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If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth - -Author: George Meredith - -Release Date: November 07, 2020 [EBook #63672] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF -EARTH *** - - - - -WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. - - - THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT: AN ARABIAN ENTERTAINMENT. - THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL. - EVAN HARRINGTON. - EMILIA IN ENGLAND. - VITTORIA. - BEAUCHAMP’S CAREER. - THE EGOIST. - &c. &c. - - -_Forthcoming Publications in Verse._ - - POEMS. - THE SENTIMENTALISTS: A COMEDY. - - - - - POEMS AND LYRICS - - OF - - THE JOY OF EARTH - -[Illustration] - - - - - POEMS AND LYRICS - - OF - - THE JOY OF EARTH - - - BY - GEORGE MEREDITH - - - London - MACMILLAN AND CO. - 1883 - - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -INSCRIBED TO - -JAMES COTTER MORISON - - - * * * * - _Antistans mihi milibus trecentis._ - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN 1 - - A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN 28 - - THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES 30 - - THE LARK ASCENDING 64 - - PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS 71 - - MELAMPUS 79 - - LOVE IN THE VALLEY 87 - - THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD 101 - - THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH 105 - - MARTIN’S PUZZLE 109 - - EARTH AND MAN 115 - - A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT 130 - - - SONNETS. - - LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT 157 - - THE STAR SIRIUS 158 - - SENSE AND SPIRIT 159 - - EARTH’S SECRET 160 - - THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE 161 - - THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE--_Continued_ 162 - - INTERNAL HARMONY 163 - - GRACE AND LOVE 164 - - APPRECIATION 165 - - THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM 166 - - THE STATE OF AGE 167 - - PROGRESS 168 - - THE WORLD’S ADVANCE 169 - - A CERTAIN PEOPLE 170 - - THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS 171 - - A LATER ALEXANDRIAN 172 - - AN ORSON OF THE MUSE 173 - - THE POINT OF TASTE 174 - - CAMELUS SALTAT 175 - - CAMELUS SALTAT--_Continued_ 176 - - TO J. M. 177 - - TO A FRIEND LOST 178 - - MY THEME 179 - - MY THEME--_Continued_ 180 - - TIME AND SENTIMENT 181 - - - - -THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN. - - - I. - - Enter these enchanted woods, - You who dare. - Nothing harms beneath the leaves - More than waves a swimmer cleaves. - Toss your heart up with the lark, - Foot at peace with mouse and worm, - Fair you fare. - Only at a dread of dark - Quaver, and they quit their form: - Thousand eyeballs under hoods - Have you by the hair. - Enter these enchanted woods, - You who dare. - - - II. - - Here the snake across your path - Stretches in his golden bath: - Mossy-footed squirrels leap - Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: - Yaffles on a chuckle skim - Low to laugh from branches dim: - Up the pine, where sits the star, - Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. - Each has business of his own; - But should you distrust a tone, - Then beware. - Shudder all the haunted roods, - All the eyeballs under hoods - Shroud you in their glare. - Enter these enchanted woods, - You who dare. - - - III. - - Open hither, open hence, - Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, - Where the strawberry runs red, - With white star-flower overhead; - Cumbered by dry twig and cone, - Shredded husks of seedlings flown, - Mine of mole and spotted flint: - Of dire wizardry no hint, - Save mayhap the print that shows - Hasty outward-tripping toes, - Heels to terror, on the mould. - These, the woods of Westermain, - Are as others to behold, - Rich of wreathing sun and rain; - Foliage lustreful around - Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. - Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, - Shelter eager minikins, - Myriads, free to peck and pipe: - Would you better? would you worse? - You with them may gather ripe - Pleasures flowing not from purse. - Quick and far as Colour flies - Taking the delighted eyes, - You of any well that springs - May unfold the heaven of things; - Have it homely and within, - And thereof its likeness win, - Will you so in soul’s desire: - This do sages grant t’ the lyre. - This is being bird and more, - More than glad musician this; - Granaries you will have a store - Past the world of woe and bliss; - Sharing still its bliss and woe; - Harnessed to its hungers, no. - On the throne Success usurps, - You shall seat the joy you feel - Where a race of water chirps, - Twisting hues of