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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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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) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="c"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="330" height="500" alt="[Image -of the book's cover unavailable.]" /></a> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_i" id="page_i"></a>{i}</span> </p> - -<p class="c"> -THE WHITE SAIL<br /> -<br /> -<span class="eng">And Other Poems</span><br /> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_ii" id="page_ii"></a>{ii}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_iii" id="page_iii"></a>{iii}</span> </p> - -<h1><img src="images/star.png" -width="25" -alt="" -/> -<img src="images/star.png" -width="25" -alt="" -/> -THE WHITE SAIL<br /> -<small>AND OTHER POEMS. -<img src="images/star.png" -width="25" -alt="" -/> -BY<br /> -LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY</small> -<img src="images/star.png" -width="25" -alt="" -/></h1> - -<p class="c"> <br /><img src="images/colophon.jpg" -width="125" -alt="[Image of the colophon unavailable.]" -/><br /> -<br /><br /> -TICKNOR & COMPANY<br /> -PUBLISHERS, BOSTON<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_iv" id="page_iv"></a>{iv}</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<i>Copyright, 1887</i>,<br /> -<span class="smcap">By Ticknor and Company</span>.<br /> -———<br /> -<i>All rights reserved.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="eng">University Press:</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">John Wilson and Son, Cambridge</span>.<br /> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_v" id="page_v"></a>{v}</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="poetry"><div class="poem"> -<span class="ig"><i><span class="letra">A</span> SALUTE by night, than night’s own heart-beat stiller,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i2"><i>From the dying to the living. Keats! I lay</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Here against thy moonlit, storm-unshaken pillar,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i4"><i>My garland of a day.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_vi" id="page_vi"></a>{vi}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_vii" id="page_vii"></a>{vii}</span> </p> - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> - -<tr><td> </td><td class="rt"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_WHITE_SAIL">THE WHITE SAIL</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_011">11</a></td></tr> - -<tr><th><a href="#LEGENDS">Legends.</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#TARPEIA"><span class="smcap">Tarpeia</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_035">35</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_CALIPH_AND_THE_BEGGAR"><span class="smcap">The Caliph and the Beggar</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_040">40</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_RISE_OF_THE_TIDE"><span class="smcap">The Rise of the Tide</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_044">44</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#CHALUZ_CASTLE"><span class="smcap">Chaluz Castle</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_048">48</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_WOOING_PINE"><span class="smcap">The Wooing Pine</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_051">51</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_SERPENTS_CROWN"><span class="smcap">The Serpent’s Crown</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_057">57</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#MOUSTACHE"><span class="smcap">Moustache</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_062">62</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#RANIERI"><span class="smcap">Ranieri</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_065">65</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#SAINT_CADOCS_BELL"><span class="smcap">Saint Cadoc’s Bell</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_068">68</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_CHOUAN"><span class="smcap">A Chouan</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_076">76</a></td></tr> - -<tr><th><a href="#LYRICS">Lyrics.</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#YOUTH"><span class="smcap">Youth</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_083">83</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_LAST_FAUN"><span class="smcap">The Last Faun</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_085">85</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#KNIGHTS_OF_WEATHER"><span class="smcap">Knights of Weather</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_087">87</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DAYBREAK"><span class="smcap">Daybreak</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_090">90</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#ON_SOME_OLD-MUSIC"><span class="smcap">On Some Old Music</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_091">91</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#LATE_PEACE"><span class="smcap">Late Peace</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_094">94</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#TO_A_YOUNG_POET"><span class="smcap">To a Young Poet</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_097">97</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DE_MORTUIS"><span class="smcap">De Mortuis</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_098">98</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DOWN_STREAM"><span class="smcap">Down Stream</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_099">99</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_INDIAN_PIPE"><span class="smcap">The Indian Pipe</span></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_viii" id="page_viii"></a>{viii}</span></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_103">103</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#BROOK_FARM"><span class="smcap">Brook Farm</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_105">105</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#MY_TIMES_ARE_IN_THY_HANDS">‘<span class="smcap">My Times are in Thy Hands</span></a>’</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_107">107</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#GARDEN_CHIDINGS"><span class="smcap">Garden Chidings</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_108">108</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#FREDERIC_OZANAM"><span class="smcap">Frédéric Ozanam</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_109">109</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#BANKRUPT"><span class="smcap">Bankrupt</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_110">110</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_REASON_FOR_SILENCE"><span class="smcap">A Reason for Silence</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#TEMPTATION"><span class="smcap">Temptation</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_113">113</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#FOR_A_CHILD"><span class="smcap">For a Child</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_115">115</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#AGLAUS"><span class="smcap">Aglaus</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_116">116</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#AN_AUDITOR"><span class="smcap">An Auditor</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_WATER-TEXT"><span class="smcap">The Water-Text</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_119">119</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#CYCLAMEN"><span class="smcap">Cyclamen</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_120">120</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_PASSING_SONG"><span class="smcap">A Passing Song</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_124">124</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#IN_TIME"><span class="smcap">In Time</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_125">125</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_WILD_RIDE"><span class="smcap">The Wild Ride</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_LIGHT_OF_THE_HOUSE"><span class="smcap">The Light of the House</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_128">128</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_LAST_WORD_ON_SHELLEY"><span class="smcap">A Last Word on Shelley</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_129">129</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#IMMUNITY"><span class="smcap">Immunity</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_130">130</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#PAULAS_EPITAPH"><span class="smcap">Paula’s Epitaph</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_131">131</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#JOHN_BROWN_A_PARADOX"><span class="smcap">John Brown: A Paradox</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_132">132</a></td></tr> - -<tr><th><a href="#SONNETS">Sonnets.</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#APRIL_DESIRE"><span class="smcap">April Desire</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_137">137</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#TWOFOLD_SERVICE"><span class="smcap">Twofold Service</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_138">138</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#IN_THE_GYMNASIUM"><span class="smcap">In the Gymnasium</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_139">139</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_SALUTATION"><span class="smcap">A Salutation</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_140">140</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#AT_A_SYMPHONY"><span class="smcap">At a Symphony</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_141">141</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#SLEEP"><span class="smcap">Sleep</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_ATONING_YESTERDAY"><span class="smcap">The Atoning Yesterday</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_143">143</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#RUSSIA_UNDER_THE_CZARS">‘<span class="smcap">Russia under the Czars</span></a>’</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_144">144</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#FOUR_SONNETS_FROM_LA_VITA_NUOVA"><span class="smcap">Four Sonnets from ‘La Vita Nuova’</span></a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_145">145</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_ix" id="page_ix"></a>{ix}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_WHITE_SAIL" id="THE_WHITE_SAIL"></a>THE WHITE SAIL.</h3> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_x" id="page_x"></a>{x}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a>{11}</span></p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-h.jpg" -width="40" -alt="H" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">H</span>IGH on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">The promontoried porch of Attica,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down-glittered with the breaker’s volleying foam<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Visioned before him in the level dark:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ægeus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And round about his knees, and at his feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sheer to the ocean’s edge, those liegemen fond<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who with him wished and wept. As thro’ the hours<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lies summer’s russet ruined panoply,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Globes itself on the summit; so they clung<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Secure among the rangèd crevices,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a>{12}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Month after month, and wakeful night on night<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vigilant; ever neighbored and o’ertopped<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With that white presence, and the boding sky.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And Ægeus prayed: ‘O give me back but him!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or into battle’s maw: my lad of Athens!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Infancy’s golden-silken underglow;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In one close sombre file against his cheek,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wherethro’ gleams laughter as thro’ sorrow’s pale.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And anger’s self doth tremble maidenly;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As I so oft have marked, when from the chase,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heading the burdened company, he came,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a>{13}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forasmuch as I love him and await him,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who from my youth have been your servitor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yield my old age its boon of vindication:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Haven the happy ship here, ere I die.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Still heedlessly the hushed moon bent her bow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Over the unshorn forest oakenry<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the dense gladiate leaves of Thoræ’s pine:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The cold and incommunicable moon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Waxing and waning thro’ the barren time<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That brought not Theseus’ self, nor of him sign,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor any waif of rumor out of Crete,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whereto, a year nigh gone, the ship had sped<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forlorn; her decks enshrouded in plucked yew<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Strewn to the mizzen; and her oary props<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And halyards all with blossomed myrtle twined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And every sail dark as from looms of hell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In token of the universal dole.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And on her heavèd anchor and spurred keel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cheers none, but protest, moans, and ire attended,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When from the quay, in melancholy weather<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forward she sobbed on black unwilling wing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a>{14}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But ere that going drear, one foot ashore,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lifted his head, and met his father’s eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And out of morning ardor made this oath:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘My people, stand not for our sakes in tears!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And overcome, Heaven’s favor for my shield.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And when engirt with conquest I return<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Or never else hies Theseus hitherward),<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That ye may read my heart while yet at sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And know indeed that fate hath used me fair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lo, I will set upon the central mast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">White to that fierce and alien coast, and white<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To your espial, from the horizon’s brink<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And they believed and watched, albeit with dread,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, taciturn and close-engarmented,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From his nocturnal towered station leaned<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pining against the unresponsive tide.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thro’ his brain, with hum processional,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a>{15}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The race he won of yore, the song he sang;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His truth, his eloquence, his April moods,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all his championship of trodden tribes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Since first he lit on Athens, like a star.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For Ægeus, to the low-voiced Meta wed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thereafter to Rhexenor’s daughter spouse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Childless, and by his brethren’s guile deposed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Led by a last mysterious oracle,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Once, exiled, to Trœzene wandered down;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And there, accorded Aphrodite’s grace,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Atonement and conciliation sweet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bereavèd Æthra, of old Pelops’ race<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But with the auroral kiss of parting, he<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And both the jewelled sandals from his feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With lofty exhortation: ‘Bid my son,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When he, with strength inherited of mine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a>{16}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Æthra bided, dreaming, at the court,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But with strange awe hang o’er him worshipping,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As one that turns with passionate-praying lips<br /></span> -<span class="i0">East to the Delian shrine he shall not see:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In wicker-work of some swart soldier’s skill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With lisping promise aye to nourish it;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And stroked his plaining bird for one long day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But on the morrow ceased his fostering,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of water unreplenished. Then the child<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Æthra held his innocent hand in hers<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Remorse, and irremediable ache,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the eased byways of forgetfulness.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She, his hot brows caressing, so besought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The weeping prince: ‘If thou, O little son!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a>{17}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be a trust broken but a small, small thing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ere the dial veered, did Æthra speak<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His vanished father’s name and gave the charge,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And led him to the rock, and in him fired<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The aspirations of his godlike race.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Burst thro’ arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The granite treasurer of those tokens twain:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His cloud of yellow hair hanging before,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With obdurate sieges, into its hard side;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beating a moated way about that place<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where the grim guardian held a fixèd foot;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stole back, o’ervanquished, to his quiet nooks.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There would he woo his mother’s frequent tale,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a>{18}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And urge her gentle prophecy, that he<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The kinsman of great Herakles, should too<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rise, mighty, and o’er earth’s fell odds prevail.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Season on season, patient. And behold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When the tenth summer’s delicate keen dews<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Died from his shoreward path, at last befell<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Clean to the sea’s verge rolled that doughty bulk!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Theseus, in his full inheritance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the superb meridian of his youth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Climbed to his mother’s bower. Æthra laid<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thereby apprised the destined hour had come,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And having sped her boy upon his quest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All robber-plagues infesting those still glens<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Phæa, prodigious Crommyonian shape,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And of his dominant valor overcame<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a>{19}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The smith-god’s son, who with the mortal mace<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And him that thrust the lavers of his feet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By dint of hospitable precedent;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wide Marathonia’s lordly bull he led,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the knife’s edge at bland Apollo’s shrine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Last, guided to a grove sabbatical,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Knelt to the chanting white Phytalidæ,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And in their midst was chrismed, and purified<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From all the bloodshed of his troublous path.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Docile to Æthra’s warning, that unnamed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The city’s sovereignty; and overruled<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their father’s childless brother, Ægeus old:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The agile, able, proud Pallantidæ,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Therefore, unheralded, with wary step,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a>{20}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Chancing upon an open banquet-hall,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And straight, along the heaped board glancing down,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Evil Medea, on her harmful track<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her tender brother’s slayer, whose vile spells<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Had promised Ægeus princes of his blood.