we question darkness? + Ere our eyes and brows be fanned +Round with airs of twilight, washed + with dews from sleep's eternal stream, +Would we know sleep's guarded secret? + Ere the fire consume the brand, +Would it know if yet its ashes + may requicken? yet we deem +Surely man may know, or ever + night unyoke her starry team, +What the dawn shall be, or if + the dawn shall be not, yea, the scroll +Would we read of sleep's dark scripture, + pledge of peace or doom of dole. +Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning + toward the gloom with venturous glee, +Though his pilot eye behold + nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal, +From the shore that hath no shore + beyond it set in all the sea. + +Friend, who knows if death indeed + have life or life have death for goal? +Day nor night can tell us, nor + may seas declare nor skies unroll +What has been from everlasting, + or if aught shall always be. +Silence answering only strikes + response reverberate on the soul +From the shore that hath no shore + beyond it set in all the sea. + + + + +_A NEW-YEAR ODE_ + +TO VICTOR HUGO + + +I. + +Twice twelve times have the springs of years refilled + Their fountains from the river-head of time +Since by the green sea's marge, ere autumn chilled + Waters and woods with sense of changing clime, +A great light rose upon my soul, and thrilled + My spirit of sense with sense of spheres in chime, +Sound as of song wherewith a God would build + Towers that no force of conquering war might climb. + Wind shook the glimmering sea + Even as my soul in me + Was stirred with breath of mastery more sublime, + Uplift and borne along + More thunderous tides of song, + Where wave rang back to wave more rapturous rhyme + And world on world flashed lordlier light +Than ever lit the wandering ways of ships by night. + + +II. + +The spirit of God, whose breath of life is song, + Moved, though his word was human, on the face +Of those deep waters of the soul, too long + Dumb, dark, and cold, that waited for the grace +Wherewith day kindles heaven: and as some throng + Of quiring wings fills full some lone chill place +With sudden rush of life and joy, more strong + Than death or sorrow or all night's darkling race, + So was my heart, that heard + All heaven in each deep word, + Filled full with light of thought, and waxed apace + Itself more wide and deep, + To take that gift and keep + And cherish while my days fulfilled their space; + A record wide as earth and sea, +The Legend writ of Ages past and yet to be. + + +III. + +As high the chant of Paradise and Hell + Rose, when the soul of Milton gave it wings; +As wide the sweep of Shakespeare's empire fell, + When life had bared for him her secret springs; +But not his various soul might range and dwell + Amid the mysteries of the founts of things; +Nor Milton's range of rule so far might swell + Across the kingdoms of forgotten kings. + Men, centuries, nations, time, + Life, death, love, trust, and crime, + Rang record through the change of smitten strings + That felt an exile's hand + Sound hope for every land + More loud than storm's cloud-sundering trumpet rings, + And bid strong death for judgment rise, +And life bow down for judgment of his awless eyes. + + +IV. + +And death, soul-stricken in his strength, resigned + The keeping of the sepulchres to song; +And life was humbled, and his height of mind + Brought lower than lies a grave-stone fallen along; +And like a ghost and like a God mankind + Rose clad with light and darkness; weak and strong, +Clean and unclean, with eyes afire and blind, + Wounded and whole, fast bound with cord and thong, + Free; fair and foul, sin-stained, + And sinless; crowned and chained; + Fleet-limbed, and halting all his lifetime long; + Glad of deep shame, and sad + For shame's sake; wise, and mad; + Girt round with love and hate of right and wrong; + Armed and disarmed for sleep and strife; +Proud, and sore fear made havoc of his pride of life. + + +V. + +Shadows and shapes of fable and storied sooth + Rose glorious as with gleam of gold unpriced; +Eve, clothed with heavenly nakedness and youth + That matched the morning's; Cain, self-sacrificed +On crime's first altar: legends wise as truth, + And truth in legends deep embalmed and spiced; +The stars that saw the starlike eyes of Ruth, + The grave that heard the clarion call of Christ. + And higher than sorrow and mirth + The heavenly song of earth + Sprang, in such notes as might have well sufficed + To still the storms of time + And sin's contentious clime + With peace renewed of life reparadised: + Earth, scarred not yet with temporal scars; +Goddess of gods, our mother, chosen among the stars. + + +VI. + +Earth fair as heaven, ere change and time set odds + Between them, light and darkness know not when, +And fear, grown strong through panic periods, + Crouched, a crowned worm, in faith's Lernean fen, +And love lay bound, and hope was scourged with rods, + And death cried out from desert and from den, +Seeing all the heaven above him dark with gods + And all the world about him marred of men. + Cities that nought might purge + Save the sea's whelming surge + From all the pent pollutions in their pen + Deep death drank down, and wrought, + With wreck of all things, nought, + That none might live of all their names again, + Nor aught of all whose life is breath +Serve any God whose likeness was not like to death. + + +VII. + +Till by the lips and eyes of one live nation + The blind mute world found grace to see and speak, +And light watched rise a more divine creation + At that more godlike utterance of the Greek, +Let there be freedom. Kings whose orient station + Made pale the morn, and all her presage bleak, +Girt each with strengths of all his generation, + Dim tribes of shamefaced soul and sun-swart cheek, + Twice, urged with one desire, + Son following hard on sire, + With all the wrath of all a world to wreak, + And all the rage of night + Afire against the light + Whose weakness makes her strong-winged empire weak, + Stood up to unsay that saying, and fell +Too far for song, though song were thousand-tongued, to tell. + + +VIII. + +From those deep echoes of the loud AEgean + That rolled response whereat false fear was chid +By songs of joy sublime and Sophoclean, + Fresh notes reverberate westward rose to bid +All wearier times take comfort from the paean + That tells the night what deeds the sunrise did, +Even till the lawns and torrents Pyrenean + Ring answer from the records of the Cid. + But never force of fountains + From sunniest hearts of mountains + Wherein the soul of hidden June was hid + Poured forth so pure and strong + Springs of reiterate song, + Loud as the streams his fame was reared amid, + More sweet than flowers they feed, and fair +With grace of lordlier sunshine and more lambent air. + + +IX. + +A star more prosperous than the storm-clothed east's + Clothed all the warm south-west with light like spring's, +When hands of strong men spread the wolves their feasts + And from snake-spirited princes plucked the stings; +Ere earth, grown all one den of hurtling beasts, + Had for her sunshine and her watersprings +The fire of hell that warmed the hearts of priests, + The wells of blood that slaked the lips of kings. + The shadow of night made stone + Stood populous and alone, + Dense with its dead and loathed of living things + That draw not life from death, + And as with hell's own breath + And clangour of immitigable wings + Vexed the fair face of Paris, made +Foul in its murderous imminence of sound and shade. + + +X. + +And all these things were parcels of the vision + That moved a cloud before his eyes, or stood +A tower half shattered by the strong collision + Of spirit and spirit, of evil gods with good; +A ruinous wall rent through with grim division, + Where time had marked his every monstrous mood +Of scorn and strength and pride and self-derision: + The Tower of Things, that felt upon it brood + Night, and about it cast + The storm of all the past + Now mute and forceless as a fire subdued: + Yet through the rifted years + And centuries veiled with tears + And ages as with very death imbrued + Freedom, whence hope and faith grow strong, +Smiles, and firm love sustains the indissoluble song. + + +XI. + +Above the cloudy coil of days deceased, + Its might of flight, with mists and storms beset, +Burns heavenward, as with heart and hope increased, + For all the change of tempests, all the fret +Of frost or fire, keen fraud or force released, + Wherewith the world once wasted knows not yet +If evil or good lit all the darkling east + From the ardent moon of sovereign Mahomet. + Sublime in work and will + The song sublimer still + Salutes him, ere the splendour shrink and set; + Then with imperious eye + And wing that sounds the sky + Soars and sees risen as ghosts in concourse met + The old world's seven elder wonders, firm +As dust and fixed as shadows, weaker than the worm. + + +XII. + +High witness borne of knights high-souled and hoary + Before death's face and empire's rings and glows +Even from the dust their life poured forth left gory, + As the eagle's cry rings after from the snows +Supreme rebuke of shame clothed round with glory + And hosts whose track the false crowned eagle shows; +More loud than sounds through stormiest song and story + The laugh of slayers whose names the sea-wind knows; + More loud than peals on land + In many a red wet hand + The clash of gold and cymbals as they close; + Loud as the blast that meets + The might of marshalled fleets + And sheds it into shipwreck, like a rose + Blown from a child's light grasp in sign +That earth's high lords are lords not over breeze and brine. + + +XIII. + +Above the dust and mire of man's dejection + The wide-winged spirit of song resurgent sees +His wingless and long-labouring resurrection + Up the arduous heaven, by sore and strange degrees +Mount, and with splendour of the soul's reflection + Strike heaven's dark sovereign down upon his knees, +Pale in the light of orient insurrection, + And dumb before the almightier lord's decrees + Who bade him be of yore, + Who bids him be no more: + And all earth's heart is quickened as the sea's, + Even as when sunrise burns + The very sea's heart yearns + That heard not on the midnight-walking breeze + The wail that woke with evensong +From hearts of poor folk watching all the darkness long. + + +XIV. + +Dawn and the beams of sunbright song illume + Love, with strange children at her piteous breast, +By grace of weakness from the grave-mouthed gloom + Plucked, and by mercy lulled to living rest, +Soft as the nursling's nigh the grandsire's tomb + That fell on sleep, a bird of rifled nest; +Soft as the lips whose smile unsaid the doom + That gave their sire to violent death's arrest. + Even for such love's sake strong, + Wrath fires the inveterate song + That bids hell gape for one whose bland mouth blest + All slayers and liars that sighed + Prayer as they slew and lied + Till blood had clothed his priesthood as a vest, + And hears, though darkness yet be dumb, +The silence of the trumpet of the wrath to come. + + +XV. + +Nor lacked these lights of constellated age + A star among them fed with life more dire, +Lit with his bloodied fame, whose withering rage + Made earth for heaven's sake one funereal pyre +And life in faith's name one appointed stage + For death to purge the souls of men with fire. +Heaven, earth, and hell on one thrice tragic page + Mixed all their light and darkness: one man's lyre + Gave all their echoes voice; + Bade rose-cheeked love rejoice, + And cold-lipped craft with ravenous fear conspire, + And fire-eyed faith smite hope + Dead, seeing enthroned as Pope + And crowned of heaven on earth at hell's desire + Sin, called by death's incestuous name +Borgia: the world that heard it flushed and quailed with shame. + + +XVI. + +Another year, and hope triumphant heard + The consummating sound of song that spake +Conclusion to the multitudinous word + Whose expectation held her spirit awake +Till full delight for twice twelve years deferred + Bade all souls entering eat and drink, and take +A third time comfort given them, that the third + Might heap the measure up of twain, and make + The sinking year sublime + Among all sons of time + And fan in all men's memories for his sake. + Each thought of ours became + Fire, kindling from his flame, + And music widening in his wide song's wake. + Yea, and the world bore witness here +How great a light was risen upon this darkening year. + + +XVII. + +It was the dawn of winter: sword in sheath, + Change, veiled and mild, came down the gradual air +With cold slow smiles that hid the doom beneath. + Five days to die in yet were autumn's, ere +The last leaf withered from his flowerless wreath. + South, east, and north, our skies were all blown bare, +But westward over glimmering holt and heath + Cloud, wind, and light had made a heaven more fair + Than ever dream or truth + Showed earth in time's keen youth + When men with angels communed unaware. + Above the sun's head, now + Veiled even to the ardent brow, + Rose two sheer wings of sundering cloud, that were + As a bird's poised for vehement flight, +Full-fledged with plumes of tawny fire and hoar grey light. + + +XVIII. + +As midnight black, as twilight brown, they spread, + But feathered thick with flame that streaked and lined +Their living darkness, ominous else of dread, + From south to northmost verge of heaven inclined +Most like some giant angel's, whose bent head + Bowed earthward, as with message for mankind +Of doom or benediction to be shed + From passage of his presence. Far behind, + Even while they seemed to close, + Stoop, and take flight, arose + Above them, higher than heavenliest thought may find + In light or night supreme + Of vision or of dream, + Immeasurable of men's eyes or mounting mind, + Heaven, manifest in manifold +Light of pure pallid amber, cheered with fire of gold. + + +XIX. + +And where the fine gold faded all the sky + Shone green as the outer sea when April glows, +Inlaid with flakes and feathers fledged to fly + Of cloud suspense in rapture and repose, +With large live petals, broad as love bids lie + Full open when the sun salutes the rose, +And small rent sprays wherewith the heavens most high + Were strewn as autumn strews the garden-close + With ruinous roseleaves whirled + About their wan chill world, + Through wind-worn bowers that now no music knows, + Spoil of the dim dusk year + Whose utter night is near, + And near the flower of dawn beyond it blows; + Till east and west were fire and light, +As though the dawn to come had flushed the coming night. + + +XX. + +The highways paced of men that toil or play, + The byways known of none but lonely feet, +Were paven of purple woven of night and day + With hands that met as hands of friends might meet-- +As though night's were not lifted up to slay + And day's had waxed not weaker. Peace more sweet +Than music, light more soft than shadow, lay + On downs and moorlands wan with day's defeat, + That watched afar above + Life's very rose of love + Let all its lustrous leaves fall, fade, and fleet, + And fill all heaven and earth + Full as with fires of birth + Whence time should feed his years with light and heat: + Nay, not life's, but a flower more strong +Than life or time or death, love's very rose of song. + + +XXI. + +Song visible, whence all men's eyes were lit + With love and loving wonder: song that glowed +Through cloud and change on souls that knew not it + And hearts that wist not whence their comfort flowed, +Whence fear was lightened of her fever-fit, + Whence anguish of her life-compelling load. +Yea, no man's head whereon the fire alit, + Of all that passed along that sunset road + Westward, no brow so drear, + No eye so dull of cheer, + No face so mean whereon that light abode, + But as with alien pride + Strange godhead glorified + Each feature flushed from heaven with fire that showed + The likeness of its own life wrought +By strong transfiguration as of living thought. + + +XXII. + +Nor only clouds of the everlasting sky, + Nor only men that paced that sunward way +To the utter bourne of evening, passed not by + Unblest or unillumined: none might say, +Of all things visible in the wide world's eye, + That all too low for all that grace it lay: +The lowliest lakelets of the moorland nigh, + The narrowest pools where shallowest wavelets play, + Were filled from heaven above + With light like fire of love, + With flames and colours like a dawn in May, + As hearts that lowlier live + With light of thoughts that give + Light from the depth of souls more deep than they + Through song's or story's kindling scroll, +The splendour of the shadow that reveals the soul. + + +XXIII. + +For, when such light is in the world, we share, + All of us, all the rays thereof that shine: +Its presence is alive in the unseen air, + Its fire within our veins as quickening wine; +A spirit is shed on all men everywhere, + Known or not known of all men for divine. +Yea, as the sun makes heaven, that light makes fair + All souls of ours, all lesser souls than thine, + Priest, prophet, seer and sage, + Lord of a subject age + That bears thy seal upon it for a sign; + Whose name shall be thy name, + Whose light thy light of fame, + The light of love that makes thy soul a shrine; + Whose record through all years to be +Shall bear this witness written--that its womb bare thee. + + +XXIV. + +O mystery, whence to one man's hand was given + Power upon all things of the spirit, and might +Whereby the veil of all the years was riven + And naked stood the secret soul of night! +O marvel, hailed of eyes whence cloud is driven, + That shows at last wrong reconciled with right +By death divine of evil and sin forgiven! + O light of song, whose fire is perfect light! + No speech, no voice, no thought, + No love, avails us aught + For service of thanksgiving in his sight + Who hath given us all for ever + Such gifts that man gave never + So many and great since first Time's wings took flight. + Man may not praise a spirit above +Man's: life and death shall praise him: we can only love. + + +XXV. + +Life, everlasting while the worlds endure, + Death, self-abased before a power more high, +Shall bear one witness, and their word stand sure, + That not till time be dead shall this man die +Love, like a bird, comes loyal to his lure; + Fame flies before him, wingless else to fly. +A child's heart toward his kind is not more pure, + An eagle's toward the sun no lordlier eye. + Awe sweet as love and proud + As fame, though hushed and bowed, + Yearns toward him silent as his face goes by: + All crowns before his crown + Triumphantly bow down, + For pride that one more great than all draws nigh: + All souls applaud, all hearts acclaim, +One heart benign, one soul supreme, one conquering name. + + + + +NOTES + + + ST. V. + V. 3. La Legende des Siecles: Le Sacre de la Femme. + 4. La Conscience. + 7. Booz endormi. + 8. Premiere rencontre du Christ avec le tombeau. + 9. La Terre: Hymne. + VI. 3. Les Temps Paniques. + 9. La Ville Disparue. + VII. Les Trois Cents. +VIII. 1. Le Detroit de l'Euripe: La Chanson de Sophocle a Salamine. + 7. Le Romancero du Cid. + IX. 3. Le Petit Roi de Galice. + 5. Le Jour des Rois. + 9. Montfaucon. + X. La vision d'ou est sorti ce livre. + XI. 9. L'an neuf de l'Hegire. + 12. Les sept merveilles du monde. + XII. 1. Les quatre jours d'Elciis. + 4. Le Regiment du baron Madruce. + 7. La Chanson des Aventuriers de la Mer. + 9. Les Reitres. + 12. La Rose de l'Infante. +XIII. 1. Le Satyre. + 12. Les paysans au bord de la mer. + XIV. 1. Les pauvres gens. + 5. Petit Paul. + 7. Guerre Civile. + 9. La Vision de Dante. + 15. La Trompette du Jugement. + XV. Torquemada (1882). + XVI. La Legende des Siecles: tome cinquieme et dernier (1883). +XVII. November 25, 1883. + + + + +_LINES ON THE MONUMENT OF GIUSEPPE MAZZINI._ + + +Italia, mother of the souls of men, + Mother divine, +Of all that served thee best with sword or pen, + All sons of thine, + +Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best + Before thee stands, +The head most high, the heart found faithfullest, + The purest hands. + +Above the fume and foam of time that flits, + The soul, we know, +Now sits on high where Alighieri sits + With Angelo. + +Not his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech + Enough to say +What this man was, whose praise no thought may reach, + No words can weigh. + +Since man's first mother brought to mortal birth + Her first-born son, +Such grace befell not ever man on earth + As crowns this one. + +Of God nor man was ever this thing said, + That he could give +Life back to her who gave him, whence his dead + Mother might live. + +But this man found his mother dead and slain, + With fast sealed eyes, +And bade the dead rise up and live again, + And she did rise. + +And all the world was bright with her through him: + But dark with strife, +Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds bedim, + Was all his life. + +Life and the clouds are vanished: hate and fear + Have had their span +Of time to hunt, and are not: he is here, + The sunlike man. + +City superb that hadst Columbus first + For sovereign son, +Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst + This mightier one. + +Glory be his for ever, while his land + Lives and is free, +As with controlling breath and sovereign hand + He bade her be. + +Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told + That crown her fame, +But highest of all that heaven and earth behold + Mazzini's name. + + + + +_LES CASQUETS._ + + +From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken + With change everlasting of life and of death, +Where hardly by noon if the lulled ear hearken + It hears the sea's as a tired child's breath, +Where hardly by night if an eye dare scan it + The storm lets shipwreck be seen