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diff --git a/27401.txt b/27401.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c85af08 --- /dev/null +++ b/27401.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5225 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (Second Series), 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: Poems & Ballads (Second Series) + Swinburne's Poems Volume III + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: December 4, 2008 [EBook #27401] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS & BALLADS (SECOND SERIES) *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Christina and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + +Poems and Ballads +Second Series + +By +Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles +Swinburne--Vol. III + + + +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 + + + +Poems and Ballads +Second Series + +By +Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles +Swinburne--Vol. III + + +1917 +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + +_First printed (Chatto), 1904_ +_Reprinted 1904, '05, '10, '12_ +_(Heinemann), 1917_ + +London: William Heinemann, 1917 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +POEMS AND BALLADS + +Second Series + + The Last Oracle 5 + + In the Bay 11 + + A Forsaken Garden 22 + + Relics 26 + + At a Month's End 29 + + Sestina 34 + + The Year of the Rose 36 + + A Wasted Vigil 39 + + The Complaint of Lisa 42 + + For the Feast of Giordano Bruno 48 + + Ave Atque Vale 50 + + Memorial Verses on the Death of Theophile Gautier 58 + + Sonnet (with a Copy of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_) 66 + + Age and Song (to Barry Cornwall) 67 + + In Memory of Barry Cornwall 69 + + Epicede 72 + + To Victor Hugo 74 + + Inferiae 75 + + A Birth-Song 77 + + Ex-Voto 81 + + A Ballad of Dreamland 85 + + Cyril Tourneur 87 + + A Ballad of Francois Villos 88 + + Pastiche 90 + + Before Sunset 92 + + Song 93 + + A Vision of Spring in Winter 94 + + Choriambics 98 + + At Parting 100 + + A Song in Season 101 + + Two Leaders 107 + + Victor Hugo in 1877 109 + + Child's Song 110 + + Triads 111 + + Four Songs of Four Seasons:-- + + I. Winter in Northumberland 113 + + II. Spring in Tuscany 122 + + III. Summer in Auvergne 125 + + IV. Autumn in Cornwall 127 + + The White Czar 129 + + Rizpah 131 + + To Louis Kossuth 132 + + Translations from the French of Villon:-- + + The Complaint of the Fair Armouress 133 + + A Double Ballad of Good Counsel 137 + + Fragment on Death 139 + + Ballad of the Lords of Old Time 140 + + Ballad of the Women of Paris 142 + + Ballad written for a Bridegroom 144 + + Ballad against the Enemies of France 146 + + The Dispute of the Heart and Body of Francois Villon 148 + + Epistle in form of a Ballad to his Friends 150 + + The Epitaph in form of a Ballad 152 + + From Victor Hugo 154 + + Nocturne 155 + + Theophile Gautier 157 + + Ode 158 + + In Obitom Theophili Poetae 160 + + Ad Catullum 161 + + Dedication, 1878 162 + + + + +POEMS AND BALLADS + +SECOND SERIES + +VOL. III. + + + + +INSCRIBED + +TO + +RICHARD F. BURTON + +IN REDEMPTION OF AN OLD PLEDGE AND IN RECOGNITION OF A FRIENDSHIP WHICH I +MUST ALWAYS COUNT AMONG THE HIGHEST HONOURS OF MY LIFE + + + + +THE LAST ORACLE + +(A.D. 361) + + +[Greek: +eipate to basilei, chamai pese daidalos aula; +ouketi Phoibos echei kaluban, ou mantida daphnen, +ou pagan laleousan; apesbeto kai lalon hudor.] + + +Years have risen and fallen in darkness or in twilight, + Ages waxed and waned that knew not thee nor thine, +While the world sought light by night and sought not thy light, + Since the sad last pilgrim left thy dark mid shrine. +Dark the shrine and dumb the fount of song thence welling, + Save for words more sad than tears of blood, that said: +_Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling,_ + _And the watersprings that spake are quenched and dead._ +_Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover_ + _In his hand the prophet laurel flowers no more._ +And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last lover, + Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core. + And he bowed down his hopeless head + In the drift of the wild world's tide, + And dying, _Thou hast conquered_, he said, + _Galilean_; he said it, and died. + And the world that was thine and was ours + When the Graces took hands with the Hours + Grew cold as a winter wave + In the wind from a wide-mouthed grave, + As a gulf wide open to swallow + The light that the world held dear. + O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, + Destroyer and healer, hear! + +Age on age thy mouth was mute, thy face was hidden, + And the lips and eyes that loved thee blind and dumb; +Song forsook their tongues that held thy name forbidden, + Light their eyes that saw the strange God's kingdom come. +Fire for light and hell for heaven and psalms for paeans + Filled the clearest eyes and lips most sweet of song, +When for chant of Greeks the wail of Galileans + Made the whole world moan with hymns of wrath and wrong. +Yea, not yet we see thee, father, as they saw thee, + They that worshipped when the world was theirs and thine, +They whose words had power by thine own power to draw thee + Down from heaven till earth seemed more than heaven divine. + For the shades are about us that hover + When darkness is half withdrawn + And the skirts of the dead night cover + The face of the live new dawn. + For the past is not utterly past + Though the word on its lips be the last, + And the time be gone by with its creed + When men were as beasts that bleed, + As sheep or as swine that wallow, + In the shambles of faith and of fear. + O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, + Destroyer and healer, hear! + +Yet it may be, lord and father, could we know it, + We that love thee for our darkness shall have light +More than ever prophet hailed of old or poet + Standing crowned and robed and sovereign in thy sight. +To the likeness of one God their dreams enthralled thee, + Who wast greater than all Gods that waned and grew; +Son of God the shining son of Time they called thee, + Who wast older, O our father, than they knew. +For no thought of man made Gods to love or honour + Ere the song within the silent soul began, +Nor might earth in dream or deed take heaven upon her + Till the word was clothed with speech by lips of man. + And the word and the life wast thou, + The spirit of man and the breath; + And before thee the Gods that bow + Take life at thine hands and death. + For these are as ghosts that wane, + That are gone in an age or twain; + Harsh, merciful, passionate, pure, + They perish, but thou shalt endure; + Be their flight with the swan or the swallow, + They pass as the flight of a year. + O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, + Destroyer and healer, hear! + +Thou the word, the light, the life, the breath, the glory, + Strong to help and heal, to lighten and to slay, +Thine is all the song of man, the world's whole story; + Not of morning and of evening is thy day. +Old and younger Gods are buried or begotten + From uprising to downsetting of thy sun, +Risen from eastward, fallen to westward and forgotten, + And their springs are many, but their end is one. +Divers births of godheads find one death appointed, + As the soul whence each was born makes room for each; +God by God goes out, discrowned and disanointed, + But the soul stands fast that gave them shape and speech. + Is the sun yet cast out of heaven? + Is the song yet cast out of man? + Life that had song for its leaven + To quicken the blood that ran + Through the veins of the songless years + More bitter and cold than tears, + Heaven that had thee for its one + Light, life, word, witness, O sun, + Are they soundless and sightless and hollow, + Without eye, without speech, without ear? + O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, + Destroyer and healer, hear! + +Time arose and smote thee silent at his warning, + Change and darkness fell on men that fell from thee; +Dark thou satest, veiled with light, behind the morning, + Till the soul of man should lift up eyes and see. +Till the blind mute soul get speech again and eyesight, + Man may worship not the light of life within; +In his sight the stars whose fires grow dark in thy sight + Shine as sunbeams on the night of death and sin. +Time again is risen with mightier word of warning, + Change hath blown again a blast of louder breath; +Clothed with clouds and stars and dreams that melt in morning, + Lo, the Gods that ruled by grace of sin and death! + They are conquered, they break, they are stricken, + Whose might made the whole world pale; + They are dust that shall rise not or quicken + Though the world for their death's sake wail. + As a hound on a wild beast's trace, + So time has their godhead in chase; + As wolves when the hunt makes head, + They are scattered, they fly, they are fled; + They are fled beyond hail, beyond hollo, + And the cry of the chase, and the cheer. + O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, + Destroyer and healer, hear! + +Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden, + Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face: +King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden; + God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace. +In thy lips the speech of man whence Gods were fashioned, + In thy soul the thought that makes them and unmakes; +By thy light and heat incarnate and impassioned, + Soul to soul of man gives light for light and takes. +As they knew thy name of old time could we know it, + Healer called of sickness, slayer invoked of wrong, +Light of eyes that saw thy light, God, king, priest, poet, + Song should bring thee back to heal us with thy song. + For thy kingdom is past not away, + Nor thy power from the place thereof hurled; + Out of heaven they shall cast not the day, + They shall cast not out song from the world. + By the song and the light they give + We know thy works that they live; + With the gift thou hast given us of speech + We praise, we adore, we beseech, + We arise at thy bidding and follow, + We cry to thee, answer, appear, + O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, + Destroyer and healer, hear! + + + +IN THE BAY + + +I + +Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star +Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, +Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, +Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar +To fold the fleet in of the winds from far +That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast: + + +II + +Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay +Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, +Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher +Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, +My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way +To find the place of souls that I desire. + + +III + +If any place for any soul there be, +Disrobed and disentrammelled; if the might, +The fire and force that filled with ardent light +The souls whose shadow is half the light we see, +Survive and be suppressed not of the night; +This hour should show what all day hid from me. + + +IV + +Night knows not, neither is it shown to day, +By sunlight nor by starlight is it shown, +Nor to the full moon's eye nor footfall known, +Their world's untrodden and unkindled way. +Nor is the breath nor music of it blown +With sounds of winter or with winds of May. + + +V + +But here, where light and darkness reconciled +Hold earth between them as a weanling child +Between the balanced hands of death and birth, +Even as they held the new-born shape of earth +When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled, +Here hope might think to find what hope were worth. + + +VI + +Past Hades, past Elysium, past the long +Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe--past the toil +Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, +The Stygian web of waters--if your song +Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong +As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil; + + +VII + +If yet these twain survive your worldly breath, +Joy trampling sorrow, life devouring death, +If perfect life possess your life all through +And like your words your souls be deathless too, +To-night, of all whom night encompasseth, +My soul would commune with one soul of you. + + +VIII + +Above the sunset might I see thine eyes +That were above the sundawn in our skies, +Son of the songs of morning,--thine that were +First lights to lighten that rekindling air +Wherethrough men saw the front of England rise +And heard thine loudest of the lyre-notes there-- + + +IX + +If yet thy fire have not one spark the less, +O Titan, born of her a Titaness, +Across the sunrise and the sunset's mark +Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark, +To change this face of our unworthiness, +Across this hour dividing light from dark. + + +X + +To change this face of our chill time, that hears +No song like thine of all that crowd its ears, +Of all its lights that lighten all day long +Sees none like thy most fleet and fiery sphere's +Outlightening Sirius--in its twilight throng +No thunder and no sunrise like thy song. + + +XI + +Hath not the sea-wind swept the sea-line bare +To pave with stainless fire through stainless air +A passage for thine heavenlier feet to tread +Ungrieved of earthly floor-work? hath it spread +No covering splendid as the sun-god's hair +To veil or to reveal thy lordlier head? + + +XII + +Hath not the sunset strewn across the sea +A way majestical enough for thee? +What hour save this should be thine hour--and mine, +If thou have care of any less divine +Than thine own soul; if thou take thought of me, +Marlowe, as all my soul takes thought of thine? + + +XIII + +Before the moon's face as before the sun +The morning star and evening star are one +For all men's lands as England. O, if night +Hang hard upon us,--ere our day take flight, +Shed thou some comfort from thy day long done +On us pale children of the latter light! + + +XIV + +For surely, brother and master and lord and king, +Where'er thy footfall and thy face make spring +In all souls' eyes that meet thee wheresoe'er, +And have thy soul for sunshine and sweet air-- +Some late love of thine old live land should cling, +Some living love of England, round thee there. + + +XV + +Here from her shore across her sunniest sea +My soul makes question of the sun for thee, +And waves and beams make answer. When thy feet +Made her ways flowerier and their flowers more sweet +With childlike passage of a god to be, +Like spray these waves cast off her foemen's fleet. + + +XVI + +Like foam they flung it from her, and like weed +Its wrecks were washed from scornful shoal to shoal, +From rock to rock reverberate; and the whole +Sea laughed and lightened with a deathless deed +That sowed our enemies in her field for seed +And made her shores fit harbourage for thy soul. + + +XVII + +Then in her green south fields, a poor man's child, +Thou hadst thy short sweet fill of half-blown joy, +That ripens all of us for time to cloy +With full-blown pain and passion; ere the wild +World caught thee by the fiery heart, and smiled +To make so swift end of the godlike boy. + + +XVIII + +For thou, if ever godlike foot there trod +These fields of ours, wert surely like a god. +Who knows what splendour of strange dreams was shed +With sacred shadow and glimmer of gold and red +From hallowed windows, over stone and sod, +On thine unbowed bright insubmissive head? + + +XIX + +The shadow stayed not, but the splendour stays, +Our brother, till the last of English days. +No day nor night on English earth shall be +For ever, spring nor summer, Junes nor Mays, +But somewhat as a sound or gleam of thee +Shall come on us like morning from the sea. + + +XX + +Like sunrise never wholly risen, nor yet +Quenched; or like sunset never wholly set, +A light to lighten as from living eyes +The cold unlit close lids of one that lies +Dead, or a ray returned from death's far skies +To fire us living lest our lives forget. + + +XXI + +For in that heaven what light of lights may be, +What splendour of what stars, what spheres of flame +Sounding, that none may number nor may name, +We know not, even thy brethren; yea, not we +Whose eyes desire the light that lightened thee, +Whose ways and thine are one way and the same. + + +XXII + +But if the riddles that in sleep we read, +And trust them not, be flattering truth indeed, +As he that rose our mightiest called them,--he, +Much higher than thou as thou much higher than we-- +There, might we say, all flower of all our seed, +All singing souls are as one sounding sea. + + +XXIII + +All those that here were of thy kind and kin, +Beside thee and below thee, full of love, +Full-souled for song,--and one alone above +Whose only light folds all your glories in-- +With all birds' notes from nightingale to dove +Fill the world whither we too fain would win. + + +XXIV + +The world that sees in heaven the sovereign light +Of sunlike Shakespeare, and the fiery night +Whose stars were watched of Webster; and beneath, +The twin-souled brethren of the single wreath, +Grown in kings' gardens, plucked from pastoral heath, +Wrought with all flowers for all men's heart's delight. + + +XXV + +And that fixed fervour, iron-red like Mars, +In the mid moving tide of tenderer stars, +That burned on loves and deeds the darkest done, +Athwart the incestuous prisoner's bride-house bars; +And thine, most highest of all their fires but one, +Our morning star, sole risen before the sun. + + +XXVI + +And one light risen since theirs to run such race +Thou hast seen, O Phosphor, from thy pride of place. +Thou hast seen Shelley, him that was to thee +As light to fire or dawn to lightning; me, +Me likewise, O our brother, shalt thou see, +And I behold thee, face to glorious face? + + +XXVII + +You twain the same swift year of manhood swept +Down the steep darkness, and our father wept. +And from the gleam of Apollonian tears +A holier aureole rounds your memories, kept +Most fervent-fresh of all the singing spheres, +And April-coloured through all months and years. + + +XXVIII + +You twain fate spared not half your fiery span; +The longer date fulfils the lesser man. +Ye from beyond the dark dividing date +Stand smiling, crowned as gods with foot on fate. +For stronger was your