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Honor, the flood august of all his life:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For he, distrustful of the oracles,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Inasmuch as Trœzene flowered no hope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now in the season of his utmost need,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Subservient to the sorceress and her whims,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With golden incident and public pomp,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Holding by night most sumptuous festival,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now Theseus knew that wily woman’s face,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shrank close to Ægeus, voluble with fear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And urged within his palm a carven bowl,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That he should bid the young wayfarer drain<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a>{21}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sprang to cower the temptress with a word.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But at the instant, sprang her minions too,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And riot and upbraidings dire began,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro’ the fray,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With love’s suspicion kindling in his veins,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gained that space before the startled host<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shod with the shoon Ægean; and his arm<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sabred with the one sword that Ægeus knew!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, blanching ’neath roused memory’s ebb and flow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Among the wrangling merry-makers all,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Clarioned ‘My own!’ and strained him to his breast.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Theseus, in those fresh days of his return,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bore down on the usurping lords of state,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Juniors and kin of his discrownèd sire;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Ægeus, o’er the wreckage of their reign<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Exalted, with calm brows indiademed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a>{22}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then was the sacred and sequestered prime<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of liberation, benison, and peace;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When the round heaven, in summer’s ministrance<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Comely and yet with rains ingerminate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His nimble princeling. In a fortnight’s span,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The island lad, competing in the games,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Made rude revolt, and took upon itself<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The barbarous dishonor of his death.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Athens shall yearly proffer unto me<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her virgin tribute of patrician seed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro’ the realm,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aye of its dearest blood depopulate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youngest of all departed, full thirteen<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Faltered aboard the deck calamitous;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And with them Theseus, best-belovèd Theseus,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a>{23}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The king’s sole-born, whom last the doom befell.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But as no sister-galley e’er set out<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Returning with her steersman, went this ship,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To thread the maze Dædalian, and destroy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pampered monster, holding harm at bay<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Homeward, to chime of oar-compellèd waves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Signalling with the white exultant sail!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘So that I live, this thing,’ he said, ‘is sworn:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Such tales of Theseus’ youth his father’s mind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Deep pondering on each noble circumstance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As a man shifteth, thro’ an idle hour,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Anon with hand in light, anon in shade,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lustres of his one memorial gem.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And oft the king, with a foreboding throe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Called, urging eld’s unserviceable sight:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Shines the white sail yet?’ Spake the murmurous ring:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then the fond voice of Ægeus, askingly:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a>{24}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The king had cherished, from a mossy seat,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The anxious faces turned his happy way;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Against the diapason of the sea.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">‘Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free:<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">‘My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day!<br /></span> -<span class="iq">And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But the king hid his brow in both wan hands,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sighing: ‘That song at her beguiling feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Out of my brief enslavement, did I make<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The year that Theseus on our revels stole.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It sears me like a brand with fires o’erpast:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be silent, my Alcamenes! spare it me.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That sets the dull blood dancing.’ Theron smiled,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a>{25}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Masking suspense (for he was Theseus’ friend),<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In trolling of an agitated lay.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">‘I drowse in the grass, to the crickets’ elfin strings,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Cydippe’s hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill!<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook:<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill!<br /></span> -<span class="iq">My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings,<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there.<br /></span> -<span class="iq">See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings<br /></span> -<span class="iq">Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe’s hand thro’ my hair.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Again, with swift uneasy gesturing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Turned Ægeus, chiding, and protested ere<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The whipped-up courage of that roundel’s close:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A song of retribution.’ For he thought:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘So retribution dogs my bruisèd age;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Still, still Medea’s soft and deadly name<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stings all the leafy splendor of my life,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a>{26}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And daunts the morrow’s bud. And if there be<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A reckoning I must pay for follies past,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Must it be—O not that, not now, not here!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And drawing to his height, he cried: ‘The sail?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Comes the sail from the south?’ They chorused ‘Naught<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Ægeus, craving solace, urged once more:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In numbers honey-clear.’ Now Rhodalus<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The poet, too, was loyal sentinel;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A fiery patriot, wont to domineer<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moods of Athens; very potent he,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And flexile-throated as the nightingale.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With all his fingers knit about his knee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And head against a hoary pillar raised,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Riddling the unintelligible space,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And interstellar agonies of midnight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To him the king’s voice throbbed a second time:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, grave with poesy’s most candid mien,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Answered the summons softly: ‘Sire, I cannot.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The music of my brothers is amiss,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a>{27}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">From their discreet and silvern vassalage,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus’ sake.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I cannot sing. But O you holy stars!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You domèd guardians of this tear-bound earth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hale rank on rank, thro’ warless cities riding!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bide thro’ the watches with us; shine; exhale not!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the dense quiet bound them.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i14">Cautiously,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In his far corner, one behind the king<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With nervous finger twitched his neighbor’s sleeve,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Towards twilight’s gracious advent, crept in awe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With arm extended, to his fellow’s side;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the two thrilled alike, immovable,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Piloting his keen sight across the main,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a>{28}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The apprehensive company dropped aghast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Out on the reeling ragged precipice<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till Ægeus, slow-divining dupe of hope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In gyral passage, like Ixion’s wheel,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spoke on accursèd spoke, portending woe.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Called like a ghost from walled eternity:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘What of the sail? What cheer?’ Their lips congealed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Intolerable arid east-blown wave<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vaulting on wave thro’ all her caverns loud,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spied leaning o’er the crags the frenzied king,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rending his garment to the paling moon;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And yet evasive of those pleading eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Adjured him: ‘O most reverend, O most dear!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all the trancèd host burst into moan.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a>{29}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Old Ægeus, like a dreamer, muttered ‘Aye,’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Passive; and from his brain the fever fell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All winter gibbeted upon that bough<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Inert, of his own broken heart impelled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the steep, solitary trysting-place,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">King Ægeus, like a stone, dropped in the sea.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A wraith of smoke, fast-driven against a flame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yon by the crimsoning east the dark ship moved,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her herald noises strangely borne ashore:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Joy, joy!’ and interlinked: ‘O joy, O joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Athens our mother! joy to all thy gates!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thunderous firm acclaim of minstrelsy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Laughter, and antheming, and salvos wild<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Outran the racing prow. But mute they lay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The blinded watchers, spent beyond desire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wounded beyond this wonder’s balsaming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a>{30}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Yet ever, thro’ the trembling lovely light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Known voice on voice re-echoed, face on face<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Uprose in resurrection. They were safe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Athens, hark! from her long thraldom free!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Theseus, victor, sang and sailed with them,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pale unsistered Phædra for his bride,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For whom was constant Ariadne cast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On Naxos, where a god did comfort her.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Theseus! who when his bark the shallows grazed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Leaped in the gentle waves for boyish glee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gained the thronged highway, crossed it at a bound,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scaling the cliffs; and stood among them there,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Clausus, and his dear Theron, and the rest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nodding upon the clamorous crowd below;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But they, as soon, had turned them blunt away,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In hot resentment of that false one. He,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’erbrimming with frank welcomes, in dismay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stricken with sight of unresponsive hands,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scenting disaster, reining up his tongue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Asked sharply for the king.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i12">He understood<br /></span> -<span class="i0">After mad struggle and bewilderment,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gloomy gazing on the absent deeps.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down on the penitential rock he sank,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All his fair body palpitant with shame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Syllabing agony: ‘Ægeus, Ægeus! ah,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a>{31}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glory of Hellas! dead for trust in me.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life-giver, irrecoverable friend,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My father! ah, ah, loving father mine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah, dear my father!... I forgot the sail.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And the great morn burst. On a hundred hills<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The marigold unbarred her casement bright.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a>{33}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a>{32}</span> </p> - -<h2><a name="LEGENDS" id="LEGENDS"></a>L E G E N D S</h2> - -<p class="c"> -<img src="images/doodad.png" width="50" alt="" title="" /> - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a>{34}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a>{35}</span> </p> - -<h3><a name="TARPEIA" id="TARPEIA"></a>TARPEIA.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>OE: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam!<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Lo, now it was night, with the moon looking chill as she went:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a>{36}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Exquisite artifice, whorls of barbaric design,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Frost’s fixèd mimicry; orbic imaginings fine<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘I had never such trinkets!’ she sighed,—like a lute was her sigh.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Were they mine at the plea, were they mine for the token, all told,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now the citadel sleeps, now my father the keeper is old,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘If I go by the way that I know, and thou followest hard,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If yet at the touch of Tarpeia the gates be unbarred?’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The chief trembled sharply for joy, then drew rein on his soul:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Of all this arm beareth I swear I will cede thee the whole.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a>{37}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And up from the nooks of the camp, with hoarse plaudit outdealt,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The bearded Sabini glanced hotly, and vowed as they knelt,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Bare-stretching the wrists that bore also the glowing great boon:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Yea! surely as over us shineth the lurid low moon,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Not alone of our lord, but of each of us take what he hath!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too poor is the guerdon, if thou wilt but show us the path.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Her nostril upraised, like a fawn’s on the arrowy air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She sped; in a serpentine gleam to the precipice stair,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">They climbed in her traces, they closed on their evil swift star:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She bent to the latches, and swung the huge portal ajar.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Repulsed where they passed her, half-tearful for wounded belief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘The bracelets!’ she pleaded. Then faced her the leonine chief,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a>{38}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And answered her: ‘Even as I promised, maid-merchant, I do.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down from his dark shoulder the baubles he sullenly drew.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘This left arm shall nothing begrudge thee. Accept. Find it sweet.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Give, too, O my brothers!’ The jewels he flung at her feet,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The jewels hard, heavy; she stooped to them, flushing with dread,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But the shield he flung after: it clanged on her beautiful head.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Like the Apennine bells when the villagers’ warnings begin,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Athwart the first lull broke the ominous din upon din;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">With a ‘Hail, benefactress!’ upon her they heaped in their zeal<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Death: agate and iron; death: chrysoprase, beryl and steel.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">’Neath the outcry of scorn, ’neath the sinewy tension and hurl,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moaning died slowly, and still they massed over the girl<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a>{39}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">A mountain of shields! and the gemmy bright tangle in links,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A torrent-like gush, pouring out on the grass from the chinks,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Pyramidal gold! the sumptuous monument won<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the deed they had loved her for, doing, and loathed her for, done.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Such was the wage that they paid her, such the acclaim:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All Rome was aroused with the thunder that buried her shame.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">On surged the Sabini to battle. O you that aspire!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tarpeia the traitor had fill of her woman’s desire.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Woe: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a>{40}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_CALIPH_AND_THE_BEGGAR" id="THE_CALIPH_AND_THE_BEGGAR"></a>THE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR.</h3> - -<h4>I.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-s.jpg" -width="40" -alt="S" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">S</span>CORNER of the pleading faces,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">In the first year of his reign,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the lean crowd and its traces<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Down the open orchard-lane<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Walked young Mahmoud in his glory,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In his pomp and his disdain<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And beyond all oratory,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Music’s sweetness, ocean’s might,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fell a voice from branches hoary:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘He whose heart is at life’s height,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who has wisdom, love, and riches,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Islam’s greatest, dies this night.