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diff --git a/18673.txt b/18673.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e7b67c --- /dev/null +++ b/18673.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4728 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Astrophel 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: Astrophel and Other Poems + Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles + Swinburne, Vol. VI + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: June 24, 2006 [EBook #18673] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Lisa Reigel, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Greek words in this text have been transliterated +and placed between +marks+.] + + + + +Astrophel and other poems + + +By + +Algernon Charles Swinburne + + +Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles +Swinburne--Vol. VI + + + + +THE COLLECTED POETICAL WORKS OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE + +VOL. VI + + +A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER TALES + + + + +SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS + + I. POEMS AND BALLADS (First Series). + + II. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE, AND SONGS OF TWO NATIONS. + +III. POEMS AND BALLADS (Second and Third Series), and SONGS OF THE + SPRINGTIDES. + + IV. TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE, THE TALE OF BALEN, ATALANTA IN CALYDON, + ERECHTHEUS. + + V. STUDIES IN SONG, A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS, SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC + POETS, THE HEPTALOGIA, ETC. + + VI. A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY, ASTROPHEL, A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS. + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + +A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS + +By + +Algernon Charles Swinburne + + +1917 + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + +_First printed_ (_Chatto_), 1904 + +_Reprinted_ 1904, '09, '10, '12 + +(_Heinemann_), 1917 + + +_London: William Heinemann_, 1917 + + + + +ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS + + +ASTROPHEL 121 + +A NYMPHOLEPT 127 + +ON THE SOUTH COAST 141 + +AN AUTUMN VISION 149 + +A SWIMMER'S DREAM 159 + +GRACE DARLING 164 + +LOCH TORRIDON 171 + +THE PALACE OF PAN 178 + +A YEAR'S CAROLS 181 + +ENGLAND: AN ODE 186 + +ETON: AN ODE 191 + +THE UNION 194 + +EAST TO WEST 196 + +INSCRIPTIONS FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A PEDESTAL 197 + +ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD BURTON 199 + +ELEGY 202 + +A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING 208 + +SUNSET AND MOONRISE 212 + +BIRTHDAY ODE 214 + +THRENODY 217 + +THE BALLAD OF MELICERTES 220 + +AU TOMBEAU DE BANVILLE 222 + +LIGHT: AN EPICEDE 223 + +THRENODY 225 + +A DIRGE 227 + +A REMINISCENCE 229 + +VIA DOLOROSA 230 + + I. TRANSFIGURATION 231 + + II. DELIVERANCE 232 + + III. THANKSGIVING 233 + + IV. LIBITINA VERTICORDIA 234 + + V. THE ORDER OF RELEASE 235 + + VI. PSYCHAGOGOS 236 + + VII. THE LAST WORD 237 + +IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI 238 + +THE FESTIVAL OF BEATRICE 242 + +THE MONUMENT OF GIORDANO BRUNO 243 + +LIFE IN DEATH 245 + +EPICEDE 246 + +MEMORIAL VERSES ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM BELL SCOTT 249 + +AN OLD SAYING 253 + +A MOSS-ROSE 254 + +TO A CAT 255 + +HAWTHORN DYKE 258 + +THE BROTHERS 259 + +JACOBITE SONG 263 + +THE BALLAD OF DEAD MEN'S BAY 266 + +DEDICATION 271 + + + + +ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS + + +TO WILLIAM MORRIS + + + + + ASTROPHEL + + AFTER READING SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S ARCADIA IN THE + GARDEN OF AN OLD ENGLISH MANOR HOUSE + + + I + + A star in the silence that follows + The song of the death of the sun + Speaks music in heaven, and the hollows + And heights of the world are as one; + One lyre that outsings and outlightens + The rapture of sunset, and thrills + Mute night till the sense of it brightens + The soul that it fills. + + The flowers of the sun that is sunken + Hang heavy of heart as of head; + The bees that have eaten and drunken + The soul of their sweetness are fled; + But a sunflower of song, on whose honey + My spirit has fed as a bee, + Makes sunnier than morning was sunny + The twilight for me. + + The letters and lines on the pages + That sundered mine eyes and the flowers + Wax faint as the shadows of ages + That sunder their season and ours; + As the ghosts of the centuries that sever + A season of colourless time + From the days whose remembrance is ever, + As they were, sublime. + + The season that bred and that cherished + The soul that I commune with yet, + Had it utterly withered and perished + To rise not again as it set, + Shame were it that Englishmen living + Should read as their forefathers read + The books of the praise and thanksgiving + Of Englishmen dead. + + O light of the land that adored thee + And kindled thy soul with her breath, + Whose life, such as fate would afford thee, + Was lovelier than aught but thy death, + By what name, could thy lovers but know it, + Might love of thee hail thee afar, + Philisides, Astrophel, poet + Whose love was thy star? + + A star in the moondawn of Maytime, + A star in the cloudland of change; + Too splendid and sad for the daytime + To cheer or eclipse or estrange; + Too sweet for tradition or vision + To see but through shadows of tears + Rise deathless across the division + Of measureless years. + + The twilight may deepen and harden + As nightward the stream of it runs + Till starshine transfigure a garden + Whose radiance responds to the sun's: + The light of the love of thee darkens + The lights that arise and that set: + The love that forgets thee not hearkens + If England forget. + + + II + + Bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy + lifetime shone, + Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave, and again + was gone: + Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has conquered as years + pass on. + + Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and + praised and wept, + Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names that her + heart's love kept + Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it sank + and slept. + + Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia resounds and + shines, + Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the steadfast + signs, + Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth, whose presage + the soul divines. + + All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sunlight + round, + All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit, and held + them bound, + Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of its music + sound. + + Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a + dove, + Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough thy soul from + afar above + Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the + fount of love. + + Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys + and fears, + Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy + peerless peers, + Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the + rayless years. + + Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of + clouded fame, + How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's England, be brought + to shame? + How should this be, while England is? What need of answer beyond + thy name? + + + III + + From the love that transfigures thy glory, + From the light of the dawn of thy death, + The life of thy song and thy story + Took subtler and fierier breath. + And we, though the day and the morrow + Set fear and thanksgiving at strife, + Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow + The sun of thy life. + + Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid thanksgiving and pride + be dumb: + Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with toils till + her life wax numb, + Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die not and dayrise + come. + + But England, enmeshed and benetted + With spiritless villainies round, + With counsels of cowardice fretted, + With trammels of treason enwound, + Is yet, though the season be other + Than wept and rejoiced over thee, + Thine England, thy lover, thy mother, + Sublime as the sea. + + Hers wast thou: if her face be now less bright, or seem for an hour + less brave, + Let but thine on her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit revive and + save, + Time shall see, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed in a + shameful grave. + + If death and not life were the portal + That opens on life at the last, + If the spirit of Sidney were mortal + And the past of it utterly past, + Fear stronger than honour was ever, + Forgetfulness mightier than fame, + Faith knows not if England should never + Subside into shame. + + Yea, but yet is thy sun not set, thy sunbright spirit of trust + withdrawn: + England's love of thee burns above all hopes that darken or fears + that fawn: + Hers thou art: and the faithful heart that hopes begets upon + darkness dawn. + + The sunset that sunrise will follow + Is less than the dream of a dream: + The starshine on height and on hollow + Sheds promise that dawn shall redeem: + The night, if the daytime would hide it, + Shows lovelier, aflame and afar, + Thy soul and thy Stella's beside it, + A star by a star. + + + + + A NYMPHOLEPT + + + Summer, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt, + Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense. + Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt, + Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense, + Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God's bow, tense + As a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt. + Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass hence? + + I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour, + Lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man. + The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower, + The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan + As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran, + Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power, + Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one God, Pan. + + The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades + The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep. + Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades, + The passing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep + Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep + Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades + Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep. + + The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast; + It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day. + And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast, + Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway. + But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away, + Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last; + But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say. + + For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust + Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a dream, + His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man's must, + His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream. + For the deep mid mystery of light and of heat that seem + To clasp and pierce dark earth, and enkindle dust, + Shall a man's faith say what it is? or a man's guess deem? + + Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night + Than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees. + Why now should the haze not open, and yield to sight + A fairer secret than hope or than slumber sees? + I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees, + With worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light: + I gaze on the gods about me, and call on these. + + I call on the gods hard by, the divine dim powers + Whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air, + In the pulseless peace of the fervid and silent flowers, + In the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there. + Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair? + The bent-grass heaves not, the couch-grass quails not or cowers; + The wind's kiss frets not the rowan's or aspen's hair. + + But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed, + And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung + With love as with pain; and the wide wood's motionless breast + Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue + And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung, + Whose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest + Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung. + + Is it rapture or terror that circles me round, and invades + Each vein of my life with hope--if it be not fear? + Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades, + Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing near + Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear. + Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades + Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here? + + The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime + That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood, + Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time, + Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood, + When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could. + The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme: + The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good. + + Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair, + That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt + In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air, + In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God dwelt: + For hence were the shafts of his love or his anger dealt. + For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair, + When each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt. + + Is it love, is it dread, that enkindles the trembling noon, + That yearns, reluctant in rapture that fear has fed, + As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon, + If I live, and the life that may look on him drop not dead, + Shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread, + The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day's tune + Receive the God, be it love that he brings or dread. + + The naked noon is upon me: the fierce dumb spell, + The fearful charm of the strong sun's imminent might, + Unmerciful, steadfast, deeper than seas that swell, + Pervades, invades, appals me with loveless light, + With harsher awe than breathes in the breath of night. + Have mercy, God who art all! For I know thee well, + How sharp is thine eye to lighten, thine hand to smite. + + The whole wood feels thee, the whole air fears thee: but fear + So deep, so dim, so sacred, is wellnigh sweet. + For the light that hangs and broods on the woodlands here, + Intense, invasive, intolerant, imperious, and meet + To lighten the works of thine hands and the ways of thy feet, + Is hot with the fire of the breath of thy life, and dear + As hope that shrivels or shrinks not for frost or heat. + + Thee, thee the supreme dim godhead, approved afar, + Perceived of the soul and conceived of the sense of man, + We scarce dare love, and we dare not fear: the star + We call the sun, that lit us when life began + To brood on the world that is thine by his grace for a span, + Conceals and reveals in the semblance of things that are + Thine immanent presence, the pulse of thy heart's life, Pan. + + The fierce mid noon that wakens and warms the snake + Conceals thy mercy, reveals thy wrath: and again + The dew-bright hour that assuages the twilight brake + Conceals thy wrath and reveals thy mercy: then + Thou art fearful only for evil souls of men + That feel with nightfall the serpent within them wake, + And hate the holy darkness on glade and glen. + + Yea, then we know not and dream not if ill things be, + Or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine. + We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea, + We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine: + We see not if shipwreck reign in the storm's dim shrine; + If death do service and doom bear witness to thee + We see not,--know not if blood for thy lips be wine. + + But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan, + As in all things good, as in all things fair that fall, + We know thee present and latent, the lord of man; + In the murmuring of doves, in the clamouring of winds that call + And wolves that howl for their prey; in the midnight's pall, + In the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, O Pan, + And in each life living, O thou the God who art all. + + Smiling and singing, wailing and wringing of hands, + Laughing and weeping, watching and sleeping, still + Proclaim but and prove but thee, as the shifted sands + Speak forth and show but the strength of the sea's wild will + That sifts and grinds them as grain in the storm-wind's mill. + In thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands: + The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfil. + + Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic + That rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man's, + Where Typho labours, and finds not his thews Titanic, + In breathless torment that ever the flame's breath fans, + Men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans + Were given to the charge of thy keeping; and soundless panic + Held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights were Pan's. + + And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe + Be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee, + So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law, + So fair and fearless and faithful and godlike she, + So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea, + Yet man should fear lest he see what of old men saw + And withered: yet shall I quail if thy breath smite me. + + Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair, + Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim, + Death seals up life, and darkness the sunbright air, + And the stars that watch blind earth in the deep night swim + Laugh, saying, "What God is your God, that ye call on him? + What is man, that the God who is guide of our way should care + If day for a man be golden, or night be grim?" + + But thou, dost thou hear? Stars too but abide for a span, + Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be + God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man, + Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free, + The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we, + Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan, + With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see. + + Yet may not it say, though it seek thee