blessing than his ban, +And earliest whom he struck, he struck too late. + + +XXIX + +Yet love and loathing, faith and unfaith yet +Bind less to greater souls in unison, +And one desire that makes three spirits as one +Takes great and small as in one spiritual net +Woven out of hope toward what shall yet be done +Ere hate or love remember or forget. + + +XXX + +Woven out of faith and hope and love too great +To bear the bonds of life and death and fate: +Woven out of love and hope and faith too dear +To take the print of doubt and change and fear: +And interwoven with lines of wrath and hate +Blood-red with soils of many a sanguine year. + + +XXXI + +Who cannot hate, can love not; if he grieve, +His tears are barren as the unfruitful rain +That rears no harvest from the green sea's plain, +And as thorns crackling this man's laugh is vain. +Nor can belief touch, kindle, smite, reprieve +His heart who has not heart to disbelieve. + + +XXXII + +But you, most perfect in your hate and love, +Our great twin-spirited brethren; you that stand +Head by head glittering, hand made fast in hand, +And underfoot the fang-drawn worm that strove +To wound you living; from so far above, +Look love, not scorn, on ours that was your land. + + +XXXIII + +For love we lack, and help and heat and light +To clothe us and to comfort us with might. +What help is ours to take or give? but ye-- +O, more than sunrise to the blind cold sea, +That wailed aloud with all her waves all night, +Much more, being much more glorious, should you be. + + +XXXIV + +As fire to frost, as ease to toil, as dew +To flowerless fields, as sleep to slackening pain, +As hope to souls long weaned from hope again +Returning, or as blood revived anew +To dry-drawn limbs and every pulseless vein, +Even so toward us should no man be but you. + + +XXXV + +One rose before the sunrise was, and one +Before the sunset, lovelier than the sun. +And now the heaven is dark and bright and loud +With wind and starry drift and moon and cloud, +And night's cry rings in straining sheet and shroud, +What help is ours if hope like yours be none? + + +XXXVI + +O well-beloved, our brethren, if ye be, +Then are we not forsaken. This kind earth +Made fragrant once for all time with your birth, +And bright for all men with your love, and worth +The clasp and kiss and wedlock of the sea, +Were not your mother if not your brethren we. + + +XXXVII + +Because the days were dark with gods and kings +And in time's hand the old hours of time as rods, +When force and fear set hope and faith at odds, +Ye failed not nor abased your plume-plucked wings; +And we that front not more disastrous things, +How should we fail in face of kings and gods? + + +XXXVIII + +For now the deep dense plumes of night are thinned +Surely with winnowing of the glimmering wind +Whose feet are fledged with morning; and the breath +Begins in heaven that sings the dark to death. +And all the night wherein men groaned and sinned +Sickens at heart to hear what sundawn saith. + + +XXXIX + +O first-born sons of hope and fairest, ye +Whose prows first clove the thought-unsounded sea +Whence all the dark dead centuries rose to bar +The spirit of man lest truth should make him free, +The sunrise and the sunset, seeing one star, +Take heart as we to know you that ye are. + + +XL + +Ye rise not and ye set not; we that say +Ye rise and set like hopes that set and rise +Look yet but seaward from a land-locked bay; +But where at last the sea's line is the sky's +And truth and hope one sunlight in your eyes, +No sunrise and no sunset marks their day. + + + +A FORSAKEN GARDEN + + +In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, + At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, +Walled round with rocks as an inland island, + The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. +A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses + The steep square slope of the blossomless bed +Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses + Now lie dead. + +The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, + To the low last edge of the long lone land. +If a step should sound or a word be spoken, + Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? +So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless, + Through branches and briars if a man make way, +He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless + Night and day. + +The dense hard passage is blind and stifled + That crawls by a track none turn to climb +To the strait waste place that the years have rifled + Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. +The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; + The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. +The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, + These remain. + +Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; + As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; +From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, + Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. +Over the meadows that blossom and wither + Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; +Only the sun and the rain come hither + All year long. + +The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels + One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. +Only the wind here hovers and revels + In a round where life seems barren as death. +Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, + Haply, of lovers none ever will know, +Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping + Years ago. + +Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," + Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea; +For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, + And men that love lightly may die--but we?" +And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, + And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, +In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, + Love was dead. + +Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? + And were one to the end--but what end who knows? +Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, + As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. +Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? + What love was ever as deep as a grave? +They are loveless now as the grass above them + Or the wave. + +All are at one now, roses and lovers, + Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. +Not a breath of the time that has been hovers + In the air now soft with a summer to be. +Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter + Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, +When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter + We shall sleep. + +Here death may deal not again for ever; + Here change may come not till all change end. +From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, + Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. +Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, + While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; +Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing + Roll the sea. + +Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, + Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, +Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble + The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, +Here now in his triumph where all things falter, + Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, +As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, + Death lies dead. + + + +RELICS + + +This flower that smells of honey and the sea, +White laurustine, seems in my hand to be + A white star made of memory long ago +Lit in the heaven of dear times dead to me. + +A star out of the skies love used to know +Here held in hand, a stray left yet to show + What flowers my heart was full of in the days +That are long since gone down dead memory's flow. + +Dead memory that revives on doubtful ways, +Half hearkening what the buried season says + Out of the world of the unapparent dead +Where the lost Aprils are, and the lost Mays. + +Flower, once I knew thy star-white brethren bred +Nigh where the last of all the land made head + Against the sea, a keen-faced promontory, +Flowers on salt wind and sprinkled sea-dews fed. + +Their hearts were glad of the free place's glory; +The wind that sang them all his stormy story + Had talked all winter to the sleepless spray, +And as the sea's their hues were hard and hoary. + +Like things born of the sea and the bright day, +They laughed out at the years that could not slay, + Live sons and joyous of unquiet hours, +And stronger than all storms that range for prey. + +And in the close indomitable flowers +A keen-edged odour of the sun and showers + Was as the smell of the fresh honeycomb +Made sweet for mouths of none but paramours. + +Out of the hard green wall of leaves that clomb +They showed like windfalls of the snow-soft foam, + Or feathers from the weary south-wind's wing, +Fair as the spray that it came shoreward from. + +And thou, as white, what word hast thou to bring? +If my heart hearken, whereof wilt thou sing? + For some sign surely thou too hast to bear, +Some word far south was taught thee of the spring. + +White like a white rose, not like these that were +Taught of the wind's mouth and the winter air, + Poor tender thing of soft Italian bloom, +Where once thou grewest, what else for me grew there? + +Born in what spring and on what city's tomb, +By whose hand wast thou reached, and plucked for whom? + There hangs about thee, could the soul's sense tell, +An odour as of love and of love's doom. + +Of days more sweet than thou wast sweet to smell, +Of flower-soft thoughts that came to flower and fell, + Of loves that lived a lily's life and died, +Of dreams now dwelling where dead roses dwell. + +O white birth of the golden mountain-side +That for the sun's love makes its bosom wide + At sunrise, and with all its woods and flowers +Takes in the morning to its heart of pride! + +Thou hast a word of that one land of ours, +And of the fair town called of the Fair Towers, + A word for me of my San Gimignan, +A word of April's greenest-girdled hours. + +Of the old breached walls whereon the wallflowers ran +Called of Saint Fina, breachless now of man, + Though time with soft feet break them stone by stone, +Who breaks down hour by hour his own reign's span. + +Of the old cliff overcome and overgrown +That all that flowerage clothed as flesh clothes bone, + That garment of acacias made for May, +Whereof here lies one witness overblown. + +The fair brave trees with all their flowers at play, +How king-like they stood up into the day! + How sweet the day was with them, and the night! +Such words of message have dead flowers to say. + +This that the winter and the wind made bright, +And this that lived upon Italian light, + Before I throw them and these words away, +Who knows but I what memories too take flight? + + + +AT A MONTH'S END + + +The night last night was strange and shaken: + More strange the change of you and me. +Once more, for the old love's love forsaken, + We went out once more toward the sea. + +For the old love's love-sake dead and buried, + One last time, one more and no more, +We watched the waves set in, the serried + Spears of the tide storming the shore. + +Hardly we saw the high moon hanging, + Heard hardly through the windy night +Far waters ringing, low reefs clanging, + Under wan skies and waste white light. + +With chafe and change of surges chiming, + The clashing channels rocked and rang +Large music, wave to wild wave timing, + And all the choral water sang. + +Faint lights fell this way, that way floated, + Quick sparks of sea-fire keen like eyes +From the rolled surf that flashed, and noted + Shores and faint cliffs and bays and skies. + +The ghost of sea that shrank up sighing + At the sand's edge, a short sad breath +Trembling to touch the goal, and dying + With weak heart heaved up once in death-- + +The rustling sand and shingle shaken + With light sweet touches and small sound-- +These could not move us, could not waken + Hearts to look forth, eyes to look round. + +Silent we went an hour together, + Under grey skies by waters white. +Our hearts were full of windy weather, + Clouds and blown stars and broken light. + +Full of cold clouds and moonbeams drifted + And streaming storms and straying fires, +Our souls in us were stirred and shifted + By doubts and dreams and foiled desires. + +Across, aslant, a scudding sea-mew + Swam, dipped, and dropped, and grazed the sea: +And one with me I could not dream you; + And one with you I could not be. + +As the white wing the white wave's fringes + Touched and slid over and flashed past-- +As a pale cloud a pale flame tinges + From the moon's lowest light and last-- + +As a star feels the sun and falters, + Touched to death by diviner eyes-- +As on the old gods' untended altars + The old lire of withered worship dies-- + +(Once only, once the shrine relighted + Sees the last fiery shadow shine, +Last shadow of flame and faith benighted, + Sees falter and flutter and fail the shrine) + +So once with fiery breath and flying + Your winged heart touched mine and went, +And the swift spirits kissed, and sighing, + Sundered and smiled and were content. + +That only touch, that feeling only, + Enough we found, we found too much; +For the unlit shrine is hardly lonely + As one the old fire forgets to touch. + +Slight as the sea's sight of the sea-mew, + Slight as the sun's sight of the star: +Enough to show one must not deem you + For love's sake other than you are. + +Who snares and tames with fear and danger + A bright beast of a fiery kin, +Only to mar, only to change her + Sleek supple soul and splendid skin? + +Easy with blows to mar and maim her, + Easy with bonds to bind and bruise; +What profit, if she yield her tamer + The limbs to mar, the soul to lose? + +Best leave or take the perfect creature, + Take all she is or leave complete; +Transmute you will not form or feature, + Change feet for wings or wings for feet. + +Strange eyes, new limbs, can no man give her; + Sweet is the sweet thing as it is. +No soul she hath, we see, to outlive her; + Hath she for that no lips to kiss? + +So may one read his weird, and reason, + And with vain drugs assuage no pain. +For each man in his loving season + Fools and is fooled of these in vain. + +Charms that allay not any longing, + Spells that appease not any grief, +Time brings us all by handfuls, wronging + All hurts with nothing of relief. + +Ah, too soon shot, the fool's bolt misses! + What help? the world is full of loves; +Night after night of running kisses, + Chirp after chirp of changing doves. + +Should Love disown or disesteem you + For loving one man more or less? +You could not tame your light white sea-mew, + Nor I my sleek black pantheress. + +For a new soul let whoso please pray, + We are what life made us, and shall be. +For you the jungle and me the sea-spray, + And south for you and north for me. + +But this one broken foam-white feather + I throw you off the hither wing, +Splashed stiff with sea-scurf and salt weather, + This song for sleep to learn and sing-- + +Sing in your ear when, daytime over, + You, couched at long length on hot sand +With some sleek sun-discoloured lover, + Wince from his breach as from a brand: + +Till the acrid hour aches out and ceases, + And the sheathed eyeball sleepier swims, +The deep flank smoothes its dimpling creases. + And passion loosens all the limbs: + +Till dreams of sharp grey north-sea weather + Fall faint upon your fiery sleep, +As on strange sands a strayed bird's feather + The wind may choose to lose or keep. + +But I, who leave my queen of panthers, + As a tired honey-heavy bee +Gilt with sweet dust from gold-grained anthers + Leaves the rose-chalice, what for me? + +From the ardours of the chaliced centre, + From the amorous anthers' golden grime, +That scorch and smutch all wings that enter, + I fly forth hot from honey-time. + +But as to a bee's gilt thighs and winglets + The flower-dust with the flower-smell clings; +As a snake's mobile rampant ringlets + Leave the sand marked with print of rings; + +So to my soul in surer fashion + Your savage stamp and savour hangs; +The print and perfume of old passion, + The wild-beast mark of panther's fangs. + + + +SESTINA + + +I saw my soul at rest upon a day + As a bird sleeping in the nest of night, +Among soft leaves that give the starlight way + To touch its wings but not its eyes with light; +So that it knew as one in visions may, + And knew not as men waking, of delight. + +This was the measure of my soul's delight; + It had no power of joy to fly by day, +Nor part in the large lordship of the light; + But in a secret moon-beholden way +Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night, + And all the love and life that sleepers may. + +But such life's triumph as men waking may + It might not have to feed its faint delight +Between the stars by night and sun by day, + Shut up with green leaves and a little light; +Because its way was as a lost star's way, + A world's not wholly known of day or night. + +All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night + Made it all music that such minstrels may, +And all they had they gave it of delight; + But in the full face of the fire of day +What place shall be for any starry light, + What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way? + +Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way, + Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night, +And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day, + Nor closer touch conclusive of delight, +Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may, + Nor more of song than they, nor more of light. + +For who sleeps once and sees the secret light + Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way +Between the rise and rest of day and night, + Shall care no more to fare as all men may, +But be his place of pain or of delight, + There shall he dwell, beholding night as day. + +Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light + Before the night be fallen across thy way; +Sing while he may, man hath no long delight. + + + +THE YEAR OF THE ROSE + + +From the depths of the green garden-closes +Where the summer in darkness dozes + Till autumn pluck from his hand + An hour-glass that holds not a sand; +From the maze that a flower-belt encloses + To the stones and sea-grass on the strand +How