or heard, +As the reefs to the waves and the foam to the granite + Respond one merciless word, + +Sheer seen and far, in the sea's live heaven, + A seamew's flight from the wild sweet land, +White-plumed with foam if the wind wake, seven + Black helms as of warriors that stir not stand. +From the depths that abide and the waves that environ + Seven rocks rear heads that the midnight masks, +And the strokes of the swords of the storm are as iron + On the steel of the wave-worn casques. + +Be night's dark word as the word of a wizard, + Be the word of dawn as a god's glad word, +Like heads of the spirits of darkness visored + That see not for ever, nor ever have heard, +These basnets, plumed as for fight or plumeless, + Crowned of the storm and by storm discrowned, +Keep ward of the lists where the dead lie tombless + And the tale of them is not found. + +Nor eye may number nor hand may reckon + The tithes that are taken of life by the dark, +Or the ways of the path, if doom's hand beckon, + For the soul to fare as a helmless bark-- +Fare forth on a way that no sign showeth, + Nor aught of its goal or of aught between, +A path for her flight which no fowl knoweth, + Which the vulture's eye hath not seen. + +Here still, though the wave and the wind seem lovers + Lulled half asleep by their own soft words, +A dream as of death in the sun's light hovers, + And a sign in the motions and cries of the birds. +Dark auguries and keen from the sweet sea-swallows + Strike noon with a sense as of midnight's breath, +And the wing that flees and the wing that follows + Are as types of the wings of death. + +For here, when the night roars round, and under + The white sea lightens and leaps like fire, +Acclaimed of storm and applauded in thunder, + Sits death on the throne of his crowned desire. +Yea, hardly the hand of the god might fashion + A seat more strong for his strength to take, +For the might of his heart and the pride of his passion + To rejoice in the wars they make. + +When the heart in him brightens with blitheness of battle + And the depth of its thirst is fulfilled with strife, +And his ear with the ravage of bolts that rattle, + And the soul of death with the pride of life, +Till the darkness is loud with his dark thanksgiving + And wind and cloud are as chords of his hymn, +There is nought save death in the deep night living + And the whole night worships him. + +Heaven's height bows down to him, signed with his token, + And the sea's depth, moved as a heart that yearns, +Heaves up to him, strong as a heart half broken, + A heart that breaks in a prayer that burns +Of cloud is the shrine of his worship moulded, + But the altar therein is of sea-shaped stone, +Whereon, with the strength of his wide wings folded, + Sits death in the dark, alone. + +He hears the word of his servant spoken, + The word that the wind his servant saith, +Storm writes on the front of the night his token, + That the skies may seem to bow down to death +But the clouds that stoop and the storms that minister + Serve but as thralls that fulfil their tasks; +And his seal is not set save here on the sinister + Crests reared of the crownless casques. + +Nor flame nor plume of the storm that crowned them + Gilds or quickens their stark black strength. +Life lightens and murmurs and laughs right round them, + At peace with the noon's whole breadth and length, +At one with the heart of the soft-souled heaven, + At one with the life of the kind wild land: +But its touch may unbrace not the strengths of the seven + Casques hewn of the storm-wind's hand. + +No touch may loosen the black braced helmlets + For the wild elves' heads of the wild waves wrought. +As flowers on the sea are her small green realmlets, + Like heavens made out of a child's heart's thought; +But these as thorns of her desolate places, + Strong fangs that fasten and hold lives fast: +And the vizors are framed as for formless faces + That a dark dream sees go past. + +Of fear and of fate are the frontlets fashioned, + And the heads behind them are dire and dumb. +When the heart of the darkness is scarce impassioned, + Thrilled scarce with sense of the wrath to come, +They bear the sign from of old engraven, + Though peace be round them and strife seem far, +That here is none but the night-wind's haven, + With death for the harbour bar. + +Of the iron of doom are the casquets carven, + That never the rivets thereof should burst. +When the heart of the darkness is hunger-starven, + And the throats of the gulfs are agape for thirst, +And stars are as flowers that the wind bids wither, + And dawn is as hope struck dead by fear, +The rage of the ravenous night sets hither, + And the crown of her work is here. + +All shores about and afar lie lonely, + But lonelier are these than the heart of grief, +These loose-linked rivets of rock, whence only + Strange life scarce gleams from the sheer main reef, +With a blind wan face in the wild wan morning, + With a live lit flame on its brows by night, +That the lost may lose not its word's mute warning + And the blind by its grace have sight. + +Here, walled in with the wide waste water, + Grew the grace of a girl's lone life, +The sea's and the sea-wind's foster-daughter, + And peace was hers in the main mid strife. +For her were the rocks clothed round with thunder, + And the crests of them carved by the storm-smith's craft: +For her was the mid storm rent in sunder + As with passion that wailed and laughed. + +For her the sunrise kindled and scattered + The red rose-leaflets of countless cloud: +For her the blasts of the springtide shattered + The strengths reluctant of waves back-bowed. +For her would winds in the mid sky levy + Bright wars that hardly the night bade cease +At noon, when sleep on the sea lies heavy, + For her would the sun make peace. + +Peace rose crowned with the dawn on golden + Lit leagues of triumph that flamed and smiled: +Peace lay lulled in the moon-beholden + Warm darkness making the world's heart mild +For all the wide waves' troubles and treasons, + One word only her soul's ear heard +Speak from stormless and storm-rent seasons, + And nought save peace was the word. + +All her life waxed large with the light of it, + All her heart fed full on the sound: +Spirit and sense were exalted in sight of it, + Compassed and girdled and clothed with it round. +Sense was none but a strong still rapture, + Spirit was none but a joy sublime, +Of strength to curb and of craft to capture + The craft and the strength of Time. + +Time lay bound as in painless prison + There, closed in with a strait small space. +Never thereon as a strange light risen + Change had unveiled for her grief's far face +Three white walls flung out from the basement + Girt the width of the world whereon +Gazing at night from her flame-lit casement + She saw where the dark sea shone. + +Hardly the breadth of a few brief paces, + Hardly the length of a strong man's stride, +The small court flower lit with children's faces + Scarce held scope for a bud to hide. +Yet here was a man's brood reared and hidden + Between the rocks and the towers and the foam, +Where peril and pity and peace were bidden + As guests to the same sure home. + +Here would pity keep watch for peril, + And surety comfort his heart with peace. +No flower save one, where the reefs lie sterile, + Gave of the seed of its heart's increase. +Pity and surety and peace most lowly + Were the root and the stem and the bloom of the flower: +And the light and the breath of the buds kept holy + That maid's else blossomless bower. + +With never a leaf but the seaweed's tangle, + Never a bird's but the seamew's note, +It heard all round it the strong storms wrangle, + Watched far past it the waste wrecks float. +But her soul was stilled by the sky's endurance, + And her heart made glad with the sea's content; +And her faith waxed more in the sun's assurance + For the winds that came and went. + +Sweetness was brought for her forth of the bitter + Sea's strength, and light of the deep sea's dark, +From where green lawns on Alderney glitter + To the bastioned crags of the steeps of Sark. +These she knew from afar beholden, + And marvelled haply what life would be +On moors that sunset and dawn leave golden, + In dells that smile on the sea. + +And forth she fared as a stout-souled rover, + For a brief blithe raid on the bounding brine: +And light winds ferried her light bark over + To the lone soft island of fair-limbed kine. +But the league-long length of its wild green border, + And the small bright streets of serene St. Anne, +Perplexed her sense with a strange disorder + At sight of the works of man. + +The world was here, and the world's confusion, + And the dust of the wheels of revolving life, +Pain, labour, change, and the fierce illusion + Of strife more vain than the sea's old strife. +And her heart within her was vexed, and dizzy + The sense of her soul as a wheel that whirled: +She might not endure for a space that busy + Loud coil of the troublous world. + +Too full, she said, was the world of trouble, + Too dense with noise of contentious things, +And shews less bright than the blithe foam's bubble + As home she fared on the smooth wind's wings. +For joy grows loftier in air more lonely, + Where only the sea's brood fain would be; +Where only the heart may receive in it only + The love of the heart of the sea. + + + + +_A BALLAD OF SARK._ + + +High beyond the granite portal arched across + Like the gateway of some godlike giant's hold +Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss + East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold + Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold +Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark +Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark + Full of spicery wrought from herb and flower and tree. +None would dream that grief even here may disembark + On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. + +Rocks emblazoned like the mid shield's royal boss + Take the sun with all their blossom broad and bold. +None would dream that all this moorland's glow and gloss + Could be dark as tombs that strike the spirit acold + Even in eyes that opened here, and here behold +Now no sun relume from hope's belated spark +Any comfort, nor may ears of mourners hark + Though the ripe woods ring with golden-throated glee, +While the soul lies shattered, like a stranded bark + On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. + +Death and doom are they whose crested triumphs toss + On the proud plumed waves whence mourning notes are tolled. +Wail of perfect woe and moan for utter loss + Raise the bride-song through the graveyard on the wold + Where the bride-bed keeps the bridegroom fast in mould, +Where the bride, with death for priest and doom for clerk, +Hears for choir the throats of waves like wolves that bark, + Sore anhungered, off the drear Eperquerie, +Fain to spoil the strongholds of the strength of Sark + On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. + +Prince of storm and tempest, lord whose ways are dark, +Wind whose wings are spread for flight that none may mark, + Lightly dies the joy that lives by grace of thee. +Love through thee lies bleeding, hope lies cold and stark, + On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. + + + + +_NINE YEARS OLD._ + +FEBRUARY 4, 1883. + + +I. + +Lord of light, whose shine no hands destroy, + God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses, +Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy, + Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses +Ring forth gold of strains without alloy, + Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses +Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy, + Since the child whose head this dawn bedews is +Sweet as once thy violet-cradled boy. + + +II. + +Even as he lay lapped about with flowers, + Lies the life now nine years old before us +Lapped about with love in all its hours; + Hailed of many loves that chant in chorus +Loud or low from lush or leafless bowers, + Some from hearts exultant born sonorous, +Some scarce louder-voiced than soft-tongued showers + Two months hence, when spring's light wings poised o'er us +High shall hover, and her heart be ours. + + +III. + +Even as he, though man-forsaken, smiled + On the soft kind snakes divinely bidden +There to feed him in the green mid wild + Full with hurtless honey, till the hidden +Birth should prosper, finding fate more mild, + So full-fed with pleasures unforbidden, +So by love's lines blamelessly beguiled, + Laughs the nursling of our hearts unchidden +Yet by change that mars not yet the child. + + +IV. + +Ah, not yet! Thou, lord of night and day, + Time, sweet father of such blameless pleasure, +Time, false friend who tak'st thy gifts away, + Spare us yet some scantlings of the treasure, +Leave us yet some rapture of delay, + Yet some bliss of blind and fearless leisure +Unprophetic of delight's decay, + Yet some nights and days wherein to measure +All the joys that bless us while they may. + + +V. + +Not the waste Arcadian woodland, wet + Still with dawn and vocal with Alpheus, +Reared a nursling worthier love's regret, + Lord, than this, whose eyes beholden free us +Straight from bonds the soul would fain forget, + Fain cast off, that night and day might see us +Clear once more of life's vain fume and fret: + Leave us, then, whate'er thy doom decree us, +Yet some days wherein to love him yet. + + +VI. + +Yet some days wherein the child is ours, + Ours, not thine, O lord whose hand is o'er us +Always, as the sky with suns and showers + Dense and radiant, soundless or sonorous; +Yet some days for love's sake, ere the bowers + Fade wherein his fair first years kept chorus +Night and day with Graces robed like hours, + Ere this worshipped childhood wane before us, +Change, and bring forth fruit--but no more flowers. + + +VII. + +Love we may the thing that is to be, + Love we must; but how forego this olden +Joy, this flower of childish love, that we + Held more dear than aught of Time is holden-- +Time, whose laugh is like as Death's to see-- + Time, who heeds not aught of all beholden, +Heard, or touched in passing--flower or tree, + Tares or grain of leaden days or golden-- +More than wind has heed of ships at sea? + + +VIII. + +First the babe, a very rose of joy, + Sweet as hope's first note of jubilation, +Passes: then must growth and change destroy + Next the child, and mar the consecration +Hallowing yet, ere thought or sense annoy, + Childhood's yet half heavenlike habitation, +Bright as truth and frailer than a toy; + Whence its guest with eager gratulation +Springs, and life grows larger round the boy. + + +IX. + +Yet, ere sunrise wholly cease to shine, + Ere change come to chide our hearts, and scatter +Memories marked for love's sake with a sign, + Let the light of dawn beholden flatter +Yet some while our eyes that feed on thine, + Child, with love that change nor time can shatter, +Love, whose silent song says more than mine + Now, though charged with elder loves and latter +Here it hails a lord whose years are nine. + + + + +_AFTER A READING._ + + +For the seven times seventh time love would renew + the delight without end or alloy +That it takes in the praise as it takes in the presence + of eyes that fulfil it with joy; +But how shall it praise them and rest unrebuked + by the presence and pride of the boy? + +Praise meet for a child is unmeet for an elder + whose winters and springs are nine +What song may have strength in its wings to expand them, + or light in its eyes to shine, +That shall seem not as weakness and darkness if matched + with the theme I would fain make mine? + +The round little flower of a face that exults + in the sunshine of shadowless days +Defies the delight it enkindles to sing of it + aught not unfit for the praise +Of the sweetest of all things that eyes may rejoice in + and tremble with love as they gaze. + +Such tricks and such meanings abound on the lips + and the brows that are brighter than light, +The demure little chin, the sedate little nose, + and the forehead of sun-stained white, +That love overflows into laughter and laughter + subsides into love at the sight. + +Each limb and each feature has action in tune + with the meaning that smiles as it speaks +From the fervour of eyes and the fluttering of hands + in a foretaste of fancies and freaks, +When the thought of them deepens the dimples that laugh + in the corners and curves of his cheeks. + +As a bird when the music within her is yet + too intense to be spoken in song, +That pauses a little for pleasure to feel + how the notes from withinwards throng, +So pauses the laugh at his lips for a little, + and waxes within more strong. + +As the music elate and triumphal that bids + all things of the dawn bear part +With the tune that prevails when her passion has risen + into rapture of passionate art, +So lightens the laughter made perfect that leaps + from its nest in the heaven of his heart. + +Deep, grave and sedate is the gaze of expectant + intensity bent for awhile +And absorbed on its aim as the tale that enthralls him + uncovers the weft of its wile, +Till the goal of attention is touched, and expectancy + kisses delight in a smile. + +And it seems to us here that in Paradise hardly + the spirit of Lamb or of Blake +May hear or behold aught sweeter than lightens + and rings when his bright thoughts break +In laughter that well might lure them to look, + and to smile as of old for his sake. + +O singers that best loved children, and best + for their sakes are beloved of us here, +In the world of your life everlasting, where love + has no thorn and desire has no fear, +All else may be sweeter than aught is on earth, + nought dearer than these are dear. + + + + +_MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER._ + + +A new year gleams on us, tearful + And troubled and smiling dim +As the smile on a lip still fearful, + As glances of eyes that swim: +But the bird of my heart makes cheerful + The days that are bright for him. + +Child, how may a man's love merit + The grace you shed as you stand, +The gift that is yours to inherit? + Through you are the bleak days bland; +Your voice is a light to my spirit; + You bring the sun in your hand. + +The year's wing shows not a feather + As yet of the plumes to be; +Yet here in the shrill grey weather + The spring's self stands at my knee, +And laughs as we commune together, + And lightens the world we see. + +The rains are as dews for the christening + Of dawns that the nights benumb: +The spring's voice answers me listening + For speech of a child to come, +While promise of music is glistening + On lips that delight keeps dumb. + +The mists and the storms receding + At sight of you smile and die: +Your eyes held wide on me reading + Shed summer across the sky: +Your heart shines clear for me, heeding + No more of the world than I. + +The world, what is it to you, dear, + And me, if its face be grey, +And the new-born year be a shrewd year + For flowers that the fierce winds fray? +You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear; + You laugh, and the month turns May. + +Love cares not for care, he has daffed her + Aside as a mate for guile: +The sight that my soul yearns after + Feeds full my sense for awhile; +Your sweet little sun-faced laughter, + Your good little glad grave smile. + +Your hands through the bookshelves flutter; + Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught; +Blake's visions, that lighten and mutter; + Moliere--and his smile has nought +Left on it of sorrow, to utter + The secret things of his thought. + +No grim thing written or graven + But grows, if you gaze on it, bright; +A lark's note rings from the raven, + And tragedy's robe turns white; +And shipwrecks drift into haven; + And darkness laughs, and is light. + +Grief seems but a vision of madness; + Life's key-note peals from above +With nought in it more of sadness + Than broods on the heart of a dove: +At sight of you, thought grows gladness, + And life, through love of you, love. + + + + +_A DOUBLE BALLAD OF AUGUST._ + +(1884.) + + +All Afric, winged with death and fire, +Pants in our pleasant English air. +Each blade of grass is tense as wire, +And all the wood's loose trembling hair +Stark in the broad and breathless glare +Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree. +This bright sharp death shines everywhere; +Life yearns for solace toward the sea. + +Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre; +The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear. +All power to fear, all keen desire, +Lies dead as dreams of days that were +Before the new-born world lay bare +In heaven's wide eye, whereunder we +Lie breathless till the season spare: +Life yearns for solace toward the sea. + +Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire +On spirit and sense, divide and share +The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire, +The throes of dreams that scarce forbear +One mute immitigable prayer +For cold perpetual sleep to be +Shed snowlike on the sense of care. +Life yearns for solace toward the sea. + +The dust of ways where men suspire +Seems even the dust of death's dim lair. +But though the feverish days be dire +The sea-wind rears and cheers its fair +Blithe broods of babes that here and there +Make the sands laugh and glow for glee +With gladder flowers than gardens wear. +Life yearns for solace toward the sea. + +The music dies not off the lyre +That lets no soul alive despair. +Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choir +Of waves whose note bids sorrow spare. +As glad they sound, as fast they fare, +As when fate's word first set them free +And gave them light and night to wear. +Life yearns for solace toward the sea. + +For there, though night and day conspire +To compass round with toil and snare +And changeless