and think to find + One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod, + What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind, + That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod + We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod, + With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind, + Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for God. + + Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright, + And bright as the night is dark on the world--no more. + Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light; + And the labour of evil and good from the years of yore + Is even as the labour of waves on a sunless shore. + And he who is first and last, who is depth and height, + Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar. + + The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life + Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread, + Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife, + Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. + No service of bended knee or of humbled head + May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife: + And life with death is as morning with evening wed. + + And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here + Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem + Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear, + Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream, + And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream. + And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear, + What helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam? + + What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense, + The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain + Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense, + Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain + Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain. + For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence + Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane? + + What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night, + Draws near, makes pause, and again--or I dream--draws near? + More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun's light, + More pure than moonbeams--yea, but the rays run sheer + As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, clear + And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright + That the light clothes round with love that is one with fear. + + Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie, + Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued, + Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky + Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood + Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood + The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by + And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed. + + I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden + This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with light + Suppressed and elate and reluctant--obscure and golden + As water kindled with presage of dawn or night-- + A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight, + Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden + Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight. + + I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange; + A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies, + As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range + And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies. + But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs, + No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change; + Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes. + + Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul + Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss + Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole, + If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss, + If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss, + Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal. + And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this? + + An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth, + Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat + And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth, + May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet, + May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet; + And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth, + Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet. + + Bloom, fervour, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow, + Breathe and brighten about me: the darkness gleams, + The sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below, + Made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams; + The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams + That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know: + Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams. + + I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun + Whose flame-lit odour satiates the flowers: mine eyes + Close, and the goal of delight and of life is one: + No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies. + No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies: + The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done, + If the mind and the face of the season be loveless, dies. + + Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling, + If haply thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good, + Unknown sweet spirit, whose vesture is soft in spring, + In summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood + That shudders and wanes and shrinks as a shamed thing should, + In winter bright as the mail of a war-worn king + Who stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood. + + My spirit or thine is it, breath of thy life or of mine, + Which fills my sense with a rapture that casts out fear? + Pan's dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine, + Transformed as night or as day by the kindling year. + Earth-born, or mine eye were withered that sees, mine ear + That hears were stricken to death by the sense divine, + Earth-born I know thee: but heaven is about me here. + + The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light, + The doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea, + The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night, + Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent ill to be, + Where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me + Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight; + And nought is all, as am I, but a dream of thee. + + + + + ON THE SOUTH COAST + + TO THEODORE WATTS + + + Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of + flowers and birds, + Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that + the land engirds, + Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life diviner than + lives in words, + + Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with sublime acclaim, + Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken, girdled + with cloud or flame; + Earth's fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and + is yet the same. + + Twice each day the divine sea's play makes glad with glory that + comes and goes + Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of + their old repose, + Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs + and flows. + + Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with trunks of + the wildwood tree, + Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and meadow, by + lawn and lea, + Inland still at her own wild will swells, rolls, and revels the + surging sea. + + Strong as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with shadows + of hopes and fears, + Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of + prayers and tears,-- + Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and + waning years. + + Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that + glooms and glows, + Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and + snows, + Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a + straight stem grows. + + Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has whelmed not or + touched or neared, + Arch and vault without stain or fault, by hands of craftsmen we + know not reared, + Time beheld them, and time was quelled; and change passed by them + as one that feared. + + Time that flies as a dream, and dies as dreams that die with the + sleep they feed, + Here alone in a garb of stone incarnate stands as a god indeed, + Stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal to man's + frail seed. + + Men and years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow is fain + to shed: + These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note of them + quick or dead: + Time, whose breath is their birth and death, folds here his + pinions, and bows his head. + + Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of unwearied + hands + Sees, as then, though the Red King's men held ruthless rule over + lawless lands, + Stand their massive design, impassive, pure and proud as a virgin + stands. + + Statelier still as the years fulfil their count, subserving her + sacred state, + Grows the hoary grey church whose story silence utters and age + makes great: + Statelier seems it than shines in dreams the face unveiled of + unvanquished fate. + + Fate, more high than the star-shown sky, more deep than waters + unsounded, shines + Keen and far as the final star on souls that seek not for charms or + signs; + Yet more bright is the love-shown light of men's hands lighted in + songs or shrines. + + Love and trust that the grave's deep dust can soil not, neither may + fear put out, + Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though years be as + hosts in rout, + Spent and slain; but the signs remain that beat back darkness and + cast forth doubt. + + Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier + than praise dare trace, + Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only the sea's + own face, + Shrines or songs that the world's change wrongs not, live by grace + of their own gift's grace. + + Dead, their names that the night reclaims--alive, their works that + the day relumes-- + Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none may behold + their tombs: + Nights and days shall record their praise while here this flower of + their grafting blooms. + + Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten + and wax and rise, + Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains with strength + from the kindled skies, + Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man's love rears though + the man's name dies. + + Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar + and near, + Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the + seaboard here; + Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that + the dawn holds dear. + + Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the + low green lea, + Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange + and free, + Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the + fairer sea. + + Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the + remote fields in, + Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the + days begin; + Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields and the + stars that win. + + Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the + first ray peers; + Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with + the grace of years; + Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that + death reveres. + + Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger + than all things, bows + Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his + crownless brows, + Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time + avows. + + Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a + flower that spreads, + Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous + oyster-beds, + Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that + the sundown sheds. + + Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that + kindled it shines with shine + Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun's + own shrine: + Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more + divine. + + Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not, + here may the sunset show, + Lightly graven in the waters paven with ghostly gold by the clouds + aglow: + Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave + below. + + Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald, + gleams + Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as + dreams + Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all + that seems; + + Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the + grace of sleep, + Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes long waking and + fain to weep + Feel fast bound on them--light around them strange, and darkness + above them steep. + + Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews + awhile + Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of + speech and smile, + Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears enter or + doubts defile, + + Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight + wed, + Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to + rosebright red + Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to northward its + wood-girt head. + + There, when day is at height of sway, men's eyes who stand, as we + oft have stood, + High where towers with its world of flowers the golden spinny that + flanks the wood, + See before and around them shore and seaboard glad as their gifts + are good. + + Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-swelling + unending downs; + East and west on the brave earth's breast glow girdle-jewels of + gleaming towns; + Southward shining, the lands declining subside in peace that the + sea's light crowns. + + Westward wide in its fruitful pride the plain lies lordly with + plenteous grace; + Fair as dawn's when the fields and lawns desire her glitters the + glad land's face: + Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a lordlier + race. + + Down beneath us afar, where seethe in wilder weather the tides + aflow, + Hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of rest that they + may not know, + Still as dew on a flower the blue broad stream now sleeps in the + fields below. + + Mild and bland in the fair green land it smiles, and takes to its + heart the sky; + Scarce the meads and the fens, the reeds and grasses, still as they + stand or lie, + Wear the palm of a statelier calm than rests on waters that pass + them by. + + Yet shall these, when the winds and seas of equal days and coequal + nights + Rage, rejoice, and uplift a voice whose sound is even as a sword + that smites, + Felt and heard as a doomsman's word from seaward reaches to + landward heights, + + Lift their heart up, and take their part of triumph, swollen and + strong with rage, + Rage elate with desire and great with pride that tempest and storm + assuage; + So their chime in the ear of time has rung from age to rekindled + age. + + Fair and dear is the land's face here, and fair man's work as a + man's may be: + Dear and fair as the sunbright air is here the record that speaks + him free; + Free by birth of a sacred earth, and regent ever of all the sea. + + + + + AN AUTUMN VISION + + OCTOBER 31, 1889 + + +Zephyrou gigantos aura+ + + + I + + Is it Midsummer here in the heavens that illumine October on earth? + Can the year, when his heart is fulfilled with desire of the days + of his mirth, + Redeem them, recall, or remember? + For a memory recalling the rapture of earth, and redeeming the sky, + Shines down from the heights to the depths: will the watchword of + dawn be July + When to-morrow acclaims November? + The stern salutation of sorrow to death or repentance to shame + Was all that the season was wont to accord her of grace or acclaim; + No lightnings of love and of laughter. + But here, in the laugh of the loud west wind from around and above, + In the flash of the waters beneath him, what sound or what light + but of love + Rings round him or leaps forth after? + + + II + + Wind beloved of earth and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow, + Wind whose might in fight was England's on her mightiest warrior + day, + South-west wind, whose breath for her was life, and fire to scourge + her foe, + Steel to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way, + Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky, + Rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms + the shore, + We receive, acclaim, salute thee, we who live and dream and die, + As the mightiest mouth of song that ever spake acclaimed of yore. + We that live as they that perish praise thee, lord of cloud and + wave, + Wind of winds, clothed on with darkness whence as lightning light + comes forth, + We that know thee strong to guard and smite, to scatter and to + save, + We to whom the south-west wind is dear as Athens held the north. + He for her waged war as thou for us against all powers defiant, + Fleets full-fraught with storm from Persia, laden deep with death + from Spain: + Thee the giant god of song and battle hailed as god and giant, + Yet not his but ours the land is whence thy praise should ring + and rain; + Rain as rapture shed from song, and ring as trumpets blown for + battle, + Sound and sing before thee, loud and glad as leaps and sinks the + sea: + Yea, the sea's white steeds are curbed and spurred of thee, and + pent as cattle, + Yet they laugh with love and pride to live, subdued not save of + thee. + Ears that hear thee hear in heaven the sound of widening wings + gigantic, + Eyes that see the cloud-lift westward see thy darkening brows + divine; + Wings whose measure is the limit of the limitless Atlantic, + Brows that bend, and bid the sovereign sea submit her soul to + thine. + + + III + + Twelve days since is it--twelve days gone, + Lord of storm, that a storm-bow shone + Higher than sweeps thy sublime dark wing, + Fair as dawn is and sweet like spring? + + Never dawn in the deep wide east + Spread so splendid and strange a feast, + Whence the soul as it drank and fed + Felt such rapture of wonder shed. + + Never spring in the wild wood's heart + Felt such flowers at her footfall start, + Born of earth, as arose on sight + Born of heaven and of storm and light. + + Stern and sullen, the grey grim sea + Swelled and strove as in toils, though free, + Free as heaven, and as heaven sublime, + Clear as heaven of the toils of time. + + + IV + + Suddenly, sheer from the heights to the depths of the sky and the + sea, + Sprang from the darkness alive as a vision of life to be + Glory triune and transcendent of colour afar and afire, + Arching and darkening the darkness with light as of dream or + desire. + Heaven, in the depth of its height, shone wistful