red was the reign of the roses + Over the rose-crowned land! + +The year of the rose is brief; +From the first blade blown to the sheaf, + From the thin green leaf to the gold, + It has time to be sweet and grow old, +To triumph and leave not a leaf + For witness in winter's sight + How lovers once in the light +Would mix their breath with its breath, + And its spirit was quenched not of night, +As love is subdued not of death. + +In the red-rose land not a mile +Of the meadows from stile to stile, + Of the valleys from stream to stream, + But the air was a long sweet dream +And the earth was a sweet wide smile + Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned + From the sea which had borne her and burned, +That with one swift smile of her mouth + Looked full on the north as it yearned, +And the north was more than the south. + +For the north, when winter was long, +In his heart had made him a song, + And clothed it with wings of desire, + And shod it with shoon as of fire, +To carry the tale of his wrong + To the south-west wind by the sea. + That none might bear it but he +To the ear of the goddess unknown + Who waits till her time shall be +To take the world for a throne. + +In the earth beneath, and above +In the heaven where her name is love, + She warms with light from her eyes + The seasons of life as they rise, +And her eyes are as eyes of a dove, + But the wings that lift her and bear + As an eagle's, and all her hair +As fire by the wind's breath curled, + And her passage is song through the air, +And her presence is spring through the world. + +So turned she northward and came, +And the white-thorn land was aflame + With the fires that were shed from her feet, + That the north, by her love made sweet, +Should be called by a rose-red name; + And a murmur was heard as of doves, + And a music beginning of loves +In the light that the roses made, + Such light as the music loves, +The music of man with maid. + +But the days drop one upon one, +And a chill soft wind is begun + In the heart of the rose-red maze + That weeps for the roseleaf days +And the reign of the rose undone + That ruled so long in the light, + And by spirit, and not by sight, +Through the darkness thrilled with its breath, + Still ruled in the viewless night, +As love might rule over death. + +The time of lovers is brief; +From the fair first joy to the grief + That tells when love is grown old, + From the warm wild kiss to the cold, +From the red to the white-rose leaf, + They have but a season to seem + As roseleaves lost on a stream +That part not and pass not apart + As a spirit from dream to dream, +As a sorrow from heart to heart. + +From the bloom and the gloom that encloses +The death-bed of Love where he dozes + Till a relic be left not of sand + To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand; +From the change in the grey garden-closes + To the last stray grass of the strand, +A rain and ruin of roses + Over the red-rose land + + + +A WASTED VIGIL + + +I + +Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold, +Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold, +With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea; + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +II + +What, not one hour? for star by star the night +Falls, and her thousands world by world take flight; +They die, and day survives, and what of thee? + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +III + +Lo, far in heaven the web of night undone, +And on the sudden sea the gradual sun; +Wave to wave answers, tree responds to tree; + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +IV + +Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line, +Foam by foam quickens on the brightening brine; +Sail by sail passes, flower by flower gets free; + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +V + +Last year, a brief while since, an age ago, +A whole year past, with bud and bloom and snow, +O moon that wast in heaven, what friends were we! + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +VI + +Old moons, and last year's flowers, and last year's snows! +Who now saith to thee, moon? or who saith, rose? +O dust and ashes, once found fair to see! + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +VII + +O dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell! +With me it is not, is it with thee well? +O sea-drift blown from windward back to lee! + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +VIII + +The old year's dead hands are full of their dead flowers. +The old days are full of dead old loves of ours, +Born as a rose, and briefer born than she; + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +IX + +Could two days live again of that dead year, +One would say, seeking us and passing here, +_Where is she?_ and one answering, _Where is he?_ + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +X + +Nay, those two lovers are not anywhere; +If we were they, none knows us what we were, +Nor aught of all their barren grief and glee. + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +XI + +Half false, half fair, all feeble, be my verse +Upon thee not for blessing nor for curse; +For some must stand, and some must fall or flee; + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +XII + +As a new moon above spent stars thou wast; +But stars endure after the moon is past. +Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three? + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +XIII + +What of the night? The night is full, the tide +Storms inland, the most ancient rocks divide; +Yet some endure, and bow nor head nor knee; + Couldst thou not watch with me? + + +XIV + +Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways; +Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. +Lie still, sleep on, be glad--as such things be; + Thou couldst not watch with me. + + + +THE COMPLAINT OF LISA + +(_Double Sestina_) + + +Decameron, x. 7 + +There is no woman living that draws breath +So sad as I, though all things sadden her. +There is not one upon life's weariest way +Who is weary as I am weary of all but death. +Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower +All day with all his whole soul toward the sun; +While in the sun's sight I make moan all day, +And all night on my sleepless maiden bed +Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee, +That thou or he would take me to the dead, +And know not what thing evil I have done +That life should lay such heavy hand on me. + +Alas, Love, what is this thou wouldst with me? +What honour shall thou have to quench my breath, +Or what shall my heart broken profit thee? +O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, +That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? +My heart is harmless as my life's first day: +Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her +Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed: +I am the least flower in thy flowery way, +But till my time be come that I be dead +Let me live out my flower-time in the sun +Though my leaves shut before the sunflower. + +O Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower! +Shall he the sun hath looked on look on me, +That live down here in shade, out of the sun, +Here living in the sorrow and shadow of death? +Shall he that feeds his heart full of the day +Care to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath? +Because she loves him shall my lord love her +Who is as a worm in my lord's kingly way? +I shall not see him or know him alive or dead; +But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee +That in brief while my brief life-days be done, +And the worm quickly make my marriage-bed. + +For underground there is no sleepless bed: +But here since I beheld my sunflower +These eyes have slept not, seeing all night and day +His sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun. +Wherefore if anywhere be any death, +I would fain find and fold him fast to me, +That I may sleep with the world's eldest dead, +With her that died seven centuries since, and her +That went last night down the night-wandering way. +For this is sleep indeed, when labour is done, +Without love, without dreams, and without breath, +And without thought, O name unnamed! of thee. + +Ah, but, forgetting all things, shall I thee? +Wilt thou not be as now about my bed +There underground as here before the sun? +Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead, +Thy moving vision without form or breath? +I read long since the bitter tale of her +Who read the tale of Launcelot on a day, +And died, and had no quiet after death, +But was moved ever along a weary way, +Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me, +O my king, O my lordly sunflower, +Would God to me too such a thing were done! + +But if such sweet and bitter things be done, +Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee. +For in that living world without a sun +Thy vision will lay hold upon me dead, +And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death. +Yet if being wroth God had such pity on her, +Who was a sinner and foolish in her day, +That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath, +Why should he not in some wise pity me? +So if I sleep not in my soft strait bed +I may look up and see my sunflower +As he the sun, in some divine strange way. + +O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what way +This sore sweet evil unto us was done. +For on a holy and a heavy day +I was arisen out of my still small bed +To see the knights tilt, and one said to me +"The king," and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath, +And if the girl spake more, I heard not her, +For only I saw what I shall see when dead, +A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower, +That shone against the sunlight like the sun, +And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee, +The fire of love that lights the pyre of death. + +Howbeit I shall not die an evil death +Who have loved in such a sad and sinless way, +That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee. +So when mine eyes are shut against the sun, +O my soul's sun, O the world's sunflower, +Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead. +And dying I pray with all my low last breath +That thy whole life may be as was that day, +That feast-day that made trothplight death and me, +Giving the world light of thy great deeds done; +And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed, +That God be good as God hath been to her. + +That all things goodly and glad remain with her, +All things that make glad life and goodly death; +That as a bee sucks from a sunflower +Honey, when summer draws delighted breath, +Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way, +And love make life a fruitful marriage-bed +Where day may bring forth fruits of joy to day +And night to night till days and nights be dead. +And as she gives light of her love to thee, +Give thou to her the old glory of days long done; +And either give some heat of light to me, +To warm me where I sleep without the sun. + +O sunflower made drunken with the sun, +O knight whose lady's heart draws thine to her, +Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee. +There is a weed lives out of the sun's way, +Hid from the heat deep in the meadow's bed, +That swoons and whitens at the wind's least breath, +A flower star-shaped, that all a summer day +Will gaze her soul out on the sunflower +For very love till twilight finds her dead. +But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death, +Knows not when all her loving life is done; +And so much knows my lord the king of me. + +Aye, all day long he has no eye for me; +With golden eye following the golden sun +From rose-coloured to purple-pillowed bed, +From birthplace to the flame-lit place of death, +From eastern end to western of his way. +So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower, +So the white star-flower turns and yearns to thee, +The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead, +Trod underfoot if any pass by her, +Pale, without colour of summer or summer breath +In the shrunk shuddering petals, that have done +No work but love, and die before the day. + +But thou, to-day, to-morrow, and every day, +Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me. +Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sun +Shall drop its golden seed in the world's way, +That all men thereof nourished shall praise thee +For grain and flower and fruit of works well done; +Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower, +Bring forth such growth of the world's garden-bed +As like the sun shall outlive age and death. +And yet I would thine heart had heed of her +Who loves thee alive; but not till she be dead. +Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath. + +Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead; +From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee, +To fly all day from sun's birth to sun's death +Down the sun's way after the flying sun, +For love of her that gave thee wings and breath, +Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower. + + + +FOR THE FEAST OF GIORDANO BRUNO, + +PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR + + +I + +Son of the lightning and the light that glows + Beyond the lightning's or the morning's light, + Soul splendid with all-righteous love of right, +In whose keen fire all hopes and fears and woes +Were clean consumed, and from their ashes rose + Transfigured, and intolerable to sight + Save of purged eyes whose lids had cast off night, +In love's and wisdom's likeness when they close, +Embracing, and between them truth stands fast, + Embraced of either; thou whose feet were set + On English earth while this was England yet, +Our friend that art, our Sidney's friend that wast, +Heart hardier found and higher than all men's past, + Shall we not praise thee though thine own forget? + + +II + +Lift up thy light on us and on thine own, + O soul whose spirit on earth was as a rod + To scourge off priests, a sword to pierce their God, +A staff for man's free thought to walk alone, +A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throne + On ways untrodden where his fathers trod + Ere earth's heart withered at a high priest's nod +And all men's mouths that made not prayer made moan. +From bonds and torments and the ravening flame + Surely thy spirit of sense rose up to greet + Lucretius, where such only spirits meet, +And walk with him apart till Shelley came + To make the heaven of heavens more heavenly sweet +And mix with yours a third incorporate name. + + + +AVE ATQUE VALE + +IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE + + +Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs; +Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs, +Et quand Octobre souffle, emondeur des vieux arbres, +Son vent melancolique a l'entour de leurs marbres, +Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats. + +_Les Fleurs du Mal._ + + +I + +Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, + Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? + Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, +Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, + Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, + Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? +Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before, + Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat +And full of bitter summer, but more sweet + To thee than gleanings of a northern shore + Trod by no tropic feet? + + +II + +For always thee the fervid languid glories + Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies; + Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs +Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, + The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave + That knows not where is that Leucadian grave +Which hides too deep the supreme head of song. + Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were, + The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear +Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, + Blind gods that cannot spare. + + +III + +Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, + Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us: + Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, +Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other + Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime; + The hidden harvest of luxurious time, +Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech; + And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep + Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep; +And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, + Seeing as men sow men reap. + + +IV + +O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, + That were athirst for sleep and no more life + And no more love, for peace and no more strife! +Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping + Spirit and body and all the springs of song, + Is it well now where love can do no wrong, +Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang + Behind the unopening closure of her lips? + Is it not well where soul from body slips +And flesh from bone divides without a pang + As dew from flower-bell drips? + + +V + +It is enough; the end and the beginning + Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. + O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend, +For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, + No triumph and no labour and no lust, + Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust. +O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought, + Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night + With obscure finger silences your sight, +Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, + Sleep, and have sleep for light. + + +VI + +Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, + Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, + Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet +Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, + Such as thy vision here solicited, + Under the shadow of her fair vast head, +The deep division of prodigious breasts, + The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, + The weight of awful tresses that still keep +The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests + Where the wet hill-winds weep? + + +VII + +Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision? + O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, + Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom? +What of despair, of rapture, of derision, + What of life is there, what of ill or good? + Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood? +Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, + The faint fields quicken any terrene root, + In low lands where the sun and moon are mute +And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers + At all, or any fruit? + + +VIII + +Alas, but though my flying song flies after, + O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet + Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, +Some dim derision of mysterious laughter + From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, + Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head, +Some little sound of unregarded tears + Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, + And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs-- +These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, + Sees only such things rise. + + +IX + +Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, + Far too far off for thought or any prayer. + What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? +What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? + Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, + Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, +Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. + Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, + The low light fails us in elusive skies, +Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind + Are still the eluded eyes. + + +X + +Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes, + Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, + The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll +I lay my hand on, and not death estranges + My spirit from communion of thy song-- + These memories and these melodies that throng +Veiled porches of a Muse funereal-- + These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold + As though a hand were in my hand to hold, +Or through mine ears a mourning musical + Of many mourners rolled. + + +XI + +I among these, I also, in such station + As when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods, + And offering to the dead made, and their gods, +The old mourners had, standing to make libation, + I stand, and to the gods and to the dead + Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed +Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, + And what of honey and spice my seedlands bear, + And what I may of fruits in this chilled air, +And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb + A curl of severed hair. + + +XII + +But by no hand nor any treason stricken, + Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King, + The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing, +Thou liest, and on this dust no tears could quicken + There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear + Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear +Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages. + Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns; + But bending us-ward with memorial urns +The most high Muses that fulfil all ages + Weep, and our God's heart yearns. + + +XIII + +For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often + Among us darkling here the lord of light + Makes manifest his music and his might +In hearts that open and in lips that soften + With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. + Thy lips indeed he touched with bitter wine, +And nourished them indeed with bitter bread; + Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came, + The fire that scarred thy spirit at his flame +Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed + Who feeds our hearts with fame. + + +XIV + +Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting, + God of all suns and songs, he too bends down + To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, +And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. + Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, + Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, +Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, + And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs + Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, +And over thine irrevocable head + Sheds light from the under skies. + + +XV + +And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, + And stains with tears her changing bosom chill: + That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, +That thing transformed which was the Cytherean, + With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine + Long since, and face no more called Erycine; +A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. + Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell + Did she, a sad and second prey, compel +Into the footless places once more trod, + And shadows hot from hell. + + +XVI + +And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, + No choral salutation lure to light + A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night +And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. + There is no help for these things; none to mend + And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, +Will make death clear or make life durable. + Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine + And with wild notes about this dust of thine +At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell + And wreathe an unseen shrine. + + +XVII + +Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, + If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; + And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. +Out of the mystic and the mournful garden + Where all day through thine hands in barren braid + Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, +Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey, + Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, + Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, +Shall death not bring us all as thee one day + Among the days departed? + + +XVIII + +For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, + Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. + Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, +And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, + With sadder than the Niobean womb, + And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. +Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done; + There lies not any troublous thing before, + Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, +For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, + All waters as the shore. + + + +MEMORIAL VERSES + +ON THE DEATH OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER + + +Death, what hast thou to do with me? So saith +Love, with eyes set against the face of Death; + What have I done, O thou strong Death, to thee, +That mine own lips should wither from thy breath? + +Though thou be blind as fire or as the sea, +Why should thy waves and storms make war on me? + Is it for hate thou hast to find me fair, +Or for desire to kiss, if it might be, + +My very mouth of song, and kill me there? +So with keen rains vexing his crownless hair. + With bright feet bruised from no delightful way, +Through darkness and the disenchanted air, + +Lost Love went weeping half a winter's day. +And the armed wind that smote him seemed to say, + How shall the dew live when the dawn is fled, +Or wherefore should the Mayflower outlast May? + +Then Death took Love by the right hand and said, +Smiling: Come now and look upon thy dead. + But Love cast down the glories of his eyes, +And bowed down like a flower his flowerless head. + +And Death spake, saying: What ails thee in such wise, +Being god, to shut thy sight up from the skies? + If thou canst see not, hast thou ears to hear? +Or is thy soul too as a leaf that dies? + +Even as he spake with fleshless lips of fear, +But soft as sleep sings in a tired man's ear, + Behold, the winter was not, and its might +Fell, and fruits broke forth of the barren year. + +And upon earth was largess of great light, +And moving music winged for worldwide flight, + And shapes and sounds of gods beheld and heard, +And day's foot set upon the neck of night. + +And with such song the hollow ways were stirred +As of a god's heart hidden in a bird, + Or as the whole soul of the sun in spring +Should find full utterance in one flower-soft word, + +And all the season should break forth and sing +From one flower's lips, in one rose triumphing; + Such breath and light of song as of a flame +Made ears and spirits of them that heard it ring. + +And Love beholding knew not for the same +The shape that led him, nor in face nor name, + For he was bright and great of thews and fair, +And in Love's eyes he was not Death, but Fame. + +Not that grey ghost whose life is empty and bare +And his limbs moulded out of mortal air, + A cloud of change that shifts into a shower +And dies and leaves no light for time to wear: + +But a god clothed with his own joy and power, +A god re-risen out of his mortal hour + Immortal, king and lord of time and space, +With eyes that look on them as from a tower. + +And where he stood the pale sepulchral place +Bloomed, as new life might in a bloodless face, + And where men sorrowing came to seek a tomb +With funeral flowers and tears for grief and grace, + +They saw with light as of a world in bloom +The portal of the House of Fame illume + The ways of life wherein we toiling tread, +And watched the darkness as a brand consume. + +And through the gates where rule the deathless dead +The sound of a new singer's soul was shed + That sang among his kinsfolk, and a beam +Shot from the star on a new ruler's head. + +A new star lighting the Lethean stream, +A new song mixed into the song supreme + Made of all souls of singers and their might, +That makes of life and time and death a dream. + +Thy star, thy song, O soul that in our sight +Wast as a sun that made for man's delight + Flowers and all fruits in season, being so near +The sun-god's face, our god that gives us light. + +To him of all gods that we love or fear +Thou amongst all men by thy name wast dear, + Dear to the god that gives us spirit of song +To bind and burn all hearts of men that hear. + +The god that makes men's words too sweet and strong +For life or time or death to do them wrong, + Who sealed with his thy spirit for a sign +And filled it with his breath thy whole life long. + +Who made thy moist lips fiery with new wine +Pressed from the grapes of song, the sovereign vine, + And with all love of all things loveliest +Gave thy soul power to make them more divine. + +That thou might'st breathe upon the breathless rest +Of marble, till the brows and lips and breast + Felt fall from off them as a cancelled curse +That speechless sleep wherewith they lived opprest. + +Who gave thee strength and heat of spirit to pierce +All clouds of form and colour that disperse, + And leave the spirit of beauty to remould +In types of clean chryselephantine verse. + +Who gave thee words more golden than fine gold +To carve in shapes more glorious than of old, + And build thy songs up in the sight of time +As statues set in godhead manifold: + +In sight and scorn of temporal change and clime +That meet the sun re-risen with refluent rhyme + --As god to god might answer face to face-- +From lips whereon the morning strikes sublime. + +Dear to the god, our god who gave thee place +Among the chosen of days, the royal race, + The lords of light, whose eyes of old and ears +Saw even on earth and heard him for a space. + +There are the souls of those once mortal years +That wrought with fire of joy and light of tears + In words divine as deeds that grew thereof +Such music as he swoons with love who hears. + +There are the lives that lighten from above +Our under lives, the spheral souls that move + Through the ancient heaven of song-illumined air +Whence we that hear them singing die with love. + +There all the crowned Hellenic heads, and there +The old gods who made men godlike as they were, + The lyric lips wherefrom all songs take fire, +Live eyes, and light of Apollonian hair. + +There, round the sovereign passion of that lyre +Which the stars hear and tremble with desire, + The ninefold light Pierian is made one +That here we see divided, and aspire, + +Seeing, after this or that crown to be won; +But where they hear the singing of the sun, + All form, all sound, all colour, and all thought +Are as one body and soul in unison. + +There the song sung shines as a picture wrought, +The painted mouths sing that on earth say nought, + The carven limbs have sense of blood and growth +And large-eyed life that seeks nor lacks not aught. + +There all the music of thy living mouth +Lives, and all loves wrought of thine hand in youth + And bound about the breasts and brows with gold +And coloured pale or dusk from north or south. + +Fair living things made to thy will of old, +Born of thy lips, no births of mortal mould, + That in the world of song about thee wait +Where thought and truth are one and manifold. + +Within the graven lintels of the gate +That here divides our vision and our fate, + The dreams we walk in and the truths of sleep, +All sense and spirit have life inseparate. + +There what one thinks, is his to grasp and keep; +There are no dreams, but very joys to reap, + No foiled desires that die before delight, +No fears to see across our joys and weep. + +There hast thou all thy will of thought and sight, +All hope for harvest, and all heaven for flight; + The sunrise of whose golden-mouthed glad head +To paler songless ghosts was heat and light. + +Here where the sunset of our year is red +Men think of thee as of the summer dead, + Gone forth before the snows, before thy day, +With unshod feet, with brows unchapleted. + +Couldst thou not wait till age had wound, they say, +Round those wreathed brows his soft white blossoms? Nay, + Why shouldst thou vex thy soul with this harsh air, +Thy bright-winged soul, once free to take its way? + +Nor for men's reverence hadst thou need to wear +The holy flower of grey time-hallowed hair; + Nor were it fit that aught of thee grew old, +Fair lover all thy days of all things fair. + +And hear we not thy words of molten gold +Singing? or is their light and heat acold + Whereat men warmed their spirits? Nay, for all +These yet are with us, ours to hear and hold. + +The lovely laughter, the clear tears, the call +Of love to love on ways where shadows fall, + Through doors of dim division and disguise, +And music made of doubts unmusical; + +The love that caught strange light from death's own eyes,[1] +And filled death's lips with fiery words and sighs, + And half asleep let feed from veins of his +Her close red warm snake's mouth, Egyptian-wise: + +And that great night of love more strange than this,[2] +When she that made the whole world's bale and bliss + Made king of all the world's desire a slave, +And killed him in mid kingdom with a kiss; + +Veiled loves that shifted shapes and shafts, and gave,[3] +Laughing, strange gifts to hands that durst not crave, + Flowers double-blossomed, fruits of scent and hue +Sweet as the bride-bed, stranger than the grave; + +All joys and wonders of old lives and new +That ever in love's shine or shadow grew, + And all the grief whereof he dreams and grieves, +And all sweet roots fed on his light and dew; + +All these through thee our spirit of sense perceives, +As threads in the unseen woof thy music weaves, + Birds caught and snared that fill our ears with thee, +Bay-blossoms in thy wreath of brow-bound leaves. + +Mixed with the masque of death's old comedy +Though thou too pass, have here our flowers, that we + For all the flowers thou gav'st upon thee shed, +And pass not crownless to Persephone. + +Blue lotus-blooms and white and rosy-red +We wind with poppies for thy silent head, + And on this margin of the sundering sea +Leave thy sweet light to rise upon the dead. + +[Footnote 1: _La Morte Amoureuse._] + +[Footnote 2: _Une Nuit de Cleopatre._] + +[Footnote 3: _Mademoiselle de Maupin._] + + + +SONNET + +(WITH A COPY OF _Mademoiselle de Maupin_) + + +This is the golden book of spirit and sense, + The holy writ of beauty; he that wrought + Made it with dreams and faultless words and thought +That seeks and finds and loses in the dense +Dim air of life that beauty's excellence + Wherewith love makes one hour of life distraught + And all hours after follow and find not aught. +Here is that height of all love's eminence +Where man may breathe but for a breathing-space + And feel his soul burn as an altar-fire + To the unknown God of unachieved desire, +And from the middle mystery of the place + Watch lights that break, hear sounds as of a quire, +But see not twice unveiled the veiled God's face. + + + +AGE AND SONG + +(TO BARRY CORNWALL) + + +I + +In vain men tell us time can alter +Old loves or make old memories falter, + That with the old year the old year's life closes. +The old dew still falls on the old sweet flowers, +The old sun revives the new-fledged hours, + The old summer rears the new-born roses. + + +II + +Much more a Muse that bears upon her +Raiment and wreath and flower of honour, + Gathered long since and long since woven, +Fades not or falls as fall the vernal +Blossoms that bear no fruit eternal, + By summer or winter charred or cloven. + + +III + +No time casts down, no time upraises, +Such loves, such memories, and such praises, + As need no grace of sun or shower, +No saving screen from frost or thunder +To tend and house around and under + The imperishable and fearless flower. + + +IV + +Old thanks, old thoughts, old aspirations, +Outlive men's lives and lives of nations, + Dead, but for one thing which survives-- +The inalienable and unpriced treasure, +The old joy of power, the old pride of pleasure, + That lives in light above men's lives. + + + +IN MEMORY OF BARRY CORNWALL + +(October 4, 1874) + + +I + +In the garden of death, where the singers whose names are deathless + One with another make music unheard of men, +Where the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long breathless, + And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or change again, +Who comes now crowned with the blossom of snow-white years? +What music is this that the world of the dead men hears? + + +II + +Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey, + Whose name in our ears and our fathers' ears was sweet, +Like summer gone forth of the land his songs made sunny, + To the beautiful veiled bright world where the glad ghosts meet, +Child, father, bridegroom and bride, and anguish and rest, +No soul shall pass of a singer than this more blest. + + +III + +Blest for the years' sweet sake that were filled and brightened, + As a forest with birds, with the fruit and the flower of his song; +For the souls' sake blest that heard, and their cares were lightened, + For the hearts' sake blest that have fostered his name so long; +By the living and dead lips blest that have loved his name, +And clothed with their praise and crowned with their love for fame. + + +IV + +Ah, fair and fragrant his fame as flowers that close not, + That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by night, +As a thought in the heart shall increase when the heart's self knows not, + Shall endure in our ears as a sound, in our eyes as a light; +Shall wax with the years that wane and the seasons' chime, +As a white rose thornless that grows in the garden of time. + + +V + +The same year calls, and one goes hence with another, + And men sit sad that were glad for their sweet songs' sake; +The same year beckons, and elder with younger brother + Takes mutely the cup from his hand that we all shall take.