whirl of change, whose gyre +Draws all things deathwards unaware, +The spirit of life they scourge and scare, +Wild waves that follow on waves that flee +Laugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair, +Life yearns for solace toward the sea. + + + + +_HEARTSEASE COUNTRY._ + +TO ISABEL SWINBURNE. + + +The far green westward heavens are bland, + The far green Wiltshire downs are clear +As these deep meadows hard at hand: + The sight knows hardly far from near, + Nor morning joy from evening cheer. +In cottage garden-plots their bees +Find many a fervent flower to seize + And strain and drain the heart away +From ripe sweet-williams and sweet-peas + At every turn on every way. + +But gladliest seems one flower to expand + Its whole sweet heart all round us here; +'Tis Heartsease Country, Pansy Land. + Nor sounds nor savours harsh and drear + Where engines yell and halt and veer +Can vex the sense of him who sees +One flower-plot midway, that for trees + Has poles, and sheds all grimed or grey +For bowers like those that take the breeze + At every turn on every way. + +Content even there they smile and stand, + Sweet thought's heart-easing flowers, nor fear, +With reek and roaring steam though fanned, + Nor shrink nor perish as they peer. + The heart's eye holds not those more dear +That glow between the lanes and leas +Where'er the homeliest hand may please + To bid them blossom as they may +Where light approves and wind agrees + At every turn on every way. + +Sister, the word of winds and seas +Endures not as the word of these + Your wayside flowers whose breath would say +How hearts that love may find heart's ease + At every turn on every way. + + + + +_A BALLAD OF APPEAL._ + +TO CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. + + +Song wakes with every wakening year + From hearts of birds that only feel +Brief spring's deciduous flower-time near: + And song more strong to help or heal + Shall silence worse than winter seal? +From love-lit thought's remurmuring cave +The notes that rippled, wave on wave, + Were clear as love, as faith were strong; +And all souls blessed the soul that gave + Sweet water from the well of song. + +All hearts bore fruit of joy to hear, + All eyes felt mist upon them steal +For joy's sake, trembling toward a tear, + When, loud as marriage-bells that peal, + Or flutelike soft, or keen like steel, +Sprang the sheer music; sharp or grave, +We heard the drift of winds that drave, + And saw, swept round by ghosts in throng, +Dark rocks, that yielded, where they clave, + Sweet water from the well of song. + +Blithe verse made all the dim sense clear + That smiles of babbling babes conceal: +Prayer's perfect heart spake here: and here + Rose notes of blameless woe and weal, + More soft than this poor song's appeal. +Where orchards bask, where cornfields wave, +They dropped like rains that cleanse and lave, + And scattered all the year along, +Like dewfall on an April grave, + Sweet water from the well of song. + +Ballad, go bear our prayer, and crave +Pardon, because thy lowlier stave + Can do this plea no right, but wrong. +Ask nought beside thy pardon, save + Sweet water from the well of song. + + + + +_CRADLE SONGS._ + +(TO A TUNE OF BLAKE'S) + + +I. + +Baby, baby bright, +Sleep can steal from sight +Little of your light: + +Soft as fire in dew, +Still the life in you +Lights your slumber through. + +Four white eyelids keep +Fast the seal of sleep +Deep as love is deep: + +Yet, though closed it lies, +Love behind them spies +Heaven in two blue eyes. + + +II. + +Baby, baby dear, +Earth and heaven are near +Now, for heaven is here. + +Heaven is every place +Where your flower-sweet face +Fills our eyes with grace. + +Till your own eyes deign +Earth a glance again, +Earth and heaven are twain. + +Now your sleep is done, +Shine, and show the sun +Earth and heaven are one. + + +III. + +Baby, baby sweet, +Love's own lips are meet +Scarce to kiss your feet. + +Hardly love's own ear, +When your laugh crows clear, +Quite deserves to hear. + +Hardly love's own wile, +Though it please awhile, +Quite deserves your smile. + +Baby full of grace, +Bless us yet a space: +Sleep will come apace. + + +IV. + +Baby, baby true, +Man, whate'er he do, +May deceive not you. + +Smiles whose love is guile, +Worn a flattering while, +Win from you no smile. + +One, the smile alone +Out of love's heart grown, +Ever wins your own. + +Man, a dunce uncouth, +Errs in age and youth: +Babies know the truth. + + +V. + +Baby, baby fair, +Love is fain to dare +Bless your haughtiest air. + +Baby blithe and bland, +Reach but forth a hand +None may dare withstand; + +Love, though wellnigh cowed, +Yet would praise aloud +Pride so sweetly proud. + +No! the fitting word +Even from breeze or bird +Never yet was heard. + + +VI. + +Baby, baby kind, +Though no word we find, +Bear us yet in mind. + +Half a little hour, +Baby bright in bower, +Keep this thought aflower-- + +Love it is, I see, +Here with heart and knee +Bows and worships me. + +What can baby do, +Then, for love so true?-- +Let it worship you. + + +VII. + +Baby, baby wise, +Love's divine surmise +Lights your constant eyes. + +Day and night and day +One mute word would they, +As the soul saith, say. + +Trouble comes and goes; +Wonder ebbs and flows; +Love remains and glows. + +As the fledgeling dove +Feels the breast above, +So your heart feels love. + + + + +_PELAGIUS._ + + +I. + +The sea shall praise him and the shores bear part + That reared him when the bright south world was black + With fume of creeds more foul than hell's own rack, +Still darkening more love's face with loveless art +Since Paul, faith's fervent Antichrist, of heart + Heroic, haled the world vehemently back + From Christ's pure path on dire Jehovah's track, +And said to dark Elisha's Lord, 'Thou art.' +But one whose soul had put the raiment on +Of love that Jesus left with James and John + Withstood that Lord whose seals of love were lies, +Seeing what we see--how, touched by Truth's bright rod, +The fiend whom Jews and Africans called God + Feels his own hell take hold on him, and dies. + + +II. + +The world has no such flower in any land, + And no such pearl in any gulf the sea, + As any babe on any mother's knee. +But all things blessed of men by saints are banned: +God gives them grace to read and understand + The palimpsest of evil, writ where we, + Poor fools and lovers but of love, can see +Nought save a blessing signed by Love's own hand. +The smile that opens heaven on us for them + Hath sin's transmitted birthmark hid therein: + The kiss it craves calls down from heaven a rod. +If innocence be sin that Gods condemn, + Praise we the men who so being born in sin + First dared the doom and broke the bonds of God. + + +III. + +Man's heel is on the Almighty's neck who said, + Let there be hell, and there was hell--on earth. + But not for that may men forget their worth-- +Nay, but much more remember them--who led +The living first from dwellings of the dead, + And rent the cerecloths that were wont to engirth + Souls wrapped and swathed and swaddled from their birth +With lies that bound them fast from heel to head. +Among the tombs when wise men all their lives +Dwelt, and cried out, and cut themselves with knives, +These men, being foolish, and of saints abhorred, + Beheld in heaven the sun by saints reviled, +Love, and on earth one everlasting Lord + In every likeness of a little child. + + + + +_LOUIS BLANC._ + +THREE SONNETS TO HIS MEMORY. + + +I. + +The stainless soul that smiled through glorious eyes; + The bright grave brow whereon dark fortune's blast + Might blow, but might not bend it, nor o'ercast, +Save for one fierce fleet hour of shame, the skies +Thrilled with warm dreams of worthier days to rise + And end the whole world's winter; here at last, + If death be death, have passed into the past; +If death be life, live, though their semblance dies. +Hope and high faith inviolate of distrust + Shone strong as life inviolate of the grave + Through each bright word and lineament serene. +Most loving righteousness and love most just + Crowned, as day crowns the dawn-enkindled wave, + With visible aureole thine unfaltering mien. + + +II. + +Strong time and fire-swift change, with lightnings clad + And shod with thunders of reverberate years, + Have filled with light and sound of hopes and fears +The space of many a season, since I had +Grace of good hap to make my spirit glad, + Once communing with thine: and memory hears + The bright voice yet that then rejoiced mine ears, +Sees yet the light of eyes that spake, and bade +Fear not, but hope, though then time's heart were weak + And heaven by hell shade-stricken, and the range + Of high-born hope made questionable and strange +As twilight trembling till the sunlight speak. + Thou sawest the sunrise and the storm in one + Break: seest thou now the storm-compelling sun? + + +III. + +Surely thou seest, O spirit of light and fire, + Surely thou canst not choose, O soul, but see + The days whose dayspring was beheld of thee +Ere eyes less pure might have their hope's desire, +Beholding life in heaven again respire + Where men saw nought that was or was to be, + Save only death imperial. Thou and he +Who has the heart of all men's hearts for lyre, +Ye twain, being great of spirit as time is great, + And sure of sight as truth's own heavenward eye, + Beheld the forms of forces passing by +And certitude of equal-balanced fate, +Whose breath forefelt makes darkness palpitate, + And knew that light should live and darkness die. + + + + +_VOS DEOS LAUDAMUS:_ + +THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNALIST'S ANTHEM. + +'As a matter of fact, no man living, or who ever lived--not +CAESAR or PERICLES, not SHAKESPEARE or MICHAEL ANGELO--could +confer honour more than he took on entering the House of +Lords.'--_Saturday Review_, December 15, 1883. + +'Clumsy and shallow snobbery--can do no hurt.'