flourished steel: - Or where light is caught in hoop - Up a clearing’s leafy rise, - Where the crossing deerherds troop - Classic splendours, knightly dyes. - Or, where old-eyed oxen chew - Speculation with the cud, - Read their pool of vision through, - Back to hours when mind was mud; - Nigh the knot, which did untwine - Timelessly to drowsy suns; - Seeing Earth a slimy spine, - Heaven a space for winging tons. - Farther, deeper, may you read, - Have you sight for things afield, - Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, - Cloaked, but in the peep revealed; - Showing a kind face and sweet: - Look you with the soul you see ’t. - Glory narrowing to grace, - Grace to glory magnified, - Following that will you embrace - Close in arms or aëry wide. - Banished is the white Foam-born - Not from here, nor under ban - Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn, - Pipings of the reedy Pan. - Loved of Earth of old they were, - Loving did interpret her; - And the sterner worship bars - None whom Song has made her stars. - You have seen the huntress moon - Radiantly facing dawn, - Dusky meads between them strewn - Glimmering like downy awn: - Argent Westward glows the hunt, - East the blush about to climb; - One another fair they front, - Transient, yet outshine the time; - Even as dewlight off the rose - In the mind a jewel sows. - Thus opposing grandeurs live - Here if Beauty be their dower; - Doth she of her spirit give, - Fleetingness will spare her flower. - This is in the tune we play, - Which no spring of strength would quell; - In subduing does not slay; - Guides the channel, guards the well: - Tempered holds the young blood-heat, - Yet through measured grave accord, - Hears the heart of wildness beat - Like a centaur’s hoof on sward. - Drink the sense the notes infuse, - You a larger self will find: - Sweetest fellowship ensues - With the creatures of your kind. - Ay, and Love, if Love it be - Flaming over _I_ and _ME_, - Love meet they who do not shove - Cravings in the van of Love. - Courtly dames are here to woo, - Knowing love if it be true. - Reverence the blossom-shoot - Fervently, they are the fruit. - Mark them stepping, hear them talk, - Goddess, is no myth inane, - You will say of those who walk - In the woods of Westermain. - Waters that from throat and thigh - Dart the sun his arrows back; - Leaves that on a woodland sigh - Chat of secret things no lack; - Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, - Bare or veiled they move sincere; - Not by slavish terrors tripped; - Being anew in nature dipped, - Growths of what they step on, these; - With the roots the grace of trees. - Casket-breasts they give, nor hide, - For a tyrant’s flattered pride, - Mind, which nourished not by light, - Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite: - Whereof are strange tales to tell; - Some in blood writ, tombed in bell. - Here the ancient battle ends, - Joining two astonished friends, - Who the kiss can give and take - With more warmth than in that world - Where the tiger claws the snake, - Snake her tiger clasps infurled, - And the issue of their fight - Peoples lands in snarling plight. - Here her splendid beast she leads - Silken-leashed and decked with weeds - Wild as he, but breathing faint - Sweetness of unfelt constraint. - Love, the great volcano, flings - Fires of lower Earth to sky; - Love, the sole permitted, sings - Sovereignly of _ME_ and _I_. - Bowers he has of sacred shade, - Spaces of superb parade, - Voiceful ... But bring you a note - Wrangling, howsoe’er remote, - Discords out of discord spin - Round and round derisive din: - Sudden will a pallor pant - Chill at screeches miscreant; - Owls or spectres, thick they flee; - Nightmare upon horror broods; - Hooded laughter, monkish glee, - Gaps the vital air. - Enter these enchanted woods - You who dare. - - - IV. - - You must love the light so well - That no darkness will seem fell. - Love it so you could accost - Fellowly a livid ghost. - Whish! the phantom wisps away, - Owns him smoke to cocks of day. - In your breast the light must burn - Fed of you, like corn in quern - Ever plumping while the wheel - Speeds the mill and drains the meal. - Light to light sees little strange, - Only features heavenly new; - Then you touch the nerve of Change, - Then of Earth you have the clue; - Then her two-sexed meanings melt - Through you, wed the thought and felt. - Sameness locks no scurfy pond - Here for Custom, crazy-fond: - Change is on the wing to bud - Rose in brain from rose in blood. - Wisdom throbbing shall you see - Central in complexity; - From her pasture ’mid the beasts - Rise to her ethereal feasts, - Not, though lightnings track your wit - Starward, scorning them you