[1] +They pass ere the leaves be past or the snows be come; +And the birds are loud, but the lips that outsang them dumb. + + +VI + +Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous, + To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death; +But the flower of their souls he shall take not away to shame us, + Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath. +For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell, +Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell. + +[Footnote 1: Sydney Dobell died August 22, 1874.] + + + +EPICEDE + +(James Lorimer Graham died at Florence, April 30, 1876) + + +Life may give for love to death + Little; what are life's gifts worth + To the dead wrapt round with earth? +Yet from lips of living breath + Sighs or words we are fain to give, + All that yet, while yet we live, +Life may give for love to death. + +Dead so long before his day, + Passed out of the Italian sun + To the dark where all is done, +Fallen upon the verge of May; + Here at life's and April's end + How should song salute my friend +Dead so long before his day? + +Not a kindlier life or sweeter + Time, that lights and quenches men, + Now may quench or light again, +Mingling with the mystic metre + Woven of all men's lives with his + Not a clearer note than this, +Not a kindlier life or sweeter. + +In this heavenliest part of earth + He that living loved the light, + Light and song, may rest aright, +One in death, if strange in birth, + With the deathless dead that make + Life the lovelier for their sake +In this heavenliest part of earth. + +Light, and song, and sleep at last-- + Struggling hands and suppliant knees + Get no goodlier gift than these. +Song that holds remembrance fast, + Light that lightens death, attend + Round their graves who have to friend +Light, and song, and sleep at last. + + + +TO VICTOR HUGO + + +He had no children, who for love of men, + Being God, endured of Gods such things as thou, + Father; nor on his thunder-beaten brow +Fell such a woe as bows thine head again, +Twice bowed before, though godlike, in man's ken, + And seen too high for any stroke to bow + Save this of some strange God's that bends it now +The third time with such weight as bruised it then. +Fain would grief speak, fain utter for love's sake +Some word; but comfort who might bid thee take? + What God in your own tongue shall talk with thee, +Showing how all souls that look upon the sun +Shall be for thee one spirit and thy son, + And thy soul's child the soul of man to be? + +_January 3, 1876._ + + + +INFERIAE + + +Spring, and the light and sound of things on earth +Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; +A time of passage or a time of birth + Fourscore years since as this year, first and last. + +The sun is all about the world we see, +The breath and strength of very spring; and we +Live, love, and feed on our own hearts; but he + Whose heart fed mine has passed into the past. + +Past, all things born with sense and blood and breath; +The flesh hears nought that now the spirit saith. +If death be like as birth and birth as death, + The first was fair--more fair should be the last. + +Fourscore years since, and come but one month more +The count were perfect of his mortal score +Whose sail went seaward yesterday from shore + To cross the last of many an unsailed sea. + +Light, love and labour up to life's last height, +These three were stars unsetting in his sight; +Even as the sun is life and heat and light + And sets not nor is dark when dark are we. + +The life, the spirit, and the work were one +That here--ah, who shall say, that here are done? +Not I, that know not; father, not thy son, + For all the darkness of the night and sea. + +_March 5, 1877_ + + + +A BIRTH-SONG + +(For Olivia Frances Madox Rossetti, born September 20, 1875) + + + Out of the dark sweet sleep + Where no dreams laugh or weep + Borne through bright gates of birth + Into the dim sweet light + Where day still dreams of night + While heaven takes form on earth, +White rose of spirit and flesh, red lily of love, + What note of song have we + Fit for the birds and thee, +Fair nestling couched beneath the mother-dove? + + Nay, in some more divine + Small speechless song of thine + Some news too good for words, + Heart-hushed and smiling, we + Might hope to have of thee, + The youngest of God's birds, +If thy sweet sense might mix itself with ours, + If ours might understand + The language of thy land, +Ere thine become the tongue of mortal hours: + + Ere thy lips learn too soon + Their soft first human tune, + Sweet, but less sweet than now, + And thy raised eyes to read + Glad and good things indeed, + But none so sweet as thou: +Ere thought lift up their flower-soft lids to see + What life and love on earth + Bring thee for gifts at birth, +But none so good as thine who hast given us thee: + + Now, ere thy sense forget + The heaven that fills it yet, + Now, sleeping or awake, + If thou couldst tell, or we + Ask and be heard of thee, + For love's undying sake, +From thy dumb lips divine and bright mute speech + Such news might touch our ear + That then would burn to hear +Too high a message now for man's to reach. + + Ere the gold hair of corn + Had withered wast thou born, + To make the good time glad; + The time that but last year + Fell colder than a tear + On hearts and hopes turned sad, +High hopes and hearts requickening in thy dawn, + Even theirs whose life-springs, child, + Filled thine with life and smiled, +But then wept blood for half their own withdrawn.[1] + + If death and birth be one, + And set with rise of sun, + And truth with dreams divine, + Some word might come with thee + From over the still sea + Deep hid in shade or shine, +Crossed by the crossing sails of death and birth, + Word of some sweet new thing + Fit for such lips to bring, +Some word of love, some afterthought of earth. + + If love be strong as death, + By what so natural breath + As thine could this be said? + By what so lovely way + Could love send word to say + He lives and is not dead? +Such word alone were fit for only thee, + If his and thine have met + Where spirits rise and set, +His whom we see not, thine whom scarce we see: + + His there new-born, as thou + New-born among us now; + His, here so fruitful-souled, + Now veiled and silent here, + Now dumb as thou last year, + A ghost of one year old: +If lights that change their sphere in changing meet, + Some ray might his not give + To thine who wast to live, +And make thy present with his past life sweet? + + Let dreams that laugh or weep, + All glad and sad dreams, sleep; + Truth more than dreams is dear. + Let thoughts that change and fly, + Sweet thoughts and swift, go by; + More than all thought is here. +More than all hope can forge or memory feign + The life that in our eyes, + Made out of love's life, lies, +And flower-like fed with love for sun and rain. + + Twice royal in its root + The sweet small olive-shoot + Here set in sacred earth; + Twice dowered with glorious grace + From either heaven-born race + First blended in its birth; +Fair God or Genius of so fair an hour, + For love of either name + Twice crowned, with love and fame, +Guard and be gracious to the fair-named flower. + +_October 19, 1875._ + +[Footnote 1: Oliver Madox Brown died November 5, 1874, in his +twentieth year.] + + + + +EX-VOTO + + +When their last hour shall rise +Pale on these mortal eyes, +Herself like one that dies, + And kiss me dying +The cold last kiss, and fold +Close round my limbs her cold +Soft shade as raiment rolled + And leave them lying, + +If aught my soul would say +Might move to hear me pray +The birth-god of my day + That he might hearken, +This grace my heart should crave, +To find no landward grave +That worldly springs make brave, + World's winters darken, + +Nor grow through gradual hours +The cold blind seed of flowers +Made by new beams and showers + From limbs that moulder, +Nor take my part with earth, +But find for death's new birth +A bed of larger girth, + More chaste and colder. + +Not earth's for spring and fall, +Not earth's at heart, not all +Earth's making, though men call + Earth only mother, +Not hers at heart she bare +Me, but thy child, O fair +Sea, and thy brother's care, + The wind thy brother. + +Yours was I born, and ye, +The sea-wind and the sea, +Made all my soul in me + A song for ever, +A harp to string and smite +For love's sake of the bright +Wind and the sea's delight, + To fail them never: + +Not while on this side death +I hear what either saith +And drink of either's breath + With heart's thanksgiving +That in my veins like wine +Some sharp salt blood of thine, +Some springtide pulse of brine, + Yet leaps up living. + +When thy salt lips wellnigh +Sucked in my mouth's last sigh, +Grudged I so much to die + This death as others? +Was it no ease to think +The chalice from whose brink +Fate gave me death to drink + Was thine--my mother's? + +Thee too, the all-fostering earth, +Fair as thy fairest birth, +More than thy worthiest worth, + We call, we know thee, +More sweet and just and dread +Than live men highest of head +Or even thy holiest dead + Laid low below thee. + +The sunbeam on the sheaf, +The dewfall on the leaf, +All joy, all grace, all grief, + Are thine for giving; +Of thee our loves are born, +Our lives and loves, that mourn +And triumph; tares with corn, + Dead seed with living: + +All good and ill things done +In eyeshot of the sun +At last in thee made one + Rest well contented; +All words of all man's breath +And works he doth or saith, +All wholly done to death, + None long lamented. + +A slave to sons of thee, +Thou, seeming, yet art free; +But who shall make the sea + Serve even in seeming? +What plough shall bid it bear +Seed to the sun and the air, +Fruit for thy strong sons' fare, + Fresh wine's foam streaming? + +What oldworld son of thine, +Made drunk with death as wine, +Hath drunk the bright sea's brine + With lips of laughter? +Thy blood they drink; but he +Who hath drunken of the sea +Once deeplier than of thee + Shall drink not after. + +Of thee thy sons of men +Drink deep, and thirst again; +For wine in feasts, and then + In fields for slaughter; +But thirst shall touch not him +Who hath felt with sense grown dim +Rise, covering lip and limb, + The wan sea's water. + +All fire of thirst that aches +The salt sea cools and slakes +More than all springs or lakes, + Freshets or shallows; +Wells where no beam can burn +Through frondage of the fern +That hides from hart and hern + The haunt it hallows. + +Peace with all graves on earth +For death or sleep or birth +Be alway, one in worth + One with another; +But when my time shall be, +O mother, O my sea, +Alive or dead, take me, + Me too, my mother. + + + +A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND + + +I hid my heart in a nest of roses, + Out of the sun's way, hidden apart; +In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is, + Under the roses I hid my heart. + Why would it sleep not? why should it start, +When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred? + What made sleep flutter his wings and part? +Only the song of a secret bird. + +Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes, + And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart; +Lie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes, + And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art. + Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart? +Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred? + What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart? +Only the song of a secret bird. + +The green land's name that a charm encloses, + It never was writ in the traveller's chart, +And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is, + It never was sold in the merchant's mart. + The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart, +And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard; + No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart, +Only the song of a secret bird. + + +ENVOI + +In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, + To sleep for a season and hear no word +Of true love's truth or of light love's art, + Only the song of a secret bird. + + + +CYRIL TOURNEUR + + +A sea that heaves with horror of the night, + As maddened by the moon that hangs aghast + With strain and torment of the ravening blast, +Haggard as hell, a bleak blind bloody light; +No shore but one red reef of rock in sight, + Whereon the waifs of many a wreck were cast + And shattered in the fierce nights overpast +Wherein more souls toward hell than heaven took flight; +And 'twixt the shark-toothed rocks and swallowing shoals +A cry as out of hell from all these souls + Sent through the sheer gorge of the slaughtering sea, +Whose thousand throats, full-fed with life by death, +Fill the black air with foam and furious breath; + And over all these one star--Chastity. + + + +A BALLAD OF FRANCOIS VILLON + +PRINCE OF ALL BALLAD-MAKERS + + +Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn + Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, +First of us all and sweetest singer born + Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears + Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; +When song new-born put off the old world's attire +And felt its tune on her changed lips expire, + Writ foremost on the roll of them that came +Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre, + Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name! + +Alas the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, + That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, +And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn + And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers + Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; +Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, +When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire + Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame +Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, + Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name! + +Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn! + Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! +Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, + That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers + Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! +What far delight has cooled the fierce desire +That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire + On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame, +But left more sweet than roses to respire, + Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name? + + +ENVOI + +Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, +A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire; + Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame. +But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, +Love reads out first at head of all our quire, + Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. + + + +PASTICHE + + +Now the days are all gone over +Of our singing, love by lover, +Days of summer-coloured seas +Blown adrift through beam and breeze. + +Now the nights are all past over +Of our dreaming, dreams that hover +In a mist of fair false things, +Nights afloat on wide wan wings. + +Now the loves with faith for mother, +Now the fears with hope for brother, +Scarce are with us as strange words, +Notes from songs of last year's birds. + +Now all good that comes or goes is +As the smell of last year's roses, +As the radiance in our eyes +Shot from summer's ere he dies. + +Now the morning faintlier risen +Seems no God come forth of prison, +But a bird of plume-plucked wing, +Pale with thoughts of evening. + +Now hath hope, outraced in running, +Given the torch up of his cunning +And the palm he thought to wear +Even to his own strong child--despair. + + + +BEFORE SUNSET + + +In the lower lands of day + On the hither side of night, +There is nothing that will stay, + There are all things soft to sight; + Lighted shade and shadowy light +In the wayside and the way, + Hours the sun has spared to smite, +Flowers the rain has left to play. + +Shall these hours run down and say + No good thing of thee and me? +Time that made us and will slay + Laughs at love in me and thee; + But if here the flowers may see +One whole hour of amorous breath, + Time shall die, and love shall be +Lord as time was over death. + + + +SONG + + +Love laid his sleepless head +On a thorny rosy bed; +And his eyes with tears were red, +And pale his lips as the dead. + +And fear and sorrow and scorn +Kept watch by his head forlorn, +Till the night was overworn +And the world was merry with morn. + +And Joy came up with the day +And kissed Love's lips as he lay, +And the watchers ghostly and grey +Sped from his pillow away. + +And his eyes as the dawn grew bright, +And his lips waxed ruddy as light: +Sorrow may reign for a night, +But day shall bring back delight. + + + +A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER + + +I + +O tender time that love thinks long to see, + Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows + Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows, +Be not too long irresolute to be; +O mother-month, where have they hidden thee? + Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose +I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands, + I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours, + The purplest of the prime; +I lean my soul down over them, with hands + Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers; + I send my love back to the lovely time. + + +II + +Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head? + Veiled with what visions while the grey world grieves, + Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves, +What warm intangible green shadows spread +To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed? + What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives? +Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn + Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet + Its silver web unweave, +Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn + Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret + Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve. + + +III + +Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star, + Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune, + Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon; +But where the silver-sandalled shadows are, +Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar, + Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon: +Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims, + The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath, + The light is listening; +They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs, + Virginal, born again of doubtful death, + Chill foster-father of the weanling spring. + + +IV + +As sweet desire of day before the day, + As dreams of love before the true love born, + From the outer edge of winter overworn +The ghost arisen of May before the May +Takes through dim air her unawakened way, + The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn. +With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks + Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring, + Lifts windward her bright brows, +Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks, + And kindles with her own mouth's colouring + The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs. + + +V + +I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see, + Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath + Shall put at last the deadly days to death +And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee +And seaward hollows where my feet would be + When heaven shall hear the word that April saith +To change the cold heart of the weary time, + To stir and soften all the time to tears, + Tears joyfuller than mirth; +As even to May's clear height the young days climb + With feet not swifter than those fair first years + Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth. + + +VI + +I would not bid thee, though I might, give back + One good thing youth has given and borne away; +I crave not any comfort of the day +That is not, nor on time's retrodden track +Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black + That long since left me on their mortal way; +Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath + That comes with morning from the sun to be + And sets light hope on fire; +No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death, + No flower nor hour once fallen from life's green tree, + No leaf once plucked or once fulfilled desire. + + +VII + +The morning song beneath the stars that fled + With twilight through the moonless mountain air, + While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair +Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head, +Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead, + The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were; +These may'st thou not give back for ever; these, + As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste, + Lie deeper than the sea; +But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease, + And all its April to the world thou may'st + Give back, and half my April back to me. + + + +CHORIAMBICS + + +Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made + lovely, we thought, with love? +What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down + from the light above? + +What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, + hands that were raised to wave, +Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the + sunless grave? + +Ah, thy luminous eyes! once was their light fed with + the fire of day; +Now their shadowy lids cover them close, hush them + and hide away. + +Ah, thy snow-coloured hands! once were they chains, + mighty to bind me fast; +Now no blood in them burns, mindless of love, senseless + of passion past. + +Ah, thy beautiful hair! so was it once braided for + me, for me; +Now for death is it crowned, only for death, lover + and lord of thee. + +Sweet, the kisses of death set on thy lips, colder are + they than mine; +Colder surely than past kisses that love poured for + thy lips as wine. + +Lov'st thou death? is his face fairer than love's, + brighter to look upon? +Seest thou light in his eyes, light by which love's + pales and is overshone? + +Lo the roses of death, grey as the dust, chiller of leaf + than snow! +Why let fall from thy hand love's that were thine, + roses that loved thee so? + +Large red lilies of love, sceptral and tall, lovely for + eyes to see; +Thornless blossom of love, full of the sun, fruits that + were reared for thee. + +Now death's poppies alone circle thy hair, girdle thy + breasts as white; +Bloodless blossoms of death, leaves that have sprung + never against the light. + +Nay then, sleep if thou wilt; love is content; what + should he do to weep? +Sweet was love to thee once; now in thine eyes + sweeter than love is sleep. + + + +AT PARTING + + +For a day and a night Love sang to us, played with us, + Folded us round from the dark and the light; +And our hearts were fulfilled of the music he made with us, +Made with our hearts and our lips while he stayed with us, + Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight + For a day and a night. + +From his foes that kept watch with his wings had he hidden us, + Covered us close from the eyes that would smite, +From the feet that had tracked and the tongues that had chidden us +Sheltering in shade of the myrtles forbidden us + Spirit and flesh growing one with delight + For a day and a night. + +But his wings will not rest and his feet will not stay for us: + Morning is here in the joy of its might; +With his breath has he sweetened a night and a day for us; +Now let him pass, and the myrtles make way for us; + Love can but last in us here at his height + For a day and a night. + + + +A SONG IN SEASON + + +I + + Thou whose beauty + Knows no duty +Due to love that moves thee never; + Thou whose mercies + Are men's curses, +And thy smile a scourge for ever; + + +II + + Thou that givest + Death and livest +On the death of thy sweet giving; + Thou that sparest + Not nor carest +Though thy scorn leave no love living; + + +III + + Thou whose rootless + Flower is fruitless +As the pride its heart encloses, + But thine eyes are + As May skies are, +And thy words like spoken roses; + + +IV + + Thou whose grace is + In men's faces +Fierce and wayward as thy will is; + Thou whose peerless + Eyes are tearless, +And thy thoughts as cold sweet lilies; + + +V + + Thou that takest + Hearts and makest +Wrecks of loves to strew behind thee, + Whom the swallow + Sure should follow, +Finding summer where we find thee; + + +VI + + Thou that wakest + Hearts and breakest, +And thy broken hearts forgive thee, + That wilt make no + Pause and take no +Gift that love for love might give thee; + + +VII + + Thou that bindest + Eyes and blindest, +Serving worst who served thee longest; + Thou that speakest, + And the weakest +Heart is his that was the strongest; + + +VIII + + Take in season + Thought with reason; +Think what gifts are ours for giving; + Hear what beauty + Owes of duty +To the love that keeps it living. + + +IX + + Dust that covers + Long dead lovers +Song blows off with breath that brightens; + At its flashes + Their white ashes +Burst in bloom that lives and lightens. + + +X + + Had they bent not + Head or lent not +Ear to love and amorous duties, + Song had never + Saved for ever, +Love, the least of all their beauties. + + +XI + + All the golden + Names of olden +Women yet by men's love cherished, + All our dearest + Thoughts hold nearest, +Had they loved not, all had perished. + + +XII + + If no fruit is + Of thy beauties, +Tell me yet, since none may win them, + What and wherefore + Love should care for +Of all good things hidden in them? + + +XIII + + Pain for profit + Comes but of it, +If the lips that lure their lover's + Hold no treasure + Past the measure +Of the lightest hour that hovers. + + +XIV + + If they give not + Or forgive not +Gifts or thefts for grace or guerdon, + Love that misses + Fruit of kisses +Long will bear no thankless burden. + + +XV + + If they care not + Though love were not, +If no breath of his burn through them, + Joy must borrow + Song from sorrow, +Fear teach hope the way to woo them. + + +XVI + + Grief has measures + Soft as pleasure's, +Fear has moods that hope lies deep in, + Songs to sing him, + Dreams to bring him, +And a red-rose bed to sleep in. + + +XVII + + Hope with fearless + Looks and tearless +Lies and laughs too near the thunder; + Fear hath sweeter + Speech and meeter +For heart's love to hide him under. + + +XVIII + + Joy by daytime + Fills his playtime +Full of songs loud mirth takes pride in; + Night and morrow + Weave round sorrow +Thoughts as soft as sleep to hide in. + + +XIX + + Graceless faces, + Loveless graces, +Are but motes in light that quicken, + Sands that run down + Ere the sundown, +Roseleaves dead ere autumn sicken. + + +XX + + Fair and fruitless + Charms are bootless +Spells to ward off age's peril; + Lips that give not + Love shall live not, +Eyes that meet not eyes are sterile. + + +XXI + + But the beauty + Bound in duty +Fast to love that falls off never + Love shall cherish + Lest it perish, +And its root bears fruit for ever. + + + +TWO LEADERS + +[Greek: +Bate domon, megaloi philotimoi +Nuktos paides apaides, hup euphroni pompa.] + + +I + +O great and wise, clear-souled and high of heart, + One the last flower of Catholic love, that grows + Amid bare thorns their only thornless rose, +From the fierce juggling of the priests' loud mart +Yet alien, yet unspotted and apart + From the blind hard foul rout whose shameless shows + Mock the sweet heaven whose secret no man knows +With prayers and curses and the soothsayer's art; +One like a storm-god of the northern foam + Strong, wrought of rock that breasts and breaks the sea + And thunders back its thunder, rhyme for rhyme + Answering, as though to outroar the tides of time + And bid the world's wave back--what song should be +Theirs that with praise would bring and sing you home? + + +II + +With all our hearts we praise you whom ye hate, + High souls that hate us; for our hopes are higher, + And higher than yours the goal of our desire, +Though high your ends be as your hearts are great. +Your world of Gods and kings, of shrine and state, + Was of the night when hope and fear stood nigher, + Wherein men walked by light of stars and fire +Till man by day stood equal with his fate. +Honour not hate we give you, love not fear, + Last prophets of past kind, who fill the dome +Of great dead Gods with wrath and wail, nor hear + Time's word and man's: "Go honoured hence, go home, +Night's childless children; here your hour is done; +Pass with the stars, and leave us with the sun." + + + +VICTOR HUGO IN 1877 + +"Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?" + + +Above the spring-tide sundawn of the year, + A sunlike star, not born of day or night, + Filled the fair heaven of spring with heavenlier light, +Made of all ages orbed in one sole sphere +Whose light was as a Titan's smile or tear; + Then rose a ray more flowerlike, starry white, + Like a child's eye grown lovelier with delight, +Sweet as a child's heart-lightening laugh to hear; +And last a fire from heaven, a fiery rain + As of God's wrath on the unclean cities, fell + And lit the shuddering shades of half-seen hell +That shrank before it and were cloven in twain; + A beacon fired by lightning, whence all time + Sees red the bare black ruins of a crime. + + + +CHILD'S SONG + + +What is gold worth, say, +Worth for work or play, +Worth to keep or pay, +Hide or throw away, + Hope about or fear? +What is love worth, pray? + Worth a tear? + +Golden on the mould +Lie the dead leaves rolled +Of the wet woods old, +Yellow leaves and cold, + Woods without a dove; +Gold is worth but gold; + Love's worth love. + + + +TRIADS + + +I + + + I + + The word of the sun to the sky, + The word of the wind to the sea, + The word of the moon to the night, + What may it be? + + + II + + The sense to the flower of the fly, + The sense of the bird to the tree, + The sense to the cloud of the light, + Who can tell me? + + + III + + The song of the fields to the kye, + The song of the lime to the bee, + The song of the depth to the height, + Who knows all three? + + +II + + + I + + The message of April to May + That May sends on into June + And June gives out to July + For birthday boon; + + + II + + + The delight of the dawn in the day, + The delight of the day in the noon, + The delight of a song in a sigh + That breaks the tune; + + + III + + The secret of passing away, + The cost of the change of the moon, + None knows it with ear or with eye, + But all will soon. + + +III + + + I + + The live wave's love for the shore, + The shore's for the wave as it dies, + The love of the thunder-fire + That sears the skies, + + + II + + We shall know not though life wax hoar, + Till all life, spent into sighs, + Burn out as consumed with desire + Of death's strange eyes; + + + III + + Till the secret be secret no more + In the light of one hour as it flies, + Be the hour as of suns that expire + Or suns that rise. + + + +FOUR SONGS OF FOUR SEASONS + + +I. WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND + + I + + Outside the garden + The wet skies harden; + The gates are barred on + The summer side: + "Shut out the flower-time, + Sunbeam and shower-time; + Make way for our time," + Wild winds have cried. + Green once and cheery, + The woods, worn weary, + Sigh as the dreary + Weak sun goes home: + A great wind grapples + The wave, and dapples + The dead green floor of the sea with foam. + + + II + + Through fell and moorland, + And salt-sea foreland, + Our noisy norland + Resounds and rings; + Waste waves thereunder + Are blown in sunder, + And winds make thunder + With cloudwide wings; + Sea-drift makes dimmer + The beacon's glimmer; + Nor sail nor swimmer + Can try the tides; + And snowdrifts thicken + Where, when leaves quicken, + Under the heather the sundew hides. + + + III + + Green land and red land, + Moorside and headland, + Are white as dead land, + Are all as one; + Nor honied heather, + Nor bells to gather, + Fair with fair weather + And faithful sun: + Fierce frost has eaten + All flowers that sweeten + The fells rain-beaten; + And winds their foes + Have made the snow's bed + Down in the rose-bed; + Deep in the snow's bed bury the rose. + + + IV + + Bury her deeper + Than any sleeper; + Sweet dreams will keep her + All day, all night; + Though sleep benumb her + And time o'ercome her, + She dreams of summer, + And takes delight, + Dreaming and sleeping + In love's good keeping, + While rain is weeping + And no leaves cling; + Winds will come bringing her + Comfort, and singing her + Stories and songs and good news of the spring. + + + V + + Draw the white curtain + Close, and be certain + She takes no hurt in + Her soft low bed; + She feels no colder, + And grows not older, + Though snows enfold her + From foot to head; + She turns not chilly + Like weed and lily + In marsh or hilly + High watershed, + Or green soft island + In lakes of highland; + She sleeps awhile, and she is not dead. + + + VI + + For all the hours, + Come sun, come showers, + Are friends of flowers, + And fairies all; + When frost entrapped her, + They came and lapped her + In leaves, and wrapped her + With shroud and pall; + In red leaves wound her, + With dead leaves bound her + Dead brows, and round her + A death-knell rang; + Rang the death-bell for her, + Sang, "is it well for her, + Well, is it well with you, rose?" they sang. + + + VII + + O what and where is + The rose now, fairies, + So shrill the air is, + So wild the sky? + Poor last of roses, + Her worst of woes is + The noise she knows is + The winter's cry; + His hunting hollo + Has scared the swallow; + Fain would she follow + And fain would fly: + But wind unsettles + Her poor last petals; + Had she but wings, and she would not die. + + + VIII + + Come, as you love her, + Come close and cover + Her white face over, + And forth again + Ere sunset glances + On foam that dances, + Through lowering lances + Of bright white rain; + And make your playtime + Of winter's daytime, + As if the Maytime + Were here to sing; + As if the snowballs + Were soft like blowballs, + Blown in a mist from the stalk in the spring. + + + IX + + Each reed that grows in + Our stream is frozen, + The fields it flows in + Are hard and black; + The water-fairy + Waits wise and wary + Till time shall vary + And thaws come back. + "O sister, water," + The wind besought her, + "O twin-born daughter + Of spring with me, + Stay with me, play with me, + Take the warm way with me, + Straight for the summer and oversea." + + + X + + But winds will vary, + And wise and wary + The patient fairy + Of water waits; + All shrunk and wizen, + In iron prison, + Till spring re-risen + Unbar the gates; + Till, as with clamour + Of axe and hammer, + Chained streams that stammer + And struggle in straits + Burst bonds that shiver, + And thaws deliver + The roaring river in stormy spates. + + + XI + + In fierce March weather + White waves break tether, + And whirled together + At either hand, + Like weeds uplifted, + The tree-trunks rifted + In spars are drifted, + Like foam or sand, + Past