--_Ibid._ + + +I. + +O Lords our Gods, beneficent, sublime, + In the evening, and before the morning flames, + We praise, we bless, we magnify your names. +The slave is he that serves not; his the crime +And shame, who hails not as the crown of Time + That House wherein the all-envious world acclaims + Such glory that the reflex of it shames +All crowns bestowed of men for prose or rhyme. +The serf, the cur, the sycophant is he +Who feels no cringing motion twitch his knee + When from a height too high for Shakespeare nods +The wearer of a higher than Milton's crown. +Stoop, Chaucer, stoop: Keats, Shelley, Burns, bow down: + These have no part with you, O Lords our Gods. + + +II. + +O Lords our Gods, it is not that ye sit + Serene above the thunder, and exempt + From strife of tongues and casualties that tempt +Men merely found by proof of manhood fit +For service of their fellows: this is it + Which sets you past the reach of Time's attempt, + Which gives us right of justified contempt +For commonwealths built up by mere men's wit: +That gold unlocks not, nor may flatteries ope, +The portals of your heaven; that none may hope + With you to watch how life beneath you plods, +Save for high service given, high duty done; +That never was your rank ignobly won: + For this we give you praise, O Lords our Gods. + + +III. + +O Lords our Gods, the times are evil: you + Redeem the time, because of evil days. + While abject souls in servitude of praise +Bow down to heads untitled, and the crew +Whose honour dwells but in the deeds they do, + From loftier hearts your nobler servants raise + More manful salutation: yours are bays +That not the dawn's plebeian pearls bedew; +Yours, laurels plucked not of such hands as wove +Old age its chaplet in Colonos' grove. + Our time, with heaven and with itself at odds, +Makes all lands else as seas that seethe and boil; +But yours are yet the corn and wine and oil, + And yours our worship yet, O Lords our Gods. + +_December 15._ + + + + +_ON THE BICENTENARY OF CORNEILLE_, + +CELEBRATED UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF VICTOR HUGO. + + +Scarce two hundred years are gone, and the world is past away + As a noise of brawling wind, as a flash of breaking foam, +That beheld the singer born who raised up the dead of Rome; + And a mightier now than he bids him too rise up to-day, +All the dim great age is dust, and its king is tombless clay, + But its loftier laurel green as in living eyes it clomb, + And his memory whom it crowned hath his people's heart for home, +And the shade across it falls of a lordlier-flowering bay. + +Stately shapes about the tomb of their mighty maker pace, +Heads of high-plumed Spaniards shine, souls revive of Roman race, +Sound of arms and words of wail through the glowing darkness rise, + Speech of hearts heroic rings forth of lips that know not breath, +And the light of thoughts august fills the pride of kindling eyes + Whence of yore the spell of song drove the shadow of darkling death. + + + + +_IN SEPULCRETIS._ + +'Vidistis ipso rapere de rogo coenam.'--CATULLUS, LIX. 3. + +'To publish even one line of an author which he himself has not +intended for the public at large--especially letters which are +addressed to private persons--is to commit a despicable act of +felony.'--HEINE. + + +I. + +It is not then enough that men who give + The best gifts given of man to man should feel, + Alive, a snake's head ever at their heel: +Small hurt the worms may do them while they live-- +Such hurt as scorn for scorn's sake may forgive. + But now, when death and fame have set one seal + On tombs whereat Love, Grief, and Glory kneel, +Men sift all secrets, in their critic sieve, +Of graves wherein the dust of death might shrink + To know what tongues defile the dead man's name + With loathsome love, and praise that stings like shame. +Rest once was theirs, who had crossed the mortal brink: + No rest, no reverence now: dull fools undress + Death's holiest shrine, life's veriest nakedness. + + +II. + +A man was born, sang, suffered, loved, and died. + Men scorned him living: let us praise him dead. + His life was brief and bitter, gently led +And proudly, but with pure and blameless pride. +He wrought no wrong toward any; satisfied + With love and labour, whence our souls are fed + With largesse yet of living wine and bread. +Come, let us praise him: here is nought to hide. +Make bare the poor dead secrets of his heart, + Strip the stark-naked soul, that all may peer, + Spy, smirk, sniff, snap, snort, snivel, snarl, and sneer: +Let none so sad, let none so sacred part + Lie still for pity, rest unstirred for shame, + But all be scanned of all men. This is fame. + + +III. + +'Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!'[1] + If one, that strutted up the brawling streets + As foreman of the flock whose concourse greets +Men's ears with bray more dissonant than brass, +Would change from blame to praise as coarse and crass + His natural note, and learn the fawning feats + Of lapdogs, who but knows what luck he meets? +But all in vain old fable holds her glass. + +Mocked and reviled by men of poisonous breath, + A great man dies: but one thing worst was spared, + Not all his heart by their base hands lay bared. +One comes to crown with praise the dust of death; + And lo, through him this worst is brought to pass. + Now, what a thing it is to be an ass! + +[Footnote 1: _Titus Andronicus_, Act iv., Scene 2.] + + +IV. + +Shame, such as never yet dealt heavier stroke + On heads more shameful, fall on theirs through whom + Dead men may keep inviolate not their tomb, +But all its depths these ravenous grave-worms choke +And yet what waste of wrath were this, to invoke + Shame on the shameless? Even their twin-born doom, + Their native air of life, a carrion fume, +Their natural breath of love, a noisome smoke, +The bread they break, the cup whereof they drink, + The record whose remembrance damns their name, + Smells, tastes, and sounds of nothing but of shame. +If thankfulness nor pity bids them think + What work is this of theirs, and pause betimes, + Not Shakespeare's grave would scare them off with rhymes. + + + + +_LOVE AND SCORN._ + + +I. + +Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things, + Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end, + In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend, +Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings? +Not grief's nor time's: though these be lords and kings + Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend, + They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend +Quick poison with the soul's live watersprings. +The true clear heart whose core is manful trust +Fears not that very death may turn to dust + Love lit therein as toward a brother born, +If one touch make not all its fine gold rust, + If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn, + And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn. + + +II. + +Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof + By keen experience of a trustless heart, + Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart +Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof +Falls of his palace, and the storied woof + Long woven of many a year with life's whole art + Is rent like any rotten weed apart, +And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof +Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt +Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt, + And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we +That once we loved, and love not; but we know +The ghost of love, surviving yet in show, + Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be. + + +III. + +O sacred, just, inevitable scorn, + Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief + The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief, +Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born, +Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn, + One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf, + Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf +Of all that fell and left behind a thorn? +Is man so strong that one should scorn another? +Is any as God, not made of mortal mother, + That love should turn in him to gall and flame? +Nay: but the true is not the false heart's brother: + Love cannot love disloyalty: the name + That else it wears is love no more, but shame. + + + + +_ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DOYLE._ + + +A light of blameless laughter, fancy-bred, + Soft-souled and glad and kind as love or sleep, + Fades, and sweet mirth's own eyes are fain to weep +Because her blithe and gentlest bird is dead. +Weep, elves and fairies all, that never shed + Tear yet for mortal mourning: you that keep + The doors of dreams whence nought of ill may creep, +Mourn once for one whose lips your honey fed. +Let waters of the Golden River steep + The rose-roots whence his grave blooms rosy-red +And murmuring of Hyblaean hives be deep + About the summer silence of its bed, +And nought less gracious than a violet peep + Between the grass grown greener round his head. + + + + +_IN MEMORY OF HENRY A. BRIGHT._ + + +Yet again another, ere his crowning year, + Gone from friends that here may look for him no more. + Never now for him shall hope set wide the door, +Hope that hailed him hither, fain to greet him here. +All the gracious garden-flowers he held so dear, + Oldworld English blossoms, all his homestead store, + Oldworld grief had strewn them round his bier of yore, +Bidding each drop leaf by leaf as tear by tear; +Rarer lutes than mine had borne more tuneful token, + Touched by subtler hands than echoing time can wrong, + Sweet as flowers had strewn his graveward path along. +Now may no such old sweet dirges more be spoken, +Now the flowers whose breath was very song are broken, + Nor may sorrow find again so sweet a song. + + + + +_A SOLITUDE._ + + +Sea beyond sea, sand after sweep of sand, + Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged with flow + Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow, +Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland +Grey gleam of skies whose smile on wave and strand + Shines weary like a man's who smiles to know + That now no dream can mock his faith with show, +Nor cloud for him seem living sea or land. + +Is there an end at all of all this waste, +These crumbling cliffs defeatured and defaced, +These ruinous heights of sea-sapped walls that slide + Seaward with all their banks of bleak blown flowers +Glad yet of life, ere yet their hope subside + Beneath the coil of dull dense waves and hours? + + + + +_VICTOR HUGO: L'ARCHIPEL DE LA MANCHE._ + + +Sea and land are fairer now, nor aught is all the same, + Since a mightier hand than Time's hath woven their votive wreath. +Rocks as swords half drawn from out the smooth wave's jewelled sheath, +Fields whose flowers a tongue divine hath numbered name by name, +Shores whereby the midnight or the noon clothed round with flame +Hears the clamour jar and grind which utters from beneath + Cries of hungering waves like beasts fast bound that gnash their teeth, +All of these the sun that lights them lights not like his fame; +None of these is but the thing it was before he came + Where the darkling overfalls like dens of torment seethe, +High on tameless moorlands, down in meadows bland and tame, + Where the garden hides, and where the wind uproots the heath, +Glory now henceforth for ever, while the world shall be, +Shines, a star that keeps not time with change on earth and sea. + + + + +_THE TWILIGHT OF THE LORDS._ + + +I. + +Is the sound a trumpet blown, or a bell for burial tolled, + Whence the whole air vibrates now to the clash of words like swords-- + 'Let us break their bonds in sunder, and cast away their cords; +Long enough the world has mocked us, and marvelled to behold +How the grown man bears the curb whence his boyhood was controlled'? + Nay, but hearken: surer counsel more sober speech