quit: - For be sure the bravest wing - Preens it in our common spring, - Thence along the vault to soar, - You with others, gathering more, - Glad of more, till you reject - Your proud title of elect, - Perilous even here, while few - Roam the arched greenwood with you. - Heed that snare. - Muffled by his cavern-cowl - Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl, - Who was lord ere light you drank, - And lest blood of knightly rank - Stream, let not your fair princess - Stray: he holds the leagues in stress, - Watches keenly there. - Oft has he been riven; slain - Is no force in Westermain. - Wait, and we shall forge him curbs, - Put his fangs to uses, tame, - Teach him, quick as cunning herbs, - How to cure him sick and lame. - Much restricted, much enringed, - Much he frets, the hooked and winged, - Never known to spare. - ’Tis enough: the name of Sage - Hits no thing in nature, nought; - Man the least, save when grave Age - From yon Dragon guards his thought. - Eye him when you hearken dumb - To what words from Wisdom come. - When she says how few are by - Listening to her, eye his eye. - Him shall Change, transforming late, - Wonderously renovate. - Hug himself the creature may: - What he hugs is loathed decay. - Crying, slip thy scales, and slough! - Change will strip his armour off; - Make of him who was all maw, - Inly only thrilling-shrewd, - Such a servant as none saw - Through his days of dragonhood. - Days when growling o’er his bone, - Sharpened he for mine and thine; - Sensitive within alone; - Scaly as in clefts of pine. - Change, the strongest son of Life, - Has the Spirit here to wife. - Lo, their young of vivid breed, - Bear the lights that onward speed, - Threading thickets, mounting glades, - Up the verdurous colonnades, - Round the fluttered curves, and down, - Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown, - Whither, in her central space, - Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase. - Fount unresting, Lure divine! - There meet all: too late look most. - Fire in water hued as wine, - Springs amid a shadowy host; - Circled: one close-headed mob, - Breathless, scanning divers heaps - Where a Heart begins to throb, - Where it ceases, slow, with leaps - And ’tis very strange, ’tis said, - How you spy in each of them - Semblance of that Dragon red, - As the oak in bracken-stem. - And ’tis said how each and each: - Which commences, which subsides: - First my Dragon! doth beseech - Her who food for all provides. - And she answers with no sign; - Utters neither yea nor nay; - Fires the water hued as wine; - Kneads another spark in clay. - Terror is about her hid; - Silence of the thunders locked; - Lightnings lining the shut lid; - Fixity on quaking rocked. - Lo, you look at Flow and Drought - Interflashed and interwrought: - Ended is begun, begun - Ended, quick as torrents run. - Young Impulsion spouts to sink; - Luridness and lustre link; - ’Tis your come and go of breath; - Mirrored pants the Life, the Death; - Each of either reaped and sown: - Rosiest rosy wanes to crone. - See you so? your senses drift; - ’Tis a shuttle weaving swift. - Look with spirit past the sense, - Spirit shines in permanence. - That is She, the view of whom - Is the dust within the tomb, - Is the inner blush above, - Look to loathe, or look to love; - Think her Lump, or know her Flame; - Dread her scourge, or read her aim; - Shoot your hungers from their nerve; - Or, in her example, serve. - Some have found her sitting grave; - Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat, - Hurling dust of fool and knave - In a hissing smithy’s jet. - More it were not well to speak; - Burn to see, you need but seek. - Once beheld she gives the key - Airing every doorway, she. - Little can you stop or steer - Ere of her you are the sëer. - On the surface she will witch, - Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze - Under, and the soul is rich - Past computing, past amaze. - Then is courage that endures - Even her awful tremble yours. - Then, the reflex of that Fount - Spied below, with Reason mount - Lordly and a quenchless force, - Lighting Pain to its mad source, - Scaring Fear till Fear escapes, - Shot through all its phantom shapes. - Then your spirit will perceive - Fleshly seed of fleshly sins; - Where the passions interweave, - How the serpent tangle spins - Of the sense of Earth misprised, - Brainlessly unrecognised; - She being Spirit in her clods, - Footway to the God of Gods. - Then for you are pleasures pure, - Sureties as the stars are sure: - Not the wanton beckoning flags - Which, of flattery and delight, - Wax to the grim Habit-Hags - Riding souls of men to night: - Pleasures that through blood run sane, - Quickening spirit