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And he crossed the rampart ditches<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blinded, and confused, and slow;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">High in palaced nooks and niches<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a>{41}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Clanged his fathers’ shields a-row;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And their turrets triple-jointed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shook with tempests of his woe.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Long past midnight, disanointed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Prone upon his breast he lay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Warring on that hour appointed:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But behold! at break of day,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As if heaven itself had spoken,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blown across the bannered bay,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Over mart and mosque outbroken,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Came the silver-solemn chime<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For some parted spirit’s token!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Mahmoud, with free breath sublime,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Summoned one whose snow-locks heaving<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Made the vision of hoar Time;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And the red tides of thanksgiving<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On his lifted brow, he said:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘In my city of the living,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Which, proclaimed of bells, is dead?’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the gray beard answered: ‘Master,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One who yesternight for bread<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a>{42}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">At thy gateway’s bronze pilaster<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Begged in vain: blind Selim, he,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Victim of the old disaster.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And the vassal suddenly<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Looked on his hard lord with wonder,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For those tears were strange to see.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h4>II.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Yet again, where boughs asunder<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Held the wavy orchard-tent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sun-empurpled clusters under<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">In changed mood the Caliph went;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And anew heard sounds upgather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Chidings with caressings blent,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">As the voice once of his father):<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Haughty heart! not thou wert wise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rich, belovèd; Selim, rather,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Islam’s prince in Allah’s eyes!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even the meek, in his great station,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Freehold had of Paradise.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a>{43}</span><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h4>III.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When the plague-wind’s desolation<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pierced Bassora’s burning wall,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Circled with a kneeling nation<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Whom his mercies held in thrall,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Died the Caliph, whispering tender<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Counsel to his liegemen tall:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘One last service, children! render<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Me, whose pride the Lord forgave:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not by our supreme Defender,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Not beside the holy wave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not in places where my race is<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lay me! but in Selim’s grave.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a>{44}</span><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h3><a name="THE_RISE_OF_THE_TIDE" id="THE_RISE_OF_THE_TIDE"></a>THE RISE OF THE TIDE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-a.jpg" -width="40" -alt="A" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">A</span> FISHERMAN gray, one night of yore,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">His nets upgathered, plied the oar,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Right merrily heading for a haven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While summer winds blew blithe before.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He sat beneath his pennon white;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His arms were brown, his eye was bright;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Twice twenty years his breast had carried<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A ribbon from Lepanto’s fight.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A cove he spied at sunset’s edge,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With pleasant trees and margin-sedge;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And barefoot went by stakes down-driven<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thro’ shallows wading from the ledge,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The boat drawn after; but behold!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A check fell on his venture bold:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He stood imprisoned, vainly leading<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The ropes in whitening fingers old.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a>{45}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Within that black and marshy sound<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His weight had sunken; he was bound<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Knee-deep! and as he beat and struggled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mocking ripples danced around.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Long since the wood-thrush ceased her song;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The summer wind grew fierce and strong;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The shuddering moon went into hiding;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down came the storm to wreak him wrong.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Against the prow he leaned his chin,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thinking of all his strength had been;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then turned, and laughed with courage steady:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘O ho! what straits we twain are in!’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And strove anew, unterrified,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But lastly, wearied wholly, cried<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For succor, since his laden wherry<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rocked ever on the coming tide.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">. . . . . . . . . .</span><br /> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘I hear a cry of anguish sore!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But straight his love had barred the door:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Bide here; the night bodes naught but danger.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Loud beat the waves along the shore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a>{46}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A bedded child made soft behest:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘So loud the voice I cannot rest.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘It is the rain, dear, in the garden.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The cruel water binds his breast.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘A lamp, a lamp! some traveller’s lost!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But thro’ the tavern roared the host:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Nay, only thunder rude and heavy.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Close to his lips the foam is tossed.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘O listen well, my liege and king!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hark from gay halls this grievous thing!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Strange how the wild wind drowns our music!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">About his head the eddies swing.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">At stroke of three the abbot meek<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Moved out among his flock to speak<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This word, with tears of doubt and wonder:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘I had a dream; come forth and seek.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">With torch and flagon, forth they sped:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fisher glared from the harbor-bed!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The tide, from his white hair down-fallen,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All kindly ebbed, now he was dead.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a>{47}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Lepanto’s star shone fast and good;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sea-kelp wrapped him like a hood;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His arms were stretched in woe to heaven;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The boat had drifted: so he stood.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The Unavenged he seemed to be!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then fell each monk upon his knee:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Lord Christ!’ the abbot sang, awe-stricken:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Rest my old rival’s soul!’ sang he.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a>{48}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="CHALUZ_CASTLE" id="CHALUZ_CASTLE"></a>CHALUZ CASTLE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HERE sped, at hint of treasure<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Dug from the garden-mould,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Word to the doughty vassal:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Thy sovereign claims the gold!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Nay, Richard, come and wrest it!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Said Vidomar the bold.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Uprose the Lionhearted,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He locked his armor on:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And over seas that morrow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Around his gonfalon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The crash and hiss of battle<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blazed up, and mocked the sun.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">King Richard led his bowmen<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By Chaluz dark and high;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like rain and rack they followed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His flashing storm-blue eye:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forth peered Bertrand de Gourdon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the turret stair thereby.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a>{49}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Thro’ morris-pikes and halberds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The king rode out and in,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His horse in gaudy trappings,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His sabre drawn and thin:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down knelt Bertrand de Gourdon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His strongbow at his chin.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O shrill that arrow quivered!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And fierce and awful broke<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Acclaim in billowy thunder<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From all the foreign folk,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At mighty Richard fallen<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath a foreign oak!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then leaped his English barons,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Converging from afar,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And loosed the flood of slaughter<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the gates of Vidomar;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And seized Bertrand de Gourdon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As clouds enmesh a star.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">They brought the bright-cheeked archer<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who scoffed not, neither feared,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the tent ringed in with faces<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That menaced in their beard;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But the king’s face lay before him<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the lamplight semisphered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a>{50}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The king’s self, stern and pallid<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gazed on the lad that day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And as if dreams were on him<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Besought him gently: ‘Say,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bertrand de Gourdon! wherefore<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou tak’st my life away?’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘To venge my martyr-father,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My foster-brethren three:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the name of thy dead foemen<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This thing I did to thee!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Richard perished, sighing:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Forgive him. Set him free!’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Alas for that late loving<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By seneschals betrayed!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While yet upon his lashes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The holy tear delayed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They bound Bertrand de Gourdon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They slew him in the glade.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Alas for noble spirits<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whom fates perverse befall!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whence David in his beauty<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gave healing unto Saul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The jeering wind beats ever<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On Chaluz castle wall.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a>{51}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_WOOING_PINE" id="THE_WOOING_PINE"></a>THE WOOING PINE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HERE was a lady, starshine in her look,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Of lineage fierce, yet tremulous and kind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As the field-gossamer, that down the wind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Floats gleamingly from some enthistled nook;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wayward as her beauty was her mind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That evermore bright errant journeys took.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Her father’s houndish lords she moved among,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From feud and uproar dewily distraught;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Winnowed her harp of its least pain; and brought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Delight’s full freshet to a beggar’s tongue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or spun amid her maids with chapel-thought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That on a crystal pivot burned and swung.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But night on night, an exile from sleek rest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She nestled warm before her hearth-fire low,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To watch its little wind-born planets go<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Orbing; and from the martyr-oak’s charred breast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In spirit-blue flame, in quintuple wild glow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The tossing leaves prolong their summer zest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a>{52}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And ailingly, she needs must often sigh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perplexèd out of her rich wonted glee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whereof some unseen warder kept the key,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And quell the dark defiance of her eye<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In patience, as a torch dips in the sea.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And so, in brooding, went the white days by.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Unto the horsemen brave in war’s array<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She waved no token from her latticed house,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor yet of princelings bare upon her brows<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love’s salutation; but from such as they<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Turned, as a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Her sealèd sense beheld no man, nor heard,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor lent its troth to any mortal bond,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But lived heart-full of vital light beyond,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And with miraculous tides of being stirred,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lingering tho’ eager, till the forest fond<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Winged to its own pure peace this homing bird.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For, sad with rains of unrevealed desire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And heavy with predestined glory’s beam,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She to the water-girdled wood’s extreme<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stole from her suitors’ pleas, her father’s ire,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a>{53}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Far from their brambly ways to sit and dream,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And make sweet plaint, in daylight’s dying fire;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When, one with lilt of her own veins, there rose<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Across remote and jasmine-pillared space,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A voice of so persuasive, piteous grace<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That all her globèd sorrow did unclose<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To fragrant helpfulness in that still place,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sought, in tears, the breather of such woes.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And peering, of the level-shafted sun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Evasive, listening from a mossy knoll,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To kindling quiet sank her gentle soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In awe at some high venture to be done,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As when outpeals from Fame’s coercive pole,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too soon, on ears too weak, her clarion.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Burst in the golden air a wide and deep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Torrent of harmony, that with clang and shock<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Might wreck a pinnace on an Afric rock,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And on the ruin foamily o’erheap<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bright reparation: ’twas a strength to mock<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Itself with swoons, and idle sobs, and sleep.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A splendor-hoary pine, of kingliest cheer,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enrooted ’neath her thrilling footfall, stood;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a>{54}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Suffused with youth and gracious hardihood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sown of the wind from heaven’s memorial sphere,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the red might of centuries in his blood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unscarred and straight against the battling year,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">From whose great heart those noble accents flowed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And from the melancholy arms outspread<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whereon the aching winter long had snowed:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Come, sister! spouse! whom Love hath strangely led<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From bondage, come!’ And her most blessèd head<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She laid upon his breast as her abode.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O wonderful to hearing, touch, and gaze!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This was of soul’s unrest and spirit’s scar<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Solving and healing; this the late full star<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Superillumining the hither ways,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the old blind allegiance set ajar<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like a dark door, against its flooded rays.