and wan from + above: + Earth from beneath, and the sea, shone stricken and breathless with + love. + As a shadow may shine, so shone they; as ghosts of the viewless + blest, + That sleep hath sight of alive in a rapture of sunbright rest, + The green earth glowed and the grey sky gleamed for a wondrous + while; + And the storm's full frown was crossed by the light of its own deep + smile. + As the darkness of thought and of passion is touched by the light + that gives + Life deathless as love from the depth of a spirit that sees and + lives, + From the soul of a seer and a singer, wherein as a scroll unfurled + Lies open the scripture of light and of darkness, the word of the + world, + So, shapeless and measureless, lurid as anguish and haggard as + crime, + Pale as the front of oblivion and dark as the heart of time, + The wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made + More fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not + shade. + The grim sea-swell, grey, sleepless, and sad as a soul estranged, + Shone, smiled, took heart, and was glad of its wrath: and the + world's face changed. + + + V + + Up from moorlands northward gleaming + Even to heaven's transcendent height, + Clothed with massive cloud, and seeming + All one fortress reared of night, + Down to where the deep sea, dreaming + Angry dreams, lay dark and white, + White as death and dark as fate, + Heaving with the strong wind's weight, + Sad with stormy pride of state, + One full rainbow shone elate. + + Up from inmost memory's dwelling + Where the light of life abides, + Where the past finds tongue, foretelling + Time that comes and grace that guides, + Power that saves and sways, compelling + Souls that ebb and flow like tides, + Shone or seemed to shine and swim + Through the cloud-surf great and grim, + Thought's live surge, the soul of him + By whose light the sun looks dim. + + In what synod were they sitting, + All the gods and lords of time, + Whence they watched as fen-fires flitting + Years and names of men sublime, + When their counsels found it fitting + One should stand where none might climb-- + None of man begotten, none + Born of men beneath the sun + Till the race of time be run, + Save this heaven-enfranchised one? + + With what rapture of creation + Was the soul supernal thrilled, + With what pride of adoration + Was the world's heart fired and filled, + Heaved in heavenward exaltation + Higher than hopes or dreams might build, + Grave with awe not known while he + Was not, mad with glorious glee + As the sun-saluted sea, + When his hour bade Shakespeare be? + + + VI + + There, clear as night beholds her crowning seven, + The sea beheld his likeness set in heaven. + The shadow of his spirit full in sight + Shone: for the shadow of that soul is light. + Nor heaven alone bore witness: earth avowed + Him present, and acclaimed of storm aloud. + From the arching sky to the ageless hills and sea + The whole world, visible, audible, was he: + Each part of all that wove that wondrous whole + The raiment of the presence of his soul. + The sun that smote and kissed the dark to death + Spake, smiled, and strove, like song's triumphant breath; + The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was dumb + Swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come. + Yet high from heaven its empire vast and vain + Frowned, and renounced not night's reluctant reign. + The serpentine swift sounds and shapes wherein + The stainless sea mocks earth and death and sin, + Crawls dark as craft, or flashes keen as hate, + Subdued and insubmissive, strong like fate + And weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet + That storms and sins are more than suns that set; + That evil everlasting, girt for strife + Eternal, wars with hope as death with life. + The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves + Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves, + And waxed within more bitter as they bowed, + Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud, + Devouring fast as fire on earth devours + And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers, + Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell, + And darkening with its miscreative spell + Light, glad and keen and splendid as the sword + Whose heft had known Othello's hand its lord, + Spake all the soul that hell drew back to greet + And felt its fire shrink shuddering from his feet. + Far off the darkness darkened, and recoiled, + And neared again, and triumphed: and the coiled + Colourless cloud and sea discoloured grew + Conscious of horror huge as heaven, and knew + Where Goneril's soul made chill and foul the mist, + And all the leprous life in Regan hissed. + Fierce homeless ghosts, rejected of the pit, + From hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit. + About them and before, the dull grey gloom + Shuddered, and heaven seemed hateful as the tomb + That shrinks from resurrection; and from out + That sullen hell which girt their shades about + The nether soul that lurks and lowers within + Man, made of dust and fire and shame and sin, + Breathed: all the cloud that felt it breathe and blight + Was blue as plague or black as thunderous night. + Elect of hell, the children of his hate + Thronged, as to storm sweet heaven's triumphal gate. + The terror of his giving rose and shone + Imminent: life had put its likeness on. + But higher than all its horrent height of shade + Shone sovereign, seen by light itself had made, + Above the woes of all the world, above + Life, sin, and death, his myriad-minded love. + From landward heights whereon the radiance leant + Full-fraught from heaven, intense and imminent, + To depths wherein the seething strengths of cloud + Scarce matched the wrath of waves whereon they bowed, + From homeborn pride and kindling love of home + To the outer skies and seas of fire and foam, + From splendour soft as dew that sundawn thrills + To gloom that shudders round the world it fills, + From midnights murmuring round Titania's ear + To midnights maddening round the rage of Lear, + The wonder woven of storm and sun became + One with the light that lightens from his name. + The music moving on the sea that felt + The storm-wind even as snows of springtide melt + Was blithe as Ariel's hand or voice might make + And bid all grief die gladly for its sake. + And there the soul alive in ear and eye + That watched the wonders of an hour pass by + Saw brighter than all stars that heaven inspheres + The silent splendour of Cordelia's tears, + Felt in the whispers of the quickening wind + The radiance of the laugh of Rosalind, + And heard, in sounds that melt the souls of men + With love of love, the tune of Imogen. + + + VII + + For the strong north-east is not strong to subdue and to slay the + divine south-west, + And the darkness is less than the light that it darkens, and dies + in reluctant rest. + It hovers and hangs on the labouring and trembling ascent of the + dawn from the deep, + Till the sun's eye quicken the world and the waters, and smite it + again into sleep. + Night, holy and starry, the fostress of souls, with the fragrance + of heaven in her breath, + Subdues with the sense of her godhead the forces and mysteries of + sorrow and death. + Eternal as dawn's is the comfort she gives: but the mist that + beleaguers and slays + Comes, passes, and is not: the strength of it withers, appalled or + assuaged by the day's. + Faith, haggard as Fear that had borne her, and dark as the sire + that begat her, Despair, + Held rule on the soul of the world and the song of it saddening + through ages that were; + Dim centuries that darkened and brightened and darkened again, and + the soul of their song + Was great as their grief, and sublime as their suffering, and + strong as their sorrows were strong. + It knew not, it saw not, but shadows triune, and evoked by the + strength of their spell + Dark hell, and the mountain of anguish, and heaven that was + hollower and harder than hell. + These are not: the womb of the darkness that bare them rejects + them, and knows them no more: + Thought, fettered in misery and iron, revives in the light that it + lived in of yore. + For the soul that is wisdom and freedom, the spirit of England + redeemed from her past, + Speaks life through the lips of the master and lord of her + children, the first and the last. + Thought, touched by his hand and redeemed by his breath, sees, + hears, and accepts from above + The limitless lightnings of vision and passion, the measureless + music of love. + + + + + A SWIMMER'S DREAM + + NOVEMBER 4, 1889 + + _Somno mollior unda_ + + + I + + Dawn is dim on the dark soft water, + Soft and passionate, dark and sweet. + Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter, + Fair and flawless from face to feet, + Hailed of all when the world was golden, + Loved of lovers whose names beholden + Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden + Days more glad than their flight was fleet. + + So they sang: but for men that love her, + Souls that hear not her word in vain, + Earth beside her and heaven above her + Seem but shadows that wax and wane. + Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses, + Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses, + Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses + Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain. + + All the strength of the waves that perish + Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs, + Sighs for love of the life they cherish, + Laughs to know that it lives and dies, + Dies for joy of its life, and lives + Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives-- + Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives + Change that bids it subside and rise. + + + II + + Hard and heavy, remote but nearing, + Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight, + Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering + Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate. + Dawn and even and noon are one, + Veiled with vapour and void of sun; + Nought in sight or in fancied hearing + Now less mighty than time or fate. + + The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer, + Pale and sweet as a dream's delight, + As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer, + Touched by dawn or subdued by night. + The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad, + Swings the rollers to westward, clad + With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer, + Lures and lulls him with dreams of light. + + Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder, + Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud, + Fill the world of the skies whereunder + Heaves and quivers and pants aloud + All the world of the waters, hoary + Now, but clothed with its own live glory, + That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder + With light more living and word more proud. + + + III + + Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife, + Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee + Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free, + Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life, + Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea. + + Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd, + Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems + Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams + Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed, + Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams. + + + IV + + O russet-robed November, + What ails thee so to smile? + Chill August, pale September, + Endured a woful while, + And fell as falls an ember + From forth a flameless pile: + But golden-girt November + Bids all she looks on smile. + + The lustrous foliage, waning + As wanes the morning moon, + Here falling, here refraining, + Outbraves the pride of June + With statelier semblance, feigning + No fear lest death be soon: + As though the woods thus waning + Should wax to meet the moon. + + As though, when fields lie stricken + By grey December's breath, + These lordlier growths that sicken + And die for fear of death + Should feel the sense requicken + That hears what springtide saith + And thrills for love, spring-stricken + And pierced with April's breath. + + The keen white-winged north-easter + That stings and spurs thy sea + Doth yet but feed and feast her + With glowing sense of glee: + Calm chained her, storm released her, + And storm's glad voice was he: + South-wester or north-easter, + Thy winds rejoice the sea. + + + V + + A dream, a dream is it all--the season, + The sky, the water, the wind, the shore? + A day-born dream of divine unreason, + A marvel moulded of sleep--no more? + For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving + Feel as in slumber beneath them heaving + Soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving + Sense of nought that was known of yore. + + A purer passion, a lordlier leisure, + A peace more happy than lives on land, + Fulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure + The dreaming head and the steering hand. + I lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow, + The deep soft swell of the full broad billow, + And close mine eyes for delight past measure, + And wish the wheel of the world would stand. + + The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture + Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb, + So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture + Was felt that soothed me with sense of home. + To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever-- + Such joy the vision of man saw never; + For here too soon will a dark day sever + The sea-bird's wing from the sea-wave's foam. + + A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer + At once and brighter than dreams that flee, + The moment's joy of the seaward swimmer + Abides, remembered as truth may be. + Not all the joy and not all the glory + Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary; + For there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer, + And here to south of them swells the sea. + + + + + GRACE DARLING + + + Take, O star of all our seas, from not an alien hand, + Homage paid of song bowed down before thy glory's face, + Thou the living light of all our lovely stormy strand, + Thou the brave north-country's very glory of glories, Grace. + + Loud and dark about the lighthouse rings and glares the night; + Glares with foam-lit gloom and darkling fire of storm and spray, + Rings with roar of winds in chase and rage of waves in flight, + Howls and hisses as with mouths of snakes and wolves at bay. + Scarce the cliffs of the islets, scarce the walls of Joyous Gard, + Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea: + Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred, + Nor may sight or fear discern what evil stars may be. + Dark as death and white as snow the sea-swell scowls and shines, + Heaves and yearns and pants for prey, from ravening lip to lip, + Strong in rage of rapturous anguish, lines on hurtling lines, + Ranks on charging ranks, that break and rend the battling ship. + All the night is mad and murderous: who shall front the night? + Not the prow that labours, helpless as a storm-blown leaf, + Where the rocks and waters, darkling depth and beetling height, + Rage with wave on shattering wave and thundering reef on reef. + Death is fallen upon the prisoners there of darkness, bound + Like as thralls with links of iron fast in bonds of doom; + How shall any way to break the bands of death be found, + Any hand avail to pluck them from that raging tomb? + All the night is great with child of death: no stars above + Show them hope in heaven, no lights from shores ward help on + earth. + Is there help or hope to seaward, is there help in love, + Hope in pity, where the ravening hounds of storm make mirth? + Where the light but shows the naked eyeless face of Death + Nearer, laughing dumb and grim across the loud live storm? + Not in human heart or hand or speech of human breath, + Surely, nor in saviours found of mortal face or form. + Yet below the light, between the reefs, a skiff shot out + Seems a sea-bird fain to breast and brave the strait fierce pass + Whence the channelled roar of waters driven in raging rout, + Pent and pressed and maddened, speaks their monstrous might and + mass. + Thunder heaves and howls about them, lightning leaps and flashes, + Hard at hand, not high in heaven, but close between the walls + Heaped and hollowed of the storms of old, whence reels and crashes + All the rage of all the unbaffled wave that breaks and falls. + Who shall thwart the madness and the gladness of it, laden + Full with heavy fate, and joyous as the birds that whirl? + Nought in heaven or earth, if not one mortal-moulded maiden, + Nought if not the soul that glorifies a northland girl. + Not the rocks that break may baffle, not the reefs that thwart + Stay the ravenous rapture of the waves that crowd and leap; + Scarce their flashing laughter shows the hunger of their heart, + Scarce their lion-throated roar the wrath at heart they keep. + Child and man and woman in the grasp of death clenched fast + Tremble, clothed with darkness round about, and scarce draw + breath, + Scarce lift eyes up toward the light that saves not, scarce may + cast + Thought or prayer up, caught and trammelled in the snare of + death. + Not as sea-mews cling and laugh or sun their plumes and sleep + Cling and cower the wild night's waifs of shipwreck, blind with + fear, + Where the fierce reef scarce yields foothold that a bird might + keep, + And the clamorous darkness deadens eye and deafens ear. + Yet beyond their helpless hearing, out of hopeless sight, + Saviours, armed and girt upon with strength of heart, fare forth, + Sire and daughter, hand on oar and face against the night, + Maid and man whose names are beacons ever to the North. + Nearer now; but all the madness of the storming surf + Hounds and roars them back; but roars and hounds them back in + vain: + As a pleasure-skiff may graze the lake-embanking turf, + So the boat that bears them grates the rock where-toward they + strain. + Dawn as fierce and haggard as the face of night scarce guides + Toward the cries that rent and clove the darkness, crying for + aid, + Hours on hours, across the engorged reluctance of the tides, + Sire and daughter, high-souled man and mightier-hearted maid. + Not the bravest land that ever breasted war's grim sea, + Hurled her foes back harried on the lowlands whence they came, + Held her own and smote her smiters down, while such durst be, + Shining northward, shining southward, as the aurorean flame, + Not our mother, not Northumberland, brought ever forth, + Though no southern shore may match the sons that kiss her mouth, + Children worthier all the birthright given of the ardent north + Where the fire of hearts outburns the suns that fire the south. + Even such fire was this that lit them, not from lowering skies + Where the darkling dawn flagged, stricken in the sun's own + shrine, + Down the gulf of