affords: + 'Is the past not all inscribed with the praises of our Lords? +Is the memory dead of deeds done of yore, the love grown cold +That should bind our hearts to trust in their counsels wise and bold? + These that stand against you now, senseless crowds and heartless hordes, +Are not these the sons of men that withstood your kings of old? + Theirs it is to bind and loose; theirs the key that knows the wards, +Theirs the staff to lead or smite; yours, the spades and ploughs and hods: +Theirs to hear and yours to cry, Power is yours, O Lords our Gods.' + + +II. + +Hear, O England: these are they that would counsel thee aright. + Wouldst thou fain have all thy sons sons of thine indeed, and free? + Nay, but then no more at all as thou hast been shalt thou be: +Needs must many dwell in darkness, that some may look on light; +Needs must poor men brook the wrong that ensures the rich man's right. + How shall kings and lords be worshipped, if no man bow the knee? + How, if no man worship these, may thy praise endure with thee? +How, except thou trust in these, shall thy name not lose its might? +These have had their will of thee since the Norman came to smite: + Sires on grandsires, even as wave after wave along the sea, +Sons on sires have followed, steadfast as clouds or hours in flight. + Time alone hath power to say, time alone hath eyes to see, +If your walls of rule be built but of clay-compacted sods, +If your place of old shall know you no more, O Lords our Gods. + + +III. + +Through the stalls wherein ye sit sounds a sentence while we wait, + Set your house in order: is it not builded on the sand? + Set your house in order, seeing the night is hard at hand. +As the twilight of the Gods in the northern dream of fate +Is this hour that comes against you, albeit this hour come late. + Ye whom Time and Truth bade heed, and ye would not understand, + Now an axe draws nigh the tree overshadowing all the land, +And its edge of doom is set to the root of all your state. +Light is more than darkness now, faith than fear and hope than hate, + And what morning wills, behold, all the night shall not withstand. +Rods of office, helms of rule, staffs of wise men, crowns of great, + While the people willed, ye bare; now their hopes and hearts expand, +Time with silent foot makes dust of your broken crowns and rods, +And the lordship of your godhead is gone, O Lords our Gods. + + + + +_CLEAR THE WAY!_ + + +Clear the way, my lords and lackeys! you have had your day. +Here you have your answer--England's yea against your nay: +Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way! + +Lust and falsehood, craft and traffic, precedent and gold, +Tongue of courtier, kiss of harlot, promise bought and sold, +Gave you heritage of empire over thralls of old. + +Now that all these things are rotten, all their gold is rust, +Quenched the pride they lived by, dead the faith and cold the lust, +Shall their heritage not also turn again to dust? + +By the grace of these they reigned, who left their sons their sway: +By the grace of these, what England says her lords unsay: +Till at last her cry go forth against them--Clear the way! + +By the grace of trust in treason knaves have lived and lied: +By the force of fear and folly fools have fed their pride: +By the strength of sloth and custom reason stands defied. + +Lest perchance your reckoning on some latter day be worse, +Halt and hearken, lords of land and princes of the purse, +Ere the tide be full that comes with blessing and with curse. + +Where we stand; as where you sit, scarce falls a sprinkling spray; +But the wind that swells, the wave that follows, none shall stay: +Spread no more of sail for shipwreck: out, and clear the way! + + + + +_A WORD FOR THE COUNTRY._ + + +Men, born of the land that for ages + Has been honoured where freedom was dear, +Till your labour wax fat on its wages + You shall never be peers of a peer. + Where might is, the right is: + Long purses make strong swords. + Let weakness learn meekness: + God save the House of Lords! + +You are free to consume in stagnation: + You are equal in right to obey: +You are brothers in bonds, and the nation + Is your mother--whose sons are her prey. + Those others your brothers, + Who toil not, weave, nor till, + Refuse you and use you + As waiters on their will. + +But your fathers bowed down to their masters + And obeyed them and served and adored. +Shall the sheep not give thanks to their pastors? + Shall the serf not give praise to his lord? + Time, waning and gaining, + Grown other now than then, + Needs pastors and masters + For sheep, and not for men. + +If his grandsire did service in battle, + If his grandam was kissed by a king, +Must men to my lord be as cattle + Or as apes that he leads in a string? + To deem so, to dream so, + Would bid the world proclaim + The dastards for bastards, + Not heirs of England's fame. + +Not in spite but in right of dishonour, + There are actors who trample your boards +Till the earth that endures you upon her + Grows weary to bear you, my lords. + Your token is broken, + It will not pass for gold: + Your glory looks hoary, + Your sun in heaven turns cold. + +They are worthy to reign on their brothers, + To contemn them as clods and as carles, +Who are Graces by grace of such mothers + As brightened the bed of King Charles. + What manner of banner, + What fame is this they flaunt, + That Britain, soul-smitten, + Should shrink before their vaunt? + +Bright sons of sublime prostitution, + You are made of the mire of the street +Where your grandmothers walked in pollution + Till a coronet shone at their feet. + Your Graces, whose faces + Bear high the bastard's brand, + Seem stronger no longer + Than all this honest land. + +But the sons of her soldiers and seamen, + They are worthy forsooth of their hire. +If the father won praise from all free men, + Shall the sons not exult in their sire? + Let money make sunny + And power make proud their lives, + And feed them and breed them + Like drones in drowsiest hives. + +But if haply the name be a burden + And the souls be no kindred of theirs, +Should wise men rejoice in such guerdon + Or brave men exult in such heirs? + Or rather the father + Frown, shamefaced, on the son, + And no men but foemen, + Deriding, cry 'Well done'? + +Let the gold and the land they inherit + Pass ever from hand into hand: +In right of the forefather's merit + Let the gold be the son's, and the land. + Soft raiment, rich payment, + High place, the state affords; + Full measure of pleasure, + But now no more, my lords. + +Is the future beleaguered with dangers + If the poor be far other than slaves? +Shall the sons of the land be as strangers + In the land of their forefathers' graves? + Shame were it to bear it, + And shame it were to see: + If free men you be, men, + Let proof proclaim you free. + +'But democracy means dissolution: + See, laden with clamour and crime, +How the darkness of dim revolution + Comes deepening the twilight of time! + Ah, better the fetter + That holds the poor man's hand + Than peril of sterile + Blind change that wastes the land. + +'Gaze forward through clouds that environ; + It shall be as it was in the past. +Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, + Shall a nation be moulded to last.' + So teach they, so preach they, + Who dream themselves the dream + That hallows the gallows + And bids the scaffold stream. + +'With a hero at head, and a nation + Well gagged and well drilled and well cowed, +And a gospel of war and damnation, + Has not empire a right to be proud? + Fools prattle and tattle + Of freedom, reason, right, + The beauty of duty, + The loveliness of light. + +'But we know, we believe it, we see it, + Force only has power upon earth.' +So be it! and ever so be it + For souls that are bestial by birth! + Let Prussian with Russian + Exchange the kiss of slaves: + But sea-folk are free folk + By grace of winds and waves. + +Has the past from the sepulchres beckoned? + Let answer from Englishmen be-- +No man shall be lord of us reckoned + Who is baser, not better, than we. + No coward, empowered + To soil a brave man's name; + For shame's sake and fame's sake, + Enough of fame and shame. + +Fame needs not the golden addition; + Shame bears it abroad as a brand. +Let the deed, and no more the tradition, + Speak out and be heard through the land. + Pride, rootless and fruitless, + No longer takes and gives: + But surer and purer + The soul of England lives. + +He is master and lord of his brothers + Who is worthier and wiser than they. +Him only, him surely, shall others, + Else equal, observe and obey. + Truth, flawless and awless, + Do falsehood what it can, + Makes royal the loyal + And simple heart of man. + +Who are these, then, that England should hearken, + Who rage and wax wroth and grow pale +If she turn from the sunsets that darken + And her ship for the morning set sail? + Let strangers fear dangers: + All know, that hold her dear, + Dishonour upon her + Can only fall through fear. + +Men, born of the landsmen and seamen + Who served her with souls and with swords, +She bids you be brothers, and free men, + And lordless, and fearless of lords. + She cares not, she dares not + Care now for gold or steel: + Light lead her, truth speed her, + God save the Commonweal! + + + + +_A WORD FOR THE NATION._ + + +I. + +A word across the water + Against our ears is borne, +Of threatenings and of slaughter, + Of rage and spite and scorn: +We have not, alack, an ally to befriend us, +And the season is ripe to extirpate and end us: +Let the German touch hands with the Gaul, +And the fortress of England must fall; +And the sea shall be swept of her seamen, + And the waters they ruled be their graves, +And Dutchmen and Frenchmen be free men, + And Englishmen slaves. + + +II. + +Our time once more is over, + Once more our end is near: +A bull without a drover, + The Briton reels to rear, +And the van of the nations is held by his betters, +And the seas of the world shall be loosed from his fetters, +And his glory shall pass as a breath, +And the life that is in him be death; +And the sepulchre sealed on his glory + For a sign to the nations shall be +As of Tyre and of Carthage in story, + Once lords of the sea. + + +III. + +The lips are wise and loyal, + The hearts are brave and true, +Imperial thoughts and royal + Make strong the clamorous crew, +Whence louder and prouder the noise of defiance +Rings rage from the grave of a trustless alliance, +And bids us beware and be warned, +As abhorred of all nations and scorned, +As a swordless and spiritless nation, + A wreck on the waste of the waves. +So foams the released indignation + Of masterless slaves. + + +IV. + +Brute throats that miss the collar, + Bowed backs that ask the whip, +Stretched hands that lack the dollar, + And many a lie-seared lip, +Forefeel and foreshow for us signs as funereal +As the signs that were regal of yore and imperial; +We shall pass as