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">All intertangled fell their dusky hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In tender twilight’s bowery recess;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And that fair bride of her heart-heaviness<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Was disenthralled in love’s Lethean air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where orchids hung upon the wind’s caress,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the first tawny lily made her lair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a>{55}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Dear minions served them in the covert green:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The squirrel coy, the beetle in his mail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moth, the bee, the throbbing nightingale,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the gaunt wolf, their vassal; to them e’en<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The widowed serpent, on her vengeful trail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Upcast an iridescent eye serene.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The last tired envoy from the realm bereaved<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blew at the drawbridge, riding castlewards;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fisher-folk along the beachen shards<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pierced, calling, the cool thickets silvern leaved;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And grandams meagre, and road-roaming bards<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shared her sad theme, for whom men vainly grieved.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But lad and lass, with parted mouth a-bloom,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who strayed thereby in April’s misty prime,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A vision freshening to the after-time<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Caught thro’ the rifts of uninvaded gloom,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A maiden, honey-lipped as Tuscan rhyme,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And her young hunter, with his sombre plume.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For dynasties tho’ passing-bells be tolled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Theirs is the midmost ecstasy of June,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her music, her imperishable moon;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While Time, that elsewhere is so rough and cold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like a soft child, flower-plucking all forenoon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gathers the ages from this garden old.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a>{56}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Calm housemates with them in their forest lone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Do Freedom, Innocence and Joy, abide:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And aye as one who into Heaven hath died<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thro’ mortal aisleways of melodious moan,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The boatman sees, at dusk, from Arno’s tide,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Everlasting Lover with his own!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a>{57}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_SERPENTS_CROWN" id="THE_SERPENTS_CROWN"></a>THE SERPENT’S CROWN.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-s.jpg" -width="40" -alt="S" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">S</span>AID he:<br /></span> -<span class="ih">‘O diligent rover! browned under many a heaven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Treasure and trophy you carry, spoils from the east and the west;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet I fear that you passed it over, the chief clime out of the seven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My wonder-land and my island, where the chance of a knight is best.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘There from the black mid-forest, past hemlock guards in waiting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Heard you not of the legend?), when the wide sun winks at noon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On the rock-ways sharpest, hoarest, warily undulating,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A star-dappled serpent hurries, with the odorous grace of June.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Over her human forehead, reared among glens abysmal,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glitters a crown gold-gossamer; only a moment’s arc<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a>{58}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Crosses the creature torrid, flexile, palpitant, prismal,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then breaks on the earth, a terror spiralling into the dark.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Every to-day and to-morrow, as the foreign old belfries tremble<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the hammer-hard heels of noon, just that instant, nor more nor less,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the blue witch-reptile’s furrow her shape stands to dissemble,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the barbed tongue tempts and entices, and the fire-eyes acquiesce.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Once she was a wily woman, whose glory the gods have finished,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose handicraft still is ruin, whose glee is to snare and kill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Defier of spearman and bowman, her empery undiminished;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But whoso can overcome her, shall bend the world to his will!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Therefore the knights importune to spur thro’ the jungles fruity,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Many a lad and a hunter and a dreamer there ventureth;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a>{59}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">For the king tends power and fortune to the slayer of that demon-beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And awards him her crown thrice-charmèd whose captor can outwit Death,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Aye, ride above storm and censure, and lord it o’er time and distance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the maddening-sweet assurance of bliss like a rose-rain shed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All for a wood-path venture, a gallant alert resistance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And a stroke of the steel in circle about that exquisite head!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘A task for your young drilled muscle!’<br /></span> -<span class="i12">But the other, in soft derision<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Answered him:<br /></span> - -<span class="i0">‘Oh, I had once some wild schemes under my hat:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some thrill for this same snake-tussle, and the heirdom of life Elysian,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long peace, long loving, long praises: but I’ve kindled and cooled on that!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Ten years have I been a ranger, I have hewn all dread to the centre;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I have learned to sift out values; my soul is at rest and free.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a>{60}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">If that be your boon for danger, on a dull safe youth to enter,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tho’ some may covet the guerdon, ’tis a poor enough thing to me.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘I choose, might I come and return so, to a cause, a friend and a foeman<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Staunch, to endure for the rest but as a moth, or a marigold!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let the philosophers yearn so, the king bribe squire and yeoman!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not for my lease immortal the serpent shall be cajoled.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘To strike her down avenges her slain; but is evil ended?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fashion dies; the function abides, and has fresher scope.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What is to be won? He cringes who would seize, were the choice extended,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For the risk elsewhere of living, here only survival’s hope!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘I would keep my lot mine purely, cast in with men’s forever;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their transient tempest sooner than these Sybaritic calms;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a>{61}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tho’ against the cobra, surely, I would pit my soul’s endeavor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her crown and its lonely meaning I would scorn to take in alms.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Rather than ease unshaken, durance that sloth unhallows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Once and for all, in honor, an end: what’s the forfeit crown<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If the chance of my short term taken run plump on the axe or the gallows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So one brother’s fetter be loosened, or one tyrant trampled down?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Why, see! this diadem’s pleasure a Turk might sigh to inherit,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heart-beats thrumming; a torpid and solitary cheer;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No call to arms, no measure of progress! Well, let him wear it<br /></span> -<span class="i0"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a>{62}</span> Unquestioned ... I spurned the bauble when I killed your snake last year.’<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h3><a name="MOUSTACHE" id="MOUSTACHE"></a>MOUSTACHE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-a.jpg" -width="40" -alt="A" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">A</span> FRIENDLESS pup that heard the fife<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Sprang to the column thro’ the clearing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And on to Switzerland and strife<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Went grenadiering.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Much he endured, and much he dared<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The long hot doomsday of the nations:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He wore a trooper’s scars; he shared<br /></span> -<span class="i4">A trooper’s rations;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Warned pickets, seized the Austrian spies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bore the despatches; thro’ the forces<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From fallen riders, prompt and wise,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Led back the horses;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Served round the tents or in the van,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Quick-witted, tireless as a treadle:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘This private wins,’ said Marshal Lannes,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">‘Ribbon and medal.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a>{63}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">(‘Moustache, a brave French dog,’ it lay<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Graven on silver, like a scholar’s;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Who lost a leg on Jena day,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">But saved the colors!’)<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">At Saragossa he was slain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They buried him, and fired a volley:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">End of Moustache. Nay, that were strain<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Too melancholy.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">His immortality was won,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His most of rapture came to bless him,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When, plumed and proud, Napoleon<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Stooped to caress him.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">His Emperor’s hand upon his head!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How, since, shall lesser honors suit him?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet ever, in that army’s stead,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Love will salute him.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And since not every cause enrolls<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such little, fond, sagacious henchmen,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Write this dog’s moral on your scrolls,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Soldiers and Frenchmen!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a>{64}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">As law is law, can be no waste<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of faithfulness, of worth and beauty;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lord of all time the slave is placed<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Who doth his duty.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">No virtue fades to thin romance<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But Heaven to use eternal moulds it:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mark! Some firm pillar of new France,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Moustache upholds it.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a>{65}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="RANIERI" id="RANIERI"></a>RANIERI.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t-quote.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>O the lute Ranieri played,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Once beneath the jasmine shade<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In a June-bright bower imprisoned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Many a Pisan beauty listened,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Velvet-eyed, with head propped under<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her gold hair’s uncoifed wonder;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like the rich sun-blooded roses<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whom the wind o’ertakes in poses<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of some marble-still delight,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On the dewy verge of night.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Merrily and loud sang he,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the fairest at his knee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sky-ringed in that garden nest!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, save sorcerers, had guessed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whither sylph and minstrel came<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the awful Archer’s aim?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or that, glossy-pined below,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lay the city in her woe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a>{66}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">For her sins, as it was written,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Desolate and fever-smitten?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Apt Ranieri was, and young,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love’s persuasion on his tongue;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And his high-erected glance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Softened into dalliance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Laughed along its haughty level:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Foremost in all skill and revel,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Steeled against the laws that seemed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Monkish figments idly dreamed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Early dipping his wild wing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the pools of rioting,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the moaning world shut out,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the damosels about;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Crimson-girdled, in the sun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Regnant, as if he were one<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For whom Death himself was mute;—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So he sat, and twanged his lute.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Placid, in her novice veil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sister Claudia told the tale.)<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘When, across the air of June,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like a mist half-risen at noon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or a fragrance barely noted,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A Judæan Vision floated!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a>{67}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, midway of music’s burst,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pleadingly, as if athirst,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long athirst, and long unsated,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sighed: “Ranieri!” sighed and waited.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Ah, the Prodigal that heard<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fell to ashes at the word!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But with broken murmurings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Putting by the wreathèd strings,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the safe and craven places,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the fond, bewildered faces,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trembling with the rush of thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With contrition overwrought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At a royal gesture, down<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Straight to the dismantled town;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Girt with justice, chaste and tender,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To all risks himself to render,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of all sorrows rude and froward<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To be prop and cure henceforward;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By no lapse of irksome duty<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swerving from the Only Beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By no olden lure enticed;—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Saint Ranieri followed Christ!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Said the little nun: ‘Amen:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Christ who calleth, now as then.’)<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a>{68}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="SAINT_CADOCS_BELL" id="SAINT_CADOCS_BELL"></a>SAINT CADOC’S BELL.</h3> - -<h4>I.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-s.jpg" -width="40" -alt="S" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">S</span>AILOR! with wonder thou hearest me,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Moored where the roots of thine anchors be,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">A bell was I of Pagan lands<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Forged and welded in might and beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">But captured by Christian chivalry,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And set in a belfry by godly hands,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">With chrisms and benedictions three,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">For a fourfold consecrated duty:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To summon to pray, to peal for the fray,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To measure the hours, to moan for the dead;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">To moan for the dead, ah me! ah me!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Where the wild gold parasites suck and spread,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Where the sea-flower rears her dreamy head;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">In the grots of immortality<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a>{69}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i4">The cool weird singing mermaids dwell in;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">In the still city, with its empurpled air<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Shaken upon the eye from bastions fair<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Of coral, and pearl, and unbought jasper’s glisten,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">I toll and wail, I burst and fail, ah, listen!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">I, the holy bell, the gift of the Lord Llewellyn,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Now the keel of a Cornish ship looms over my prison,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Call from the underworld in mine old despair.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h4>II.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">They brought me in my virgin fame<br /></span> -<span class="i4">To the carven minster wonder-high,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Close to the glorious sun and sky,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">With song, and jubilee, and acclaim:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fountains brimming with wine sprayed out on the crowd;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the chapel-porches the viols and harps clanged loud,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the slim maids danced a solemn measure, ever and aye the same,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Singing: ‘Behold, we hang our bell in<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The freedom of spring, in the golden weather,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">The gift of the Lord Llewellyn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Redeemed from heathenry and strange shame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lion-strong bell, for our service at last led hither,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a>{70}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Flower-woven, caressed, and in Christ made willing and tame.’<br /></span> -<span class="i4">But ere the pleased stir of the people had died,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Llewellyn, fresh home from the wars, with his soldierly stride<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Climbed, bearded and splendid in mail, and his only young child<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Held up from his shoulder in sight of them all; till they cried<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Peal on peal of delight when the rosy babe turned, and her lip<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Laid sweetly upon me in benison mild.