storm subsiding, till their earnest eyes + Find the relics of the ravening night that spared but nine. + Life by life the man redeems them, head by storm-worn head, + While the girl's hand stays the boat whereof the waves are fain: + Ah, but woe for one, the mother clasping fast her dead! + Happier, had the surges slain her with her children slain. + Back they bear, and bring between them safe the woful nine, + Where above the ravenous Hawkers fixed at watch for prey + Storm and calm behold the Longstone's towering signal shine + Now as when that labouring night brought forth a shuddering day. + Now as then, though like the hounds of storm against her snarling + All the clamorous years between us storm down many a fame, + As our sires beheld before us we behold Grace Darling + Crowned and throned our queen, and as they hailed we hail her + name. + Nay, not ours alone, her kinsfolk born, though chiefliest ours, + East and west and south acclaim her queen of England's maids, + Star more sweet than all their stars and flower than all their + flowers, + Higher in heaven and earth than star that sets or flower that + fades. + How should land or sea that nurtured her forget, or love + Hold not fast her fame for us while aught is borne in mind? + Land and sea beneath us, sun and moon and stars above, + Bear the bright soul witness, seen of all but souls born blind. + Stars and moon and sun may wax and wane, subside and rise, + Age on age as flake on flake of showering snows be shed: + Not till earth be sunless, not till death strike blind the skies, + May the deathless love that waits on deathless deeds be dead. + + Years on years have withered since beside the hearth once thine + I, too young to have seen thee, touched thy father's hallowed + hand: + Thee and him shall all men see for ever, stars that shine + While the sea that spared thee girds and glorifies the land. + + + + + LOCH TORRIDON + + TO E. H. + + + The dawn of night more fair than morning rose, + Stars hurrying forth on stars, as snows on snows + Haste when the wind and winter bid them speed. + Vague miles of moorland road behind us lay + Scarce traversed ere the day + Sank, and the sun forsook us at our need, + Belated. Where we thought to have rested, rest + Was none; for soft Maree's dim quivering breast, + Bound round with gracious inland girth of green + And fearless of the wild wave-wandering West, + Shone shelterless for strangers; and unseen + The goal before us lay + Of all our blithe and strange and strenuous day. + + For when the northering road faced westward--when + The dark sharp sudden gorge dropped seaward--then, + Beneath the stars, between the steeps, the track + We followed, lighted not of moon or sun, + And plunging whither none + Might guess, while heaven and earth were hoar and black, + Seemed even the dim still pass whence none turns back: + And through the twilight leftward of the way, + And down the dark, with many a laugh and leap, + The light blithe hill-streams shone from scaur to steep + In glittering pride of play; + And ever while the night grew great and deep + We felt but saw not what the hills would keep + Sacred awhile from sense of moon or star; + And full and far + Beneath us, sweet and strange as heaven may be, + The sea. + + The very sea: no mountain-moulded lake + Whose fluctuant shapeliness is fain to take + Shape from the steadfast shore that rules it round, + And only from the storms a casual sound: + The sea, that harbours in her heart sublime + The supreme heart of music deep as time, + And in her spirit strong + The spirit of all imaginable song. + + Not a whisper or lisp from the waters: the skies were not silenter. + Peace + Was between them; a passionless rapture of respite as soft as + release. + Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded with patient + delight + The soul and the body, clothed round with the comfort of limitless + night. + Night infinite, living, adorable, loved of the land and the sea: + Night, mother of mercies, who saith to the spirits in prison, Be + free. + And softer than dewfall, and kindlier than starlight, and keener + than wine, + Came round us the fragrance of waters, the life of the breath of + the brine. + We saw not, we heard not, the face or the voice of the waters: we + knew + By the darkling delight of the wind as the sense of the sea in it + grew, + By the pulse of the darkness about us enkindled and quickened, that + here, + Unseen and unheard of us, surely the goal we had faith in was near. + A silence diviner than music, a darkness diviner than light, + Fulfilled as from heaven with a measureless comfort the measure of + night. + + But never a roof for shelter + And never a sign for guide + Rose doubtful or visible: only + And hardly and gladly we heard + The soft waves whisper and welter, + Subdued, and allured to subside, + By the mild night's magic: the lonely + Sweet silence was soothed, not stirred, + By the noiseless noise of the gleaming + Glad ripples, that played and sighed, + Kissed, laughed, recoiled, and relented, + Whispered, flickered, and fled. + No season was this for dreaming + How oft, with a stormier tide, + Had the wrath of the winds been vented + On sons of the tribes long dead: + The tribes whom time, and the changes + Of things, and the stress of doom, + Have erased and effaced; forgotten + As wrecks or weeds of the shore + In sight of the stern hill-ranges + That hardly may change their gloom + When the fruits of the years wax rotten + And the seed of them springs no more. + For the dim strait footway dividing + The waters that breathed below + Led safe to the kindliest of shelters + That ever awoke into light: + And still in remembrance abiding + Broods over the stars that glow + And the water that eddies and welters + The passionate peace of the night. + + All night long, in the world of sleep, + Skies and waters were soft and deep: + Shadow clothed them, and silence made + Soundless music of dream and shade: + All above us, the livelong night, + Shadow, kindled with sense of light; + All around us, the brief night long, + Silence, laden with sense of song. + Stars and mountains without, we knew, + Watched and waited, the soft night through: + All unseen, but divined and dear, + Thrilled the touch of the sea's breath near: + All unheard, but alive like sound, + Throbbed the sense of the sea's life round: + Round us, near us, in depth and height, + Soft as darkness and keen as light. + + And the dawn leapt in at my casement: and there, as I rose, at my + feet + No waves of the landlocked waters, no lake submissive and sweet, + Soft slave of the lordly seasons, whose breath may loose it or + freeze; + But to left and to right and ahead was the ripple whose pulse is + the sea's. + From the gorge we had travelled by starlight the sunrise, winged + and aflame, + Shone large on the live wide wavelets that shuddered with joy as it + came; + As it came and caressed and possessed them, till panting and + laughing with light + From mountain to mountain the water was kindled and stung to + delight. + And the grey gaunt heights that embraced and constrained and + compelled it were glad, + And the rampart of rock, stark naked, that thwarted and barred it, + was clad + With a stern grey splendour of sunrise: and scarce had I sprung to + the sea + When the dawn and the water were wedded, the hills and the sky set + free. + The chain of the night was broken: the waves that embraced me and + smiled + And flickered and fawned in the sunlight, alive, unafraid, + undefiled, + Were sweeter to swim in than air, though fulfilled with the + mounting morn, + Could be for the birds whose triumph rejoiced that a day was born. + + And a day was arisen indeed for us. Years and the changes of years + Clothed round with their joys and their sorrows, and dead as their + hopes and their fears, + Lie noteless and nameless, unlit by remembrance or record of days + Worth wonder or memory, or cursing or blessing, or passion or + praise, + Between us who live and forget not, but yearn with delight in it + yet, + And the day we forget not, and never may live and may think to + forget. + And the years that were kindlier and fairer, and kindled with + pleasures as keen, + Have eclipsed not with lights or with shadows the light on the face + of it seen. + For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed from drew, + The face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds pass through, + And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the strait of the sharp + steep cleft, + The portal that opens with imminent rampires to right and to left, + Sublime as the sky they darken and strange as a spell-struck dream, + On the world unconfined of the mountains, the reign of the sea + supreme, + The kingdom of westward waters, wherein when we swam we knew + The waves that we clove were boundless, the wind on our brows that + blew + Had swept no land and no lake, and had warred not on tower or on + tree, + But came on us hard out of heaven, and alive with the soul of the + sea. + + + + + THE PALACE OF PAN + + INSCRIBED TO MY MOTHER + + + September, all glorious with gold, as a king + In the radiance of triumph attired, + Outlightening the summer, outsweetening the spring, + Broods wide on the woodlands with limitless wing, + A presence of all men desired. + + Far eastward and westward the sun-coloured lands + Smile warm as the light on them smiles; + And statelier than temples upbuilded with hands, + Tall column by column, the sanctuary stands + Of the pine-forest's infinite aisles. + + Mute worship, too fervent for praise or for prayer, + Possesses the spirit with peace, + Fulfilled with the breath of the luminous air, + The fragrance, the silence, the shadows as fair + As the rays that recede or increase. + + Ridged pillars that redden aloft and aloof, + With never a branch for a nest, + Sustain the sublime indivisible roof, + To the storm and the sun in his majesty proof, + And awful as waters at rest. + + Man's hand hath not measured the height of them; thought + May measure not, awe may not know; + In its shadow the woofs of the woodland are wrought; + As a bird is the sun in the toils of them caught, + And the flakes of it scattered as snow. + + As the shreds of a plumage of gold on the ground + The sun-flakes by multitudes lie, + Shed loose as the petals of roses discrowned + On the floors of the forest engilt and embrowned + And reddened afar and anigh. + + Dim centuries with darkling inscrutable hands + Have reared and secluded the shrine + For gods that we know not, and kindled as brands + On the altar the years that are dust, and their sands + Time's glass has forgotten for sign. + + A temple whose transepts are measured by miles, + Whose chancel has morning for priest, + Whose floor-work the foot of no spoiler defiles, + Whose musical silence no music beguiles, + No festivals limit its feast. + + The noon's ministration, the night's and the dawn's, + Conceals not, reveals not for man, + On the slopes of the herbless and blossomless lawns, + Some track of a nymph's or some trail of a faun's + To the place of the slumber of Pan. + + Thought, kindled and quickened by worship and wonder + To rapture too sacred for fear + On the ways that unite or divide them in sunder, + Alone may discern if about them or under + Be token or trace of him here. + + With passionate awe that is deeper than panic + The spirit subdued and unshaken + Takes heed of the godhead terrene and Titanic + Whose footfall is felt on the breach of volcanic + Sharp steeps that their fire has forsaken. + + By a spell more serene than the dim necromantic + Dead charms of the past and the night, + Or the terror that lurked in the noon to make frantic + Where Etna takes shape from the limbs of gigantic + Dead gods disanointed of might, + + The spirit made one with the spirit whose breath + Makes noon in the woodland sublime + Abides as entranced in a presence that saith + Things loftier than life and serener than death, + Triumphant and silent as time. + + PINE RIDGE: _September 1893_ + + + + + A YEAR'S CAROLS + + + JANUARY + + Hail, January, that bearest here + On snowbright breasts the babe-faced year + That weeps and trembles to be born. + Hail, maid and mother, strong and bright, + Hooded and cloaked and shod with white, + Whose eyes are stars that match the morn. + Thy forehead braves the storm's bent bow, + Thy feet enkindle stars of snow. + + + FEBRUARY + + Wan February with weeping cheer, + Whose cold hand guides the youngling year + Down misty roads of mire and rime, + Before thy pale and fitful face + The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace + Through skies the morning scarce may climb. + Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears, + But lit with hopes that light the year's. + + + MARCH + + Hail, happy March, whose foot on earth + Rings as the blast of martial mirth + When trumpets fire men's hearts for fray. + No race of wild things winged or finned + May match the might that wings thy wind + Through air and sea, through scud and spray. + Strong joy and thou were powers twin-born + Of tempest and the towering morn. + + + APRIL + + Crowned April, king whose kiss bade earth + Bring forth to time her lordliest birth + When Shakespeare from thy lips drew breath + And laughed to hold in one soft hand + A spell that bade the world's wheel stand, + And power on life, and power on death, + With quiring suns and sunbright showers + Praise him, the flower of all thy flowers. + + + MAY + + Hail, May, whose bark puts forth full-sailed + For summer; May, whom Chaucer hailed + With all his happy might of heart, + And gave thy rosebright daisy-tips + Strange fragrance from his amorous lips + That still thine own breath seems to part + And sweeten till each word they say + Is even a flower of flowering May. + + + JUNE + + Strong June, superb, serene, elate + With conscience of thy sovereign state + Untouched of thunder, though the storm + Scathe here and there thy shuddering skies + And bid its lightning cross thine eyes + With fire, thy golden hours inform + Earth and the souls of men with life + That brings forth peace from shining strife. + + + JULY + + Hail, proud July, whose fervent mouth + Bids even be morn and north be south + By grace and gospel of thy word, + Whence all the splendour of the sea + Lies breathless with delight in thee + And marvel at the music heard + From the ardent silent lips of noon + And midnight's rapturous plenilune. + + + AUGUST + + Great August, lord of golden lands, + Whose lordly joy through seas and strands + And all the red-ripe heart of earth + Strikes passion deep as life, and stills + The folded vales and folding hills + With gladness too divine for mirth, + The gracious glories of thine eyes + Make night a noon where darkness dies. + + + SEPTEMBER + + Hail, kind September, friend whose grace + Renews the bland year's bounteous face + With largess given of corn and wine + Through many a land that laughs with love + Of thee and all the heaven above, + More fruitful found than all save thine + Whose skies fulfil with strenuous cheer + The fervent fields that knew thee near. + + + OCTOBER + + October of the tawny crown, + Whose heavy-laden hands drop down + Blessing, the bounties of thy breath + And mildness of thy mellowing might + Fill earth and heaven with love and light + Too sweet for fear to dream of death + Or memory, while thy joy lives yet, + To know what joy would fain forget. + + + NOVEMBER + + Hail, soft November, though thy pale + Sad smile rebuke the words that hail + Thy sorrow with no sorrowing words + Or gratulate thy grief with song + Less bitter than the winds that wrong + Thy withering woodlands, where the birds + Keep hardly heart to sing or see + How fair thy faint wan face may be. + + + DECEMBER + + December, thou whose hallowing hands + On shuddering seas and hardening lands + Set as a sacramental sign + The seal of Christmas felt on earth + As witness toward a new year's birth + Whose promise makes thy death divine, + The crowning joy that comes of thee + Makes glad all grief on land or sea. + + + + + ENGLAND: AN ODE + + + I + + Sea and strand, and a lordlier land than sea-tides rolling and + rising sun + Clasp and lighten in climes that brighten with day when day that + was here is done, + Call aloud on their children, proud with trust that future and past + are one. + + Far and near from the swan's nest here the storm-birds bred of her + fair white breast, + Sons whose home was the sea-wave's foam, have borne the fame of her + east and west; + North and south has the storm-wind's mouth rung praise of England + and England's quest. + + Fame, wherever her flag flew, never forbore to fly with an equal + wing: + France and Spain with their warrior train bowed down before her as + thrall to king; + India knelt at her feet, and felt her sway more fruitful of life + than spring. + + Darkness round them as iron bound fell off from races of elder + name, + Slain at sight of her eyes, whose light bids freedom lighten and + burn as flame; + Night endures not the touch that cures of kingship tyrants, and + slaves of shame. + + All the terror of time, where error and fear were lords of a world + of slaves, + Age on age in resurgent rage and anguish darkening as waves on + waves, + Fell or fled from a face that shed such grace as quickens the dust + of graves. + + Things of night at her glance took flight: the strengths of + darkness recoiled and sank: + Sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wild agony writhed + and shrank: + Rose the light of the reign of right from gulfs of years that the + darkness drank. + + Yet the might of her wings in flight, whence glory lightens and + music rings, + Loud and bright as the dawn's, shall smite and still the discord of + evil things, + Yet not slain by her radiant reign, but darkened now by her + sail-stretched wings. + + + II + + Music made of change and conquest, glory born of evil slain, + Stilled the discord, slew the darkness, bade the lights of tempest + wane, + Where the deathless dawn of England rose in sign that right should + reign. + + Mercy, where the tiger wallowed mad and blind with blood and lust, + Justice, where the jackal yelped and fed, and slaves allowed it + just, + Rose as England's light on Asia rose, and smote them down to dust. + + Justice bright as mercy, mercy girt by justice with her sword, + Smote and saved and raised and ruined, till the tyrant-ridden horde + Saw the lightning fade from heaven and knew the sun for God and + lord. + + Where the footfall sounds of England, where the smile of England + shines, + Rings the tread and laughs the face of freedom, fair as hope + divines + Days to be, more brave than ours and lit by lordlier stars for + signs. + + All our past acclaims our future: Shakespeare's voice and Nelson's + hand, + Milton's faith and Wordsworth's trust in this our chosen and + chainless land, + Bear us witness: come the world against her, England yet shall + stand. + + Earth and sea bear England witness if he lied who said it; he + Whom the winds that ward her, waves that clasp, and herb