swamp and sallow + And reed-beds callow, + Through pool and shallow, + To wind and lee, + Till, no more tongue-tied, + Full flood and young tide + Roar down the rapids and storm the sea. + + + XII + + As men's cheeks faded + On shores invaded, + When shorewards waded + The lords of fight; + When churl and craven + Saw hard on haven + The wide-winged raven + At mainmast height; + When monks affrighted + To windward sighted + The birds full-flighted + Of swift sea-kings; + So earth turns paler + When Storm the sailor + Steers in with a roar in the race of his wings. + + + XIII + + O strong sea-sailor, + Whose cheek turns paler + For wind or hail or + For fear of thee? + O far sea-farer, + O thunder-bearer, + Thy songs are rarer + Than soft songs be. + O fleet-foot stranger, + O north-sea ranger + Through days of danger + And ways of fear, + Blow thy horn here for us, + Blow the sky clear for us, + Send us the song of the sea to hear. + + + XIV + + Roll the strong stream of it + Up, till the scream of it + Wake from a dream of it + Children that sleep, + Seamen that fare for them + Forth, with a prayer for them; + Shall not God care for them, + Angels not keep? + Spare not the surges + Thy stormy scourges; + Spare us the dirges + Of wives that weep. + Turn back the waves for us: + Dig no fresh graves for us, + Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep. + + + XV + + O stout north-easter, + Sea-king, land-waster, + For all thine haste, or + Thy stormy skill, + Yet hadst thou never, + For all endeavour, + Strength to dissever + Or strength to spill, + Save of his giving + Who gave our living, + Whose hands are weaving + What ours fulfil; + Whose feet tread under + The storms and thunder; + Who made our wonder to work his will. + + + XVI + + His years and hours, + His world's blind powers, + His stars and flowers, + His nights and days, + Sea-tide and river, + And waves that shiver, + Praise God, the giver + Of tongues to praise. + Winds in their blowing, + And fruits in growing; + Time in its going, + While time shall be; + In death and living, + With one thanksgiving, + Praise him whose hand is the strength of the sea. + + + +II. SPRING IN TUSCANY + +Rose-red lilies that bloom on the banner; + Rose-cheeked gardens that revel in spring; + Rose-mouthed acacias that laugh as they climb, +Like plumes for a queen's hand fashioned to fan her + With wind more soft than a wild dove's wing, + What do they sing in the spring of their time? + +If this be the rose that the world hears singing, + Soft in the soft night, loud in the day, + Songs for the fire-flies to dance as they hear; +If that be the song of the nightingale, springing + Forth in the form of a rose in May, + What do they say of the way of the year? + +What of the way of the world gone Maying, + What of the work of the buds in the bowers, + What of the will of the wind on the wall, +Fluttering the wall-flowers, sighing and playing, + Shrinking again as a bird that cowers, + Thinking of hours when the flowers have to fall? + +Out of the throats of the loud birds showering, + Out of the folds where the flag-lilies leap, + Out of the mouths of the roses stirred, +Out of the herbs on the walls reflowering, + Out of the heights where the sheer snows sleep, + Out of the deep and the steep, one word. + +One from the lips of the lily-flames leaping, + The glad red lilies that burn in our sight, + The great live lilies for standard and crown; +One from the steeps where the pines stand sleeping, + One from the deep land, one from the height, + One from the light and the might of the town. + +The lowlands laugh with delight of the highlands, + Whence May winds feed them with balm and breath + From hills that beheld in the years behind +A shape as of one from the blest souls' islands, + Made fair by a soul too fair for death, + With eyes on the light that should smite them blind. + +Vallombrosa remotely remembers, + Perchance, what still to us seems so near + That time not darkens it, change not mars, +The foot that she knew when her leaves were September's, + The face lift up to the star-blind seer, + That saw from his prison arisen his stars. + +And Pisa broods on her dead, not mourning, + For love of her loveliness given them in fee; + And Prato gleams with the glad monk's gift +Whose hand was there as the hand of morning; + And Siena, set in the sand's red sea, + Lifts loftier her head than the red sand's drift. + +And far to the fair south-westward lightens, + Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers, + At sunset over the love-lit lands, +The hill-side's crown where the wild hill brightens, + Saint Fina's town of the Beautiful Towers, + Hailing the sun with a hundred hands. + +Land of us all that have loved thee dearliest, + Mother of men that were lords of man, + Whose name in the world's heart works as a spell, +My last song's light, and the star of mine earliest, + As we turn from thee, sweet, who wast ours for a span, + Fare well we may not who say farewell. + + +III. SUMMER IN AUVERGNE + +The sundawn fills the land +Full as a feaster's hand +Fills full with bloom of bland + Bright wine his cup; +Flows full to flood that fills +From the arch of air it thrills +Those rust-red iron hills + With morning up. + +Dawn, as a panther springs, +With fierce and fire-fledged wings +Leaps on the land that rings + From her bright feet +Through all its lava-black +Cones that cast answer back +And cliffs of footless track + Where thunders meet. + +The light speaks wide and loud +From deeps blown clean of cloud +As though day's heart were proud + And heaven's were glad; +The towers brown-striped and grey +Take fire from heaven of day +As though the prayers they pray + Their answers had. + +Higher in these high first hours +Wax all the keen church towers, +And higher all hearts of ours + Than the old hills' crown, +Higher than the pillared height +Of that strange cliff-side bright +With basalt towers whose might + Strong time bows down. + +And the old fierce ruin there +Of the old wild princes' lair +Whose blood in mine hath share + Gapes gaunt and great +Toward heaven that long ago +Watched all the wan land's woe +Whereon the wind would blow + Of their bleak hate. + +Dead are those deeds; but yet +Their memory seems to fret +Lands that might else forget + That old world's brand; +Dead all their sins and days; +Yet in this red clime's rays +Some fiery memory stays + That sears their land. + + +IV. AUTUMN IN CORNWALL + +The year lies fallen and faded +On cliffs by clouds invaded, +With tongues of storms upbraided, + With wrath of waves bedinned; +And inland, wild with warning, +As in deaf ears or scorning, +The clarion even and morning + Rings of the south-west wind. + +The wild bents wane and wither +In blasts whose breath bows hither +Their grey-grown heads and thither, + Unblest of rain or sun; +The pale fierce heavens are crowded +With shapes like dreams beclouded, +As though the old year enshrouded + Lay, long ere life were done. + +Full-charged with oldworld wonders, +From dusk Tintagel thunders +A note that smites and sunders + The hard frore fields of air; +A trumpet stormier-sounded +Than once from lists rebounded +When strong men sense-confounded + Fell thick in tourney there. + +From scarce a duskier dwelling +Such notes of wail rose welling +Through the outer darkness, telling + In the awful singer's ears +What souls the darkness covers, +What love-lost souls of lovers, +Whose cry still hangs and hovers + In each man's born that hears. + +For there by Hector's brother +And yet some thousand other +He that had grief to mother + Passed pale from Dante's sight; +With one fast linked as fearless, +Perchance, there only tearless; +Iseult and Tristram, peerless + And perfect queen and knight. + +A shrill-winged sound comes flying +North, as of wild souls crying +The cry of things undying, + That know what life must be; +Or as the old year's heart, stricken +Too sore for hope to quicken +By thoughts like thorns that thicken, + Broke, breaking with the sea. + + + +THE WHITE CZAR + +[In an English magazine of 1877 there appeared a version of some insolent +lines addressed by "A Russian Poet to the Empress of India." To these the +first of the two following sonnets was designed to serve by way of +counterblast. The writer will scarcely be suspected of royalism or +imperialism; but it seemed to him that an insult levelled by Muscovite lips +at the ruler of England might perhaps be less unfitly than unofficially +resented by an Englishman who was also a republican.] + + +I + +Gehazi by the hue that chills thy cheek + And Pilate by the hue that sears thine hand + Whence all earth's waters cannot wash the brand +That signs thy soul a manslayer's though thou speak +All Christ, with lips most murderous and most meek-- + Thou set thy foot where England's used to stand! + Thou reach thy rod forth over Indian land! +Slave of the slaves that call thee lord, and weak +As their foul tongues who praise thee! son of them +Whose presence put the snows and stars to shame + In centuries dead and damned that reek below +Curse-consecrated, crowned with crime and flame, + To them that bare thee like them shalt thou go + Forth of man's life--a leper white as snow. + + +II + +Call for clear water, wash thine hands, be clean, + Cry, _What is truth?_ O Pilate; thou shalt know + Haply too soon, and gnash thy teeth for woe +Ere the outer darkness take thee round unseen +That hides the red ghosts of thy race obscene + Bound nine times round with hell's most dolorous flow, + And in its pools thy crownless head lie low +By his of Spain who dared an English queen +With half a world to hearten him for fight, +Till the wind gave his warriors and their might + To shipwreck and the corpse-encumbered sea. +But thou, take heed, ere yet thy lips wax white, + Lest as it was with Philip so it be, + O white of name and red of hand, with thee. + + + +RIZPAH + + +How many sons, how many generations, + For how long years hast thou bewept, and known + Nor end of torment nor surcease of moan, +Rachel or Rizpah, wofullest of nations, +Crowned with the crowning sign of desolations, + And couldst not even scare off with hand or groan + Those carrion birds devouring bone by bone +The children of thy thousand tribulations? +Thou wast our warrior once; thy sons long dead +Against a foe less foul than this made head, + Poland, in years that sound and shine afar; +Ere the east beheld in thy bright sword-blade's stead + The rotten corpse-light of the Russian star + That lights towards hell his bondslaves and their Czar. + + + +TO LOUIS KOSSUTH + +1877 + + +Light of our fathers' eyes, and in our own + Star of the unsetting sunset! for thy name, + That on the front of noon was as a flame +In the great year nigh thirty years agone +When all the heavens of Europe shook and shone + With stormy wind and lightning, keeps its fame + And bears its witness all day through the same; +Not for past days and great deeds past alone, +Kossuth, we praise thee as our Landor praised, +But that now too we know thy voice upraised, +Thy voice, the trumpet of the truth of God, + Thine hand, the thunder-bearer's, raised to smite +As with heaven's lightning for a sword and rod + Men's heads abased before the Muscovite. + + + +TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH OF VILLON + + +THE COMPLAINT OF THE FAIR ARMOURESS + +I + +Meseemeth I heard cry and groan + That sweet who was the armourer's maid; +For her young years she made sore moan, + And right upon this wise she said; + "Ah fierce old age with foul bald head, +To spoil fair things thou art over fain; + Who holdeth me? who? would God I were dead! +Would God I were well dead and slain! + + +II + +"Lo, thou hast broken the sweet yoke + That my high beauty held above +All priests and clerks and merchant-folk; + There was not one but for my love + Would give me gold and gold enough, +Though sorrow his very heart had riven, + To win from me such wage thereof +As now no thief would take if given. + + +III + +"I was right chary of the same, + God wot it was my great folly, +For love of one sly knave of them, + Good store of that same sweet had he; + For all my subtle wiles, perdie, +God wot I loved him well enow; + Right evilly he handled me, +But he loved well my gold, I trow. + + +IV + +"Though I gat bruises green and black, + I loved him never the less a jot; +Though he bound burdens on my back, + If he said 'Kiss me and heed it not' + Right little pain I felt, God wot, +When that foul thief's mouth, found so sweet, + Kissed me--Much good thereof I got! +I keep the sin and the shame of it. + + +V + +"And he died thirty year agone. + I am old now, no sweet thing to see; +By God, though, when I think thereon, + And of that good glad time, woe's me, + And stare upon my changed body +Stark naked, that has been so sweet, + Lean, wizen, like a small dry tree, +I am nigh mad with the pain of it. + + +VI + +"Where is my faultless forehead's white, + The lifted eyebrows, soft gold hair, +Eyes wide apart and keen of sight, + With subtle skill in the amorous air; + The straight nose, great nor small, but fair, +The small carved ears of shapeliest growth, + Chin dimpling, colour good to wear, +And sweet red splendid kissing mouth? + + +VII + +"The shapely slender shoulders small, + Long arms, hands wrought in glorious wise, +Round little breasts, the hips withal + High, full of flesh, not scant of size, + Fit for all amorous masteries; +*** ***** *****, *** *** ****** **** *** + ******* ***** ** **** ***** ****** +** * ***** ****** ** **** *****? + + +VIII + +"A writhled forehead, hair gone grey, + Fallen eyebrows, eyes gone blind and red, +Their laughs and looks all fled away, + Yea, all that smote men's hearts are fled; + The bowed nose, fallen from goodlihead; +Foul flapping ears like water-flags; + Peaked chin, and cheeks all waste and dead, +And lips that are two skinny rags: + + +IX + +"Thus endeth all the beauty of us. + The arms made short, the hands made lean, +The shoulders bowed and ruinous, + The breasts, alack! all fallen in; + The flanks too, like the breasts, grown thin; +** *** *** ***** *****, *** ** **! + For the lank thighs, no thighs but skin, +They are specked with spots like sausage-meat. + + +X + +"So we make moan for the old sweet days, + Poor old light women, two or three +Squatting above the straw-fire's blaze, + The bosom crushed against the knee, + Like faggots on a heap we be, +Round fires soon lit, soon quenched and done; + And we were once so sweet, even we! +Thus fareth many and many an one." + + + +A DOUBLE BALLAD OF GOOD COUNSEL + + +Now take your fill of love and glee, + And after balls and banquets hie; +In the end ye'll get no good for fee, + But just heads broken by and by; + Light loves make beasts of men that sigh; +They changed the faith of Solomon, + And left not Samson lights to spy; +Good luck has he that deals with none! + +Sweet Orpheus, lord of minstrelsy, + For this with flute and pipe came nigh +The danger of the dog's heads three + That ravening at hell's door doth lie; + Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy, +For love's love lightly lost and won, + In a deep well to drown and die; +Good luck has he that deals with none! + +Sardana, flower of chivalry, + Who conquered Crete with horn and cry, +For this was fain a maid to be + And learn with girls the thread to ply; + King David, wise in prophecy, +Forgot the fear of God for one + Seen washing either shapely thigh; +Good luck has he that deals with none! + +For this did Amnon, craftily + Feigning to eat of cakes of rye, +Deflower his sister fair to see, + Which was foul incest; and hereby + Was Herod moved, it is no lie, +To lop the head of Baptist John + For dance and jig and psaltery; +Good luck has he that deals with none! + +Next of myself I tell, poor me, + How thrashed like clothes at wash was I +Stark naked, I must needs agree; + Who made me eat so sour a pie + But Katherine of Vaucelles? thereby, +Noe took third part of that fun; + Such wedding-gloves are ill to buy; +Good luck has he that deals with none! + +But for that young man fair and free + To pass those young maids lightly by, +Nay, would you burn him quick, not he; + Like broom-horsed witches though he fry, + They are sweet as civet in his eye; +But trust them, and you're fooled anon; + For white or brown, and low or high, +Good luck has he that deals with none! + + + +FRAGMENT ON DEATH + + +And Paris be it or Helen dying, + Who dies soever, dies with pain. +He that lacks breath and wind for sighing, + His gall bursts on his heart; and then + He sweats, God knows what sweat!--again, +No man may ease him of his grief; + Child, brother, sister, none were fain +To bail him thence for his relief. + +Death makes him shudder, swoon, wax pale, + Nose bend, veins stretch, and breath surrender, +Neck swell, flesh soften, joints that fail + Crack their strained nerves and arteries slender. + O woman's body found so tender, +Smooth, sweet, so precious in men's eyes, + Must thou too bear such count to render? +Yes; or pass quick into the skies. + + +[In the original here follows Villon's masterpiece, the matchless _Ballad +of the Ladies of Old Time_, so incomparably rendered in the marvellous +version of D. G. Rossetti; followed in its turn by the succeeding poem, as +inferior to its companion as is my attempt at translation of it to his +triumph in that higher and harder field.