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diff --git a/old/54907-0.txt b/old/54907-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8a91653..0000000 --- a/old/54907-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3321 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Sail, by Louise Imogen Guiney - -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/license - - -Title: The White Sail - and Other Poems - -Author: Louise Imogen Guiney - -Release Date: June 14, 2017 [EBook #54907] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE SAIL *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif, Emmy, MWS and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - - THE WHITE SAIL - - And Other Poems - - - - - THE WHITE SAIL - AND OTHER POEMS. BY - LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - - [Illustration: colophon] - - TICKNOR & COMPANY - PUBLISHERS, BOSTON - - - _Copyright, 1887_, - BY TICKNOR AND COMPANY. - - _All rights reserved._ - - - University Press: - JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. - - - - - _A SALUTE by night, than night’s own heart-beat stiller, - From the dying to the living. Keats! I lay - Here against thy moonlit, storm-unshaken pillar, - My garland of a day._ - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - -THE WHITE SAIL 11 - - -Legends. - -TARPEIA 35 - -THE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR 40 - -THE RISE OF THE TIDE 44 - -CHALUZ CASTLE 48 - -THE WOOING PINE 51 - -THE SERPENT’S CROWN 57 - -MOUSTACHE 62 - -RANIERI 65 - -SAINT CADOC’S BELL 68 - -A CHOUAN 76 - - -Lyrics. - -YOUTH 83 - -THE LAST FAUN 85 - -KNIGHTS OF WEATHER 87 - -DAYBREAK 90 - -ON SOME OLD MUSIC 91 - -LATE PEACE 94 - -TO A YOUNG POET 97 - -DE MORTUIS 98 - -DOWN STREAM 99 - -THE INDIAN PIPE 103 - -BROOK FARM 105 - -‘MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS’ 107 - -GARDEN CHIDINGS 108 - -FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM 109 - -BANKRUPT 110 - -A REASON FOR SILENCE 112 - -TEMPTATION 113 - -FOR A CHILD 115 - -AGLAUS 116 - -AN AUDITOR 118 - -THE WATER-TEXT 119 - -CYCLAMEN 120 - -A PASSING SONG 124 - -IN TIME 125 - -THE WILD RIDE 126 - -THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE 128 - -A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY 129 - -IMMUNITY 130 - -PAULA’S EPITAPH 131 - -JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX 132 - - -Sonnets. - -APRIL DESIRE 137 - -TWOFOLD SERVICE 138 - -IN THE GYMNASIUM 139 - -A SALUTATION 140 - -AT A SYMPHONY 141 - -SLEEP 142 - -THE ATONING YESTERDAY 143 - -‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS’ 144 - -FOUR SONNETS FROM ‘LA VITA NUOVA’ 145 - - - - - THE WHITE SAIL. - - - HIGH on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry, - The promontoried porch of Attica, - Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair - Down-glittered with the breaker’s volleying foam - Visioned before him in the level dark: - Ægeus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king. - And round about his knees, and at his feet, - In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight, - Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups - Sheer to the ocean’s edge, those liegemen fond - Who with him wished and wept. As thro’ the hours - Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill, - Lies summer’s russet ruined panoply, - Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds - Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow - Globes itself on the summit; so they clung - Secure among the rangèd crevices, - Month after month, and wakeful night on night - Vigilant; ever neighbored and o’ertopped - With that white presence, and the boding sky. - - And Ægeus prayed: ‘O give me back but him! - My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount, - My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace - Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths - Or into battle’s maw: my lad of Athens! - With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show - Infancy’s golden-silken underglow; - The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea - Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes - In one close sombre file against his cheek, - Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop, - Wherethro’ gleams laughter as thro’ sorrow’s pale. - And anger’s self doth tremble maidenly; - The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth; - The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride, - As I so oft have marked, when from the chase, - The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow, - Heading the burdened company, he came, - Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler - Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus! - Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation, - Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty - Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded - Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear, - And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming, - Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods! - Forasmuch as I love him and await him, - Who from my youth have been your servitor, - Yield my old age its boon of vindication: - Haven the happy ship here, ere I die.’ - - Still heedlessly the hushed moon bent her bow - Over the unshorn forest oakenry - And the dense gladiate leaves of Thoræ’s pine: - The cold and incommunicable moon, - Waxing and waning thro’ the barren time - That brought not Theseus’ self, nor of him sign, - Nor any waif of rumor out of Crete, - Whereto, a year nigh gone, the ship had sped - Forlorn; her decks enshrouded in plucked yew - Strewn to the mizzen; and her oary props - And halyards all with blossomed myrtle twined, - And every sail dark as from looms of hell, - In token of the universal dole. - And on her heavèd anchor and spurred keel - Cheers none, but protest, moans, and ire attended, - When from the quay, in melancholy weather - Forward she sobbed on black unwilling wing. - - But ere that going drear, one foot ashore, - Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand,-- - The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed, - Lifted his head, and met his father’s eyes, - And out of morning ardor made this oath: - ‘My people, stand not for our sakes in tears! - No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike - And overcome, Heaven’s favor for my shield. - And when engirt with conquest I return - (Or never else hies Theseus hitherward), - That ye may read my heart while yet at sea, - And know indeed that fate hath used me fair, - That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home, - Lo, I will set upon the central mast - The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze, - White to that fierce and alien coast, and white - To your espial, from the horizon’s brink - Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy. - Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me.’ - - And they believed and watched, albeit with dread, - Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king, - Who, taciturn and close-engarmented, - From his nocturnal towered station leaned - Pining against the unresponsive tide. - And thro’ his brain, with hum processional, - Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus, - The race he won of yore, the song he sang; - His truth, his eloquence, his April moods, - And all his championship of trodden tribes, - Since first he lit on Athens, like a star. - - For Ægeus, to the low-voiced Meta wed, - Thereafter to Rhexenor’s daughter spouse, - Childless, and by his brethren’s guile deposed, - Led by a last mysterious oracle, - Once, exiled, to Trœzene wandered down; - And there, accorded Aphrodite’s grace, - To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised, - Atonement and conciliation sweet, - Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway - Bereavèd Æthra, of old Pelops’ race - Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home. - But with the auroral kiss of parting, he - In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore - Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock, - And both the jewelled sandals from his feet, - With lofty exhortation: ‘Bid my son, - When he, with strength inherited of mine - Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon, - And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!’ - And Æthra bided, dreaming, at the court, - Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes. - - And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves, - Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly, - Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb - Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide, - But with strange awe hang o’er him worshipping, - As one that turns with passionate-praying lips - East to the Delian shrine he shall not see: - Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent - In wicker-work of some swart soldier’s skill, - With lisping promise aye to nourish it; - And stroked his plaining bird for one long day, - But on the morrow ceased his fostering, - And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd - Of water unreplenished. Then the child - Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute; - And Æthra held his innocent hand in hers - With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw - Remorse, and irremediable ache, - And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves - To the eased byways of forgetfulness. - She, his hot brows caressing, so besought - The weeping prince: ‘If thou, O little son! - Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself, - Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe. - Be a trust broken but a small, small thing, - Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.’ - And ere the dial veered, did Æthra speak - His vanished father’s name and gave the charge, - And led him to the rock, and in him fired - The aspirations of his godlike race. - - Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he - Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft - Burst thro’ arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn, - And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light, - Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole - The granite treasurer of those tokens twain: - With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand, - His cloud of yellow hair hanging before, - Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee - With obdurate sieges, into its hard side; - Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb, - Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours, - Beating a moated way about that place - Where the grim guardian held a fixèd foot; - And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears, - Stole back, o’ervanquished, to his quiet nooks. - There would he woo his mother’s frequent tale, - And urge her gentle prophecy, that he - The kinsman of great Herakles, should too - Rise, mighty, and o’er earth’s fell odds prevail. - Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart - To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew, - Season on season, patient. And behold, - When the tenth summer’s delicate keen dews - Died from his shoreward path, at last befell - One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock - At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed, - Clean to the sea’s verge rolled that doughty bulk! - And Theseus, in his full inheritance, - In the superb meridian of his youth, - Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast, - Climbed to his mother’s bower. Æthra laid - Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned, - Thereby apprised the destined hour had come, - And having sped her boy upon his quest, - Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died. - - Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland, - All robber-plagues infesting those still glens - Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed. - Phæa, prodigious Crommyonian shape, - Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew; - And of his dominant valor overcame - The smith-god’s son, who with the mortal mace - Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur; - Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge, - He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb - Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs; - And him that thrust the lavers of his feet - Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served - By dint of hospitable precedent; - Wide Marathonia’s lordly bull he led, - Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose, - To the knife’s edge at bland Apollo’s shrine; - Last, guided to a grove sabbatical, - Knelt to the chanting white Phytalidæ, - And in their midst was chrismed, and purified - From all the bloodshed of his troublous path. - - On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode, - Docile to Æthra’s warning, that unnamed, - And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire; - For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held - The city’s sovereignty; and overruled - Their father’s childless brother, Ægeus old: - The agile, able, proud Pallantidæ, - Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir, - Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war. - Therefore, unheralded, with wary step, - Chancing upon an open banquet-hall, - Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed - The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy; - And straight, along the heaped board glancing down, - Evil Medea, on her harmful track - From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted. - - This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late - Her tender brother’s slayer, whose vile spells - Had promised Ægeus princes of his blood. - Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon, - Honor, the flood august of all his life: - For he, distrustful of the oracles, - Inasmuch as Trœzene flowered no hope, - Now in the season of his utmost need, - Subservient to the sorceress and her whims, - Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her; - And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine - With golden incident and public pomp, - Holding by night most sumptuous festival, - Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned. - Now Theseus knew that wily woman’s face, - Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes, - Shrank close to Ægeus, voluble with fear, - And urged within his palm a carven bowl, - That he should bid the young wayfarer drain - Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught: - Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell, - Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth, - And sprang to cower the temptress with a word. - But at the instant, sprang her minions too, - And riot and upbraidings dire began, - Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging. - Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro’ the fray, - With love’s suspicion kindling in his veins, - And gained that space before the startled host - Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away: - Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet, - Shod with the shoon Ægean; and his arm - Sabred with the one sword that Ægeus knew! - Who, blanching ’neath roused memory’s ebb and flow, - Among the wrangling merry-makers all, - Clarioned ‘My own!’ and strained him to his breast. - - Theseus, in those fresh days of his return, - Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste - Bore down on the usurping lords of state, - Juniors and kin of his discrownèd sire; - Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld - Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor, - And Ægeus, o’er the wreckage of their reign - Exalted, with calm brows indiademed. - Then was the sacred and sequestered prime - Of liberation, benison, and peace; - When the round heaven, in summer’s ministrance - Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end - Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue, - Comely and yet with rains ingerminate, - Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent - His nimble princeling. In a fortnight’s span, - The island lad, competing in the games, - Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob - Made rude revolt, and took upon itself - The barbarous dishonor of his death. - And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town, - Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise: - ‘Athens shall yearly proffer unto me - Her virgin tribute of patrician seed, - Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot, - Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur.’ - Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head. - - So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro’ the realm, - Aye of its dearest blood depopulate, - And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year, - Youngest of all departed, full thirteen - Faltered aboard the deck calamitous; - And with them Theseus, best-belovèd Theseus, - The king’s sole-born, whom last the doom befell. - But as no sister-galley e’er set out - To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse - Returning with her steersman, went this ship, - Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt - To thread the maze Dædalian, and destroy - The pampered monster, holding harm at bay - From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash - Homeward, to chime of oar-compellèd waves, - Signalling with the white exultant sail! - ‘So that I live, this thing,’ he said, ‘is sworn: - Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me.’ - - Such tales of Theseus’ youth his father’s mind - Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night, - Deep pondering on each noble circumstance, - As a man shifteth, thro’ an idle hour, - Anon with hand in light, anon in shade, - The lustres of his one memorial gem. - And oft the king, with a foreboding throe - Called, urging eld’s unserviceable sight: - ‘Shines the white sail yet?’ Spake the murmurous ring: - ‘Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on.’ - Then the fond voice of Ægeus, askingly: - ‘Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.’ - - Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth - The king had cherished, from a mossy seat, - The anxious faces turned his happy way; - And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm, - Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained - Against the diapason of the sea. - - ‘Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces, - Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free: - Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces, - The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee. - - ‘My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing - Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day! - And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging, - Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away.’ - - But the king hid his brow in both wan hands, - Sighing: ‘That song at her beguiling feet, - Out of my brief enslavement, did I make - The year that Theseus on our revels stole. - It sears me like a brand with fires o’erpast: - Be silent, my Alcamenes! spare it me. - Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain - With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal - That sets the dull blood dancing.’ Theron smiled, - Masking suspense (for he was Theseus’ friend), - Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin - Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king, - In trolling of an agitated lay. - - ‘I drowse in the grass, to the crickets’ elfin strings, - With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book, - At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs, - Cydippe’s hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill! - Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look, - My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill, - In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook: - Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill! - My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings, - Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there. - See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings - Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe’s hand thro’ my hair.’ - - Again, with swift uneasy gesturing - Turned Ægeus, chiding, and protested ere - The whipped-up courage of that roundel’s close: - ‘Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song, - A song of retribution.’ For he thought: - ‘So retribution dogs my bruisèd age; - Still, still Medea’s soft and deadly name - Stings all the leafy splendor of my life, - And daunts the morrow’s bud. And if there be - A reckoning I must pay for follies past, - Must it be--O not that, not now, not here!’ - And drawing to his height, he cried: ‘The sail? - Comes the sail from the south?’ They chorused ‘Naught - Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull.’ - And Ægeus, craving solace, urged once more: - ‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul, - In numbers honey-clear.’ Now Rhodalus - The poet, too, was loyal sentinel; - A fiery patriot, wont to domineer - The moods of Athens; very potent he, - And flexile-throated as the nightingale. - With all his fingers knit about his knee, - And head against a hoary pillar raised, - Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge, - Riddling the unintelligible space,-- - Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives, - And interstellar agonies of midnight; - To him the king’s voice throbbed a second time: - ‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul.’ - Who, grave with poesy’s most candid mien, - Answered the summons softly: ‘Sire, I cannot. - The music of my brothers is amiss, - So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested - From their discreet and silvern vassalage, - Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus’ sake. - I cannot sing. But O you holy stars! - Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory; - Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits; - You domèd guardians of this tear-bound earth, - You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands - Hale rank on rank, thro’ warless cities riding! - Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven, - Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs - That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace, - Bide thro’ the watches with us; shine; exhale not!’ - And the dense quiet bound them. - - Cautiously, - In his far corner, one behind the king - At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush, - With nervous finger twitched his neighbor’s sleeve, - And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue, - And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced - Towards twilight’s gracious advent, crept in awe - With arm extended, to his fellow’s side; - And the two thrilled alike, immovable, - Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye, - Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked, - Piloting his keen sight across the main, - And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan, - And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes - The apprehensive company dropped aghast - Out on the reeling ragged precipice - Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide: - Till Ægeus, slow-divining dupe of hope, - Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne, - Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked - In gyral passage, like Ixion’s wheel, - Spoke on accursèd spoke, portending woe. - But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle - Called like a ghost from walled eternity: - ‘What of the sail? What cheer?’ Their lips congealed - Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on. - Intolerable arid east-blown wave - Vaulting on wave thro’ all her caverns loud, - Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea. - - Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate, - Spied leaning o’er the crags the frenzied king, - Rending his garment to the paling moon; - And yet evasive of those pleading eyes, - Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast, - Adjured him: ‘O most reverend, O most dear! - The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain. - Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black.’ - And all the trancèd host burst into moan. - - Old Ægeus, like a dreamer, muttered ‘Aye,’ - Passive; and from his brain the fever fell, - And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen - Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear. - Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white; - The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead - In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead; - Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty - Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead! - And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf - All winter gibbeted upon that bough - Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery! - Inert, of his own broken heart impelled, - From the steep, solitary trysting-place, - King Ægeus, like a stone, dropped in the sea. - - A wraith of smoke, fast-driven against a flame, - Yon by the crimsoning east the dark ship moved, - Her herald noises strangely borne ashore: - ‘Joy, joy!’ and interlinked: ‘O joy, O joy, - Athens our mother! joy to all thy gates!’ - And thunderous firm acclaim of minstrelsy, - Laughter, and antheming, and salvos wild - Outran the racing prow. But mute they lay, - The blinded watchers, spent beyond desire, - Wounded beyond this wonder’s balsaming. - - Yet ever, thro’ the trembling lovely light, - Known voice on voice re-echoed, face on face - Uprose in resurrection. They were safe, - And Athens, hark! from her long thraldom free! - And Theseus, victor, sang and sailed with them, - The pale unsistered Phædra for his bride, - For whom was constant Ariadne cast - On Naxos, where a god did comfort her. - Theseus! who when his bark the shallows grazed, - Leaped in the gentle waves for boyish glee, - Gained the thronged highway, crossed it at a bound, - Scaling the cliffs; and stood among them there, - Clausus, and his dear Theron, and the rest, - Nodding upon the clamorous crowd below; - But they, as soon, had turned them blunt away, - In hot resentment of that false one. He, - O’erbrimming with frank welcomes, in dismay, - Stricken with sight of unresponsive hands, - Scenting disaster, reining up his tongue, - Asked sharply for the king. - - He understood - After mad struggle and bewilderment, - And gloomy gazing on the absent deeps. - Down on the penitential rock he sank, - All his fair body palpitant with shame, - Syllabing agony: ‘Ægeus, Ægeus! ah, - Glory of Hellas! dead for trust in me. - Life-giver, irrecoverable friend, - My father! ah, ah, loving father mine, - Ah, dear my father!... I forgot the sail.’ - - And the great morn burst. On a hundred hills - The marigold unbarred her casement bright. - - - - - LEGENDS - - - - - TARPEIA. - - - WOE: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam! - Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome! - - Lo, now it was night, with the moon looking chill as she went: - It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent. - - The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird; - She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard. - - Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light; - All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night. - - The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee; - The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see: - - Exquisite artifice, whorls of barbaric design, - Frost’s fixèd mimicry; orbic imaginings fine - - In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them, - The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem. - - And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye. - ‘I had never such trinkets!’ she sighed,--like a lute was her sigh. - - ‘Were they mine at the plea, were they mine for the token, all told, - Now the citadel sleeps, now my father the keeper is old, - - ‘If I go by the way that I know, and thou followest hard, - If yet at the touch of Tarpeia the gates be unbarred?’ - - The chief trembled sharply for joy, then drew rein on his soul: - ‘Of all this arm beareth I swear I will cede thee the whole.’ - - And up from the nooks of the camp, with hoarse plaudit outdealt, - The bearded Sabini glanced hotly, and vowed as they knelt, - - Bare-stretching the wrists that bore also the glowing great boon: - ‘Yea! surely as over us shineth the lurid low moon, - - ‘Not alone of our lord, but of each of us take what he hath! - Too poor is the guerdon, if thou wilt but show us the path.’ - - Her nostril upraised, like a fawn’s on the arrowy air, - She sped; in a serpentine gleam to the precipice stair, - - They climbed in her traces, they closed on their evil swift star: - She bent to the latches, and swung the huge portal ajar. - - Repulsed where they passed her, half-tearful for wounded belief, - ‘The bracelets!’ she pleaded. Then faced her the leonine chief, - And answered her: ‘Even as I promised, maid-merchant, I do.’ - Down from his dark shoulder the baubles he sullenly drew. - - ‘This left arm shall nothing begrudge thee. Accept. Find it sweet. - Give, too, O my brothers!’ The jewels he flung at her feet, - - The jewels hard, heavy; she stooped to them, flushing with dread, - But the shield he flung after: it clanged on her beautiful head. - - Like the Apennine bells when the villagers’ warnings begin, - Athwart the first lull broke the ominous din upon din; - - With a ‘Hail, benefactress!’ upon her they heaped in their zeal - Death: agate and iron; death: chrysoprase, beryl and steel. - - ’Neath the outcry of scorn, ’neath the sinewy tension and hurl, - The moaning died slowly, and still they massed over the girl - A mountain of shields! and the gemmy bright tangle in links, - A torrent-like gush, pouring out on the grass from the chinks, - - Pyramidal gold! the sumptuous monument won - By the deed they had loved her for, doing, and loathed her for, done. - - Such was the wage that they paid her, such the acclaim: - All Rome was aroused with the thunder that buried her shame. - - On surged the Sabini to battle. O you that aspire! - Tarpeia the traitor had fill of her woman’s desire. - - Woe: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam! - Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome! - - - - - THE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR. - - - I. - - SCORNER of the pleading faces, - In the first year of his reign, - From the lean crowd and its traces - - Down the open orchard-lane - Walked young Mahmoud in his glory, - In his pomp and his disdain - - And beyond all oratory, - Music’s sweetness, ocean’s might, - Fell a voice from branches hoary: - - ‘He whose heart is at life’s height, - Who has wisdom, love, and riches, - Islam’s greatest, dies this night.’ - - And he crossed the rampart ditches - Blinded, and confused, and slow; - High in palaced nooks and niches - - Clanged his fathers’ shields a-row; - And their turrets triple-jointed - Shook with tempests of his woe. - - Long past midnight, disanointed, - Prone upon his breast he lay, - Warring on that hour appointed: - - But behold! at break of day,-- - As if heaven itself had spoken,-- - Blown across the bannered bay, - - Over mart and mosque outbroken, - Came the silver-solemn chime - For some parted spirit’s token! - - Mahmoud, with free breath sublime, - Summoned one whose snow-locks heaving - Made the vision of hoar Time; - - And the red tides of thanksgiving - On his lifted brow, he said: - ‘In my city of the living, - - Which, proclaimed of bells, is dead?’ - And the gray beard answered: ‘Master, - One who yesternight for bread - - At thy gateway’s bronze pilaster - Begged in vain: blind Selim, he, - Victim of the old disaster.’ - - And the vassal suddenly - Looked on his hard lord with wonder, - For those tears were strange to see. - - - II. - - Yet again, where boughs asunder - Held the wavy orchard-tent, - Sun-empurpled clusters under - - In changed mood the Caliph went; - And anew heard sounds upgather, - (Chidings with caressings blent, - - As the voice once of his father): - ‘Haughty heart! not thou wert wise, - Rich, belovèd; Selim, rather, - - ‘Islam’s prince in Allah’s eyes! - Even the meek, in his great station, - Freehold had of Paradise.’ - - - III. - - When the plague-wind’s desolation - Pierced Bassora’s burning wall, - Circled with a kneeling nation - - Whom his mercies held in thrall, - Died the Caliph, whispering tender - Counsel to his liegemen tall: - - ‘One last service, children! render - Me, whose pride the Lord forgave: - Not by our supreme Defender, - - ‘Not beside the holy wave, - Not in places where my race is - Lay me! but in Selim’s grave.’ - - - - - THE RISE OF THE TIDE. - - - A FISHERMAN gray, one night of yore, - His nets upgathered, plied the oar, - Right merrily heading for a haven, - While summer winds blew blithe before. - - He sat beneath his pennon white; - His arms were brown, his eye was bright; - Twice twenty years his breast had carried - A ribbon from Lepanto’s fight. - - A cove he spied at sunset’s edge, - With pleasant trees and margin-sedge; - And barefoot went by stakes down-driven - Thro’ shallows wading from the ledge, - - The boat drawn after; but behold! - A check fell on his venture bold: - He stood imprisoned, vainly leading - The ropes in whitening fingers old. - - Within that black and marshy sound - His weight had sunken; he was bound - Knee-deep! and as he beat and struggled, - The mocking ripples danced around. - - Long since the wood-thrush ceased her song; - The summer wind grew fierce and strong; - The shuddering moon went into hiding; - Down came the storm to wreak him wrong. - - Against the prow he leaned his chin, - Thinking of all his strength had been; - Then turned, and laughed with courage steady: - ‘O ho! what straits we twain are in!’ - - And strove anew, unterrified, - But lastly, wearied wholly, cried - For succor, since his laden wherry - Rocked ever on the coming tide. - - * * * * * - - ‘I hear a cry of anguish sore!’ - But straight his love had barred the door: - ‘Bide here; the night bodes naught but danger.’ - Loud beat the waves along the shore. - - A bedded child made soft behest: - ‘So loud the voice I cannot rest.’ - ‘It is the rain, dear, in the garden.’ - The cruel water binds his breast. - - ‘A lamp, a lamp! some traveller’s lost!’ - But thro’ the tavern roared the host: - ‘Nay, only thunder rude and heavy.’ - Close to his lips the foam is tossed. - - ‘O listen well, my liege and king! - Hark from gay halls this grievous thing!’ - ‘Strange how the wild wind drowns our music!’ - About his head the eddies swing. - - At stroke of three the abbot meek - Moved out among his flock to speak - This word, with tears of doubt and wonder: - ‘I had a dream; come forth and seek.’ - - With torch and flagon, forth they sped: - The fisher glared from the harbor-bed! - The tide, from his white hair down-fallen, - All kindly ebbed, now he was dead. - - Lepanto’s star shone fast and good; - The sea-kelp wrapped him like a hood; - His arms were stretched in woe to heaven; - The boat had drifted: so he stood. - - The Unavenged he seemed to be! - Then fell each monk upon his knee: - ‘Lord Christ!’ the abbot sang, awe-stricken: - ‘Rest my old rival’s soul!’ sang he. - - - - - CHALUZ CASTLE. - - - THERE sped, at hint of treasure - Dug from the garden-mould, - Word to the doughty vassal: - ‘Thy sovereign claims the gold!’ - ‘Nay, Richard, come and wrest it!’ - Said Vidomar the bold. - - Uprose the Lionhearted, - He locked his armor on: - And over seas that morrow - Around his gonfalon, - The crash and hiss of battle - Blazed up, and mocked the sun. - - King Richard led his bowmen - By Chaluz dark and high; - Like rain and rack they followed - His flashing storm-blue eye: - Forth peered Bertrand de Gourdon - From the turret stair thereby. - - Thro’ morris-pikes and halberds - The king rode out and in, - His horse in gaudy trappings, - His sabre drawn and thin: - Down knelt Bertrand de Gourdon - His strongbow at his chin. - - O shrill that arrow quivered! - And fierce and awful broke - Acclaim in billowy thunder - From all the foreign folk, - At mighty Richard fallen - Beneath a foreign oak! - - Then leaped his English barons, - Converging from afar, - And loosed the flood of slaughter - To the gates of Vidomar; - And seized Bertrand de Gourdon, - As clouds enmesh a star. - - They brought the bright-cheeked archer - Who scoffed not, neither feared, - To the tent ringed in with faces - That menaced in their beard; - But the king’s face lay before him - In the lamplight semisphered. - - The king’s self, stern and pallid - Gazed on the lad that day, - And as if dreams were on him - Besought him gently: ‘Say, - Bertrand de Gourdon! wherefore - Thou tak’st my life away?’ - - ‘To venge my martyr-father, - My foster-brethren three: - In the name of thy dead foemen - This thing I did to thee!’ - And Richard perished, sighing: - ‘Forgive him. Set him free!’ - - Alas for that late loving - By seneschals betrayed! - While yet upon his lashes - The holy tear delayed, - They bound Bertrand de Gourdon, - They slew him in the glade. - - Alas for noble spirits - Whom fates perverse befall! - Whence David in his beauty - Gave healing unto Saul, - The jeering wind beats ever - On Chaluz castle wall. - - - - - THE WOOING PINE. - - - THERE was a lady, starshine in her look, - Of lineage fierce, yet tremulous and kind - As the field-gossamer, that down the wind - Floats gleamingly from some enthistled nook; - And wayward as her beauty was her mind - That evermore bright errant journeys took. - - Her father’s houndish lords she moved among, - From feud and uproar dewily distraught; - Winnowed her harp of its least pain; and brought - Delight’s full freshet to a beggar’s tongue, - Or spun amid her maids with chapel-thought - That on a crystal pivot burned and swung. - - But night on night, an exile from sleek rest, - She nestled warm before her hearth-fire low, - To watch its little wind-born planets go - Orbing; and from the martyr-oak’s charred breast, - In spirit-blue flame, in quintuple wild glow, - The tossing leaves prolong their summer zest. - - And ailingly, she needs must often sigh, - Perplexèd out of her rich wonted glee, - Whereof some unseen warder kept the key, - And quell the dark defiance of her eye - In patience, as a torch dips in the sea. - And so, in brooding, went the white days by. - - Unto the horsemen brave in war’s array - She waved no token from her latticed house, - Nor yet of princelings bare upon her brows - Love’s salutation; but from such as they - Turned, as a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs, - And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away - - Her sealèd sense beheld no man, nor heard, - Nor lent its troth to any mortal bond, - But lived heart-full of vital light beyond, - And with miraculous tides of being stirred, - Lingering tho’ eager, till the forest fond - Winged to its own pure peace this homing bird. - - For, sad with rains of unrevealed desire, - And heavy with predestined glory’s beam, - She to the water-girdled wood’s extreme - Stole from her suitors’ pleas, her father’s ire, - Far from their brambly ways to sit and dream, - And make sweet plaint, in daylight’s dying fire; - - When, one with lilt of her own veins, there rose - Across remote and jasmine-pillared space, - A voice of so persuasive, piteous grace - That all her globèd sorrow did unclose - To fragrant helpfulness in that still place, - And sought, in tears, the breather of such woes. - - And peering, of the level-shafted sun - Evasive, listening from a mossy knoll, - To kindling quiet sank her gentle soul, - In awe at some high venture to be done, - As when outpeals from Fame’s coercive pole, - Too soon, on ears too weak, her clarion. - - Burst in the golden air a wide and deep - Torrent of harmony, that with clang and shock - Might wreck a pinnace on an Afric rock, - And on the ruin foamily o’erheap - Bright reparation: ’twas a strength to mock - Itself with swoons, and idle sobs, and sleep. - - A splendor-hoary pine, of kingliest cheer, - Enrooted ’neath her thrilling footfall, stood; - Suffused with youth and gracious hardihood, - Sown of the wind from heaven’s memorial sphere, - With the red might of centuries in his blood, - Unscarred and straight against the battling year, - - From whose great heart those noble accents flowed, - And from the melancholy arms outspread - Whereon the aching winter long had snowed: - ‘Come, sister! spouse! whom Love hath strangely led - From bondage, come!’ And her most blessèd head - She laid upon his breast as her abode. - - O wonderful to hearing, touch, and gaze! - This was of soul’s unrest and spirit’s scar - Solving and healing; this the late full star - Superillumining the hither ways, - And the old blind allegiance set ajar - Like a dark door, against its flooded rays. - - All intertangled fell their dusky hair - In tender twilight’s bowery recess; - And that fair bride of her heart-heaviness - Was disenthralled in love’s Lethean air, - Where orchids hung upon the wind’s caress, - And the first tawny lily made her lair. - - Dear minions served them in the covert green: - The squirrel coy, the beetle in his mail, - The moth, the bee, the throbbing nightingale, - And the gaunt wolf, their vassal; to them e’en - The widowed serpent, on her vengeful trail, - Upcast an iridescent eye serene. - - The last tired envoy from the realm bereaved - Blew at the drawbridge, riding castlewards; - The fisher-folk along the beachen shards - Pierced, calling, the cool thickets silvern leaved; - And grandams meagre, and road-roaming bards - Shared her sad theme, for whom men vainly grieved. - - But lad and lass, with parted mouth a-bloom, - Who strayed thereby in April’s misty prime, - A vision freshening to the after-time - Caught thro’ the rifts of uninvaded gloom,-- - A maiden, honey-lipped as Tuscan rhyme, - And her young hunter, with his sombre plume. - - For dynasties tho’ passing-bells be tolled, - Theirs is the midmost ecstasy of June, - Her music, her imperishable moon; - While Time, that elsewhere is so rough and cold, - Like a soft child, flower-plucking all forenoon, - Gathers the ages from this garden old. - - Calm housemates with them in their forest lone - Do Freedom, Innocence and Joy, abide: - And aye as one who into Heaven hath died - Thro’ mortal aisleways of melodious moan, - The boatman sees, at dusk, from Arno’s tide, - The Everlasting Lover with his own! - - - - - THE SERPENT’S CROWN. - - - SAID he: - - ‘O diligent rover! browned under many a heaven, - Treasure and trophy you carry, spoils from the east and the west; - Yet I fear that you passed it over, the chief clime out of the seven, - My wonder-land and my island, where the chance of a knight is best. - - ‘There from the black mid-forest, past hemlock guards in waiting - (Heard you not of the legend?), when the wide sun winks at noon, - On the rock-ways sharpest, hoarest, warily undulating, - A star-dappled serpent hurries, with the odorous grace of June. - - ‘Over her human forehead, reared among glens abysmal, - Glitters a crown gold-gossamer; only a moment’s arc - Crosses the creature torrid, flexile, palpitant, prismal, - Then breaks on the earth, a terror spiralling into the dark. - - ‘Every to-day and to-morrow, as the foreign old belfries tremble - With the hammer-hard heels of noon, just that instant, nor more nor less, - In the blue witch-reptile’s furrow her shape stands to dissemble, - And the barbed tongue tempts and entices, and the fire-eyes acquiesce. - - ‘Once she was a wily woman, whose glory the gods have finished, - Whose handicraft still is ruin, whose glee is to snare and kill, - Defier of spearman and bowman, her empery undiminished; - But whoso can overcome her, shall bend the world to his will! - - ‘Therefore the knights importune to spur thro’ the jungles fruity, - Many a lad and a hunter and a dreamer there ventureth; - For the king tends power and fortune to the slayer of that demon-beauty, - And awards him her crown thrice-charmèd whose captor can outwit Death, - - ‘Aye, ride above storm and censure, and lord it o’er time and distance, - In the maddening-sweet assurance of bliss like a rose-rain shed, - All for a wood-path venture, a gallant alert resistance, - And a stroke of the steel in circle about that exquisite head! - - ‘A task for your young drilled muscle!’ - But the other, in soft derision - - Answered him: - - ‘Oh, I had once some wild schemes under my hat: - Some thrill for this same snake-tussle, and the heirdom of life Elysian, - Long peace, long loving, long praises: but I’ve kindled - and cooled on that! - - ‘Ten years have I been a ranger, I have hewn all dread to the centre; - I have learned to sift out values; my soul is at rest and free. - If that be your boon for danger, on a dull safe youth to enter, - Tho’ some may covet the guerdon, ’tis a poor enough thing to me. - - ‘I choose, might I come and return so, to a cause, a friend and a foeman - Staunch, to endure for the rest but as a moth, or a marigold! - Let the philosophers yearn so, the king bribe squire and yeoman! - Not for my lease immortal the serpent shall be cajoled. - - ‘To strike her down avenges her slain; but is evil ended? - The fashion dies; the function abides, and has fresher scope. - What is to be won? He cringes who would seize, were the choice extended, - For the risk elsewhere of living, here only survival’s hope! - - ‘I would keep my lot mine purely, cast in with men’s forever; - Their transient tempest sooner than these Sybaritic calms; - Tho’ against the cobra, surely, I would pit my soul’s endeavor, - Her crown and its lonely meaning I would scorn to take in alms. - - ‘Rather than ease unshaken, durance that sloth unhallows, - Once and for all, in honor, an end: what’s the forfeit crown - If the chance of my short term taken run plump on the axe or the gallows, - So one brother’s fetter be loosened, or one tyrant trampled down? - - ‘Why, see! this diadem’s pleasure a Turk might sigh to inherit,-- - Heart-beats thrumming; a torpid and solitary cheer; - No call to arms, no measure of progress! Well, let him wear it - Unquestioned ... I spurned the bauble when I killed your snake - last year.’ - - - - - MOUSTACHE. - - - A FRIENDLESS pup that heard the fife - Sprang to the column thro’ the clearing, - And on to Switzerland and strife - Went grenadiering. - - Much he endured, and much he dared - The long hot doomsday of the nations: - He wore a trooper’s scars; he shared - A trooper’s rations; - - Warned pickets, seized the Austrian spies, - Bore the despatches; thro’ the forces - From fallen riders, prompt and wise, - Led back the horses; - - Served round the tents or in the van, - Quick-witted, tireless as a treadle: - ‘This private wins,’ said Marshal Lannes, - ‘Ribbon and medal.’ - - (‘Moustache, a brave French dog,’ it lay - Graven on silver, like a scholar’s; - ‘Who lost a leg on Jena day, - But saved the colors!’) - - At Saragossa he was slain; - They buried him, and fired a volley: - End of Moustache. Nay, that were strain - Too melancholy. - - His immortality was won, - His most of rapture came to bless him, - When, plumed and proud, Napoleon - Stooped to caress him. - - His Emperor’s hand upon his head! - How, since, shall lesser honors suit him? - Yet ever, in that army’s stead, - Love will salute him. - - And since not every cause enrolls - Such little, fond, sagacious henchmen, - Write this dog’s moral on your scrolls, - Soldiers and Frenchmen! - - As law is law, can be no waste - Of faithfulness, of worth and beauty; - Lord of all time the slave is placed - Who doth his duty. - - No virtue fades to thin romance - But Heaven to use eternal moulds it: - Mark! Some firm pillar of new France, - Moustache upholds it. - - - - - RANIERI. - - - TO the lute Ranieri played, - Once beneath the jasmine shade - In a June-bright bower imprisoned, - Many a Pisan beauty listened, - Velvet-eyed, with head propped under - Her gold hair’s uncoifed wonder; - Like the rich sun-blooded roses - Whom the wind o’ertakes in poses - Of some marble-still delight, - On the dewy verge of night. - - ‘Merrily and loud sang he, - With the fairest at his knee, - Sky-ringed in that garden nest! - Who, save sorcerers, had guessed - Whither sylph and minstrel came - From the awful Archer’s aim? - Or that, glossy-pined below, - Lay the city in her woe, - For her sins, as it was written, - Desolate and fever-smitten? - - ‘Apt Ranieri was, and young, - Love’s persuasion on his tongue; - And his high-erected glance, - Softened into dalliance, - Laughed along its haughty level: - Foremost in all skill and revel, - Steeled against the laws that seemed - Monkish figments idly dreamed, - Early dipping his wild wing - In the pools of rioting, - With the moaning world shut out, - With the damosels about; - Crimson-girdled, in the sun - Regnant, as if he were one - For whom Death himself was mute;-- - So he sat, and twanged his lute.’ - (Placid, in her novice veil, - Sister Claudia told the tale.) - - ‘When, across the air of June, - Like a mist half-risen at noon, - Or a fragrance barely noted, - A Judæan Vision floated! - Who, midway of music’s burst, - Pleadingly, as if athirst, - Long athirst, and long unsated, - Sighed: “Ranieri!” sighed and waited. - - ‘Ah, the Prodigal that heard - Fell to ashes at the word! - But with broken murmurings - Putting by the wreathèd strings,-- - From the safe and craven places, - From the fond, bewildered faces, - Trembling with the rush of thought, - With contrition overwrought, - At a royal gesture, down - Straight to the dismantled town; - Girt with justice, chaste and tender, - To all risks himself to render, - Of all sorrows rude and froward - To be prop and cure henceforward; - By no lapse of irksome duty - Swerving from the Only Beauty, - By no olden lure enticed;-- - Saint Ranieri followed Christ!’ - (Said the little nun: ‘Amen: - Christ who calleth, now as then.’) - - - - - SAINT CADOC’S BELL. - - - I. - - SAILOR! with wonder thou hearest me, - Moored where the roots of thine anchors be, - Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the heart of the sea. - - A bell was I of Pagan lands - Forged and welded in might and beauty, - But captured by Christian chivalry, - And set in a belfry by godly hands, - With chrisms and benedictions three, - For a fourfold consecrated duty: - To summon to pray, to peal for the fray, - To measure the hours, to moan for the dead; - To moan for the dead, ah me! ah me! - Where the wild gold parasites suck and spread, - Where the sea-flower rears her dreamy head; - In the grots of immortality - The cool weird singing mermaids dwell in; - In the still city, with its empurpled air - Shaken upon the eye from bastions fair - Of coral, and pearl, and unbought jasper’s glisten, - I toll and wail, I burst and fail, ah, listen! - I, the holy bell, the gift of the Lord Llewellyn, - Now the keel of a Cornish ship looms over my prison, - Call from the underworld in mine old despair. - - - II. - - They brought me in my virgin fame - To the carven minster wonder-high, - Close to the glorious sun and sky, - With song, and jubilee, and acclaim: - The fountains brimming with wine sprayed out on the crowd; - In the chapel-porches the viols and harps clanged loud, - And the slim maids danced a solemn measure, ever and aye the same, - Singing: ‘Behold, we hang our bell in - The freedom of spring, in the golden weather, - The gift of the Lord Llewellyn, - Redeemed from heathenry and strange shame, - The lion-strong bell, for our service at last led hither, - Flower-woven, caressed, and in Christ made willing and tame.’ - But ere the pleased stir of the people had died, - Llewellyn, fresh home from the wars, with his soldierly stride - Climbed, bearded and splendid in mail, and his only young child - Held up from his shoulder in sight of them all; till they cried - Peal on peal of delight when the rosy babe turned, and her lip - Laid sweetly upon me in benison mild. - Yea, sailor! and thou that hearest my voice from thy ship, - Thou knowest my sorrow’s beginning, thou knowest, ah me! - Whence my tolling and wailing, my breaking and failing, afar - in the heart of the sea. - - - III. - - I served the Lord ten years and a day, - In Saint Cadoc’s church by the surging bay; - And housed with the gathering webs and must, - ’Mid whirring of velvety wings outside, - In calm and in wind, brooding over the tide, - And the bright massed roofs, and the crags’ array, - My strong life, innocent and just, - Fell of a sudden to ashes and dust, - And on my neck hotly the demon laid the bare rod of his sway! - - How it befell, I know not yet, - (Sailor, with wonder thou hearest me), - Save that a passionate sharp regret, - An exile’s longing, o’ermastered not, - Seared thought like a pestilential spot, - And sent my day-dreams traitorously - Back to the place where my life began, - To the long blue mornings, blown and wet, - To the pyre by the sacred rivulet, - And the chanting Cappadocian. - No more a Christian bell was I! - For all became, which seemed so good, - Vile thraldom, in my bitter mood - That thrust the old conformance by. - Sullen and harsh, to the acolyte - I answered of a Sabbath night, - And sprang on the organ’s withdrawing peal - To shatter its pomp, like a charge of steel. - The good monks puzzled and prayed, I trow: - But against their Heaven I set my brow. - - - IV. - - To me, by the ancient, triple-roped, - Lone, tortuous stair, whereby I made - A tingling silence, a heavy concentric shade, - The twelve-years’ child of the Lord Llewellyn groped: - With May-wreaths laden, the loving strange child came! - And my pulses that throbbed at sight of her, ten years gone, - Chilled and recoiled at her delicate finger-touch, guessing - Along my brazen-wrought margin, the laud and the blessing - Traced, thro’ the vine, thro’ the tangle of star and of sun, - By her dead father’s name, by Llewellyn’s magnificent name. - And even as she stood in the dark, the doom and the horror rushed on me; - (I had weakened my soul, and they won me!) - I felt the desire at my vitals, the unbearable joy that is pain: - With one mad tigerish spring against the dim rafter, - I smote the sweet child in my rage, I smote her with laughter, - And a sound like the rain - Whirled east on the casement, died after: - And I knew that the life in her brain - I had quenched at the stroke, and flung even my darling of yore - Down the resonant, tottering stair, down, down to the centuried door! - Then the swift hurricane, - The clamoring army thronged up from below, my - allegiance to claim! - Lean goblins, brown-flecked like a toad, the gnomic horned ghosts, - Imps flickering, quarry-sprites grim, all the din of the dolorous hosts, - All the glory and glee of the cursèd hissed round me and round, - as a flame. - And they loosened my hold from the tower, and my hope from the hem - Of the garment of Him who could save, as they jeered! and with speed - Crashed down past the rocks and the wrecks; and the horrible deed - Was done. I was theirs; and I gave up my spirit to them. - - - V. - - In a mossy minaret - Fathoms under, I am set. - All the sea-shapes undulating - At my gates forlorn are waiting, - All the dreary faint-eyed people - Watch me in my hollow steeple, - While the glass-clear city heaves - Oft beneath its earthy eaves. - So in sorrow, sorrow, sorrow - Yestereven and to-morrow, - Thro’ the æons, in a cell - Hangs Saint Cadoc’s loveless bell, - Orbèd, like a mortal’s tear, - On the moony atmosphere, - Bearing, the refrain of time, - Memory, and unrest, and crime. - Thou that hast the world sublime! - I that was free, I am lost, I am damned, I am here! - And whenever a child among men by a blow is dead, - Docile for aye from the deeps must I lift my head, - And from the heathen heart of me that breaks, - The unextinguishable music wakes, - Naught availing, naught deterred. - And the sailor heareth me, - Even as thou, alas! hast heard, - Fallen in awe upon thy knee, - Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the ominous sea. - - - - - A CHOUAN. - - - FROM the school-porch at Vannes - Weaponed, the children ran; - One little voice began, - Lark-like ascended: - - ‘Treason is on the wing, - Black vows, and menacing: - March, boys! God save the King!’ - Allio ended. - - Singing, with sunny head, - Battleward straight he led, - Stones for his captain’s bed, - Herbs for his diet: - - He and his legion brave, - Trouble enough they gave! - Ere the Blues’ bullets drave - Them into quiet. - - Spared, with a few as bold, - Once the storm over-rolled, - Allio, twelve years old, - Crept from the clamor; - - Came, when the days were brief, - To the old desk in grief, - Thumbing anew the leaf - Of the old grammar. - - Kings out!... rang the chime, - Kings in!... answered Time. - In his ignoring clime, - Silent, he studied; - - Till, ere his youth was done, - For him, the chosen one, - Shepherd disclaimed of none, - Aaron’s rod budded. - - Long, in unbroken round, - Peace on his paths he found; - Saw the glad Breton ground - Husbanded, quarried: - - Blessed it, the record saith, - All the years he had breath, - Till the dim eightieth - Snowed on his forehead. - - President!... Emperor!... - President!... On the floor - Spake a sharp Senator - Widening his ranges: - - ‘From Paris I impeach - Vannes for disloyal speech; - Send thither troops to teach, - How the world changes!’ - - Down on the peasants then - Rode the Republic’s men, - Trampling the corn again, - Miring the flowers; - - Hewed thro’ the rebels nigh, - Scoffed at the women’s cry, - Set the tricolor high - On the church towers. - - Pale in his cot that day, - Dying, the pastor lay, - Where still his eye could stray - Up valleys gleaming; - - Watchers were at his side; - Prayer unto prayer replied: - Hush! what was that he spied, - Pinnacle-streaming? - - (Nothing was he aware - In his deaf Breton air,-- - So gray traditions there - Throve unforgotten,-- - - That, by a final chance, - Kings all were led a dance; - Long since, in fickle France, - Sceptres were rotten!) - - Sprang the old lion, still - Live with prodigious will, - To his stone casement-sill; - Foolish and true one! - - Snatched up the blade he bore, - Rough with its rust of yore, - Kissed it, a saint no more-- - Only a Chouan! - - Barred from the charging mass - In the choked market-pass, - All he could do, alas! - Now, was to clang it: - - Nay, more:--‘God save the King!’ - With a last clarion ring, - Shot ere he ceased to sing, - Allio sang it. - - - - - LYRICS - - - - - YOUTH. - - - LET us hymn thee for our silent brothers, - Freely as the wild impellent wind blows, - Briefly, rudely, in the smoky pauses - Of a battle, in the stress and scourging - Of the sail apast thy heavenly margin; - Let us hymn thee, while the gallant pulses - In high heart and limbs one kingliest instant, - Boom and flash thy name and their allegiance; - ‘Once, and for one only,’ let us hymn thee, - O Delight, O Sunrise, O sole Answer, - Empery unbought, supreme Adventure, - Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow. - - Let us hymn thee, we, the passing, dying, - Out of bondage by a vision lifted, - Since by chance sublime, in secret places, - Goddess! we, Aktaion-like, have seen thee. - Tho’ our voice as a spent eagle’s voice is, - Let us hymn thee, while the doom is forging; - Holding, losing, thro’ one first last moment, - One mad moment worth dull life forever, - Triumphing in anguish, let us hymn thee! - Thine, beholden Beauty, thine this heart-break, - Thine, O Hope forsworn! this salutation, - Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow. - - - - - THE LAST FAUN. - - - HOW hath he stumbled hither, in search of love and praise, - A tardy comer and goer across the world’s highways, - A kind shape from the thicket, a wanderer all his days? - - He finds a rocky seat where the moiling town recedes: - The altered shepherds flout him; but O he little heeds! - Incredulous he swings there, and drones upon his reeds. - - He stamps his cloven heel, and he laughs adown the wind, - With eye that wanes and waxes at doings of mankind. - Slow, slow creeps the invader upon that happy mind. - - The apple breasts his fellow; doves wheel by two and three, - And ever dance in circle the shallops on the sea; - The goats and deer are many; but playmate none hath he, - Nor nymph nor child to follow upon his signals rude; - He smiles: there is no frolic; he snarls: there is no feud. - He feels his poor heart sinking at every interlude. - - His shaggy ear and freakish resents the wail and din; - Earth’s rumors chill his veins with their ghostly gliding in; - He aches to slip these tethers, and be where he hath been. - - Elsewhere is waking glory, and here the dream, the thrall. - Hush! hear the sunless waters, the wrestling leaves that call! - He lops the grass, and whistles; and while he cheats them all, - - Obeys, is gone, gone wholly. From alien air too cold, - The Faun, with garlands flying, with sylvan ditties trolled, - Being homesick, being patient, regains his greenwood old. - - - - - KNIGHTS OF WEATHER. - - - WHEN down the filmy lanes - The too wise sun goes grieving, - A wake of splendor leaving - Upbillowed from the ground; - When at the window-panes - The hooded chestnuts rattle, - And there is clash of battle - New England’s oaks around: - Oh, then we knights of weather, - We birds of sober feather, - Fill up the woods with revel - That summer’s pomp is slain; - And make a mighty shouting - For King October’s outing, - The Saracen October - Astride the hurricane! - - When dappled butterflies - Have crept away to cover, - And one persistent plover - Is coaxing from the fen; - When apples show the skies - Their bubbly lush vermilion, - And from a rent pavilion - Laugh down on maids and men: - Oh, then we knights of weather, - We birds of sober feather, - Fill up the woods with revel - That summer’s pomp is slain; - And make a mighty shouting - For King October’s outing, - The Saracen October - Astride the hurricane! - - When pricks the winy air; - When o’er the meadows clamber - Cloud-masonries of amber; - When brooks are silver-clear; - When conquering colors dare - The hills and cliffy places, - To hold, with braggart graces, - High wassail of the year: - Oh, then we knights of weather, - We birds of sober feather, - Fill up the woods with revel - That summer’s pomp is slain; - And make a mighty shouting - For King October’s outing, - The Saracen October - Astride the hurricane! - - - - - DAYBREAK. - - - THE young sun rides the mists anew; his cohorts follow from the sea. - Let Aztec children shout and sue, the Persian lend a thankful knee: - Those glad auroral eyes shall beam not anywhere henceforth on me. - - Up with the banners on the height, set every matin bell astir! - The tree-top choirs carouse in light; the dew’s on phlox and lavender: - Ah, mockery! for, worlds away, the heart of morning beats with her. - - - - - ON SOME OLD-MUSIC. - - - TO lie beside a stream, upon the sod - At ease, while weary shepherds homeward plod, - And feel benignly by, as daylight mellows, - The mountains in their weathering period; - Aye so, with silence shod - To lie in depth of grass with man’s meek fellows, - The cattle large and calm, aware of God, - - And, keen as if to flesh the spirit sprang, - To hear,--O but to hear that silvern clang - Of young hale melody! and hither rally - The thrill, the aspiration, and the pang - Again, as once it rang - Sovereign and clear thro’ all the Saco valley, - Whose slaves were we that heard, and he that sang! - - Happy the spot, the hour, the spanning strain - Precious and far, the rainbow of the rain, - The seal of patience, dark endeavor’s summing, - The heaven-bright close of Pergolese’s pain! - Sighs bid it back in vain, - Nor win its peer, till craftsmen aftercoming - Lost art, lost heart, from shipwrecked years regain. - - How, like an angel, it effaced the crime, - The moil and heat of our tempestuous time, - And brought from dewier air, to us who waited, - The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime! - As falls, at midnight’s chime - To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated, - The thought of Love’s remote sunshining prime. - - There flits upon the wind’s wing, as we gaze, - Our northern springtime, virgin-green three days; - The racy water shallowing, the glory - Of jonquils strewn, the wafted apple-sprays: - O let it be thy praise, - Child-song too lovely and too transitory! - Thou art as they; thy feet have gone their ways. - - O beauty unassailable! O bride - Of memory! while yet thou didst abide - The yester joy was ours, the joy to-morrow, - Life’s brimming whole: and since to earth denied, - Soft ebbed thy dreamy tide, - To us the first, the full, the only sorrow, - Wild as when Abel out of Eden died. - - - - - LATE PEACE. - - - AS a pool beset with lilies - In the May-green copses hid, - Far from wayfarers and wrongers, - Clangors, rumors, disillusions, - Neighbored by the wild-grape only, - By the hemlock’s dreamy host, - By the Rhodian nightingale, - O remote, remote, O lonely!-- - So thy life is. - - Whence and wherefore is it - Never peace may be co-dweller - With my lakelet - Too belovèd and too sheltered, - That, secure from broil of cities, - From a secret regnant spring - To its own wild depth awaking, - Makes but moaning and resistance, - Undiminishable protest; - Mimicking with pain and fury - Of humanity the struggle; - Fretting, foaming, pacing ever - Round and round its fragrant cloister, - All within itself perplexèd, - Every heart-vein bruised but eager; - And its clear soul, doubt-o’erladen, - ’Neath the stirred and floating foulness, - Long abased, long dumb, ah! long?-- - So thy life is. - - Comes the respite, comes the guerdon; - The perfect truce arrives - In the honey-dropping twilight, - The southwestering pallid sunshine, - The magian clouds a-fire, - The mooring galleon-wind: - At whose spell, - Potent daily, - The lulled water is beguiled - Back to saneness, back to sweetness. - All its arrowy hissing atoms - Gather from the chase forsaken; - The sphered galaxy of bubbles, - Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful, - Disunite, as to heard music, - Like weird dancers, from their wreathings - Each to its cool grotto swaying; - Till there follows, on their fervor, - Depth, and crystal clarity. - So thy life is, so thy life! - Darkling to beatitude, - Shaken in the saving change. - And the spirit made wise, not weary - By the throes that youth endureth, - When old age falls, evening-placid, - On the mystery unriddled, - Yet in empire, yet in honor, - In submission not ignoble, - Glistens to a central quiet, - Leal to the most lovely moon. - - - - - TO A YOUNG POET. - - - SIGH not to be remembered, dear, - Nor for Time’s fickle graces strive; - Vex not thy spirit’s songful cheer - With the sick ardor to survive. - - But be content, thou quick bright thing - A while than lasting stars more fair: - A lone high-flashing skylark’s wing - Across obliterating air. - - O rich in immortality! - Not thee Fame’s graven stones benight; - But ever, to some world-worn eye, - All Heaven is bluer for thy flight. - - - - - DE MORTUIS. - - - THE skilfullest of mankind! - So praise him, reckoning - By shot in the sea-gull’s wing, - By doubts in boyhood’s mind. - - - - - DOWN STREAM. - - - SCARRED hemlock roots, - Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots - Spring’s first-knighted; - Clinging aspens grouped between, - Slender, misty-green, - Faintly affrighted: - - Far hills behind, - Sombre growth, with sunlight lined, - On their edges; - Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair, - And the straight and fair - Phalanx of sedges: - - Wee wings and eyes, - Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies, - Fearless rangers; - Drowsy turtles in a tribe - Diving, with a gibe - Muttered at strangers; - - Wren, bobolink, - Robin, at the grassy brink; - Great frogs jesting; - And the beetle, for no grief - Half-across his leaf - Sighing and resting; - - In the keel’s way, - Unwithdrawing bream at play, - Till from branches - Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft, - Graze them with their soft - Full avalanches! - - This is very odd! - Boldly sings the river-god: - ‘Pilgrim rowing! - From the Hyperborean air - Wherefore, and O where - Should man be going?’ - - Slave to a dream, - Me no urgings and no theme - Can embolden; - Now no more the oars swing back, - Drip, dip, till black - Waters froth golden. - - Musketaquid! - I have loved thee, all unbid, - Earliest, longest; - Thou hast taught me thine own thrift: - Here I sit, and drift - Where the wind’s strongest. - - If, furthermore, - There be any pact ashore, - I forget it! - If, upon a busy day - Beauty make delay, - Once over, let it! - - Only,--despite - Thee, who wouldst unnerve me quite - Like a craven,-- - Best the current be not so, - Heart and I must row - Into our haven! - - - - - THE INDIAN PIPE. - -(TO R. L. S.) - - - YOUR bays shall all men bring, - And flowers the children strew you. - Once, as I stood in a thick west wood, - I took from a fissure a precious thing, - The homage whereof be to you! - - A thing pearl-pale, yet stung - With fire, as the morning’s beam is; - Hid underground thro’ a solar round, - Hardy and fragile, antique and young, - More exquisite than a dream is. - - No rose had so bright birth; - No gem of romance surpassed it, - By a minstrel-knight, for his maid’s delight, - Borne from the moon-burnt marge of the earth, - Where Paynim breakers cast it. - - Rude-named, memorial, quaint, - The dews and the darkness mould it: - Scarce twice in an age is our heritage - This glory and mystery without taint. - Dear Stevenson, do you hold it - - A text of grace, ah! much - Beyond what the praising throng say: - Only your art is its peer at heart, - Only your touch is a wonder such, - My wild little loving song says! - - - - - BROOK FARM. - - - DOWN the long road bent and brown, - Youth, that dearly loves a vision, - Ventures to the gates Elysian, - As a palmer from the town, - - Coming not so late, so far, - Rocks and birches! for your story, - Nor to prate of vanished glory - Where of old was quenched a star; - - Where, of old, in lapse of toil, - Time, that has for weeds a dower, - Bade the supersensual flower - Starve in our New England soil. - - But to Youth, whose radiant eyes - Shatter mists of grief and daunting, - Lost glad voices still are chanting - ’Neath those unremaining skies; - Still the dreams of fellowship - Beat their wings of aspiration; - And a smile of soft elation - Trembles from his haughty lip, - - If another dare deride - Hopes heroic snapped and parted, - Disillusion so high-hearted, - All success is mean beside! - - - - - ‘MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS.’ - - - ‘MY times are in Thy hands!’ - It rumbles from the sea; - It jingles ever, inland far, - From the reddening rowan-tree. - - Let me not sit inert, - Let me not be afraid! - Teach me to dare and to resist - Like the first mortal made, - - To whom of fate’s dread strength - No sickening rumors ran; - Who with whatever grim event - Grappled, as man with man. - - Seal to my utmost age - What now my youth hath known: - ‘My times are in Thy hands,’ O most! - When wholly in my own. - - - - - GARDEN CHIDINGS. - - - THE spring being at her blessed carpentry, - This morning makes a stem, this noon a leaf, - And jewels her sparse greenery with a bud; - Fostress of happy growth is she. But thou, - O too disdainful spirit, or too shy! - Passive dost thou inhabit, like a mole, - The porch elect of darkness; for thy trade - Is underground, a barren industry, - Shivering true ardor on the nether air, - Shaping the thousandth tendril, and all year - Webbing the silver nothings to and fro. - What wonder if the gardener think thee dead, - When every punctual neighbor-root now goes - Adventurously skyward for a flower? - Up, laggard! climb thine inch; thyself fulfil; - Thou only hast no sign, no pageantry, - Save these fine gropings: soon from thy small plot - The seasonable sunshine steals away. - - - - - FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM. - - - UNTO the constant heart whom saints befriend - Afar in peace, what were our gaudy praise? - His course is ended, and his faith is kept. - Honor in silence to that memory! sweet - Equally in the forum of the schools, - And in the sufferer’s hovel. His, threefold, - The lowliness of Isai’s chosen son, - And zeal that fired the warring Macchabee, - About him like a wedding-garment, worn - The day of his acceptance; and we know - That for the sake of some such soul as this,-- - So brave, so clean, compassionate and just, - Alert in its most meek security,-- - Love beareth yet with all that stains the world. - - - - - BANKRUPT. - - - PAST the cold gates, a wraith without a name, - Sullen and withered, like a thing half-tame - Still for its jungle moaning, came by night, - Before the Judgment’s awful Angel came. - - ‘Answer, Immortal! at my high decree - Glory or shame shall flood thee as the sea: - What of the power, the skill, the graciousness, - The star-strong soul the Lord hath lent to thee?’ - - But the lone spectre raised a mournful hand: - ‘Call me not that! Release me from this land! - What words are Heaven and Hell? They fall on me - As on a sphere the fooled and slipping sand. - - ‘Discerning, thou the good mayst yet belie, - By some last test, the sinner sanctify. - My guilt is neutral-safe, like innocence: - No boon nor bane of deathless days gain I, - - ‘Whose life is hollow shell and broken bowl, - Of all which was its treasury, the whole - Utterly, vilely squandered. O most Just! - Put down thy scales: for I have spent my soul.’ - - - - - A REASON FOR SILENCE. - - - YOU sang, you sang! you mountain brook - Scarce by your tangly banks held in, - As running from a rocky nook, - You leaped the world, the sea to win, - Sun-bright past many a foamy crook, - And headlong as a javelin. - - Now men do check and still your course - To serve a village enterprise, - And wheelward drive your sullen force, - What wonder, slave! that in no wise - Breaks from you, pooled ’mid reeds and gorse, - The voice you had in Paradise? - - - - - TEMPTATION. - - - I COME where the wry road leads - Thro’ the pines and the alder scents, - Sated of books, with a start, - Sharp on the gang to-day: - Scarce see the Romany steeds, - Scarce hear the flap of the tents, - When hillo! my heart, my heart - Is out of its leash, and away. - - Gypsies, gypsies, the whole - Tatterdemalion crew! - Brown and sly and severe - With curious trades in hand. - A string snaps in my soul, - The one high answer due - If an exile chance to hear - The songs of his fatherland. - -... To be abroad with the rain, - And at home with the forest hush, - With the crag, and the flower-urn, - And the wan sleek mist upcurled; - To break the lens and the plane, - To burn the pen and the brush, - And, clean and alive, return - Into the old wild world!... - - How is it? O wind that bears - The arrow from its mark, - The sea-bird from the sea, - The moth from his midnight lamp, - Fate’s self, thou mocker of prayers! - Whirl up from the mighty dark, - And even so, even me - Blow far from the gypsy camp! - - - - - FOR A CHILD. - - Schumann’s ‘Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.’ - - - IN memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made - Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid, - Aye, truly, sore afraid: - - For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears, - In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears - Would yet be strong to break my song, - Thro’ all these after-years! - - - - - AGLAUS. - - - THE ash hath no perfidious mind; - The open fields are just and kind; - Tho’ loves betray, I hear this way - The feathery step of the faithful wind. - - Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose - Around me, talismanic, close: - The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes, - Are bulwarks twain of my year’s repose. - - No struggle, no delight, no moan, - But at my hearthstone I have known! - All thoughts that pass, as in a glass - The gods have bared to me for mine own. - - Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed, - Hath of her own will been my guest; - Not smoking feud, but quietude - My heart hath chosen, at her behest. - - ‘This is of men the happiest man - Who hath his plot Arcadian,’ - Apollo cried, my gates beside, - ‘Nor ever wanders beyond its span.’ - - Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold; - My hair is shaken in the cold; - The night is nigh; but ere I die, - Bear witness, brothers! that young and old, - - My name I wear without regret: - The Home-Keeper am I, and yet - At every inn my feet have been, - Above all travellers I am set. - - Tho’ ocean currents by me purled, - The sails of my desire were furled. - What pilgrims crave, three acres gave; - And I, Aglaus, have seen the world! - - - - - AN AUDITOR. - - - WHY chide me that mutely I listen, ah, jester? - For either thou knowest - Too much, or thou knowest not aught of this aching vexed - planet down-whirling: - Thou knowest?--Thy wit is but fortitude; would’st have me - laugh in its presence? - Thou knowest not?--Laugh I can never, for innocence also is sacred. - - - - - THE WATER-TEXT. - - - WATCHING my river marching overland, - By mighty tides, transfigured and set free,-- - My river, lapped in idle-hearted mirth, - Made at a touch a glory to the earth, - And leaving, wheresoever falls his hand, - The balm and benediction of the sea,-- - - O soon, I know, the hour whereof we dreamed, - The saving hour miraculous, arrives! - When, ere to darkness winds our sordid course, - Some glad, new, potent, consecrating force - Shall speed us, so uplifted, so redeemed, - Along the old worn channel of our lives. - - - - - CYCLAMEN. - - - ON me, thro’ joy’s eclipse, and inward dark, - First fell thy beauty like a star new-lit; - To thee my carol now! albeit no lark - Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite. - O would that song might fit - These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting, - Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing, - Thou undefiled estray of earth’s o’ervanished spring! - - Here is the sunless clime, the fallen race; - Down our green dingles is no peer of thee: - Why art thou such, dear outcast, who hadst place - With shrine, and bower, and olive-silvery - Peaked islets in mid-sea? - Thou seekest thine Achaian dews in vain, - And osiered nooks jocose, at summer’s wane, - With gossip spirit-fine of chill and widening rain. - - Thou wert among Thessalia’s hoofy host, - Their radiant shepherd stroked thee with a sigh; - When falchioned Perseus spied the Æthiop coast, - Unto his love’s sad feet thy cheek was nigh; - And all thy blood beat high - With woodland Rhœcus at the brink of bliss; - Thy leaf the Naiad plucked by Thyamis, - And she, the straying maid, the bride beguiled of Dis. - - These, these are gone. The air is wan and cold, - The choric gladness of the woods is fled: - But thou, aye dove-like, rapt in memories old, - Inclinest to the ground thy fragile head, - In ardor and in dread. - Searcher of yesternight! how wilt thou find - In any dolven aisle or cavern blind, - In any ocean-hall, the glory left behind? - - June’s butterfly, poised o’er his budded sweet, - Is scarce so quiet-winged, betimes, as thou. - Fail twilight’s thrill, and noonday’s wavy heat - To kiss the fever from thy downcast brow. - Ah, cease that vigil now! - No west nor east thine unhoused vision keeps, - Nor yet in heaven’s pale purpureal deeps - Of worlds unnavigate, the dream of childhood sleeps. - - Flower of the joyous realm! thy rivers lave - Their once proud valleys with forgetful moan; - Thy kindred nod on many a trodden grave - Among marmorean altars overthrown; - For thou art left alone, - Alone and dying, duped for love’s extreme: - Hope not! thy Greece is over, as a dream; - Stay not! but follow her down Time’s star-lucent stream. - - Less art thou of the earth than of the air, - A frail outshaken splendor of the morn; - Dimmest desire, the softest throb of prayer, - Impels thee out of bondage to thy bourn: - Ere thou art half forlorn, - Farewell, farewell! for from thy golden stem - Thou slippest like a wild enchanter’s gem. - Swift are the garden-ghosts, and swiftest thou of them! - - Yea, speed thy freeborn life no doubts debar, - O blossom-breath of that which was delight! - In cooling whirl and undulation far - The wind shall be thy bearer all the night - Thro’ ether trembling-white: - And I that clung with thee, as exiles may - Whose too slight roots in every zephyr sway, - Thy little soul salute along her homeward way! - - - - - A PASSING SONG. - - - WHERE thrums the bee and the honeysuckle hovers, - Gather, golden lasses, to a roundelay; - Dance, dance, yokefellows and lovers, - Headlong down the garden, in the heart of May! - Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away. - - Dance! what if last year Winnie’s cheek were rounder? - Dance! tho’ that foot, Hal, were nimbler yesterday. - Spread the full sail! for soon the ship must founder; - Flaunt the red rose! soon the canker-worm has sway: - Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away. - - See the dial shifting, hear the night-birds calling! - Dance, you starry striplings! round the fountain-spray; - With its mellow music out of sunshine falling, - With its precious waters trickling into clay, - Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away! - - - - - IN TIME. - - - HER little dumb child, for whom hope was none - In any mind, she watched from sun to sun, - Until three years her mighty faith had run; - - Then, in an agony of love, laid by - The bright head from her breast, and went to lie - ’Neath cedarn shadows, and the wintry sky, - - Not having, for her long desire and prayer, - One sign from those shut lips, so rosy-fair - It seemed all eloquence must nestle there. - - That day, to her near grave, thro’ frost and sleet, - He, following from his toys on truant feet, - Cried: ‘Mother, mother!’ joyous and most sweet. - - And as their souls ached in them at the word, - The father lifted his new-wakened bird - With one rapt tear, that now at last she heard! - - - - - THE WILD RIDE. - - - _I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, - All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses; - All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._ - - Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle, - Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion, - With a stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him. - - The road is thro’ dolor and dread, over crags and morasses; - There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: - What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding! - - _I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, - All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses; - All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._ - - We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind; - We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil. - Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow. - - - - - THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE. - - - BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live; - You pace the garden-walks secure and sensitive; - You linger on the stair: Love’s lonely pulses leap! - The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep. - - Years after, and years after, you keep your heirdom still, - Your winning youth about you, your joyous force and skill, - Unvexed, unapprehended, with waking sense adored; - And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord. - - To every quiet inmate, strong in the cheer you brought, - Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought; - And unto whoso knocks, an awe-struck visitor, - The sunshine that was you floods all the open door! - - - - - A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY. - - - EACH ninth hierarchal wave, a league of sound, - To phantom shreds the hostile crags confound, - To wreck on wreck forlorn. The crags remain. - - Smile at the storm for our safe poet’s sake! - Not ever this ordainèd world shall break - That mounting, foolish, foam-bright heart again. - - - - - IMMUNITY. - - - LEAF of the deep-leaved holly-tree, - Long spared the weather-god’s disdain, - Have not thy brothers borne for thee - June’s inavertible raging rain? - - And they are beautiful and hale, - Those sun-veined revellers; and thou - Still crippled, still afraid and pale, - Sole discord of the singing bough! - - - - - PAULA’S EPITAPH. - - - GO you by with gentle tread. - This was Paula, who is dead: - Eyes dark-lustrous to the look - As a leaf-pavilioned brook, - Voice upon the ear to cling - Sweeter than the cithern-string; - Whose shy spirit, unaware - Loosed into refreshful air, - With it took for talisman, - Climbing past the starry van, - Names to which the heavens do ope, - Candor, Chastity, and Hope. - - - - - JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX. - - - COMPASSIONATE eyes had our brave John Brown, - And a craggy stern forehead, a militant frown; - He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley, - The fool who redeemed us once of our folly, - And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown! - - Too vehement, verily, was John Brown! - For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown - Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter - Of freedmen; aye, call him fanatic and martyr: - He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown. - - A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown, - And a jeer; but ah! soon from the terrified town, - In his bleeding track made over hilltop and hollow, - Wise armies and councils were eager to follow, - And the children’s lips chanted our lost John Brown. - - Star-led for us, stumbled and groped John Brown, - Star-led, in the awful morasses to drown; - And the trumpet that rang for a nation’s upheaval, - From the thought that was just, thro’ the deed that was evil, - Was blown with the breath of this dumb John Brown! - - Bared heads and a pledge unto mad John Brown! - Now the curse is allayed, now the dragon is down, - Now we see, clear enough, looking back at the onset, - Christianity’s flood-tide and Chivalry’s sunset - In the old broken heart of our hanged John Brown! - - - - - SONNETS - - - - - APRIL DESIRE. - - - WHILE in these spacious fields is my sojourn, - Needs must I bless the blossomy outbreak - Of earth’s pent beauty, and for old love’s sake - Trembling, the bees’ on-coming chant discern; - Hail the rash hyacinth, the ambushed fern, - High-bannered boughs that green defiance make, - And watch from sheathing ice the brave Spring take - Her broad, bright river-blade. Ah! then, in turn - Long-hushèd forces stir in me; I feel - All the most sharp unrest of the young year; - Fain would my spirit, too, like idling steel - Be snatched from its dull scabbard, for a strife - With cold oppressions! straightway, if not here, - In consummated freedom, ampler life. - - - - - TWOFOLD SERVICE. - - - CHAMPIONS of men with brawny fist and lung, - You righteous! with eyes oped and utterance terse, - Whose greed of energies would fain disperse - Ere any mould be cast, or roundel sung, - Your gentler brothers still at play among - The smirch and jangle of the universe, - Mere fool-blind trespassers for you to curse, - The Sabbath-breakers, the unchristened young;-- - Peace! These, too, know: these are as ye employed, - Nor of laborious help and value void, - Living; who, faithful to their fellows’ need, - Fling life away for truth, art, fatherland, - Like a gold largess from a princely hand, - Without one trading thought of heavenly meed. - - - - - IN THE GYMNASIUM. - - - I LEAN against a pillar in the sun, - The sandals loose on mine arrested feet, - While from their paths orbicular the fleet - Slim racers drop like stars. O loveliest one, - Lender of sixfold wings the while I run, - Whose tortoise-lyre saves yet for me its sweet - Cyllenic suasions old, to thy dim seat - Glory and grace! the votive rites are done. - Thy sole rememberer honey hath, nor palm, - Libation none, nor lamb to lead to thee, - Ah, Maia’s son! once god, and once aye-living. - Here stood thy shrine: here chants my heart in calm - Sad as the centralmost weird wave’s at sea, - Hermes! thy last June pæan and thanksgiving. - - - - - A SALUTATION. - - - HIGH-HEARTED Surrey! I do love your ways, - Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement, - All with inviolate honor sealed and blent, - To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays: - I love your youth, your friendships, whims, and frays; - Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent, - Heard as in dreams from some old harper’s tent, - And stirring in the listener’s brain for days. - Good father-poet! if to-night there be - At Framlingham none save the north-wind’s sighs, - No guard but moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears, - Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me, - Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes - Sought not one other down three hundred years! - - - - - AT A SYMPHONY. - - - OH, I would have these tongues oracular - Dip into silence, tease no more, let be! - They madden, like some choral of the free - Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar. - To earth the boast that her gold empires are, - The menace of delicious death to me, - Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree, - Piercing the heart with beauty from afar! - Music too winning to the sense forlorn! - Of what angelic lineage was she born, - Bred in what rapture?--These her sires and friends: - Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe. - Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so - Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends. - - - - - SLEEP. - - - O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide - On whose moon-heaving breast my head hath lain, - Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain - Thro’ holy hours, be yet unsatisfied, - Loose me betimes! for in my soul abide - Urgings of memory; and exile’s pain - Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain - May throb for the old strife wherein he died. - - Often and evermore, across the sea - Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of day - O speed me! like that outworn king erewhile - From kind Phæacia shoreward borne; for me, - Thy loving healèd Greek, thou too shall lay - Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle. - - - - - THE ATONING YESTERDAY. - - - YE daffodilian days, whose fallen towers - Shielded our paradisal prime from ill, - Fair past, fair motherhood! let come what will, - We, being yours, defy the anarch powers. - For us the happy tidings fell, in showers - Enjewelling the wind from every hill; - We drained the sun against the winter’s chill; - Our ways were barricadoed in with flowers: - - And if from skyey minsters now unhoused, - Earth’s massy workings at the forge we hear, - The black roll of the congregated sea, - And war’s live hoof: O yet, last year, last year - We were the lark-lulled shepherdlings, that drowsed - Grave-deep, at noon, in grass of Arcady! - - - - - ‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS.’ - - - OF thraldom and the accursèd diadem - In that vast snow-land, shout the passionate tale; - Touch graybeards in the mart, bid braggarts quail, - And rouse the student lone from his old phlegm - To breathe the self-same sacred air with them, - Spirits supreme, our brothers! whose avail - Is sacrifice. Nay, make no woman’s wail: - Rome is re-born! whom kings dare not contemn. - On Neva’s shore-streets tho’ high blood be spent, - There this lorn world’s renascent hopes are meeting: - In camp is Mucius, at the bridge, Horatius; - Regulus walks in gyves, magnificent; - And thence men hear--O sound sublime and gracious! - The unquelled heart of Cæsar’s Brutus beating. - - - - - FOUR SONNETS FROM ‘LA VITA NUOVA.’ - - - I. - - ‘_Io mi sentii svegliar dentro allo core._’ - - WITHIN my bosom, from long apathy, - Love’s mood of tenderness extreme awoke, - And spying him far off, mine eye bespoke - Love’s self, so joyous scarce it seemèd he, - Crying: ‘Now, verily, pay thy vows to me!’ - And bright thro’ every word his smile outbroke. - Then stood we twain, I in my liege lord’s yoke, - Watching the path he came by, soon to see - The Lady Joan and Lady Beatrice - Nearing our very nook, each marvel close - Following her peer, all beauty else above; - And Love said, in a voice like Memory’s: - ‘The first is Spring; but she that with her goes, - My counterpart, bears my own name of Love!’ - - - II. - - ‘_Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare._’ - - SO chaste, so noble looks that lady mine - Saluting on her way, that tongues of some - Are mute a-tremble, and the eyes that clomb - High as her eyes, abashed, their gaze decline. - Thro’ perils of heard praise she moves benign, - Armored in her own meekness, as if come - Hither from Heaven, to give our Christendom - Even of a miracle the vouch divine. - So with beholders doth her worth avail, - It sheds, thro’ sight, a sweetness on the soul, - (Alas! how told to one that felt it never?) - And from her presence seemeth to exhale - A breath half-solace and of love the whole, - That saith to the bowed spirit ‘Sigh!’ forever. - - - III. - - ‘_Era venuta nella mente mia._’ - - THERE came upon my mind remembrances - Of my lost lady, who for her reward - Is now set safe, by Heaven’s Most Highest Lord, - In kingdoms of the meek, where Mary is. - And Love, whose own are her dear memories, - Called to the sighs in my heart’s wreckage stored: - ‘Go!’ whereby outwardly, with one accord, - Not having ever other vent than this, - Plaining athwart my breast they flocked to air, - With speech that, oft recalled, draws unaware - The darkened tears into my mournful eyes; - And those that came in greatest anguish thence - Sang: ‘O most glorious Intelligence! - Thou art one year this day in Paradise.’ - - - IV. - - ‘_Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate._’ - - YE pilgrims, who with pensive aspect go - Thinking, perhaps, of bygone things and dear, - Come you from lands so very far from here - As unto us who watch your port would show? - For that you weep not outright, filing slow - Thro’ the mid-highway of this city drear, - You even as gentle stranger-folk appear, - Who of the common sorrow nothing know! - Would you but linger, would you but be told, - Pledge with its thousand sighs my soul doth give - That you, likewise, should travel on heart-broken: - Ah, we have lost our Beatrice! Behold, - What least soever word be of her spoken, - The tears must follow now from all that live. - - University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Sail, by Louise Imogen Guiney - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE SAIL *** - -***** This file should be named 54907-0.txt or 54907-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/0/54907/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif, Emmy, MWS and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - -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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