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yea, sailor! and thou that hearest my voice from thy ship,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou knowest my sorrow’s beginning, thou knowest, ah me!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whence my tolling and wailing, my breaking and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h4>III.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">I served the Lord ten years and a day,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">In Saint Cadoc’s church by the surging bay;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And housed with the gathering webs and must,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">’Mid whirring of velvety wings outside,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">In calm and in wind, brooding over the tide,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a>{71}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i4">And the bright massed roofs, and the crags’ array,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">My strong life, innocent and just,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Fell of a sudden to ashes and dust,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And on my neck hotly the demon laid the bare rod of his sway!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">How it befell, I know not yet,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">(Sailor, with wonder thou hearest me),<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Save that a passionate sharp regret,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">An exile’s longing, o’ermastered not,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Seared thought like a pestilential spot,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And sent my day-dreams traitorously<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Back to the place where my life began,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">To the long blue mornings, blown and wet,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">To the pyre by the sacred rivulet,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And the chanting Cappadocian.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">No more a Christian bell was I!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">For all became, which seemed so good,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Vile thraldom, in my bitter mood<br /></span> -<span class="i4">That thrust the old conformance by.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Sullen and harsh, to the acolyte<br /></span> -<span class="i4">I answered of a Sabbath night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sprang on the organ’s withdrawing peal<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To shatter its pomp, like a charge of steel.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">The good monks puzzled and prayed, I trow:<br /></span> -<span class="i4">But against their Heaven I set my brow.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a>{72}</span></p> - -<h4>IV.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">To me, by the ancient, triple-roped,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Lone, tortuous stair, whereby I made<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A tingling silence, a heavy concentric shade,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The twelve-years’ child of the Lord Llewellyn groped:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With May-wreaths laden, the loving strange child came!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And my pulses that throbbed at sight of her, ten years gone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Chilled and recoiled at her delicate finger-touch, guessing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Along my brazen-wrought margin, the laud and the blessing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Traced, thro’ the vine, thro’ the tangle of star and of sun,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By her dead father’s name, by Llewellyn’s magnificent name.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And even as she stood in the dark, the doom and the horror rushed on me;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">(I had weakened my soul, and they won me!)<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I felt the desire at my vitals, the unbearable joy that is pain:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With one mad tigerish spring against the dim rafter,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I smote the sweet child in my rage, I smote her with laughter,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And a sound like the rain<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a>{73}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whirled east on the casement, died after:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I knew that the life in her brain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I had quenched at the stroke, and flung even my darling of yore<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down the resonant, tottering stair, down, down to the centuried door!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Then the swift hurricane,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The clamoring army thronged up from below, my<br /></span> -<span class="i0">allegiance to claim!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lean goblins, brown-flecked like a toad, the gnomic horned ghosts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Imps flickering, quarry-sprites grim, all the din of the dolorous hosts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All the glory and glee of the cursèd hissed round me and round, as a flame.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And they loosened my hold from the tower, and my hope from the hem<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of the garment of Him who could save, as they jeered! and with speed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Crashed down past the rocks and the wrecks; and the horrible deed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Was done. I was theirs; and I gave up my spirit to them.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a>{74}</span></p> - -<h4>V.</h4> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">In a mossy minaret<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Fathoms under, I am set.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">All the sea-shapes undulating<br /></span> -<span class="i4">At my gates forlorn are waiting,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">All the dreary faint-eyed people<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Watch me in my hollow steeple,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">While the glass-clear city heaves<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Oft beneath its earthy eaves.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">So in sorrow, sorrow, sorrow<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Yestereven and to-morrow,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Thro’ the æons, in a cell<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Hangs Saint Cadoc’s loveless bell,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Orbèd, like a mortal’s tear,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">On the moony atmosphere,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Bearing, the refrain of time,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Memory, and unrest, and crime.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Thou that hast the world sublime!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I that was free, I am lost, I am damned, I am here!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And whenever a child among men by a blow is dead,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Docile for aye from the deeps must I lift my head,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And from the heathen heart of me that breaks,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">The unextinguishable music wakes,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Naught availing, naught deterred.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a>{75}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i4">And the sailor heareth me,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Even as thou, alas! hast heard,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Fallen in awe upon thy knee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the ominous sea.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a>{76}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="A_CHOUAN" id="A_CHOUAN"></a>A CHOUAN.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-f.jpg" -width="40" -alt="F" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">F</span>ROM the school-porch at Vannes<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Weaponed, the children ran;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One little voice began,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Lark-like ascended:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Treason is on the wing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Black vows, and menacing:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">March, boys! God save the King!’<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Allio ended.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Singing, with sunny head,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Battleward straight he led,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stones for his captain’s bed,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Herbs for his diet:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He and his legion brave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trouble enough they gave!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ere the Blues’ bullets drave<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Them into quiet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a>{77}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Spared, with a few as bold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Once the storm over-rolled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Allio, twelve years old,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Crept from the clamor;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Came, when the days were brief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the old desk in grief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thumbing anew the leaf<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Of the old grammar.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Kings out!... rang the chime,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Kings in!... answered Time.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In his ignoring clime,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Silent, he studied;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Till, ere his youth was done,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For him, the chosen one,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shepherd disclaimed of none,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Aaron’s rod budded.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Long, in unbroken round,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Peace on his paths he found;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Saw the glad Breton ground<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Husbanded, quarried:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a>{78}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Blessed it, the record saith,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All the years he had breath,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till the dim eightieth<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Snowed on his forehead.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">President!... Emperor!...<br /></span> -<span class="i0">President!... On the floor<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spake a sharp Senator<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Widening his ranges:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘From Paris I impeach<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vannes for disloyal speech;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Send thither troops to teach,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">How the world changes!’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Down on the peasants then<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rode the Republic’s men,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trampling the corn again,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Miring the flowers;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Hewed thro’ the rebels nigh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scoffed at the women’s cry,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Set the tricolor high<br /></span> -<span class="i4">On the church towers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a>{79}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Pale in his cot that day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dying, the pastor lay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where still his eye could stray<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Up valleys gleaming;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Watchers were at his side;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Prayer unto prayer replied:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hush! what was that he spied,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Pinnacle-streaming?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">(Nothing was he aware<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In his deaf Breton air,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So gray traditions there<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Throve unforgotten,—<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">That, by a final chance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Kings all were led a dance;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long since, in fickle France,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Sceptres were rotten!)<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Sprang the old lion, still<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Live with prodigious will,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To his stone casement-sill;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Foolish and true one!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a>{80}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Snatched up the blade he bore,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rough with its rust of yore,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Kissed it, a saint no more—<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Only a Chouan!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Barred from the charging mass<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the choked market-pass,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All he could do, alas!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Now, was to clang it:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nay, more:—’God save the King!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With a last clarion ring,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shot ere he ceased to sing,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Allio sang it.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a>{81}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="LYRICS" id="LYRICS"></a>L Y R I C S</h2> - -<p class="c"> -<img src="images/doodad.png" width="50" alt="" title="" /><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a>{82}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a>{83}</span> </p> - -<h3><a name="YOUTH" id="YOUTH"></a>YOUTH.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-l.jpg" -width="40" -alt="L" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">L</span>ET us hymn thee for our silent brothers,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Freely as the wild impellent wind blows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Briefly, rudely, in the smoky pauses<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of a battle, in the stress and scourging<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of the sail apast thy heavenly margin;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let us hymn thee, while the gallant pulses<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In high heart and limbs one kingliest instant,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Boom and flash thy name and their allegiance;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Once, and for one only,’ let us hymn thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O Delight, O Sunrise, O sole Answer,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Empery unbought, supreme Adventure,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Let us hymn thee, we, the passing, dying,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Out of bondage by a vision lifted,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a>{84}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Since by chance sublime, in secret places,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Goddess! we, Aktaion-like, have seen thee.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tho’ our voice as a spent eagle’s voice is,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let us hymn thee, while the doom is forging;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Holding, losing, thro’ one first last moment,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One mad moment worth dull life forever,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Triumphing in anguish, let us hymn thee!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thine, beholden Beauty, thine this heart-break,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thine, O Hope forsworn! this salutation,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a>{85}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_LAST_FAUN" id="THE_LAST_FAUN"></a>THE LAST FAUN.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-h.jpg" -width="40" -alt="H" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">H</span>OW hath he stumbled hither, in search of love and praise,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">A tardy comer and goer across the world’s highways,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A kind shape from the thicket, a wanderer all his days?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He finds a rocky seat where the moiling town recedes:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The altered shepherds flout him; but O he little heeds!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Incredulous he swings there, and drones upon his reeds.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He stamps his cloven heel, and he laughs adown the wind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With eye that wanes and waxes at doings of mankind.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Slow, slow creeps the invader upon that happy mind.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The apple breasts his fellow; doves wheel by two and three,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ever dance in circle the shallops on the sea;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The goats and deer are many; but playmate none hath he,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a>{86}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor nymph nor child to follow upon his signals rude;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He smiles: there is no frolic; he snarls: there is no feud.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He feels his poor heart sinking at every interlude.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">His shaggy ear and freakish resents the wail and din;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth’s rumors chill his veins with their ghostly gliding in;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He aches to slip these tethers, and be where he hath been.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Elsewhere is waking glory, and here the dream, the thrall.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hush! hear the sunless waters, the wrestling leaves that call!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He lops the grass, and whistles; and while he cheats them all,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Obeys, is gone, gone wholly. From alien air too cold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Faun, with garlands flying, with sylvan ditties trolled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Being homesick, being patient, regains his greenwood old.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a>{87}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="KNIGHTS_OF_WEATHER" id="KNIGHTS_OF_WEATHER"></a>KNIGHTS OF WEATHER.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>HEN down the filmy lanes<br /></span> -<span class="ih">The too wise sun goes grieving,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A wake of splendor leaving<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Upbillowed from the ground;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When at the window-panes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The hooded chestnuts rattle,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And there is clash of battle<br /></span> -<span class="i0">New England’s oaks around:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh, then we knights of weather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We birds of sober feather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fill up the woods with revel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That summer’s pomp is slain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And make a mighty shouting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For King October’s outing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Saracen October<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Astride the hurricane!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When dappled butterflies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Have crept away to cover,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a>{88}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And one persistent plover<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is coaxing from the fen;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When apples show the skies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their bubbly lush vermilion,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And from a rent pavilion<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Laugh down on maids and men:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh, then we knights of weather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We birds of sober feather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fill up the woods with revel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That summer’s pomp is slain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And make a mighty shouting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For King October’s outing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Saracen October<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Astride the hurricane!