and flower + and tree + Fed with English dews and sunbeams, hail as more than man may be. + + No man ever spake as he that bade our England be but true, + Keep but faith with England fast and firm, and none should bid her + rue; + None may speak as he: but all may know the sign that Shakespeare + knew. + + + III + + From the springs of the dawn, from the depths of the noon, from the + heights of the night that shine, + Hope, faith, and remembrance of glory that found but in England her + throne and her shrine, + Speak louder than song may proclaim them, that here is the seal of + them set for a sign. + + And loud as the sea's voice thunders applause of the land that is + one with the sea + Speaks Time in the ear of the people that never at heart was not + inly free + The word of command that assures us of life, if we will but that + life shall be; + + If the race that is first of the races of men who behold unashamed + the sun + Stand fast and forget not the sign that is given of the years and + the wars that are done, + The token that all who are born of its blood should in heart as in + blood be one. + + The word of remembrance that lightens as fire from the steeps of + the storm-lit past + Bids only the faith of our fathers endure in us, firm as they held + it fast: + That the glory which was from the first upon England alone may + endure to the last. + + That the love and the hate may change not, the faith may not fade, + nor the wrath nor scorn, + That shines for her sons and that burns for her foemen as fire of + the night or the morn: + That the births of her womb may forget not the sign of the glory + wherein they were born. + + A light that is more than the sunlight, an air that is brighter + than morning's breath, + Clothes England about as the strong sea clasps her, and answers the + word that it saith; + The word that assures her of life if she change not, and choose not + the ways of death. + + Change darkens and lightens around her, alternate in hope and in + fear to be: + Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whether hope be not + blind as she: + But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal, and girdled + with life by the sea. + + + + + ETON: AN ODE + + FOR THE FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION + OF THE COLLEGE + + + I + + Four hundred summers and fifty have shone on the meadows of Thames + and died + Since Eton arose in an age that was darkness, and shone by his + radiant side + As a star that the spell of a wise man's word bade live and ascend + and abide. + + And ever as time's flow brightened, a river more dark than the + storm-clothed sea, + And age upon age rose fairer and larger in promise of hope set + free, + With England Eton her child kept pace as a fostress of men to be. + + And ever as earth waxed wiser, and softer the beating of time's + wide wings, + Since fate fell dark on her father, most hapless and gentlest of + star-crossed kings, + Her praise has increased as the chant of the dawn that the choir of + the noon outsings. + + + II + + Storm and cloud in the skies were loud, and lightning mocked at the + blind sun's light; + War and woe on the land below shed heavier shadow than falls from + night; + Dark was earth at her dawn of birth as here her record of praise is + bright. + + Clear and fair through her morning air the light first laugh of the + sunlit stage + Rose and rang as a fount that sprang from depths yet dark with a + spent storm's rage, + Loud and glad as a boy's, and bade the sunrise open on + Shakespeare's age. + + Lords of state and of war, whom fate found strong in battle, in + counsel strong, + Here, ere fate had approved them great, abode their season, and + thought not long: + Here too first was the lark's note nursed that filled and flooded + the skies with song. + + + III + + Shelley, lyric lord of England's lordliest singers, here first + heard + Ring from lips of poets crowned and dead the Promethean word + Whence his soul took fire, and power to outsoar the sunward-soaring + bird. + + Still the reaches of the river, still the light on field and hill, + Still the memories held aloft as lamps for hope's young fire to + fill, + Shine, and while the light of England lives shall shine for England + still. + + When four hundred more and fifty years have risen and shone and + set, + Bright with names that men remember, loud with names that men + forget, + Haply here shall Eton's record be what England finds it yet. + + + + + THE UNION + + + I + + Three in one, but one in three, + God, who girt her with the sea, + Bade our Commonweal to be: + Nought, if now not one. + Though fraud and fear would sever + The bond assured for ever, + Their shameful strength shall never + Undo what heaven has done. + + + II + + South and North and West and East + Watch the ravens flock to feast, + Dense as round some death-struck beast, + Black as night is black. + Stand fast as faith together + In stress of treacherous weather + When hounds and wolves break tether + And Treason guides the pack. + + + III + + Lovelier than thy seas are strong, + Glorious Ireland, sword and song + Gird and crown thee: none may wrong, + Save thy sons alone. + The sea that laughs around us + Hath sundered not but bound us: + The sun's first rising found us + Throned on its equal throne. + + + IV + + North and South and East and West, + All true hearts that wish thee best + Beat one tune and own one quest, + Staunch and sure as steel. + God guard from dark disunion + Our threefold State's communion, + God save the loyal Union, + The royal Commonweal! + + + + + EAST TO WEST + + + Sunset smiles on sunrise: east and west are one, + Face to face in heaven before the sovereign sun. + From the springs of the dawn everlasting a glory renews and + transfigures the west, + From the depths of the sunset a light as of morning enkindles the + broad sea's breast, + And the lands and the skies and the waters are glad of the day's + and the night's work done. + + Child of dawn, and regent on the world-wide sea, + England smiles on Europe, fair as dawn and free. + Not the waters that gird her are purer, nor mightier the winds that + her waters know. + But America, daughter and sister of England, is praised of them, + far as they flow: + Atlantic responds to Pacific the praise of her days that have been + and shall be. + + So from England westward let the watchword fly, + So for England eastward let the seas reply; + Praise, honour, and love everlasting be sent on the wind's wings, + westward and east, + That the pride of the past and the pride of the future may mingle + as friends at feast, + And the sons of the lords of the world-wide seas be one till the + world's life die. + + + + + INSCRIPTIONS + + FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A PEDESTAL + + + I + + Marlowe, the father of the sons of song + Whose praise is England's crowning praise, above + All glories else that crown her, sweet and strong + As England, clothed with light and fire of love, + And girt with might of passion, thought, and trust, + Stands here in spirit, sleeps not here in dust. + + + II + + Marlowe, a star too sovereign, too superb, + To fade when heaven took fire from Shakespeare's light, + A soul that knew but song's triumphal curb + And love's triumphant bondage, holds of right + His pride of place, who first in place and time + Made England's voice as England's heart sublime. + + + III + + Marlowe bade England live in living song: + The light he lifted up lit Shakespeare's way: + He spake, and life sprang forth in music, strong + As fire or lightning, sweet as dawn of day. + Song was a dream where day took night to wife: + "Let there be life," he said: and there was life. + + + IV + + Marlowe of all our fathers first beheld + Beyond the tidal ebb and flow of things + The tideless depth and height of souls, impelled + By thought or passion, borne on waves or wings, + Beyond all flight or sight but song's: and he + First gave our song a sound that matched our sea. + + + + + ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD BURTON + + + Night or light is it now, wherein + Sleeps, shut out from the wild world's din, + Wakes, alive with a life more clear, + One who found not on earth his kin? + + Sleep were sweet for awhile, were dear + Surely to souls that were heartless here, + Souls that faltered and flagged and fell, + Soft of spirit and faint of cheer. + + A living soul that had strength to quell + Hope the spectre and fear the spell, + Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime + And a faith superb, can it fare not well? + + Life, the shadow of wide-winged time, + Cast from the wings that change as they climb, + Life may vanish in death, and seem + Less than the promise of last year's prime. + + But not for us is the past a dream + Wherefrom, as light from a clouded stream, + Faith fades and shivers and ebbs away, + Faint as the moon if the sundawn gleam. + + Faith, whose eyes in the low last ray + Watch the fire that renews the day, + Faith which lives in the living past, + Rock-rooted, swerves not as weeds that sway. + + As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast + She stands, unsmitten of death's keen blast, + With strong remembrance of sunbright spring + Alive at heart to the lifeless last. + + Night, she knows, may in no wise cling + To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing, + A sun that sets not in death's false night + Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king. + + Souls there are that for soul's affright + Bow down and cower in the sun's glad sight, + Clothed round with faith that is one with fear, + And dark with doubt of the live world's light. + + But him we hailed from afar or near + As boldest born of the bravest here + And loved as brightest of souls that eyed + Life, time, and death with unchangeful cheer, + + A wider soul than the world was wide, + Whose praise made love of him one with pride, + What part has death or has time in him, + Who rode life's lists as a god might ride? + + While England sees not her old praise dim, + While still her stars through the world's night swim, + A fame outshining her Raleigh's fame, + A light that lightens her loud sea's rim, + + Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim + The pride that kindles at Burton's name. + And joy shall exalt their pride to be + The same in birth if in soul the same. + + But we that yearn for a friend's face--we + Who lack the light that on earth was he-- + Mourn, though the light be a quenchless flame + That shines as dawn on a tideless sea. + + + + + ELEGY + + 1869-1891 + + + Auvergne, Auvergne, O wild and woful land, + O glorious land and gracious, white as gleam + The stairs of heaven, black as a flameless brand, + Strange even as life, and stranger than a dream, + + Could earth remember man, whose eyes made bright + The splendour of her beauty, lit by day + Or soothed and softened and redeemed by night, + Wouldst thou not know what light has passed away? + + Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world, + Mourns? For the world whose wildest ways he trod, + And smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled + Against him, knows him now less man than god. + + Our demigod of daring, keenest-eyed + To read and deepest read in earth's dim things, + A spirit now whose body of death has died + And left it mightier yet in eyes and wings, + The sovereign seeker of the world, who now + Hath sought what world the light of death may show, + Hailed once with me the crowns that load thy brow, + Crags dark as midnight, columns bright as snow. + + Thy steep small Siena, splendid and content + As shines the mightier city's Tuscan pride + Which here its face reflects in radiance, pent + By narrower bounds from towering side to side, + + Set fast between the ridged and foamless waves + Of earth more fierce and fluctuant than the sea, + The fearless town of towers that hails and braves + The heights that gird, the sun that brands Le Puy; + + The huddled churches clinging on the cliffs + As birds alighting might for storm's sake cling, + Moored to the rocks as tempest-harried skiffs + To perilous refuge from the loud wind's wing; + + The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb + Even up to the utmost crag's edge curved and curled, + More bright than vision, more than faith sublime, + Strange as the light and darkness of the world; + + Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun, + And washed from west and east by day's deep tide. + Shine yet less fair, when all their heights are won, + Than sundawn shows thy pillared mountain-side. + + Even so the dawn of death, whose light makes dim + The starry fires that life sees rise and set, + Shows higher than here he shone before us him + Whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget. + + Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb + Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud, + Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam, + And shrouded as a corpse with storm's grey shroud, + + Foot following foot along the sheer strait ledge + Where space was none to bear the wild goat's feet + Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge + Where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat, + + The abyss before us, viewless even as time's, + The abyss to left of us, the abyss to right, + Bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs + That death sets free from change of day and night. + + The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath + Shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod, + The wondrous world it darkened, made our path + Like theirs who take the shadow of death for God. + + Yet eastward, veiled in vapour white as snow, + The grim black herbless heights that scorn the sun + And mock the face of morning rose to show + The work of earth-born fire and earthquake done. + + And half the world was haggard night, wherein + We strove our blind way through: but far above + Was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin, + And far beneath a land worth light and love. + + Deep down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted + By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings + And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted + By present sense of past and monstrous things, + + The glimmering water holds its gracious way + Full forth, and keeps one happier hand's-breadth green + Of all that storm-scathed world whereon the sway + Sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen. + + But on the soundless and the viewless river + That bears through night perchance again to day + The dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver + From life that dies, and time's inveterate sway, + + No shadow save of falsehood and of fear + That brands the future with the past, and bids + The spirit wither and the soul grow sere, + Hovers or hangs to cloud life's opening lids, + + If life have eyes to lift again and see, + Beyond the bounds of sensual sight or breath, + What life incognisable of ours may be + That turns our light to darkness deep as death. + + Priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm + With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies, + About his dust while yet his dust is warm + Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes, + + Their godless ghost of godhead, false and foul + As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we, + Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: + The corpse be theirs to mock; the soul is free. + + Free as ere yet its earthly day was done + It lived above the coil about us curled: + A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun, + A soul whose wings were wider than the world. + + We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams, + Bound fast with visions, girt about with fears, + Live, trust, and think by chance, while shadow seems + Light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers. + + He, whose full soul held east and west in poise, + Weighed man with man, and creed of man's with creed, + And age with age, their triumphs and their toys, + And found what faith may read not and may read. + + Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit + With fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn + Wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it + The splendour and the steadfastness of scorn. + + What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what space + Illimitable, insuperable, infinite, + Now to that strong-winged soul yields ampler place + Than passing darkness yields to passing light, + + No dream, no faith can tell us: hope and fear, + Whose tongues were loud of old as children's, now + From babbling fall to silence: change is here, + And death; dark furrows drawn by time's dark plough. + + Still sunward here on earth its flight was bent, + Even since the man within the child began + To yearn and kindle with superb intent + And trust in time to magnify the man. + + Still toward the old garden of the Sun, whose fruit + The honey-heavy lips of Sophocles + Desired and sang, wherein the unwithering root + Sprang of all growths that thought brings forth and sees + + Incarnate, bright with bloom or dense with leaf + Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night: + And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf + His strenuous spirit bound and stored aright. + + And eastward now, and ever toward the dawn, + If death's deep veil by life's bright hand be rent, + We see, as through the shadow of death withdrawn, + The imperious soul's indomitable ascent. + + But not the soul whose labour knew not end-- + But not the swordsman's hand, the crested head-- + The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend, + Burton--a name that lives till fame be dead. + + + + + A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING + + + I + + The clearest eyes in all the world they read + With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true + Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew + Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, + As they the light of ages quick and dead, + Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew + Can slay not one of all the works we knew, + Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head. + + The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, + And moulded of unconquerable thought, + And quickened with imperishable flame, + Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought + May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame, + Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name. + + _December 13, 1889._ + + + II + + Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom + Time is not lord, but servant? What least part + Of all the fire that fed his living heart, + Of all the light more keen than sundawn's bloom + That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom + And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart + Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art, + A shadow born of terror's