from the brain. - Each of each in sequent birth, - Blood and brain and spirit, three - (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), - Join for true felicity. - Are they parted, then expect - Some one sailing will be wrecked: - Separate hunting are they sped, - Scan the morsel coveted. - Earth that Triad is: she hides - Joy from him who that divides; - Showers it when the three are one - Glassing her in union. - Earth your haven, Earth your helm, - You command a double realm; - Labouring here to pay your debt, - Till your little sun shall set; - Leaving her the future task: - Loving her too well to ask. - Eglantine that climbs the yew, - She her darkest wreathes for those - Knowing her the Ever-new, - And themselves the kin o’ the rose. - Life, the chisel, axe and sword, - Wield who have her depths explored: - Life, the dream, shall be their robe, - Large as air about the globe; - Life, the question, hear its cry - Echoed with concordant Why; - Life, the small self-dragon ramped, - Thrill for service to be stamped. - Ay, and over every height - Life for them shall wave a wand: - That, the last, where sits affright, - Homely shows the stream beyond. - Love the light and be its lynx, - You will track her and attain; - Read her as no cruel Sphinx - In the woods of Westermain. - Daily fresh the woods are ranged; - Glooms which otherwhere appal, - Sounded: here, their worths exchanged, - Urban joins with pastoral: - Little lost, save what may drop - Husk-like, and the mind preserves. - Natural overgrowths they lop, - Yet from nature neither swerves, - Trained or savage: for this cause: - Of our Earth they ply the laws, - Have in Earth their feeding root, - Mind of man and bent of brute. - Hear that song; both wild and ruled. - Hear it: is it wail or mirth? - Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled? - None, and all: it springs of Earth. - O but hear it! ’tis the mind; - Mind that with deep Earth unites, - Round the solid trunk to wind - Rings of clasping parasites. - Music have you there to feed - Simplest and most soaring need. - Free to wind, and in desire - Winding, they to her attached - Feel the trunk a spring of fire, - And ascend to heights unmatched, - Whence the tidal world is viewed - As a sea of windy wheat, - Momently black, barren, rude; - Golden-brown, for harvest meet, - Dragon-reaped from folly-sown; - Bride-like to the sickle-blade: - Quick it varies, while the moan, - Moan of a sad creature strayed, - Chiefly is its voice. So flesh - Conjures tempest-flails to thresh - Good from worthless. Some clear lamps - Light it; more of dead marsh-damps. - Monster is it still, and blind, - Fit but to be led by Pain. - Glance we at the paths behind, - Fruitful sight has Westermain. - There we laboured, and in turn - Forward our blown lamps discern, - As you see on the dark deep - Far the loftier billows leap, - Foam for beacon bear. - Hither, hither, if you will, - Drink instruction, or instil, - Run the woods like vernal sap, - Crying, hail to luminousness! - But have care. - In yourself may lurk the trap: - On conditions they caress. - Here you meet the light invoked: - Here is never secret cloaked. - Doubt you with the monster’s fry - All his orbit may exclude; - Are you of the stiff, the dry, - Cursing the not understood; - Grasp you with the monster’s claws; - Govern with his truncheon-saws; - Hate, the shadow of a grain; - You are lost in Westermain: - Earthward swoops a vulture sun, - Nighted upon carrion: - Straightway venom winecups shout - Toasts to One whose eyes are out: - Flowers along the reeling floor - Drip henbane and hellebore: - Beauty, of her tresses shorn, - Shrieks as nature’s maniac: - Hideousness on hoof and horn - Tumbles, yapping in her track: - Haggard Wisdom, stately once, - Leers fantastical and trips: - Allegory drums the sconce, - Impiousness nibblenips. - Imp that dances, imp that flits, - Imp o’ the demon-growing girl, - Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pits - Round you, and with them you whirl - Fast where pours the fountain-rout - Out of Him whose eyes are out: - Multitudes on multitudes, - Drenched in wallowing devilry: - And you ask where you may be, - In what reek of a lair - Given to bones and ogre-broods: - And they yell you Where. - Enter these enchanted woods, - You who dare. - - - - -A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN. - - - I. - - Last night returning from my twilight walk - I met the gray mist Death, whose eyeless brow - Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk - He reached me flowers as from a withered bough: - O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou! - - - II. - - Death said, I gather, and pursued his way. - Another stood