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When pricks the winy air;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When o’er the meadows clamber<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cloud-masonries of amber;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When brooks are silver-clear;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When conquering colors dare<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The hills and cliffy places,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To hold, with braggart graces,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">High wassail of the year:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh, then we knights of weather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We birds of sober feather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fill up the woods with revel<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a>{89}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">That summer’s pomp is slain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And make a mighty shouting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For King October’s outing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Saracen October<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Astride the hurricane!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a>{90}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="DAYBREAK" id="DAYBREAK"></a>DAYBREAK.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE young sun rides the mists anew; his cohorts follow from the sea.<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Let Aztec children shout and sue, the Persian lend a thankful knee:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Those glad auroral eyes shall beam not anywhere henceforth on me.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Up with the banners on the height, set every matin bell astir!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The tree-top choirs carouse in light; the dew’s on phlox and lavender:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah, mockery! for, worlds away, the heart of morning beats with her.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a>{91}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="ON_SOME_OLD-MUSIC" id="ON_SOME_OLD-MUSIC"></a>ON SOME OLD-MUSIC.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>O lie beside a stream, upon the sod<br /></span> -<span class="ih">At ease, while weary shepherds homeward plod,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And feel benignly by, as daylight mellows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mountains in their weathering period;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Aye so, with silence shod<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To lie in depth of grass with man’s meek fellows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The cattle large and calm, aware of God,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And, keen as if to flesh the spirit sprang,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To hear,—O but to hear that silvern clang<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of young hale melody! and hither rally<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The thrill, the aspiration, and the pang<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Again, as once it rang<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sovereign and clear thro’ all the Saco valley,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose slaves were we that heard, and he that sang!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Happy the spot, the hour, the spanning strain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Precious and far, the rainbow of the rain,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a>{92}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The seal of patience, dark endeavor’s summing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The heaven-bright close of Pergolese’s pain!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Sighs bid it back in vain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor win its peer, till craftsmen aftercoming<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lost art, lost heart, from shipwrecked years regain.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How, like an angel, it effaced the crime,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moil and heat of our tempestuous time,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And brought from dewier air, to us who waited,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">As falls, at midnight’s chime<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The thought of Love’s remote sunshining prime.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There flits upon the wind’s wing, as we gaze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Our northern springtime, virgin-green three days;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The racy water shallowing, the glory<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of jonquils strewn, the wafted apple-sprays:<br /></span> -<span class="i4">O let it be thy praise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Child-song too lovely and too transitory!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou art as they; thy feet have gone their ways.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O beauty unassailable! O bride<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of memory! while yet thou didst abide<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a>{93}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The yester joy was ours, the joy to-morrow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life’s brimming whole: and since to earth denied,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Soft ebbed thy dreamy tide,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To us the first, the full, the only sorrow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wild as when Abel out of Eden died.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a>{94}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="LATE_PEACE" id="LATE_PEACE"></a>LATE PEACE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-a.jpg" -width="40" -alt="A" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">A</span>S a pool beset with lilies<br /></span> -<span class="ih">In the May-green copses hid,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Far from wayfarers and wrongers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Clangors, rumors, disillusions,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Neighbored by the wild-grape only,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the hemlock’s dreamy host,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the Rhodian nightingale,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O remote, remote, O lonely!—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So thy life is.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Whence and wherefore is it<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Never peace may be co-dweller<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With my lakelet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too belovèd and too sheltered,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That, secure from broil of cities,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From a secret regnant spring<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To its own wild depth awaking,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Makes but moaning and resistance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a>{95}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Undiminishable protest;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mimicking with pain and fury<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of humanity the struggle;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fretting, foaming, pacing ever<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Round and round its fragrant cloister,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All within itself perplexèd,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Every heart-vein bruised but eager;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And its clear soul, doubt-o’erladen,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Neath the stirred and floating foulness,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long abased, long dumb, ah! long?—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So thy life is.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Comes the respite, comes the guerdon;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The perfect truce arrives<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the honey-dropping twilight,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The southwestering pallid sunshine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The magian clouds a-fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mooring galleon-wind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At whose spell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Potent daily,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lulled water is beguiled<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Back to saneness, back to sweetness.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All its arrowy hissing atoms<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gather from the chase forsaken;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sphered galaxy of bubbles,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a>{96}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Disunite, as to heard music,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like weird dancers, from their wreathings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each to its cool grotto swaying;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till there follows, on their fervor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Depth, and crystal clarity.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So thy life is, so thy life!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Darkling to beatitude,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shaken in the saving change.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the spirit made wise, not weary<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the throes that youth endureth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When old age falls, evening-placid,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On the mystery unriddled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet in empire, yet in honor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In submission not ignoble,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glistens to a central quiet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Leal to the most lovely moon.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a>{97}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="TO_A_YOUNG_POET" id="TO_A_YOUNG_POET"></a>TO A YOUNG POET.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-s.jpg" -width="40" -alt="S" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">S</span>IGH not to be remembered, dear,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Nor for Time’s fickle graces strive;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vex not thy spirit’s songful cheer<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the sick ardor to survive.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But be content, thou quick bright thing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A while than lasting stars more fair:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A lone high-flashing skylark’s wing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Across obliterating air.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O rich in immortality!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not thee Fame’s graven stones benight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But ever, to some world-worn eye,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All Heaven is bluer for thy flight.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a>{98}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="DE_MORTUIS" id="DE_MORTUIS"></a>DE MORTUIS.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE skilfullest of mankind!<br /></span> -<span class="ih">So praise him, reckoning<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By shot in the sea-gull’s wing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By doubts in boyhood’s mind.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a>{99}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="DOWN_STREAM" id="DOWN_STREAM"></a>DOWN STREAM.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-s.jpg" -width="40" -alt="S" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">S</span>CARRED hemlock roots,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Spring’s first-knighted;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Clinging aspens grouped between,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Slender, misty-green,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Faintly affrighted:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Far hills behind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sombre growth, with sunlight lined,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">On their edges;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the straight and fair<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Phalanx of sedges:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a>{100}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Wee wings and eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Fearless rangers;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Drowsy turtles in a tribe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Diving, with a gibe<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Muttered at strangers;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Wren, bobolink,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Robin, at the grassy brink;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Great frogs jesting;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the beetle, for no grief<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Half-across his leaf<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Sighing and resting;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">In the keel’s way,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unwithdrawing bream at play,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Till from branches<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Graze them with their soft<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Full avalanches!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">This is very odd!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Boldly sings the river-god:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">‘Pilgrim rowing!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a>{101}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the Hyperborean air<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wherefore, and O where<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Should man be going?’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Slave to a dream,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Me no urgings and no theme<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Can embolden;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now no more the oars swing back,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Drip, dip, till black<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Waters froth golden.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Musketaquid!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I have loved thee, all unbid,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Earliest, longest;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou hast taught me thine own thrift:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here I sit, and drift<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Where the wind’s strongest.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">If, furthermore,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There be any pact ashore,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">I forget it!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If, upon a busy day<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beauty make delay,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Once over, let it!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a>{102}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Only,—despite<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thee, who wouldst unnerve me quite<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Like a craven,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Best the current be not so,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heart and I must row<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Into our haven!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a>{103}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_INDIAN_PIPE" id="THE_INDIAN_PIPE"></a>THE INDIAN PIPE.<br /><br /> -<small>(TO R. L. S.)</small></h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-y.jpg" -width="40" -alt="Y" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">Y</span>OUR bays shall all men bring,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">And flowers the children strew you.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Once, as I stood in a thick west wood,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">I took from a fissure a precious thing,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">The homage whereof be to you!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A thing pearl-pale, yet stung<br /></span> -<span class="i4">With fire, as the morning’s beam is;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hid underground thro’ a solar round,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Hardy and fragile, antique and young,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">More exquisite than a dream is.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">No rose had so bright birth;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">No gem of romance surpassed it,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By a minstrel-knight, for his maid’s delight,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Borne from the moon-burnt marge of the earth,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Where Paynim breakers cast it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a>{104}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Rude-named, memorial, quaint,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">The dews and the darkness mould it:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scarce twice in an age is our heritage<br /></span> -<span class="i2">This glory and mystery without taint.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Dear Stevenson, do you hold it<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A text of grace, ah! much<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Beyond what the praising throng say:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only your art is its peer at heart,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Only your touch is a wonder such,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">My wild little loving song says!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a>{105}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="BROOK_FARM" id="BROOK_FARM"></a>BROOK FARM.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-d.jpg" -width="40" -alt="D" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">D</span>OWN the long road bent and brown,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Youth, that dearly loves a vision,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ventures to the gates Elysian,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As a palmer from the town,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Coming not so late, so far,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rocks and birches! for your story,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor to prate of vanished glory<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where of old was quenched a star;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Where, of old, in lapse of toil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Time, that has for weeds a dower,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bade the supersensual flower<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Starve in our New England soil.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But to Youth, whose radiant eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shatter mists of grief and daunting,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lost glad voices still are chanting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Neath those unremaining skies;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a>{106}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Still the dreams of fellowship<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beat their wings of aspiration;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And a smile of soft elation<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trembles from his haughty lip,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">If another dare deride<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hopes heroic snapped and parted,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Disillusion so high-hearted,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All success is mean beside!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a>{107}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="MY_TIMES_ARE_IN_THY_HANDS" id="MY_TIMES_ARE_IN_THY_HANDS"></a>‘MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS.’</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-m-quote.jpg" -width="40" -alt="M" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">‘M</span>Y times are in Thy hands!’<br /></span> -<span class="ih">It rumbles from the sea;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It jingles ever, inland far,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the reddening rowan-tree.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Let me not sit inert,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let me not be afraid!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Teach me to dare and to resist<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like the first mortal made,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">To whom of fate’s dread strength<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No sickening rumors ran;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who with whatever grim event<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grappled, as man with man.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Seal to my utmost age<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What now my youth hath known:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘My times are in Thy hands,’ O most!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When wholly in my own.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a>{108}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="GARDEN_CHIDINGS" id="GARDEN_CHIDINGS"></a>GARDEN CHIDINGS.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE spring being at her blessed carpentry,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">This morning makes a stem, this noon a leaf,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And jewels her sparse greenery with a bud;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fostress of happy growth is she. But thou,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O too disdainful spirit, or too shy!