barren womb, + That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou, + To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow, + That power on him is given thee,--that thy breath + Can make him less than love acclaims him now, + And hears all time sound back the word it saith? + What part hast thou then in his glory, Death? + + + III + + A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: + Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand, + Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand + And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve. + A graceless guerdon we that loved receive + For all our love, from that the dearest land + Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland, + Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave, + Shone on our dreams and memories evermore + The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore + That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black + Seems now the face we loved as he of yore. + We have given thee love--no stint, no stay, no lack: + What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back? + + + IV + + But he--to him, who knows what gift is thine, + Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we + Pass likewise thither where to-night is he, + Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine + And darken round such dreams as half divine + Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea + Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee, + To read with him the secret of thy shrine. + + There too, as here, may song, delight, and love, + The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove, + Fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky + Till all beneath wax bright as all above: + But none of all that search the heavens, and try + The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye. + + _December 14._ + + + V + + Among the wondrous ways of men and time + He went as one that ever found and sought + And bore in hand the lamplike spirit of thought + To illume with instance of its fire sublime + The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime. + No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought, + No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought + That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime, + No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light, + No love more lovely than the snows are white, + No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb, + No song-bird singing from some live soul's height, + But he might hear, interpret, or illume + With sense invasive as the dawn of doom. + + + VI + + What secret thing of splendour or of shade + Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein + Man, led of love and life and death and sin, + Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid, + Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade + Of that full soul that had for aim to win + Light, silent over time's dark toil and din, + Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade? + O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee + That he might know not of in spirit, and see + The heart within the heart that seems to strive, + The life within the life that seems to be, + And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive, + The living sound of all men's souls alive? + + + VII + + He held no dream worth waking: so he said, + He who stands now on death's triumphal steep, + Awakened out of life wherein we sleep + And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. + But never death for him was dark or dread: + "Look forth" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep, + All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep + Vain memory's vision of a vanished head + As all that lives of all that once was he + Save that which lightens from his word: but we, + Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll, + Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea, + Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole, + And life and death but shadows of the soul. + + _December 15._ + + + + + SUNSET AND MOONRISE + + NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1889 + + + All the west, whereon the sunset sealed the dead year's glorious + grave + Fast with seals of light and fire and cloud that light and fire + illume, + Glows at heart and kindles earth and heaven with joyous blush and + bloom, + Warm and wide as life, and glad of death that only slays to save. + As a tide-reconquered sea-rock lies aflush with the influent wave + Lies the light aflush with darkness, lapped about by lustrous + gloom, + Even as life with death, and fame with time, and memory with the + tomb + Where a dead man hath for vassals Fame the serf and Time the slave. + + Far from earth as heaven, the steadfast light withdrawn, superb, + suspense, + Burns in dumb divine expansion of illimitable flower: + Moonrise whets the shadow's edges keen as noontide: hence and + thence + Glows the presence from us passing, shines and passes not the + power. + Souls arise whose word remembered is as spirit within the sense: + All the hours are theirs of all the seasons: death has but his + hour. + + + + + BIRTHDAY ODE + + AUGUST 6, 1891 + + + I + + Love and praise, and a length of days whose shadow cast upon time + is light, + Days whose sound was a spell shed round from wheeling wings as of + doves in flight, + Meet in one, that the mounting sun to-day may triumph, and cast out + night. + + Two years more than the full fourscore lay hallowing hands on a + sacred head-- + Scarce one score of the perfect four uncrowned of fame as they + smiled and fled: + Still and soft and alive aloft their sunlight stays though the suns + be dead. + + Ere we were or were thought on, ere the love that gave us to life + began, + Fame grew strong with his crescent song, to greet the goal of the + race they ran, + Song with fame, and the lustrous name with years whose changes + acclaimed the man. + + + II + + Soon, ere time in the rounding rhyme of choral seasons had hailed + us men, + We too heard and acclaimed the word whose breath was life upon + England then-- + Life more bright than the breathless light of soundless noon in a + songless glen. + + Ah, the joy of the heartstruck boy whose ear was opened of love to + hear! + Ah, the bliss of the burning kiss of song and spirit, the mounting + cheer + Lit with fire of divine desire and love that knew not if love were + fear! + + Fear and love as of heaven above and earth enkindled of heaven were + one; + One white flame, that around his name grew keen and strong as the + worldwide sun; + Awe made bright with implied delight, as weft with weft of the + rainbow spun. + + + III + + He that fears not the voice he hears and loves shall never have + heart to sing: + All the grace of the sun-god's face that bids the soul as a + fountain spring + Bids the brow that receives it bow, and hail his likeness on earth + as king. + + We that knew when the sun's shaft flew beheld and worshipped, + adored and heard: + Light rang round it of shining sound, whence all men's hearts were + subdued and stirred: + Joy, love, sorrow, the day, the morrow, took life upon them in one + man's word. + + Not for him can the years wax dim, nor downward swerve on a + darkening way: + Upward wind they, and leave behind such light as lightens the front + of May: + Fair as youth and sublime as truth we find the fame that we hail + to-day. + + + + + THRENODY + + OCTOBER 6, 1892 + + + I + + Life, sublime and serene when time had power upon it and ruled its + breath, + Changed it, bade it be glad or sad, and hear what change in the + world's ear saith, + Shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens the dusk + of death. + + Suns that sink on the wan sea's brink, and moons that kindle and + flame and fade, + Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and + see not shade + Rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and + moonlight swayed. + + So, when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pillowed on + Shakespeare's breast, + Hand in hand with him, soon to stand where shine the glories that + death loves best, + Passed the light of his face from sight, and sank sublimely to + radiant rest. + + + II + + Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voiceless + praise, + Shines for ever the name that never shall feel the shade of the + changeful days + Fall and chill the delight that still sees winter's light on it + shine like May's. + + Strong as death is the dark day's breath whose blast has withered + the life we see + Here where light is the child of night, and less than visions or + dreams are we: + Strong as death; but a word, a breath, a dream is stronger than + death can be. + + Strong as truth and superb in youth eternal, fair as the sundawn's + flame + Seen when May on her first-born day bids earth exult in her radiant + name, + Lives, clothed round with its praise and crowned with love that + dies not, his love-lit fame. + + + III + + Fairer far than the morning star, and sweet for us as the songs + that rang + Loud through heaven from the choral Seven when all the stars of the + morning sang, + Shines the song that we loved so long--since first such love in us + flamed and sprang. + + England glows as a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from sea to + sea, + Bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow that + needs must be, + Needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory to lawn + and lea. + + Not through tears shall the new-born years behold him, crowned with + applause of men, + Pass at last from a lustrous past to life that lightens beyond + their ken, + Glad and dead, and from earthward led to sunward, guided of Imogen. + + + + + THE BALLAD OF MELICERTES + + IN MEMORY OF THEODORE DE BANVILLE + + + Death, a light outshining life, bids heaven resume + Star by star the souls whose light made earth divine. + Death, a night outshining day, sees burn and bloom + Flower by flower, and sun by sun, the fames that shine + Deathless, higher than life beheld their sovereign sign. + Dead Simonides of Ceos, late restored, + Given again of God, again by man deplored, + Shone but yestereve, a glory frail as breath. + Frail? But fame's breath quickens, kindles, keeps in ward, + Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death. + + Mother's love, and rapture of the sea, whose womb + Breeds eternal life of joy that stings like brine, + Pride of song, and joy to dare the singer's doom, + Sorrow soft as sleep and laughter bright as wine, + Flushed and filled with fragrant fire his lyric line. + As the sea-shell utters, like a stricken chord, + Music uttering all the sea's within it stored, + Poet well-beloved, whose praise our sorrow saith, + So thy songs retain thy soul, and so record + Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death. + + Side by side we mourned at Gautier's golden tomb: + Here in spirit now I stand and mourn at thine. + Yet no breath of death strikes thence, no shadow of gloom, + Only light more bright than gold of the inmost mine, + Only steam of incense warm from love's own shrine. + Not the darkling stream, the sundering Stygian ford, + Not the hour that smites and severs as a sword, + Not the night subduing light that perisheth, + Smite, subdue, divide from us by doom abhorred, + Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death. + + Prince of song more sweet than honey, lyric lord, + Not thy France here only mourns a light adored, + One whose love-lit fame the world inheriteth. + Strangers too, now brethren, hail with heart's accord + Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death. + + + + + AU TOMBEAU DE BANVILLE + + + La plus douce des voix qui vibraient sous le ciel + Se tait: les rossignols ailes pleurent le frere + Qui s'envole au-dessus de l'apre et sombre terre, + Ne lui laissant plus voir que l'etre essentiel, + + Esprit qui chante et rit, fleur d'une ame sans fiel. + L'ombre elyseenne, ou la nuit n'est que lumiere, + Revoit, tout revetu de splendeur douce et fiere, + Melicerte, poete a la bouche de miel. + + Dieux exiles, passants celestes de ce monde, + Dont on entend parfois dans notre nuit profonde + Vibrer la voix, fremir les ailes, vous savez + S'il vous aima, s'il vous pleura, lui dont la vie + Et le chant rappelaient les votres. Recevez + L'ame de Melicerte affranchie et ravie. + + + + + LIGHT: AN EPICEDE + + TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON + + + Love will not weep because the seal is broken + That sealed upon a life beloved and brief + Darkness, and let but song break through for token + How deep, too far for even thy song's relief, + Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief. + + Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter, + As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair; + As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter, + Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear + Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care. + + Two days agone, and love was one with pity + When love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goal + Where, as a shrine lit in some darkling city, + Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul: + And now thou art healed of life; thou art healed, and whole. + + Yea, two days since, all we that loved thee pitied: + And now with wondering love, with shame of face, + We think how foolish now, how far unfitted, + Should be from us, toward thee who hast run thy race, + Pity--toward thee, who hast won the painless place; + + The painless world of death, yet unbeholden + Of eyes that dream what light now lightens thine + And will not weep. Thought, yearning toward those olden + Dear hours that sorrow sees and sees not shine, + Bows tearless down before a flameless shrine: + + A flameless altar here of life and sorrow + Quenched and consumed together. These were one, + One thing for thee, as night was one with morrow + And utter darkness with the sovereign sun: + And now thou seest life, sorrow, and darkness done. + + And yet love yearns again to win thee hither; + Blind love, and loveless, and unworthy thee: + Here where I watch the hours of darkness wither, + Here where mine eyes were glad and sad to see + Thine that could see not mine, though turned on me. + + But now, if aught beyond sweet sleep lie hidden, + And sleep be sealed not fast on dead men's sight + For ever, thine hath grace for ours forbidden, + And sees us compassed round with change and night: + Yet light like thine is ours, if love be light. + + + + + THRENODY + + + Watching here alone by the fire whereat last year + Sat with me the friend that a week since yet was near, + That a week has borne so far and hid so deep, + Woe am I that I may not weep, + May not yearn to behold him here. + + Shame were mine, and little the love I bore him were, + Now to mourn that better he fares than love may fare + Which desires, and would not have indeed, its will, + Would not love him so worse than ill, + Would not clothe him again with care. + + Yet can love not choose but remember, hearts but ache, + Eyes but darken, only for one vain thought's poor sake, + For the thought that by this hearth's now lonely side + Two fast friends, on the day he died, + Looked once more for his hand to take. + + Let thy soul forgive them, and pardon heal the sin, + Though their hearts be heavy to think what then had been, + The delight that never while they live may be-- + Love's communion of speech with thee, + Soul and speech with the soul therein. + + O my friend, O brother, a glory veiled and marred! + Never love made moan for a life more evil-starred. + Was it envy, chance, or chance-compelling fate, + Whence thy spirit was bruised so late, + Bowed so heavily, bound so hard? + + Now released, it may be,--if only love might know-- + Filled and fired with sight, it beholds us blind and low + With a pity keener yet, if that may be, + Even than ever was this that we + Felt, when love of thee wrought us woe. + + None may tell the depths and the heights of life and death. + What we may we give thee: a word that sorrow saith, + And that none will heed save sorrow: scarce a song. + All we may, who have loved thee long, + Take: the best we can give is breath. + + + + + A DIRGE + + + A bell tolls on in my heart + As though in my ears a knell + Had ceased for awhile to swell, + But the sense of it would not part + From the spirit that bears its part + In the chime of the soundless bell. + + Ah dear dead singer of sorrow, + The burden is now not thine + That grief bade sound for a sign + Through the songs of the night whose morrow + Has risen, and I may not borrow + A beam from its radiant shrine. + + The burden has dropped from thee + That grief on thy life bound fast; + The winter is over and past + Whose end thou wast fain to see. + Shall sorrow not comfort me + That is thine no longer--at last? + + Good day, good night, and good morrow, + Men living and mourning say. + For thee we could only pray + That night of the day might borrow + Such comfort as dreams lend sorrow: + Death gives thee at last good day. + + + + + A REMINISCENCE + + + The rose to the wind has yielded: all its leaves + Lie strewn on the graveyard grass, and all their light + And colour and fragrance leave our sense and sight + Bereft as a man whom bitter time bereaves + Of blossom at once and hope of garnered sheaves, + Of April at once and August. Day to night + Calls wailing, and life to death, and depth to height, + And soul upon soul of man that hears and grieves. + + Who knows, though he see the snow-cold blossom shed, + If haply the heart that burned within the rose, + The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead? + If haply the wind that slays with storming snows + Be one with the wind that quickens? Bow thine head, + O Sorrow, and commune with thine heart: who knows? + + + + + VIA DOLOROSA + + + The days of a man are threescore years and ten. + The days of his life were half a man's, whom we + Lament, and would yet not bid him back, to be + Partaker of all the woes and ways of men. + Life sent him enough of sorrow: not again + Would anguish of love, beholding him set free, + Bring back the beloved to suffer life and see + No light but the fire of grief that scathed him then. + + We know not at all: we hope, and do not fear. + We shall not again behold him, late so near, + Who now from afar above, with eyes alight + And spirit enkindled, haply toward us here + Looks down unforgetful yet of days like night + And love that has yet his sightless face in sight. + + _February 15, 1887._ + + + I + + TRANSFIGURATION + + But half a man's days--and his days were nights. + What hearts were ours who loved him, should we pray + That night would yield him back to darkling day, + Sweet death that soothes, to life that spoils and smites? + For now, perchance, life lovelier than the light's + That shed no comfort on his weary way + Shows him what none may dream to see or say + Ere yet the soul may scale those topless heights + Where death lies dead, and triumph. Haply there + Already may his kindling eyesight find + Faces of friends--no face than his more fair-- + And first among them found of all his kind + Milton, with crowns from Eden on his hair, + And eyes that meet a brother's now not blind. + + + II + + DELIVERANCE + + O Death, fair Death, sole comforter and sweet, + Nor Love nor Hope can give such gifts as thine. + Sleep hardly shows us round thy shadowy shrine + What roses hang, what music floats, what feet + Pass and what wings of angels. We repeat + Wild words or mild, disastrous or divine, + Blind prayer, blind imprecation, seeing no sign + Nor hearing aught of thee not faint and fleet + As words of men or snowflakes on the wind. + But if we chide thee, saying "Thou hast sinned, thou hast sinned, + Dark Death, to take so sweet a light away + As shone but late, though shadowed, in our skies," + We hear thine answer--"Night has given what day + Denied him: darkness hath unsealed his eyes." + + + III + + THANKSGIVING + + Could love give strength to thank thee! Love can give + Strong sorrow heart to suffer: what we bear + We would not put away, albeit this were + A burden love might cast aside and live. + Love chooses rather pain than palliative, + Sharp thought than soft oblivion. May we dare + So trample down our passion and our prayer + That fain would cling round feet now fugitive + And stay them--so remember, so forget, + What joy we had who had his presence yet, + What griefs were his while joy in him was ours + And grief made weary music of his breath, + As even to hail his best and last of hours + With love grown strong enough to thank thee, Death? + + + IV + + LIBITINA VERTICORDIA + + Sister of sleep, healer of life, divine + As rest and strong as very love may be, + To set the soul that love could set not free, + To bid the skies that day could bid not shine, + To give the gift that life withheld was thine. + With all my heart I loved one borne from me: + And all my heart bows down and praises thee, + Death, that hast now made grief not his but mine. + + O Changer of men's hearts, we would not bid thee + Turn back our hearts from sorrow: this alone + We bid, we pray thee, from thy sovereign throne + And sanctuary sublime where heaven has hid thee, + Give: grace to know of those for whom we weep + That if they wake their life is sweet as sleep. + + + V + + THE ORDER OF RELEASE + + Thou canst not give it. Grace enough is ours + To know that pain for him has fallen on rest. + The worst we know was his on earth: the best, + We fain would think,--a thought no fear deflowers-- + Is his, released from bonds of rayless hours. + Ah, turn our hearts from longing; bid our quest + Cease, as content with failure. This thy guest + Sleeps, vexed no more of time's imperious powers, + The spirit of hope, the spirit of change and loss, + The spirit of love bowed down beneath his cross, + Nor now needs comfort from the strength of song. + Love, should he wake, bears now no cross for him: + Dead hope, whose living eyes like his were dim, + Has brought forth better comfort, strength more strong. + + + VI + + PSYCHAGOGOS + + As Greece of old acclaimed thee God and man, + So, Death, our tongue acclaims thee: yet wast thou + Hailed of old Rome as Romans hail thee now, + Goddess and woman. Since the sands first ran + That told when first man's life and death began, + The shadows round thy blind ambiguous brow + Have mocked the votive plea, the pleading vow + That sought thee sorrowing, fain to bless or ban. + + But stronger than a father's love is thine, + And gentler than a mother's. Lord and God, + Thy staff is surer than the wizard rod + That Hermes bare as priest before thy shrine + And herald of thy mercies. We could give + Nought, when we would have given: thou bidst him live. + + + VII + + THE LAST WORD + + So many a dream and hope that went and came, + So many and sweet, that love thought like to be, + Of hours as bright and soft as those for me + That made our hearts for song's sweet love the same, + Lie now struck dead, that hope seems one with shame. + O Death, thy name is Love: we know it, and see + The witness: yet for very love's sake we + Can hardly bear to mix with thine his name. + + Philip, how hard it is to bid thee part + Thou knowest, if aught thou knowest where now thou art + Of us that loved and love thee. None may tell + What none but knows--how hard it is to say + The word that seals up sorrow, darkens day, + And bids fare forth the soul it bids farewell. + + + + + IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI + + + The wider world of men that is not ours + Receives a soul whose life on earth was light. + Though darkness close the date of human hours, + Love holds the spirit and sense of life in sight, + That may not, even though death bid fly, take flight. + Faith, love, and hope fulfilled with memory, see + As clear and dear as life could bid it be + The present soul that is and is not he. + + He, who held up the shield and sword of Rome + Against the ravening brood of recreant France, + Beside the man of men whom heaven took home + When earth beheld the spring's first eyebeams glance + And life and winter seemed alike a trance + Eighteen years since, in sight of heaven and spring + That saw the soul above all souls take wing, + He too now hears the heaven we hear not sing. + + He too now dwells where death is dead, and stands + Where souls like stars exult in life to be: + Whence all who linked heroic hearts and hands + Shine on our sight, and give it strength to see + What hope makes fair for all whom faith makes free: + Free with such freedom as we find in sleep, + The light sweet shadow of death, when dreams are deep + And high as heaven whence light and lightning leap. + + And scarce a month yet gone, his living hand + Writ loving words that sealed me friend of his. + Are heaven and earth as near as sea to strand? + May life and death as bride and bridegroom kiss? + His last month's written word abides, and is; + Clear as the sun that lit through storm and strife + And darkling days when hope took fear to wife + The faith whose fire was light of all his life. + + A life so fair, so pure of earthlier leaven, + That none hath won through higher and harder ways + The deathless life of death which earth calls heaven; + Heaven, and the light of love on earth, and praise + Of silent memory through subsiding days + Wherein the light subsides not whence the past + Feeds full with life the future. Time holds fast + Their names whom faith forgets not, first and last. + + Forget? The dark forgets not dawn, nor we + The suns that sink to rise again, and shine + Lords of live years and ages. Earth and sea + Forget not heaven that makes them seem divine, + Though night put out their fires and bid their shrine + Be dark and pale as storm and twilight. Day, + Not night, is everlasting: life's full sway + Bids death bow down as dead, and pass away. + + What part has death in souls that past all fear + Win heavenward their supernal way, and smite + With scorn sublime as heaven such dreams as here + Plague and perplex with cloud and fire the light + That leads men's waking souls from glimmering night + To the awless heights of day, whereon man's awe, + Transfigured, dies in rapture, seeing the law + Sealed of the sun that earth arising saw? + + Faith, justice, mercy, love, and heaven-born hate + That sets them all on fire and bids them be + More than soft words and dreams that wake too late, + Shone living through the lordly life that we + Beheld, revered, and loved on earth, while he + Dwelt here, and bade our eyes take light thereof; + Light as from heaven that flamed or smiled above + In light or fire whose very hate was love. + + No hate of man, but hate of hate whose foam + Sheds poison forth from tongues of snakes and priests, + And stains the sickening air with steams whence Rome + Now feeds not full the God that slays and feasts; + For now the fangs of all the ravenous beasts + That ramped about him, fain of prayer and prey, + Fulfil their lust no more: the tide of day + Swells, and compels him down the deathward way. + + Night sucks the Church its creature down, and hell + Yawns, heaves, and yearns to clasp its loathliest child + Close to the breasts that bore it. All the spell + Whence darkness saw the dawn in heaven defiled + Is dumb as death: the lips that lied and smiled + Wax white for fear as ashes. She that bore + The banner up of darkness now no more + Sheds night and fear and shame from shore to shore. + + When they that cast her kingdom down were born, + North cried on south and east made moan to west + For hopes that love had hardly heart to mourn, + For Italy that was not. Kings on quest, + By priests whose blessings burn as curses blest, + Made spoil of souls and bodies bowed and bound, + Hunted and harried, leashed as horse or hound, + And hopeless of the hope that died unfound. + + And now that faith has brought forth fruit to time, + How should not memory praise their names, and hold + Their record even as Dante's life sublime, + Who bade his dream, found fair and false of old, + Live? Not till earth and heaven be dead and cold + May man forget whose work and will made one + Italy, fair as heaven or freedom won, + And left their fame to shine beside her sun. + + _April 1890._ + + + + + THE FESTIVAL OF BEATRICE + + + Dante, sole standing on the heavenward height, + Beheld and heard one saying, "Behold me well: + I am, I am Beatrice." Heaven and hell + Kept silence, and the illimitable light + Of all the stars was darkness in his sight + Whose eyes beheld her eyes again, and fell + Shame-stricken. Since her soul took flight to dwell + In heaven, six hundred years have taken flight. + + And now that heavenliest part of earth whereon + Shines yet their shadow as once their presence shone + To her bears witness for his sake, as he + For hers bare witness when her face was gone: + No slave, no hospice now for grief--but free + From shore to mountain and from Alp to sea. + + + + + THE MONUMENT OF GIORDANO BRUNO + + + I + + Not from without us, only from within, + Comes or can ever come upon us light + Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight. + No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win, + No grace for guidance, no release from sin, + Save of his own soul's giving. Deep and bright + As fire enkindled in the core of night + Burns in the soul where once its fire has been + The light that leads and quickens thought, inspired + To doubt and trust and conquer. So he said + Whom Sidney, flower of England, lordliest head + Of all we love, loved: but the fates required + A sacrifice to hate and hell, ere fame + Should set with his in heaven Giordano's name. + + + II + + Cover thine eyes and weep, O child of hell, + Grey spouse of Satan, Church of name abhorred. + Weep, withered harlot, with thy weeping lord, + Now none will buy the heaven thou hast to sell + At price of prostituted souls, and swell + Thy loveless list of lovers. Fire and sword + No more are thine: the steel, the wheel, the cord, + The flames that rose round living limbs, and fell + In lifeless ash and ember, now no more + Approve thee godlike. Rome, redeemed at last + From all the red pollution of thy past, + Acclaims the grave bright face that smiled of yore + Even on the fire that caught it round and clomb + To cast its ashes on the face of Rome. + + _June 9, 1889._ + + + + + LIFE IN DEATH + + + He should have followed who goes forth before us, + Last born of us in life, in death first-born: + The last to lift up eyes against the morn, + The first to see the sunset. Life, that bore us + Perchance for death to comfort and restore us, + Of him hath left us here awhile forlorn, + For him is as a garment overworn, + And time and change, with suns and stars in chorus, + Silent. But if, beyond all change or time, + A law more just, more equal, more sublime + Than sways the surge of life's loud sterile sea + Sways that still world whose peace environs him, + Where death lies dead as night when stars wax dim, + Above all thought or hope of ours is he. + + _August 2, 1891._ + + + + + EPICEDE + + + As a vesture shalt thou change them, said the prophet, + And the raiment that was flesh is turned to dust; + Dust and flesh and dust again the likeness of it, + And the fine gold woven and worn of youth is rust. + Hours that wax and wane salute the shade and scoff it, + That it knows not aught it doth nor aught it must: + Day by day the speeding soul makes haste to doff it, + Night by night the pride of life resigns its trust. + + Sleep, whose silent notes of song loud life's derange not, + Takes the trust in hand awhile as angels may: + Joy with wings that rest not, grief with wings that range not, + Guard the gates of sleep and waking, gold or grey. + Joys that joys estrange, and griefs that griefs estrange not, + Day that yearns for night, and night that yearns for day, + As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they change not, + Seeing that change may never change or pass away. + + Life of death makes question, "What art thou that changest? + What am I, that fear should trust or faith should doubt? + I that lighten, thou that darkenest and estrangest, + Is it night or day that girds us round about? + Light and darkness on the ways wherein thou rangest + Seem as one, and beams as clouds they put to rout. + Strange is hope, but fear of all things born were strangest, + Seeing that none may strive with change to cast it out. + + "Change alone stands fast, thou sayest, O death: I know not: + What art thou, my brother death, that thou shouldst know? + Men may reap no fruits of fields wherein they sow not; + Hope or fear is all the seed we have to sow. + Winter seals the sacred springs up that they flow not: + Wind and sun and change unbind them, and they flow. + Am I thou or art thou I? The years that show not + Pass, and leave no sign when time shall be to show." + + Hope makes suit to faith lest fear give ear to sorrow: + Doubt strews dust upon his head, and goes his way. + All the golden hope that life of death would borrow, + How, if death require again, may life repay? + Earth endures no darkness whence no light yearns thorough; + God in man as light in darkness lives, they say: + Yet, would midnight take assurance of the morrow, + Who shall pledge the faith or seal the bond of day? + + Darkness, mute or loud with music or with mourning, + Starry darkness, winged with wind or clothed with calm, + Dreams no dream of grief or fear or wrath or warning, + Bears no sign of race or goal or strife or palm. + Word of blessing, word of mocking or of scorning, + Knows it none, nor whence its breath sheds blight or balm. + Yet a little while, and hark, the psalm of morning: + Yet a little while, and silence takes the psalm. + + All the comfort, all the worship, all the wonder, + All the light of love that darkness holds in fee, + All the song that silence keeps or keeps not under, + Night, the soul that knows gives thanks for all to thee. + Far beyond the gates that morning strikes in sunder, + Hopes that grief makes holy, dreams that fear sets free, + Far above the throne of thought, the lair of thunder, + Silent shines the word whose utterance fills the sea. + + + + + MEMORIAL VERSES ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM BELL SCOTT + + + A life more bright than the sun's face, bowed + Through stress of season and coil of cloud, + Sets: and the sorrow that casts out fear + Scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud, + + Dead on the breast of the dying year, + Poet and painter and friend, thrice dear + For love of the suns long set, for love + Of song that sets not with sunset here, + + For love of the fervent heart, above + Their sense who saw not the swift light move + That filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre + The thoughts that passion was fain to prove + + In fervent labour of high desire + And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre + Alive and strong as the sun, and caught + From darkness light, and from twilight fire. + + Passion, deep as the depths unsought + Whence faith's own hope may redeem us nought, + Filled full with ardour of pain sublime + His mourning song and his mounting thought. + + Elate with sense of a sterner time, + His hand's flight clomb as a bird's might climb + Calvary: dark in the darkling air + That shrank for fear of the crowning crime, + + Three crosses rose on the hillside bare, + Shown scarce by grace of the lightning's glare + That clove the veil of the temple through + And smote the priests on the threshold there. + + The soul that saw it, the hand that drew, + Whence light as thought's or as faith's glance flew, + And stung to life the sepulchral past, + And bade the stars of it burn anew, + + Held no less than the dead world fast + The light live shadows about them cast, + The likeness living of dawn and night, + The days that pass and the dreams that last. + + Thought, clothed round with sorrow as light, + Dark as a cloud that the moon turns bright, + Moved, as a wind on the striving sea, + That yearns and quickens and flags in flight, + + Through forms of colour and song that he + Who fain would have set its wide wings free + Cast round it, clothing or chaining hope + With lights that last not and shades that flee. + + Scarce in song could his soul find scope, + Scarce the strength of his hand might ope + Art's inmost gate of her sovereign shrine, + To cope with heaven as a man may cope. + + But high as the hope of a man may shine + The faith, the fervour, the life divine + That thrills our life and transfigures, rose + And shone resurgent, a sunbright sign, + + Through shapes whereunder the strong soul glows + And fills them full as a sunlit rose + With sense and fervour of life, whose light + The fool's eye knows not, the man's eye knows. + + None that can read or divine aright + The scriptures writ of the soul may slight + The strife of a strenuous soul to show + More than the craft of the hand may write. + + None may slight it, and none may know + How high the flames that aspire and glow + From heart and spirit and soul may climb + And triumph; higher than the souls lie low + + Whose hearing hears not the livelong rhyme, + Whose eyesight sees not the light sublime, + That shines, that sounds, that ascends and lives + Unquenched of change, unobscured of time. + + A long life's length, as a man's life gives + Space for the spirit that soars and strives + To strive and soar, has the soul shone through + That heeds not whither the world's wind drives + + Now that the days and the ways it knew + Are strange, are dead as the dawn's grey dew + At high midnoon of the mounting day + That mocks the might of the dawn it slew. + + Yet haply may not--and haply may-- + No sense abide of the dead sun's ray + Wherein the soul that outsoars us now + Rejoiced with ours in its radiant sway. + + Hope may hover, and doubt may bow, + Dreaming. Haply--they dream not how-- + Not life but death may indeed be dead + When silence darkens the dead man's brow. + + Hope, whose name is remembrance, fed + With love