by me, a shape in stone, - Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay, - And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: - O Life, how naked and how hard when known! - - - III. - - Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I. - Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, - And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, - Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s decline: - Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine. - - - - -THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES. - - - I. - - He who has looked upon Earth - Deeper than flower and fruit, - Losing some hue of his mirth, - As the tree striking rock at the root, - Unto him shall the marvellous tale - Of Callistes more humanly come - With the touch on his breast than a hail - From the markets that hum. - - - II. - - Now the youth footed swift to the dawn. - ’Twas the season when wintertide, - In the higher rock-hollows updrawn, - Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied, - By light throwing shallow shade, - Between the beam and the gloom, - Sicilian Enna, whose Maid - Such aspect wears in her bloom - Underneath since the Charioteer - Of Darkness whirled her away, - On a reaped afternoon of the year, - Nigh the poppy-droop of Day. - O and naked of her, all dust, - The majestic Mother and Nurse, - Ringing cries to the God, the Just, - Curled the land with the blight of her curse: - Recollected of this glad isle - Still quaking. But now more fair, - And momently fraying the while - The veil of the shadows there, - Soft Enna that prostrate grief - Sang through, and revealed round the vines, - Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf, - The wheat-blades tripping in lines, - A hue unillumined by sun - Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts: - All the penetrable dun - Of the Morn ere she mounts. - - - III. - - Nor had saffron and sapphire and red - Waved aloft to their sisters below, - When gaped by the rock-channel head - Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow, - Reverberant over the plain: - A sound oft fearfully swung - For the coming of wrathful rain: - And forth, like the dragon-tongue - Of a fire beaten flat by the gale, - But more as the smoke to behold, - A chariot burst. Then a wail - Quivered high of the love that would fold - Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart, - Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed, - And the team of the chariot swart - Reared in marble, the six, dismayed, - Like hoofs that by night plashing sea - Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave: - For, lo, the Great Mother, She! - And Callistes gazed, he gave - His eyeballs up to the sight: - The embrace of the Twain, of whom - To men are their day, their night, - Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb: - Our Lady of the Sheaves - And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet - Of Enna: he saw through leaves - The Mother and Daughter meet. - They stood by the chariot-wheel, - Embraced, very tall, most like - Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel - Down their shivering columns and strike - Head to head, crossing throats: and apart, - For the feast of the look, they drew, - Which Darkness no longer could thwart; - And they broke together anew, - Exulting to tears, flower and bud. - But the mate of the Rayless was grave: - She smiled like Sleep on its flood, - That washes of all we crave: - Like the trance of eyes awake - And the spirit enshrouded, she cast - The wan underworld on the lake. - They were so, and they passed. - - - IV. - - He tells it, who knew the law - Upon mortals: he stood alive - Declaring that this he saw: - He could see, and survive. - - - V. - - Now the youth was not ware of the beams - With the grasses intertwined, - For each thing seen, as in dreams, - Came stepping to rear through his mind, - Till it struck his remembered prayer - To be witness of this which had flown - Like a smoke melted thinner than air, - That the vacancy doth disown. - And viewing a maiden, he thought - It might now be morn, and afar - Within him the memory wrought - Of a something that slipped from the car - When those, the august, moved by: - Perchance a scarf, and perchance - This maiden. She did not fly, - Nor started at his advance: - She looked, as when infinite thirst - Pants pausing to bless the springs, - Refreshed, unsated. Then first - He trembled with awe of the things - He had seen; and he did transfer, - Divining and doubting in turn, - His reverence unto her; - Nor asked what he crouched to learn: - The whence of her, whither, and why - Her presence there, and her name, - Her parentage: under which