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Passive dost thou inhabit, like a mole,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The porch elect of darkness; for thy trade<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is underground, a barren industry,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shivering true ardor on the nether air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shaping the thousandth tendril, and all year<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Webbing the silver nothings to and fro.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What wonder if the gardener think thee dead,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When every punctual neighbor-root now goes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Adventurously skyward for a flower?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Up, laggard! climb thine inch; thyself fulfil;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou only hast no sign, no pageantry,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Save these fine gropings: soon from thy small plot<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The seasonable sunshine steals away.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a>{109}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="FREDERIC_OZANAM" id="FREDERIC_OZANAM"></a>FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-u.jpg" -width="40" -alt="U" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">U</span>NTO the constant heart whom saints befriend<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Afar in peace, what were our gaudy praise?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His course is ended, and his faith is kept.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Honor in silence to that memory! sweet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Equally in the forum of the schools,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And in the sufferer’s hovel. His, threefold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lowliness of Isai’s chosen son,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And zeal that fired the warring Macchabee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">About him like a wedding-garment, worn<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The day of his acceptance; and we know<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That for the sake of some such soul as this,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So brave, so clean, compassionate and just,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Alert in its most meek security,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love beareth yet with all that stains the world.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a>{110}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="BANKRUPT" id="BANKRUPT"></a>BANKRUPT.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-p.jpg" -width="40" -alt="P" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">P</span>AST the cold gates, a wraith without a name,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Sullen and withered, like a thing half-tame<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Still for its jungle moaning, came by night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before the Judgment’s awful Angel came.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Answer, Immortal! at my high decree<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glory or shame shall flood thee as the sea:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What of the power, the skill, the graciousness,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The star-strong soul the Lord hath lent to thee?’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But the lone spectre raised a mournful hand:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Call me not that! Release me from this land!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What words are Heaven and Hell? They fall on me<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As on a sphere the fooled and slipping sand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a>{111}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Discerning, thou the good mayst yet belie,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By some last test, the sinner sanctify.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My guilt is neutral-safe, like innocence:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No boon nor bane of deathless days gain I,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Whose life is hollow shell and broken bowl,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of all which was its treasury, the whole<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Utterly, vilely squandered. O most Just!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Put down thy scales: for I have spent my soul.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a>{112}</span><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h3><a name="A_REASON_FOR_SILENCE" id="A_REASON_FOR_SILENCE"></a>A REASON FOR SILENCE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-y.jpg" -width="40" -alt="Y" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">Y</span>OU sang, you sang! you mountain brook<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Scarce by your tangly banks held in,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As running from a rocky nook,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">You leaped the world, the sea to win,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sun-bright past many a foamy crook,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And headlong as a javelin.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Now men do check and still your course<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To serve a village enterprise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wheelward drive your sullen force,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">What wonder, slave! that in no wise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Breaks from you, pooled ’mid reeds and gorse,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The voice you had in Paradise?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a>{113}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="TEMPTATION" id="TEMPTATION"></a>TEMPTATION.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-i.jpg" -width="40" -alt="I" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">I</span> COME where the wry road leads<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Thro’ the pines and the alder scents,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sated of books, with a start,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sharp on the gang to-day:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scarce see the Romany steeds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scarce hear the flap of the tents,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When hillo! my heart, my heart<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is out of its leash, and away.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Gypsies, gypsies, the whole<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tatterdemalion crew!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Brown and sly and severe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With curious trades in hand.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A string snaps in my soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The one high answer due<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If an exile chance to hear<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The songs of his fatherland.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a>{114}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">... To be abroad with the rain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And at home with the forest hush,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the crag, and the flower-urn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the wan sleek mist upcurled;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To break the lens and the plane,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To burn the pen and the brush,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, clean and alive, return<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into the old wild world!...<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How is it? O wind that bears<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The arrow from its mark,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sea-bird from the sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moth from his midnight lamp,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fate’s self, thou mocker of prayers!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whirl up from the mighty dark,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And even so, even me<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blow far from the gypsy camp!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a>{115}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="FOR_A_CHILD" id="FOR_A_CHILD"></a>FOR A CHILD.<br /><br /> -<small>Schumann’s ‘Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.’</small></h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-i.jpg" -width="40" -alt="I" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">I</span>N memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid,<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Aye, truly, sore afraid:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would yet be strong to break my song,<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Thro’ all these after-years!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a>{116}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="AGLAUS" id="AGLAUS"></a>AGLAUS.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE ash hath no perfidious mind;<br /></span> -<span class="ih">The open fields are just and kind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tho’ loves betray, I hear this way<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The feathery step of the faithful wind.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Around me, talismanic, close:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are bulwarks twain of my year’s repose.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">No struggle, no delight, no moan,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But at my hearthstone I have known!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All thoughts that pass, as in a glass<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The gods have bared to me for mine own.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hath of her own will been my guest;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not smoking feud, but quietude<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My heart hath chosen, at her behest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a>{117}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘This is of men the happiest man<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who hath his plot Arcadian,’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Apollo cried, my gates beside,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Nor ever wanders beyond its span.’<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My hair is shaken in the cold;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The night is nigh; but ere I die,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bear witness, brothers! that young and old,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">My name I wear without regret:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Home-Keeper am I, and yet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At every inn my feet have been,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Above all travellers I am set.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Tho’ ocean currents by me purled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sails of my desire were furled.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What pilgrims crave, three acres gave;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I, Aglaus, have seen the world!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a>{118}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="AN_AUDITOR" id="AN_AUDITOR"></a>AN AUDITOR.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>HY chide me that mutely I listen, ah, jester?<br /></span> -<span class="ih">For either thou knowest<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too much, or thou knowest not aught of this aching vexed planet down-whirling:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou knowest?—Thy wit is but fortitude; would’st have me laugh in its presence?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou knowest not?—Laugh I can never, for innocence also is sacred.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a>{119}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_WATER-TEXT" id="THE_WATER-TEXT"></a>THE WATER-TEXT.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>ATCHING my river marching overland,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">By mighty tides, transfigured and set free,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My river, lapped in idle-hearted mirth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Made at a touch a glory to the earth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And leaving, wheresoever falls his hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The balm and benediction of the sea,—<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O soon, I know, the hour whereof we dreamed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The saving hour miraculous, arrives!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When, ere to darkness winds our sordid course,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some glad, new, potent, consecrating force<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall speed us, so uplifted, so redeemed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Along the old worn channel of our lives.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a>{120}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="CYCLAMEN" id="CYCLAMEN"></a>CYCLAMEN.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-o.jpg" -width="40" -alt="O" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">O</span>N me, thro’ joy’s eclipse, and inward dark,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">First fell thy beauty like a star new-lit;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To thee my carol now! albeit no lark<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite.<br /></span> -<span class="i6">O would that song might fit<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou undefiled estray of earth’s o’ervanished spring!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Here is the sunless clime, the fallen race;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down our green dingles is no peer of thee:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why art thou such, dear outcast, who hadst place<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With shrine, and bower, and olive-silvery<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Peaked islets in mid-sea?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou seekest thine Achaian dews in vain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And osiered nooks jocose, at summer’s wane,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With gossip spirit-fine of chill and widening rain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a>{121}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Thou wert among Thessalia’s hoofy host,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Their radiant shepherd stroked thee with a sigh;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">When falchioned Perseus spied the Æthiop coast,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Unto his love’s sad feet thy cheek was nigh;<br /></span> -<span class="i6">And all thy blood beat high<br /></span> -<span class="i2">With woodland Rhœcus at the brink of bliss;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Thy leaf the Naiad plucked by Thyamis,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And she, the straying maid, the bride beguiled of Dis.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">These, these are gone. The air is wan and cold,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The choric gladness of the woods is fled:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">But thou, aye dove-like, rapt in memories old,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Inclinest to the ground thy fragile head,<br /></span> -<span class="i6">In ardor and in dread.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Searcher of yesternight! how wilt thou find<br /></span> -<span class="i2">In any dolven aisle or cavern blind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In any ocean-hall, the glory left behind?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">June’s butterfly, poised o’er his budded sweet,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Is scarce so quiet-winged, betimes, as thou.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Fail twilight’s thrill, and noonday’s wavy heat<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To kiss the fever from thy downcast brow.<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Ah, cease that vigil now!<br /></span> -<span class="i2">No west nor east thine unhoused vision keeps,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a>{122}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i2">Nor yet in heaven’s pale purpureal deeps<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of worlds unnavigate, the dream of childhood sleeps.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Flower of the joyous realm! thy rivers lave<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Their once proud valleys with forgetful moan;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Thy kindred nod on many a trodden grave<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Among marmorean altars overthrown;<br /></span> -<span class="i6">For thou art left alone,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Alone and dying, duped for love’s extreme:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Hope not! thy Greece is over, as a dream;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stay not! but follow her down Time’s star-lucent stream.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Less art thou of the earth than of the air,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A frail outshaken splendor of the morn;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Dimmest desire, the softest throb of prayer,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Impels thee out of bondage to thy bourn:<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Ere thou art half forlorn,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Farewell, farewell! for from thy golden stem<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Thou slippest like a wild enchanter’s gem.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swift are the garden-ghosts, and swiftest thou of them!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Yea, speed thy freeborn life no doubts debar,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">O blossom-breath of that which was delight!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a>{123}</span><br /></span> -<span class="i2">In cooling whirl and undulation far<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The wind shall be thy bearer all the night<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Thro’ ether trembling-white:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And I that clung with thee, as exiles may<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Whose too slight roots in every zephyr sway,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy little soul salute along her homeward way!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a>{124}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="A_PASSING_SONG" id="A_PASSING_SONG"></a>A PASSING SONG.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>HERE thrums the bee and the honeysuckle hovers,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Gather, golden lasses, to a roundelay;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dance, dance, yokefellows and lovers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Headlong down the garden, in the heart of May!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Dance! what if last year Winnie’s cheek were rounder?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dance! tho’ that foot, Hal, were nimbler yesterday.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spread the full sail! for soon the ship must founder;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Flaunt the red rose! soon the canker-worm has sway:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">See the dial shifting, hear the night-birds calling!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dance, you starry striplings! round the fountain-spray;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With its mellow music out of sunshine falling,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With its precious waters trickling into clay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a>{125}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="IN_TIME" id="IN_TIME"></a>IN TIME.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-h.jpg" -width="40" -alt="H" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">H</span>ER little dumb child, for whom hope was none<br /></span> -<span class="ih">In any mind, she watched from sun to sun,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Until three years her mighty faith had run;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then, in an agony of love, laid by<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The bright head from her breast, and went to lie<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Neath cedarn shadows, and the wintry sky,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Not having, for her long desire and prayer,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One sign from those shut lips, so rosy-fair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It seemed all eloquence must nestle there.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">That day, to her near grave, thro’ frost and sleet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He, following from his toys on truant feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cried: ‘Mother, mother!’ joyous and most sweet.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And as their souls ached in them at the word,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The father lifted his new-wakened bird<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With one rapt tear, that now at last she heard!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a>{126}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_WILD_RIDE" id="THE_WILD_RIDE"></a>THE WILD RIDE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-i.jpg" -width="40" -alt="I" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap"><i>I</i></span> <i>HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,</i><br /></span> -<span class="ih"><i>All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing.</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With a stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The road is thro’ dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a>{127}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing.</i><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a>{128}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_LIGHT_OF_THE_HOUSE" id="THE_LIGHT_OF_THE_HOUSE"></a>THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-b.jpg" -width="40" -alt="B" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">B</span>EYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;<br /></span> -<span class="ih">You pace the garden-walks secure and sensitive;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You linger on the stair: Love’s lonely pulses leap!