that lightens from seasons fled, + Dreams, and craves not indeed to know, + That death and life are as souls that wed. + + But change that falls on the heart like snow + Can chill not memory nor hope, that show + The soul, the spirit, the heart and head, + Alive above us who strive below. + + + + + AN OLD SAYING + + + Many waters cannot quench love, + Neither can the floods drown it. + Who shall snare or slay the white dove + Faith, whose very dreams crown it, + Gird it round with grace and peace, deep, + Warm, and pure, and soft as sweet sleep? + Many waters cannot quench love, + Neither can the floods drown it. + + Set me as a seal upon thine heart, + As a seal upon thine arm. + How should we behold the days depart + And the nights resign their charm? + Love is as the soul: though hate and fear + Waste and overthrow, they strike not here. + Set me as a seal upon thine heart, + As a seal upon thine arm. + + + + + A MOSS-ROSE + + + If the rose of all flowers be the rarest + That heaven may adore from above, + And the fervent moss-rose be the fairest + That sweetens the summer with love, + + Can it be that a fairer than any + Should blossom afar from the tree? + Yet one, and a symbol of many, + Shone sudden for eyes that could see. + + In the grime and the gloom of November + The bliss and the bloom of July + Bade autumn rejoice and remember + The balm of the blossoms gone by. + + Would you know what moss-rose now it may be + That puts all the rest to the blush, + The flower was the face of a baby, + The moss was a bonnet of plush. + + + + + TO A CAT + + + I + + Stately, kindly, lordly friend, + Condescend + Here to sit by me, and turn + Glorious eyes that smile and burn, + Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed, + On the golden page I read. + + All your wondrous wealth of hair, + Dark and fair, + Silken-shaggy, soft and bright + As the clouds and beams of night, + Pays my reverent hand's caress + Back with friendlier gentleness. + + Dogs may fawn on all and some + As they come; + You, a friend of loftier mind, + Answer friends alone in kind. + Just your foot upon my hand + Softly bids it understand. + + Morning round this silent sweet + Garden-seat + Sheds its wealth of gathering light, + Thrills the gradual clouds with might, + Changes woodland, orchard, heath, + Lawn, and garden there beneath. + + Fair and dim they gleamed below: + Now they glow + Deep as even your sunbright eyes, + Fair as even the wakening skies. + Can it not or can it be + Now that you give thanks to see? + + May not you rejoice as I, + Seeing the sky + Change to heaven revealed, and bid + Earth reveal the heaven it hid + All night long from stars and moon, + Now the sun sets all in tune? + + What within you wakes with day + Who can say? + All too little may we tell, + Friends who like each other well, + What might haply, if we might, + Bid us read our lives aright. + + + II + + Wild on woodland ways your sires + Flashed like fires; + Fair as flame and fierce and fleet + As with wings on wingless feet + Shone and sprang your mother, free, + Bright and brave as wind or sea. + + Free and proud and glad as they, + Here to-day + Rests or roams their radiant child, + Vanquished not, but reconciled, + Free from curb of aught above + Save the lovely curb of love. + + Love through dreams of souls divine + Fain would shine + Round a dawn whose light and song + Then should right our mutual wrong-- + Speak, and seal the love-lit law + Sweet Assisi's seer foresaw. + + Dreams were theirs; yet haply may + Dawn a day + When such friends and fellows born, + Seeing our earth as fair at morn, + May for wiser love's sake see + More of heaven's deep heart than we. + + + + + HAWTHORN DYKE + + + All the golden air is full of balm and bloom + Where the hawthorns line the shelving dyke with flowers. + Joyous children born of April's happiest hours, + High and low they laugh and lighten, knowing their doom + Bright as brief--to bless and cheer they know not whom, + Heed not how, but washed and warmed with suns and showers + Smile, and bid the sweet soft gradual banks and bowers + Thrill with love of sunlit fire or starry gloom. + All our moors and lawns all round rejoice; but here + All the rapturous resurrection of the year + Finds the radiant utterance perfect, sees the word + Spoken, hears the light that speaks it. Far and near, + All the world is heaven: and man and flower and bird + Here are one at heart with all things seen and heard. + + + + + THE BROTHERS + + + There were twa brethren fell on strife; + Sweet fruits are sair to gather: + The tane has reft his brother of life; + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + There were twa brethren fell to fray; + Sweet fruits are sair to gather: + The tane is clad in a cloak of clay; + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + O loud and loud was the live man's cry, + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "Would God the dead and the slain were I!" + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "O sair was the wrang and sair the fray," + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "But liefer had love be slain than slay." + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "O sweet is the life that sleeps at hame," + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "But I maun wake on a far sea's faem." + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "And women are fairest of a' things fair," + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "But never shall I kiss woman mair." + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + Between the birk and the aik and the thorn + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + He's laid his brother to lie forlorn: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + Between the bent and the burn and the broom + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + He's laid him to sleep till dawn of doom: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + He's tane him owre the waters wide, + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + Afar to fleet and afar to bide: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + His hair was yellow, his cheek was red, + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + When he set his face to the wind and fled: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + His banes were stark and his een were bright + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + When he set his face to the sea by night: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + His cheek was wan and his hair was grey + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + When he came back hame frae the wide world's way: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + His banes were weary, his een were dim, + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + And nae man lived and had mind of him: + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "O whatten a wreck wad they seek on land" + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "That they houk the turf to the seaward hand?" + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "O whatten a prey wad they think to take" + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "That they delve the dykes for a dead man's sake?" + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + A bane of the dead in his hand he's tane; + Sweet fruits are sair to gather: + And the red blood brak frae the dead white bane. + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + He's cast it forth of his auld faint hand; + Sweet fruits are sair to gather: + And the red blood ran on the wan wet sand. + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "O whatten a slayer is this," they said, + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "That the straik of his hand should raise his dead?" + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "O weel is me for the sign I take" + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "That now I may die for my auld sin's sake." + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + "For the dead was in wait now fifty year," + (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) + "And now shall I die for his blood's sake here." + And the wind wears owre the heather. + + + + + JACOBITE SONG + + + Now who will speak, and lie not, + And pledge not life, but give? + Slaves herd with herded cattle: + The dawn grows bright for battle, + And if we die, we die not; + And if we live, we live. + + The faith our fathers fought for, + The kings our fathers knew, + We fight but as they fought for: + We seek the goal they sought for, + The chance they hailed and knew, + The praise they strove and wrought for, + To leave their blood as dew + On fields that flower anew. + + Men live that serve the stranger; + Hounds live that huntsmen tame: + These life-days of our living + Are days of God's good giving + Where death smiles soft on danger + And life scowls dark on shame. + + And what would you do other, + Sweet wife, if you were I? + And how should you be other, + My sister, than your brother, + If you were man as I, + Born of our sire and mother, + With choice to cower and fly, + And chance to strike and die? + + No churl's our oldworld name is, + The lands we leave are fair: + But fairer far than these are, + But wide as all the seas are, + But high as heaven the fame is + That if we die we share. + + Our name the night may swallow, + Our lands the churl may take: + But night nor death may swallow, + Nor hell's nor heaven's dim hollow, + The star whose height we take, + The star whose light we follow + For faith's unfaltering sake + Till hope that sleeps awake. + + Soft hope's light lure we serve not, + Nor follow, fain to find: + Dark time's last word may smite her + Dead, ere man's falsehood blight her, + But though she die, we swerve not, + Who cast not eye behind. + + Faith speaks when hope dissembles: + Faith lives when hope lies dead: + If death as life dissembles, + And all that night assembles + Of stars at dawn lie dead, + Faint hope that smiles and trembles + May tell not well for dread: + But faith has heard it said. + + Now who will fight, and fly not, + And grudge not life to give? + And who will strike beside us, + If life's or death's light guide us? + For if we live, we die not, + And if we die, we live. + + + + + THE BALLAD OF DEAD MEN'S BAY + + + The sea swings owre the slants of sand, + All white with winds that drive; + The sea swirls up to the still dim strand, + Where nae man comes alive. + + At the grey soft edge of the fruitless surf + A light flame sinks and springs; + At the grey soft rim of the flowerless turf + A low flame leaps and clings. + + What light is this on a sunless shore, + What gleam on a starless sea? + Was it earth's or hell's waste womb that bore + Such births as should not be? + + As lithe snakes turning, as bright stars burning, + They bicker and beckon and call; + As wild waves churning, as wild winds yearning, + They flicker and climb and fall. + + A soft strange cry from the landward rings-- + "What ails the sea to shine?" + A keen sweet note from the spray's rim springs-- + "What fires are these of thine?" + + A soul am I that was born on earth + For ae day's waesome span: + Death bound me fast on the bourn of birth + Ere I were christened man. + + "A light by night, I fleet and fare + Till the day of wrath and woe; + On the hems of earth and the skirts of air + Winds hurl me to and fro." + + "O well is thee, though the weird be strange + That bids thee flit and flee; + For hope is child of the womb of change, + And hope keeps watch with thee. + + "When the years are gone, and the time is come, + God's grace may give thee grace; + And thy soul may sing, though thy soul were dumb, + And shine before God's face. + + "But I, that lighten and revel and roll + With the foam of the plunging sea, + No sign is mine of a breathing soul + That God should pity me. + + "Nor death, nor heaven, nor hell, nor birth + Hath part in me nor mine: + Strong lords are these of the living earth + And loveless lords of thine. + + "But I that know nor lord nor life + More sure than storm or spray, + Whose breath is made of sport and strife, + Whereon shall I find stay?" + + "And wouldst thou change thy doom with me, + Full fain with thee would I: + For the life that lightens and lifts the sea + Is more than earth or sky. + + "And what if the day of doubt and doom + Shall save nor smite not me? + I would not rise from the slain world's tomb + If there be no more sea. + + "Take he my soul that gave my soul, + And give it thee to keep; + And me, while seas and stars shall roll + Thy life that falls on sleep." + + That word went up through the mirk mid sky, + And even to God's own ear: + And the Lord was ware of the keen twin cry, + And wroth was he to hear. + + He's tane the soul of the unsained child + That fled to death from birth; + He's tane the light of the wan sea wild, + And bid it burn on earth. + + He's given the ghaist of the babe new-born + The gift of the water-sprite, + To ride on revel from morn to morn + And roll from night to night. + + He's given the sprite of the wild wan sea + The gift of the new-born man, + A soul for ever to bide and be + When the years have filled their span. + + When a year was gone and a year was come, + O loud and loud cried they-- + "For the lee-lang year thou hast held us dumb + Take now thy gifts away!" + + O loud and lang they cried on him, + And sair and sair they prayed: + "Is the face of thy grace as the night's face grim + For those thy wrath has made?" + + A cry more bitter than tears of men + From the rim of the dim grey sea;-- + "Give me my living soul again, + The soul thou gavest me, + The doom and the dole of kindly men, + To bide my weird and be!" + + A cry more keen from the wild low land + Than the wail of waves that roll;-- + "Take back the gift of a loveless hand, + Thy gift of doom and dole, + The weird of men that bide on land; + Take from me, take my soul!" + + The hands that smite are the hands that spare; + They build and break the tomb; + They turn to darkness and dust and air + The fruits of the waste earth's womb; + But never the gift of a granted prayer, + The dole of a spoken doom. + + Winds may change at a word unheard, + But none may change the tides: + The prayer once heard is as God's own word; + The doom once dealt abides. + + And ever a cry goes up by day, + And ever a wail by night; + And nae ship comes by the weary bay + But her shipmen hear them wail and pray, + And see with earthly sight + The twofold flames of the twin lights play + Where the sea-banks green and the sea-floods grey + Are proud of peril and fain of prey, + And the sand quakes ever; and ill fare they + That look upon that light. + + + + + DEDICATION + + 1893 + + + The sea of the years that endure not + Whose tide shall endure till we die + And know what the seasons assure not, + If death be or life be a lie, + Sways hither the spirit and thither, + A waif in the swing of the sea + Whose wrecks are of memories that wither + As leaves of a tree. + + We hear not and hail not with greeting + The sound of the wings of the years, + The storm of the sound of them beating, + That none till it pass from him hears: + But tempest nor calm can imperil + The treasures that fade not or fly; + Change bids them not change and be sterile, + Death bids them not die. + + Hearts plighted in youth to the royal + High service of hope and of song, + Sealed fast for endurance as loyal, + And proved of the years as they throng, + Conceive not, believe not, and fear not + That age may be other than youth; + That faith and that friendship may hear not + And utter not truth. + + Not yesterday's light nor to-morrow's + Gleams nearer or clearer than gleams, + Though joys be forgotten and sorrows + Forgotten as changes of dreams, + The dawn of the days unforgotten + That noon could eclipse not or slay, + Whose fruits were as children begotten + Of dawn upon day. + + The years that were flowerful and fruitless, + The years that were fruitful and dark, + The hopes that were radiant and rootless, + The hopes that were winged for their mark, + Lie soft in the sepulchres fashioned + Of hours that arise and subside, + Absorbed and subdued and impassioned, + In pain or in pride. + + But far in the night that entombs them + The starshine as sunshine is strong, + And clear through the cloud that resumes them + Remembrance, a light and a song, + Rings lustrous as music and hovers + As birds that impend on the sea, + And thoughts that their prison-house covers + Arise and are free. + + Forgetfulness deep as a prison + Holds days that are dead for us fast + Till the sepulchre sees rearisen + The spirit whose reign is the past, + Disentrammelled of darkness, and kindled + With life that is mightier than death, + When the life that obscured it has dwindled + And passed as a breath. + + But time nor oblivion may darken + Remembrance whose name will be joy + While memory forgets not to hearken, + While manhood forgets not the boy + Who heard and exulted in hearing + The songs of the sunrise of youth + Ring radiant above him, unfearing + And joyous as truth. + + Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture + And sense of the radiance of yore, + Fulfilled you with power to recapture + What never might singer before-- + The life, the delight, and the sorrow + Of troublous and chivalrous years + That knew not of night or of morrow, + Of hopes or of fears. + + But wider the wing and the vision + That quicken the spirit have spread + Since memory beheld with derision + Man's hope to be more than his dead. + From the mists and the snows and the thunders + Your spirit has brought for us forth + Light, music, and joy in the wonders + And charms of the north. + + The wars and the woes and the glories + That quicken and lighten and rain + From the clouds of its chronicled stories, + The passion, the pride, and the pain, + Whose echoes were mute and the token + Was lost of the spells that they spake, + Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken + Of ages that break. + + For you, and for none of us other, + Time is not: the dead that must live + Hold commune with you as a brother + By grace of the life that you give. + The heart that was in them is in you, + Their soul in your spirit endures: + The strength of their song is the sinew + Of this that is yours. + + Hence is it that life, everlasting + As light and as music, abides + In the sound of the surge of it, casting + Sound back to the surge of the tides, + Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen + Watch, hurtling to windward and lee, + Round England, unbacked of her horsemen, + The steeds of the sea. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Astrophel and Other Poems, by +Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS *** + +***** This file should be named 18673.txt or 18673.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/7/18673/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Lisa Reigel, 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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