sky - Her birth, and how hither she came, - So young, a virgin, alone, - Unfriended, having no fear, - As Oreads have; no moan, - Like the lost upon earth; no tear; - Not a sign of the torch in the blood, - Though her stature had reached the height - When mantles a tender rud - In maids that of youths have sight, - If maids of our seed they be: - For he said: A glad vision art thou! - And she answered him: Thou to me! - As men utter a vow. - - - VI. - - Then said she, quick as the cries - Of the rainy cranes: Light! light! - And Helios rose in her eyes, - That were full as the dew-balls bright, - Relucent to him as dews - Unshaded. Breathing, she sent - Her voice to the God of the Muse, - And along the vale it went, - Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill; - Sweet, but no young maid’s throat: - The echo beyond the hill - Ran falling on half the note: - And under the shaken ground - Where the Hundred-headed groans - By the roots of great Ætna bound, - As of him were hollow tones - Of wondering roared: a tale - Repeated to sunless halls. - But now off the face of the vale - Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls - Of the lake’s rock-head were gold, - And the breast of the lake, that swell - Of the crestless long wave rolled - To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. - A morning of radiant lids - O’er the dance of the earth opened wide: - The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids - Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, - Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: - There was milk, honey, music to make: - Up their branches the little birds billed: - Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake. - O shining in sunlight, chief - After water and water’s caress, - Was the young bronze-orange leaf, - That clung to the tree as a tress, - Shooting lucid tendrils to wed - With the vine-hook tree or pole, - Like Arachne launched out on her thread. - Then the maiden her dusky stole - In the span of the black-starred zone, - Gathered up for her footing fleet. - As one that had toil of her own - She followed the lines of wheat - Tripping straight through the field, green blades, - To the groves of olive gray, - Downy-gray, golden-tinged: and to glades - Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray - In a night, like the snow-packed storm: - Pear, apple, almond, plum: - Not wintry now: pushing, warm! - And she touched them with finger and thumb, - As the vine-hook closes: she smiled, - Recounting again and again, - Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child, - With the meaning known to men. - For hours in the track of the plough - And the pruning-knife she stepped, - And of how the seed works, and of how - Yields the soil, she seemed adept. - Then she murmured that name of the dearth, - The Beneficent, Hers, who bade - Our husbandmen sow for the birth - Of the grain making earth full glad. - She murmured that Other’s: the dirge - Of life-light: for whose dark lap - Our locks are clipped on the verge - Of the realm where runs no sap. - She said: We have looked on both! - And her eyes had a wavering beam - Of various lights, like the froth - Of the storm-swollen ravine stream - In flame of the bolt. What links - Were these which had made him her friend? - He eyed her, as one who drinks, - And would drink to the end. - - - VII. - - Now the meadows with crocus besprent, - And the asphodel woodsides she left, - And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent - Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft - That tutors the torrent-brook, - Delaying its forceful spleen - With many a wind and crook - Through rock to the broad ravine. - By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes, - And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid, - And the sun-loving lizards and snakes - On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid - Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all, - At a snap of twig or bark - In the track of the foreign foot-fall, - She climbed to the pine-forest dark, - Overbrowing an emerald chine - Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath, - Running poplar and cypress to pine, - The lake-banks are seen, and beneath, - Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms, - The citadel watching the bay, - The bay with the town in its arms, - The town shining white as the spray - Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock, - Where the rock stars the girdle of sea, - White-ringed, as the midday flock, - Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree. - That hour of the piercing shaft - Transfixes bough-shadows, confused - In veins of fire, and she laughed, - With her quiet mouth amused, - To see the whole flock, adroop, - Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one, - Imperceptibly filling the loop - Of its shade at a slant of sun. - The pipes under pent of the crag, - Where the goatherds in piping recline, - Have whimsical stops, burst and flag - Uncorrected as outstretched swine: - For the fingers are slack and unsure, - And the wind issues querulous:--thorns - And snakes!