the princes they served, +We shall reap what our fathers deserved, +And the place that was England's be taken + By one that is worthier than she, +And the yoke of her empire be shaken + Like spray from the sea. + + +V. + +French hounds, whose necks are aching + Still from the chain they crave, +In dog-day madness breaking + The dog-leash, thus may rave: +But the seas that for ages have fostered and fenced her +Laugh, echoing the yell of their kennel against her +And their moan if destruction draw near them +And the roar of her laughter to hear them; +For she knows that if Englishmen be men + Their England has all that she craves; +All love and all honour from free men, + All hatred from slaves. + + +VI. + +All love that rests upon her + Like sunshine and sweet air, +All light of perfect honour + And praise that ends in prayer, +She wins not more surely, she wears not more proudly, +Than the token of tribute that clatters thus loudly, +The tribute of foes when they meet +That rattles and rings at her feet, +The tribute of rage and of rancour, + The tribute of slaves to the free, +To the people whose hope hath its anchor + Made fast in the sea. + + +VII. + +No fool that bows the back he + Feels fit for scourge or brand, +No scurril scribes that lackey + The lords of Lackeyland, +No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet, +For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet, +No whelp of as currish a pack +As the litter whose yelp it gives back, +Though he answer the cry of his brother + As echoes might answer from caves, +Shall be witness as though for a mother + Whose children were slaves. + + +VIII. + +But those found fit to love her, + Whose love has root in faith, +Who hear, though darkness cover + Time's face, what memory saith, +Who seek not the service of great men or small men +But the weal that is common for comfort of all men, +Those yet that in trust have beholden +Truth's dawn over England grow golden +And quicken the darkness that stagnates + And scatter the shadows that flee, +Shall reply for her meanest as magnates + And masters by sea. + + +IX. + +And all shall mark her station, + Her message all shall hear, +When, equal-eyed, the nation + Bids all her sons draw near, +And freedom be more than tradition or faction, +And thought be no swifter to serve her than action, +And justice alone be above her, +That love may be prouder to love her, +And time on the crest of her story + Inscribe, as remembrance engraves, +The sign that subdues with its glory + Kings, princes, and slaves. + + + + +_A WORD FROM THE PSALMIST._ + +PS. XCIV. 8. + + +I. + + 'Take heed, ye unwise among the people: + O ye fools, when will ye understand?' + From pulpit or choir beneath the steeple, + Though the words be fierce, the tones are bland. +But a louder than the Church's echo thunders + In the ears of men who may not choose but hear, +And the heart in him that hears it leaps and wonders, + With triumphant hope astonished, or with fear + For the names whose sound was power awaken + Neither love nor reverence now nor dread; + Their strongholds and shrines are stormed and taken, + Their kingdom and all its works are dead. + + +II. + + Take heed: for the tide of time is risen: + It is full not yet, though now so high + That spirits and hopes long pent in prison + Feel round them a sense of freedom nigh, +And a savour keen and sweet of brine and billow, + And a murmur deep and strong of deepening strength. +Though the watchman dream, with sloth or pride for pillow, + And the night be long, not endless is its length. + From the springs of dawn, from clouds that sever + From the equal heavens and the eastward sea, + The witness comes that endures for ever, + Till men be brethren and thralls be free. + + +III. + + But the wind of the wings of dawn expanding + Strikes chill on your hearts as change and death. + Ye are old, but ye have not understanding, + And proud, but your pride is a dead man's breath. +And your wise men, toward whose words and signs ye hearken, + And your strong men, in whose hands ye put your trust, +Strain eyes to behold but clouds and dreams that darken, + Stretch hands that can find but weapons red with rust. + Their watchword rings, and the night rejoices, + But the lark's note laughs at the night-bird's notes-- + 'Is virtue verily found in voices? + Or is wisdom won when all win votes? + + +IV. + + 'Take heed, ye unwise indeed, who listen + When the wind's wings beat and shift and change; + Whose hearts are uplift, whose eyeballs glisten, + With desire of new things great and strange. +Let not dreams misguide nor any visions wrong you: + That which has been, it is now as it was then. +Is not Compromise of old a god among you? + Is not Precedent indeed a king of men? + But the windy hopes that lead mislead you, + And the sounds ye hear are void and vain. + Is a vote a coat? will franchise feed you, + Or words be a roof against the rain? + + +V. + + 'Eight ages are gone since kingship entered, + With knights and peers at its harnessed back, + And the land, no more in its own strength centred, + Was cast for a prey to the princely pack. +But we pared the fangs and clipped the ravening claws of it, + And good was in time brought forth of an evil thing, +And the land's high name waxed lordlier in war because of it, + When chartered Right had bridled and curbed the king. + And what so fair has the world beholden, + And what so firm has withstood the years, + As Monarchy bound in chains all golden, + And Freedom guarded about with peers? + + +VI. + + 'How think ye? know not your lords and masters + What collars are meet for brawling throats? + Is change not mother of strange disasters? + Shall plague or peril be stayed by votes? +Out of precedent and privilege and order + Have we plucked the flower of compromise, whose root +Bears blossoms that shine from border again to border, + And the mouths of many are fed with its temperate fruit. + Your masters are wiser than ye, their henchmen: + Your lords know surely whereof ye have need. + Equality? Fools, would you fain be Frenchmen? + Is equity more than a word indeed? + + +VII. + + 'Your voices, forsooth, your most sweet voices, + Your worthy voices, your love, your hate, + Your choice, who know not whereof your choice is, + What stays are these for a stable state? +Inconstancy, blind and deaf with its own fierce babble, + Swells ever your throats with storm of uncertain cheers: +He leans on straws who leans on a light-souled rabble; + His trust is frail who puts not his trust in peers.' + So shrills the message whose word convinces + Of righteousness knaves, of wisdom fools; + That serfs may boast them because of princes, + And the weak rejoice that the strong man rules. + + +VIII. + + True friends, ye people, are these, the faction + Full-mouthed that flatters and snails and bays, + That fawns and foams with alternate action, + And mocks the names that it soils with praise. +As from fraud and force their power had fast beginning, + So by righteousness and peace it may not stand, +But by craft of state and nets of secret spinning, + Words that weave and unweave wiles like ropes of sand + Form, custom, and gold, and laws grown hoary, + And strong tradition that guards the gate: + To these, O people, to these give glory, + That your name among nations may be great. + + +IX. + + How long--for haply not now much longer-- + Shall fear put faith in a faithless creed, + And shapes and shadows of truths be stronger + In strong men's eyes than the truth indeed? +If freedom be not a word that dies when spoken, + If justice be not a dream whence men must wake, +How shall not the bonds of the thraldom of old be broken, + And right put might in the hands of them that break? + For clear as a tocsin from the steeple + Is the cry gone forth along the land, + Take heed, ye unwise among the people: + O ye fools, when will ye understand? + + + + +_A BALLAD AT PARTING._ + + +Sea to sea that clasps and fosters England, uttering ever-more +Song eterne and praise immortal of the indomitable shore, + Lifts aloud her constant heart up, south to north and east to west, +Here in speech that shames all music, there in thunder-throated roar, + Chiming concord out of discord, waking rapture out of rest. +All her ways are lovely, all her works and symbols are divine, + Yet shall man love best what first bade leap his heart and bend his knee; +Yet where first his whole soul worshipped shall his soul set up her shrine: + Nor may love not know the lovelier, fair as both beheld may be, + Here the limitless north-eastern, there the strait south-western sea. + +Though their chant bear all one burden, as ere man was born it bore; +Though the burden be diviner than the songs all souls adore; + Yet may love not choose but choose between them which to love the best. +Me the sea my nursing-mother, me the Channel green and hoar, + Holds at heart more fast than all things, bares for me the goodlier breast, +Lifts for me the lordlier love-song, bids for me more sunlight shine, + Sounds for me the stormier trumpet of the sweeter strain to me. +So the broad pale Thames is loved not like the tawny springs of Tyne: + Choice is clear between them for the soul whose vision holds in fee + Here the limitless north-eastern, there the strait south-western sea. + +Choice is clear, but dear is either; nor has either not in store +Many a likeness, many a written sign of spirit-searching lore, + Whence the soul takes fire of sweet remembrance, magnified and blest. +Thought of songs whose flame-winged feet have trod the unfooted water-floor + When the lord of all the living lords of souls bade speed their quest, +Soft live sound like children's babble down the rippling sand's incline, + Or the lovely song that loves them, hailed with thankful prayer and plea; +These are parcels of the harvest here whose gathered sheaves are mine, + Garnered now, but sown and reaped where winds make wild with wrath or glee + Here the limitless north-eastern, there the strait south-western sea. + +Song, thy name is freedom, seeing thy strength was born of breeze and brine. + Fare now forth and fear no fortune; such a seal is set on thee. +Joy begat and memory bare thee, seeing in spirit a two-fold sign, + Even the sign of those thy fosters, each as thou from all time free, + Here the limitless north-eastern, there the strait south-western sea. + + + + + PRINTED BY + SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE + LONDON + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems, by +Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY AND *** + +***** This file should be named 18424.txt or 18424.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/4/2/18424/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Louise Hope, Thierry Alberto, +Henry Craig and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +at http://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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