--A. C. S.] + + + + +BALLAD OF THE LORDS OF OLD TIME + +(AFTER THE FORMER ARGUMENT) + + +What more? Where is the third Calixt, + Last of that name now dead and gone, +Who held four years the Papalist? + Alphonso king of Aragon, + The gracious lord, duke of Bourbon, +And Arthur, duke of old Britaine? + And Charles the Seventh, that worthy one? +Even with the good knight Charlemain. + +The Scot too, king of mount and mist, + With half his face vermilion, +Men tell us, like an amethyst + From brow to chin that blazed and shone; + The Cypriote king of old renown, +Alas! and that good king of Spain, + Whose name I cannot think upon? +Even with the good knight Charlemain. + +No more to say of them I list; + 'Tis all but vain, all dead and done: +For death may no man born resist, + Nor make appeal when death comes on. + I make yet one more question; +Where's Lancelot, king of far Bohain? + Where's he whose grandson called him son? +Even with the good knight Charlemain. + +Where is Guesclin, the good Breton? + The lord of the eastern mountain-chain, +And the good late duke of Alencon? + Even with the good knight Charlemain. + + + +BALLAD OF THE WOMEN OF PARIS + + +Albeit the Venice girls get praise + For their sweet speech and tender air, +And though the old women have wise ways + Of chaffering for amorous ware, + Yet at my peril dare I swear, +Search Rome, where God's grace mainly tarries, + Florence and Savoy, everywhere, +There's no good girl's lip out of Paris. + +The Naples women, as folk prattle, + Are sweetly spoken and subtle enough: +German girls are good at tattle, + And Prussians make their boast thereof; + Take Egypt for the next remove, +Or that waste land the Tartar harries, + Spain or Greece, for the matter of love, +There's no good girl's lip out of Paris. + +Breton and Swiss know nought of the matter, + Gascony girls or girls of Toulouse; +Two fishwives here with a half-hour's chatter + Would shut them up by threes and twos; + Calais, Lorraine, and all their crews, +(Names enow the mad song marries) + England and Picardy, search them and choose, +There's no good girl's lip out of Paris. + +Prince, give praise to our French ladies + For the sweet sound their speaking carries; +'Twixt Rome and Cadiz many a maid is, + But no good girl's lip out of Paris. + + + +BALLAD WRITTEN FOR A BRIDEGROOM + +WHICH VILLON GAVE TO A GENTLEMAN NEWLY MARRIED TO SEND TO HIS WIFE WHOM HE +HAD WON WITH THE SWORD + + +At daybreak, when the falcon claps his wings, + No whit for grief, but noble heart and high, +With loud glad noise he stirs himself and springs, + And takes his meat and toward his lure draws nigh; + Such good I wish you! Yea, and heartily +I am fired with hope of true love's meed to get; + Know that Love writes it in his book; for why, +This is the end for which we twain are met. + +Mine own heart's lady with no gainsayings + You shall be always wholly till I die; +And in my right against all bitter things + Sweet laurel with fresh rose its force shall try; + Seeing reason wills not that I cast love by +(Nor here with reason shall I chide or fret) + Nor cease to serve, but serve more constantly; +This is the end for which we twain are met. + +And, which is more, when grief about me clings + Through Fortune's fit or fume of jealousy, +Your sweet kind eye beats down her threatenings + As wind doth smoke; such power sits in your eye. + Thus in your field my seed of harvestry +Thrives, for the fruit is like me that I set; + God bids me tend it with good husbandry; +This is the end for which we twain are met. + +Princess, give ear to this my summary; + That heart of mine your heart's love should forget +Shall never be: like trust in you put I: + This is the end for which we twain are met. + + + +BALLAD AGAINST THE ENEMIES OF FRANCE + + +May he fall in with beasts that scatter fire, + Like Jason, when he sought the fleece of gold, +Or change from man to beast three years entire, + As King Nebuchadnezzar did of old; +Or else have times as shameful and as bad +As Trojan folk for ravished Helen had; +Or gulfed with Proserpine and Tantalus +Let hell's deep fen devour him dolorous, + With worse to bear than Job's worst sufferance, +Bound in his prison-maze with Daedalus, + Who could wish evil to the state of France! + +May he four months, like bitterns in the mire, + Howl with head downmost in the lake-springs cold, +Or to bear harness like strong bulls for hire + To the Great Turk for money down be sold; +Or thirty years like Magdalen live sad, +With neither wool nor web of linen clad; +Drown like Narciss', or swing down pendulous +Like Absalom with locks luxurious, + Or liker Judas fallen to reprobance; +Or find such death as Simon sorcerous, + Who could wish evil to the state of France! + +May the old times come of fierce Octavian's ire, + And in his belly molten coin be told; +May he like Victor in the mill expire, + Crushed between moving millstones on him rolled, +Or in deep sea drenched breathless, more adrad +Than in the whale's bulk Jonas, when God bade: +From Phoebus' light, from Juno's treasure-house +Driven, and from joys of Venus amorous, + And cursed of God most high to the utterance, +As was the Syrian king Antiochus, + Who could wish evil to the state of France! + +Prince, may the bright-winged brood of AEolus +To sea-king Glaucus' wild wood cavernous + Bear him bereft of peace and hope's least glance, +For worthless is he to get good of us, + Who could wish evil to the state of France. + + + +THE DISPUTE OF THE HEART AND BODY OF FRANCOIS VILLON + + +Who is this I hear?--Lo, this is I, thine heart, + That holds on merely now by a slender string. +Strength fails me, shape and sense are rent apart, + The blood in me is turned to a bitter thing, + Seeing thee skulk here like a dog shivering.-- +Yea, and for what?--For that thy sense found sweet.-- +What irks it thee?--I feel the sting of it.-- + Leave me at peace.--Why?--Nay now, leave me at peace; +I will repent when I grow ripe in wit.-- + I say no more.--I care not though thou cease.-- + +What art thou, trow?--A man worth praise, perfay.-- + This is thy thirtieth year of wayfaring.-- +'Tis a mule's age.--Art thou a boy still?--Nay.-- + Is it hot lust that spurs thee with its sting, + Grasping thy throat? Know'st thou not anything?-- +Yea, black and white, when milk is specked with flies, +I can make out.--No more?--Nay, in no wise. + Shall I begin again the count of these?-- +Thou art undone.--I will make shift to rise.-- + I say no more.--I care not though thou cease.-- + +I have the sorrow of it, and thou the smart. + Wert thou a poor mad fool or weak of wit, +Then might'st thou plead this pretext with thine heart; + But if thou know not good from evil a whit, + Either thy head is hard as stone to hit, +Or shame, not honour, gives thee most content. +What canst thou answer to this argument?-- + When I am dead I shall be well at ease.-- +God! what good hope!--Thou art over eloquent.-- + I say no more.--I care not though thou cease.-- + +Whence is this ill?--From sorrow and not from sin. + When Saturn packed my wallet up for me +I well believe he put these ills therein.-- + Fool, wilt thou make thy servant lord of thee? +Hear now the wise king's counsel; thus saith he: +All power upon the stars a wise man hath; +There is no planet that shall do him scathe.-- + Nay, as they made me I grow and I decrease.-- +What say'st thou?--Truly this is all my faith.-- + I say no more.--I care not though thou cease.-- + +Wouldst thou live still?--God help me that I may!-- +Then thou must--What? turn penitent and pray?-- +Read always--What?--Grave words and good to say; + Leave off the ways of fools, lest they displease.-- +Good; I will do it.--Wilt thou remember?--Yea.-- +Abide not till there come an evil day. + I say no more.--I care not though thou cease. + + + +EPISTLE IN FORM OF A BALLAD TO HIS FRIENDS + + +Have pity, pity, friends, have pity on me, + Thus much at least, may it please you, of your grace! +I lie not under hazel or hawthorn-tree + Down in this dungeon ditch, mine exile's place + By leave of God and fortune's foul disgrace. +Girls, lovers, glad young folk and newly wed, +Jumpers and jugglers, tumbling heel o'er head, + Swift as a dart, and sharp as needle-ware, +Throats clear as bells that ring the kine to shed, + Your poor old friend, what, will you leave him there? + +Singers that sing at pleasure, lawlessly, + Light, laughing, gay of word and deed, that race +And run like folk light-witted as ye be + And have in hand nor current coin nor base, + Ye wait too long, for now he's dying apace. +Rhymers of lays and roundels sung and read, +Ye'll brew him broth too late when he lies dead. + Nor wind nor lightning, sunbeam nor fresh air, +May pierce the thick wall's bound where lies his bed; + Your poor old friend, what, will you leave him there? + +O noble folk from tithes and taxes free, + Come and behold him in this piteous case, +Ye that nor king nor emperor holds in fee, + But only God in heaven; behold his face + Who needs must fast, Sundays and holidays, +Which makes his teeth like rakes; and when he hath fed +With never a cake for banquet but dry bread, + Must drench his bowels with much cold watery fare, +With board nor stool, but low on earth instead; + Your poor old friend, what, will you leave him there? + +Princes afore-named, old and young foresaid, +Get me the king's seal and my pardon sped, + And hoist me in some basket up with care: +So swine will help each other ill bested, +For where one squeaks they run in heaps ahead. + Your poor old friend, what, will you leave him there? + + + +THE EPITAPH IN FORM OF A BALLAD + +WHICH VILLON MADE FOR HIMSELF AND HIS COMRADES, EXPECTING TO BE HANGED +ALONG WITH THEM + + +Men, brother men, that after us yet live, + Let not your hearts too hard against us be; +For if some pity of us poor men ye give, + The sooner God shall take of you pity. + Here are we five or six strung up, you see, +And here the flesh that all too well we fed +Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred, + And we the bones grow dust and ash withal; +Let no man laugh at us discomforted, + But pray to God that he forgive us all. + +If we call on you, brothers, to forgive, + Ye should not hold our prayer in scorn, though we +Were slain by law; ye know that all alive + Have not wit alway to walk righteously; + Make therefore intercession heartily +With him that of a virgin's womb was bred, +That his grace be not as a dry well-head + For us, nor let hell's thunder on us fall; +We are dead, let no man harry or vex us dead, + But pray to God that he forgive us all. + +The rain has washed and laundered us all five, + And the sun dried and blackened; yea, perdie, +Ravens and pies with beaks that rend and rive + Have dug our eyes out, and plucked off for fee + Our beards and eyebrows; never are we free, +Not once, to rest; but here and there still sped, +Drive at its wild will by the wind's change led, + More pecked of birds than fruits on garden-wall; +Men, for God's love, let no gibe here be said, + But pray to God that he forgive us all. + +Prince Jesus, that of all art lord and head, +Keep us, that hell be not our bitter bed; + We have nought to do in such a master's hall. +Be not ye therefore of our fellowhead, + But pray to God that he forgive us all. + + + +FROM VICTOR HUGO + + +Take heed of this small child of earth; + He is great: he hath in him God most high. +Children before their fleshly birth + Are lights alive in the blue sky. + +In our light bitter world of wrong + They come; God gives us them awhile. +His speech is in their stammering tongue, + And his forgiveness in their smile. + +Their sweet light rests upon our eyes. + Alas! their right to joy is plain. +If they are hungry, Paradise + Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain. + +The want that saps their sinless flower + Speaks judgment on sin's ministers. +Man holds an angel in his power. + Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs, + +When God seeks out these tender things + Whom in the shadow where we sleep +He sends us clothed about with wings, + And finds them ragged babes that weep! + + + +NOCTURNE + + +La nuit ecoute et se penche sur l'onde +Pour y cueillir rien qu'un souffle d'amour; +Pas de lueur, pas de musique au monde, +Pas de sommeil pour moi ni de sejour. +O mere, o Nuit, de ta source profonde +Verse-nous, verse enfin l'oubli du jour. + +Verse l'oubli de l'angoisse et du jour; +Chante; ton chant assoupit l'ame et l'onde: +Fais de ton sein pour mon ame un sejour, +Elle est bien lasse, o mere, de ce monde, +Ou le baiser ne veut pas dire amour, +Ou l'ame aimee est moins que toi profonde. + +Car toute chose aimee est moins profonde, +O Nuit, que toi, fille et mere du jour; +Toi dont l'attente est le repit du monde, +Toi dont le souffle est plein de mots d'amour, +Toi dont l'haleine enfle et reprime l'onde, +Toi dont l'ombre a tout le ciel pour sejour. + +La misere humble et lasse, sans sejour, +S'abrite et dort sous ton aile profonde; +Tu fais a tous l'aumone de l'amour: +Toutes les soifs viennent boire a ton onde, +Tout ce qui pleure et se derobe au jour, +Toutes les faims et tous les maux du monde. + +Moi seul je veille et ne vois dans ce monde +Que ma douleur qui n'ait point de sejour +Ou s'abriter sur ta rive profonde +Et s'endormir sous tes yeux loin du jour; +Je vais toujours cherchant au bord de l'onde +Le sang du beau pied blesse de l'amour. + +La mer est sombre ou tu naquis, amour, +Pleine des pleurs et des sanglots du monde; +On ne voit plus le gouffre ou nait le jour +Luire et fremir sous ta lueur profonde; +Mais dans les coeurs d'homme ou tu fais sejour +La douleur monte et baisse comme une onde. + + +ENVOI + +Fille de l'onde et mere de l'amour, +Du haut sejour plein de ta paix profonde +Sur ce bas monde epands un peu de jour. + + + +THEOPHILE GAUTIER + + +Pour mettre une couronne au front d'une chanson, +Il semblait qu'en passant son pied semat des roses, +Et que sa main cueillit comme des fleurs ecloses +Les etoiles au fond du ciel en floraison. + +Sa parole de marbre et d'or avait le son +Des clairons de l'ete chassant les jours moroses; +Comme en Thrace Apollon banni des grands cieux roses, +Il regardait du coeur l'Olympe, sa maison. + +Le soleil fut pour lui le soleil du vieux monde, +Et son oeil recherchait dans les flots embrases +Le sillon immortel d'ou s'elanca sur l'onde +Venus, que la mer molle enivrait de baisers: +Enfin, dieu ressaisi de sa splendeur premiere, +Il trone, et son sepulcre est bati de lumiere. + + + +ODE + +(LE TOMBEAU DE THEOPHILE GAUTIER) + + +Quelle fleur, o Mort, quel joyau, quel chant, +Quel vent, quel rayon de soleil couchant, +Sur ton front penche, sur ta main avide, +Sur l'apre paleur de ta levre aride, + Vibre encore et luit? +Ton sein est sans lait, ton oreille est vide, + Ton oeil plein de nuit. + +Ta bouche est sans souffle et ton front sans ride; +Mais l'eclair voile d'une flamme humide, +Flamme eclose au coeur d'un ciel pluvieux, +Rallume ta levre et remplit tes yeux + De lueurs d'opale; +Ta bouche est vermeille et ton front joyeux, + O toi qui fus pale. + +Comme aux jours divins la mere des dieux, +Reine au sein fecond, au corps radieux, +Tu surgis au bord de la tombe amere; +Tu nous apparais, o Mort, vierge et mere, + Effroi des humains, +Le divin laurier sur la tete altiere + Et la lyre aux mains. + +Nous reconnaissons, courbes vers la terre, +Que c'est la splendeur de ta face austere +Qui dore la nuit de nos longs malheurs; +Que la vie ailee aux mille couleurs, + Dont tu n'es que l'ame, +Refait par tes mains les pres et les fleurs, + La rose et la femme. + +Lune constante! astre ami des douleurs +Qui luis a travers la brume des pleurs! +Quelle flamme au fond de ta clarte molle +Eclate et rougit, nouvelle aureole, + Ton doux front voile? +Quelle etoile, ouvrant ses ailes, s'envole + Du ciel etoile? + +Pleurant ce rayon de jour qu'on lui vole, +L'homme execre en vain la Mort triste et folle; +Mais l'astre qui fut a nos yeux si beau, +La-haut, loin d'ici, dans un ciel nouveau + Plein d'autres etoiles, +Se leve, et pour lui la nuit du tombeau + Entr'ouvre ses voiles. + +L'ame est dans le corps comme un jeune oiseau +Dont l'aile s'agite au bord du berceau; +La mort, deliant cette aile inquiete, +Quand nous ecoutons la bouche muette + Qui nous dit adieu, +Fait de l'homme infime et sombre un poete, + Du poete un dieu. + + + +IN OBITUM THEOPHILI POETAE + + +O lux Pieridum et laurigeri deliciae dei, +Vox leni Zephyro lenior, ut veris amans novi +Tollit floridulis implicitum primitiis caput, +Ten' ergo abripuit non rediturum, ut redeunt novo +Flores vere novi, te quoque mors irrevocabilem? +Cur vatem neque te Musa parens, te neque Gratiae, +Nec servare sibi te potuit fidum animi Venus? +Quae nunc ipsa magis vel puero te Cinyreio, +Te desiderium et flebilibus lumen amoribus, +Amissum queritur, sanguineis fusa comam genis. +Tantis tu lacrymis digne, comes dulcis Apollini, +Carum nomen eris dis superis atque sodalibus +Nobis, quis eadem quae tibi vivo patuit via +Non aequis patet, at te sequimur passibus haud tuis, +At maesto cinerem carmine non illacrymabilem +Tristesque exuvias floribus ac fletibus integris +Una contegimus, nec cithara nec sine tibia, +Votoque unanimae vocis Ave dicimus et Vale. + + + +AD CATULLUM + + +Catulle frater, ut velim comes tibi +Remota per vireta, per cavum nemus +Sacrumque Ditis haud inhospiti specus, +Pedem referre, trans aquam Stygis ducem +Secutus unum et unicum, Catulle, te, +Ut ora vatis optimi reviserem, +Tui meique vatis ora, quem scio +Venustiorem adisse vel tuo lacum, +Benigniora semper arva vel tuis, +Ubi serenus accipit suos deus, +Tegitque myrtus implicata laurea, +Manuque mulcet halituque consecrat +Fovetque blanda mors amabili sinu, +Et ore fama fervido colit viros +Alitque qualis unus ille par tibi +Britannus unicusque in orbe praestitit +Amicus ille noster, ille ceteris +Poeta major, omnibusque floribus +Priore Landor inclytum rosa caput +Revinxit extulitque, quam tua manu +Recepit ac refovit integram sua. + + + +DEDICATION + +1878 + + +Some nine years gone, as we dwelt together +In the sweet hushed heat of the south French weather + Ere autumn fell on the vine-tressed hills +Or the season had shed one rose-red feather, + +Friend, whose fame is a flame that fills +All eyes it lightens and hearts it thrills + With joy to be born of the blood which bred +From a land that the grey sea girds and chills + +The heart and spirit and hand and head +Whose might is as light on a dark day shed, + On a day now dark as a land's decline +Where all the peers of your praise are dead, + +In a land and season of corn and vine +I pledged you a health from a beaker of mine + But halfway filled to the lip's edge yet +With hope for honey and song for wine. + +Nine years have risen and eight years set +Since there by the wellspring our hands on it met: + And the pledge of my songs that were then to be, +I could wonder not, friend, though a friend should forget. + +For life's helm rocks to the windward and lee, +And time is as wind, and as waves are we; + And song is as foam that the sea-winds fret, +Though the thought at its heart should be deep as the sea. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (Second Series), by +Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS & BALLADS (SECOND SERIES) *** + +***** This file should be named 27401.txt or 27401.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/4/0/27401/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Christina and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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