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Years after, and years after, you keep your heirdom still,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your winning youth about you, your joyous force and skill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unvexed, unapprehended, with waking sense adored;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">To every quiet inmate, strong in the cheer you brought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And unto whoso knocks, an awe-struck visitor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sunshine that was you floods all the open door!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a>{129}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="A_LAST_WORD_ON_SHELLEY" id="A_LAST_WORD_ON_SHELLEY"></a>A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-e.jpg" -width="40" -alt="E" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">E</span>ACH ninth hierarchal wave, a league of sound,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">To phantom shreds the hostile crags confound,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To wreck on wreck forlorn. The crags remain.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Smile at the storm for our safe poet’s sake!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not ever this ordainèd world shall break<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That mounting, foolish, foam-bright heart again.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a>{130}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="IMMUNITY" id="IMMUNITY"></a>IMMUNITY.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-l.jpg" -width="40" -alt="L" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">L</span>EAF of the deep-leaved holly-tree,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Long spared the weather-god’s disdain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Have not thy brothers borne for thee<br /></span> -<span class="i2">June’s inavertible raging rain?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And they are beautiful and hale,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Those sun-veined revellers; and thou<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Still crippled, still afraid and pale,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Sole discord of the singing bough!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a>{131}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="PAULAS_EPITAPH" id="PAULAS_EPITAPH"></a>PAULA’S EPITAPH.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-g.jpg" -width="40" -alt="G" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">G</span>O you by with gentle tread.<br /></span> -<span class="ih">This was Paula, who is dead:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Eyes dark-lustrous to the look<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As a leaf-pavilioned brook,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Voice upon the ear to cling<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sweeter than the cithern-string;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose shy spirit, unaware<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Loosed into refreshful air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With it took for talisman,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Climbing past the starry van,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Names to which the heavens do ope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Candor, Chastity, and Hope.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a>{132}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="JOHN_BROWN_A_PARADOX" id="JOHN_BROWN_A_PARADOX"></a>JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-c.jpg" -width="40" -alt="C" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">C</span>OMPASSIONATE eyes had our brave John Brown,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">And a craggy stern forehead, a militant frown;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fool who redeemed us once of our folly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Too vehement, verily, was John Brown!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of freedmen; aye, call him fanatic and martyr:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And a jeer; but ah! soon from the terrified town,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In his bleeding track made over hilltop and hollow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wise armies and councils were eager to follow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the children’s lips chanted our lost John Brown.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a>{133}</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Star-led for us, stumbled and groped John Brown,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Star-led, in the awful morasses to drown;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the trumpet that rang for a nation’s upheaval,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the thought that was just, thro’ the deed that was evil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Was blown with the breath of this dumb John Brown!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Bared heads and a pledge unto mad John Brown!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now the curse is allayed, now the dragon is down,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now we see, clear enough, looking back at the onset,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Christianity’s flood-tide and Chivalry’s sunset<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the old broken heart of our hanged John Brown!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a>{135}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a>{134}</span> </p> - -<h2><a name="SONNETS" id="SONNETS"></a>S O N N E T S</h2> - -<p class="c"> -<img src="images/doodad.png" width="50" alt="" title="" /><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a>{136}</span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a>{137}</span> </p> - -<h3><a name="APRIL_DESIRE" id="APRIL_DESIRE"></a>APRIL DESIRE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>HILE in these spacious fields is my sojourn,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Needs must I bless the blossomy outbreak<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of earth’s pent beauty, and for old love’s sake<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trembling, the bees’ on-coming chant discern;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hail the rash hyacinth, the ambushed fern,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">High-bannered boughs that green defiance make,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And watch from sheathing ice the brave Spring take<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her broad, bright river-blade. Ah! then, in turn<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long-hushèd forces stir in me; I feel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All the most sharp unrest of the young year;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fain would my spirit, too, like idling steel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be snatched from its dull scabbard, for a strife<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With cold oppressions! straightway, if not here,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In consummated freedom, ampler life.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a>{138}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="TWOFOLD_SERVICE" id="TWOFOLD_SERVICE"></a>TWOFOLD SERVICE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-c.jpg" -width="40" -alt="C" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">C</span>HAMPIONS of men with brawny fist and lung,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">You righteous! with eyes oped and utterance terse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose greed of energies would fain disperse<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ere any mould be cast, or roundel sung,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your gentler brothers still at play among<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The smirch and jangle of the universe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mere fool-blind trespassers for you to curse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Sabbath-breakers, the unchristened young;—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Peace! These, too, know: these are as ye employed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor of laborious help and value void,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Living; who, faithful to their fellows’ need,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fling life away for truth, art, fatherland,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like a gold largess from a princely hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Without one trading thought of heavenly meed.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a>{139}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="IN_THE_GYMNASIUM" id="IN_THE_GYMNASIUM"></a>IN THE GYMNASIUM.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-i.jpg" -width="40" -alt="I" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">I</span> LEAN against a pillar in the sun,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">The sandals loose on mine arrested feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While from their paths orbicular the fleet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Slim racers drop like stars. O loveliest one,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lender of sixfold wings the while I run,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose tortoise-lyre saves yet for me its sweet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cyllenic suasions old, to thy dim seat<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glory and grace! the votive rites are done.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy sole rememberer honey hath, nor palm,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Libation none, nor lamb to lead to thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah, Maia’s son! once god, and once aye-living.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here stood thy shrine: here chants my heart in calm<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sad as the centralmost weird wave’s at sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hermes! thy last June pæan and thanksgiving.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a>{140}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="A_SALUTATION" id="A_SALUTATION"></a>A SALUTATION.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-h.jpg" -width="40" -alt="H" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">H</span>IGH-HEARTED Surrey! I do love your ways,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All with inviolate honor sealed and blent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I love your youth, your friendships, whims, and frays;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heard as in dreams from some old harper’s tent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And stirring in the listener’s brain for days.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Good father-poet! if to-night there be<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At Framlingham none save the north-wind’s sighs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No guard but moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sought not one other down three hundred years!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a>{141}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="AT_A_SYMPHONY" id="AT_A_SYMPHONY"></a>AT A SYMPHONY.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-o.jpg" -width="40" -alt="O" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">O</span>H, I would have these tongues oracular<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Dip into silence, tease no more, let be!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They madden, like some choral of the free<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To earth the boast that her gold empires are,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The menace of delicious death to me,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Piercing the heart with beauty from afar!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Music too winning to the sense forlorn!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of what angelic lineage was she born,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bred in what rapture?—These her sires and friends:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a>{142}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="SLEEP" id="SLEEP"></a>SLEEP.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-o.jpg" -width="40" -alt="O" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">O</span> GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide<br /></span> -<span class="ih">On whose moon-heaving breast my head hath lain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thro’ holy hours, be yet unsatisfied,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Loose me betimes! for in my soul abide<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Urgings of memory; and exile’s pain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">May throb for the old strife wherein he died.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Often and evermore, across the sea<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of day<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O speed me! like that outworn king erewhile<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From kind Phæacia shoreward borne; for me,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy loving healèd Greek, thou too shall lay<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a>{143}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="THE_ATONING_YESTERDAY" id="THE_ATONING_YESTERDAY"></a>THE ATONING YESTERDAY.</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-y.jpg" -width="40" -alt="Y" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">Y</span>E daffodilian days, whose fallen towers<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Shielded our paradisal prime from ill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fair past, fair motherhood! let come what will,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We, being yours, defy the anarch powers.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For us the happy tidings fell, in showers<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enjewelling the wind from every hill;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We drained the sun against the winter’s chill;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Our ways were barricadoed in with flowers:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And if from skyey minsters now unhoused,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth’s massy workings at the forge we hear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The black roll of the congregated sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And war’s live hoof: O yet, last year, last year<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We were the lark-lulled shepherdlings, that drowsed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grave-deep, at noon, in grass of Arcady!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a>{144}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="RUSSIA_UNDER_THE_CZARS" id="RUSSIA_UNDER_THE_CZARS"></a>‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS.’</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-o.jpg" -width="40" -alt="O" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">O</span>F thraldom and the accursèd diadem<br /></span> -<span class="ih">In that vast snow-land, shout the passionate tale;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Touch graybeards in the mart, bid braggarts quail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And rouse the student lone from his old phlegm<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To breathe the self-same sacred air with them,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spirits supreme, our brothers! whose avail<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is sacrifice. Nay, make no woman’s wail:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rome is re-born! whom kings dare not contemn.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On Neva’s shore-streets tho’ high blood be spent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There this lorn world’s renascent hopes are meeting:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In camp is Mucius, at the bridge, Horatius;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Regulus walks in gyves, magnificent;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thence men hear—O sound sublime and gracious!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The unquelled heart of Cæsar’s Brutus beating.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a>{145}</span></p> - -<h3><a name="FOUR_SONNETS_FROM_LA_VITA_NUOVA" id="FOUR_SONNETS_FROM_LA_VITA_NUOVA"></a>FOUR SONNETS FROM ‘LA VITA NUOVA.’</h3> - -<h4>I.</h4> - -<p class="csml">‘<i>Io mi sentii svegliar dentro allo core.</i>’</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-w.jpg" -width="40" -alt="W" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">W</span>ITHIN my bosom, from long apathy,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Love’s mood of tenderness extreme awoke,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And spying him far off, mine eye bespoke<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love’s self, so joyous scarce it seemèd he,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Crying: ‘Now, verily, pay thy vows to me!’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And bright thro’ every word his smile outbroke.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then stood we twain, I in my liege lord’s yoke,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Watching the path he came by, soon to see<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Lady Joan and Lady Beatrice<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nearing our very nook, each marvel close<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Following her peer, all beauty else above;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Love said, in a voice like Memory’s:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘The first is Spring; but she that with her goes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My counterpart, bears my own name of Love!’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a>{146}</span><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h4>II.</h4> - -<p class="csml">‘<i>Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare.</i>’</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-s.jpg" -width="40" -alt="S" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">S</span>O chaste, so noble looks that lady mine<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Saluting on her way, that tongues of some<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are mute a-tremble, and the eyes that clomb<br /></span> -<span class="i0">High as her eyes, abashed, their gaze decline.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thro’ perils of heard praise she moves benign,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Armored in her own meekness, as if come<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hither from Heaven, to give our Christendom<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even of a miracle the vouch divine.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So with beholders doth her worth avail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It sheds, thro’ sight, a sweetness on the soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Alas! how told to one that felt it never?)<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And from her presence seemeth to exhale<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A breath half-solace and of love the whole,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That saith to the bowed spirit ‘Sigh!’ forever.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a>{147}</span></p> - -<h4>III.</h4> - -<p class="csml">‘<i>Era venuta nella mente mia.</i>’</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-t.jpg" -width="40" -alt="T" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HERE came upon my mind remembrances<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Of my lost lady, who for her reward<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is now set safe, by Heaven’s Most Highest Lord,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In kingdoms of the meek, where Mary is.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Love, whose own are her dear memories,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Called to the sighs in my heart’s wreckage stored:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Go!’ whereby outwardly, with one accord,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not having ever other vent than this,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Plaining athwart my breast they flocked to air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With speech that, oft recalled, draws unaware<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The darkened tears into my mournful eyes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And those that came in greatest anguish thence<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sang: ‘O most glorious Intelligence!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou art one year this day in Paradise.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a>{148}</span><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h4>IV.</h4> - -<p class="csml">‘<i>Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate.</i>’</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><img src="images/drop-y.jpg" -width="40" -alt="Y" -class="cap-img" - /><span class="drop-cap">Y</span>E pilgrims, who with pensive aspect go<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Thinking, perhaps, of bygone things and dear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Come you from lands so very far from here<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As unto us who watch your port would show?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For that you weep not outright, filing slow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thro’ the mid-highway of this city drear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You even as gentle stranger-folk appear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who of the common sorrow nothing know!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would you but linger, would you but be told,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pledge with its thousand sighs my soul doth give<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That you, likewise, should travel on heart-broken:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah, we have lost our Beatrice! Behold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What least soever word be of her spoken,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The tears must follow now from all that live.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="c">University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -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-h.htm or 54907-h.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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