--but she listened demure, - Comparing day’s music with morn’s. - Of the gentle spirit that slips - From the bark of the tree she discoursed, - And of her of the wells, whose lips - Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced. - And much of the sacred loon, - The frolic, the Goatfoot God, - For stories of indolent noon - In the pineforest’s odorous nod, - She questioned, not knowing: he can - Be waspish, irascible, rude, - He is oftener friendly to man, - And ever to beasts and their brood. - For the which did she love him well, - She said, and his pipes of the reed, - His twitched lips puffing to tell - In music his tears and his need, - Against the sharp catch of his hurt. - Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak, - Nor spake as the schools, to divert, - But fondly, perceiving him weak - Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear, - A holiness, horn and heel. - All this she had learnt in her ear - From Callistes, and taught him to feel. - Yea, the solemn divinity flushed - Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast, - And the steeps where the cataract rushed, - And the wilds where the forest is priest, - Were his temple to clothe him in awe, - While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read - The haunts of the beak and the claw - As plain as the land of bread, - But Cities and martial States, - Whither soon the youth veered his theme, - Were impervious barrier-gates - To her: and that ship, a trireme, - Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance, - Though he dwelt on the message it bore - Of sceptre and sword and lance - To the bee-swarms black on the shore, - Which were audible almost, - So black they were. It befel - That he called up the warrior host - Of the Song pouring hydromel - In thunder, the wide-winged Song, - And he named with his boyish pride - The heroes, the noble throng - Past Acheron now, foul tide! - With his joy of the godlike band - And the verse divine, he named - The chiefs pressing hot on the strand, - Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed. - The fleetfoot and ireful; the King; - Him, the prompter in stratagem, - Many-shifted and masterful: Sing, - O Muse! But she cried: Not of them! - She breathed as if breath had failed, - And her eyes, while she bade him desist, - Held the lost-to-light ghosts gray-mailed, - As you see the gray river-mist - Hold shapes on the yonder bank. - A moment her body waned, - The light of her sprang and sank: - Clear feature, and she breathed deep. - She wore the wan smile he had seen, - As the flow of the river of Sleep, - On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen. - In sunlight she craved to bask, - Saying: Life! And who was she? who? - Of what issue? He dared not ask, - For that partly he knew. - - - VIII. - - A noise of the hollow ground - Turned the eye to the ear in debate: - Not the soft overflowing of sound - Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight, - Barely swayed to some whispers remote, - Some swarming whispers above: - Not the pines with the faint airs afloat, - Hush-hushing the nested-dove: - It was not the pines, or the rout - Oft heard from mid-forest in chase, - But the long muffled roar of a shout - Subterranean. Sharp grew her face. - She rose, yet not moved by affright; - ’Twas rather good haste to use - Her holiday of delight - In the beams of the God of the Muse. - And the steeps of the forest she crossed, - On its dry red sheddings and cones - Up the paths by roots green-mossed, - Spotted amber, and old mossed stones. - Then out where the brook-torrent starts - To her leap, and from bend to curve - A hurrying elbow darts - For the instant-glancing swerve, - Decisive, with violent will - In the action formed, like hers, - The maiden’s, ascending; and still - Ascending, the bud of the furze, - The broom, and all blue-berried shoots - Of stubborn and prickly kind, - The juniper flat on its roots, - The dwarf rhododaphne, behind - She left, and the mountain sheep - Far behind, goat, herbage and flower. - The island was hers, and the deep, - All heaven, a golden hour. - Then with wonderful voice that rang - Through air as the swan’s nigh death, - Of the glory of Light she sang, - She sang of the rapture of Breath. - Nor ever, says he who heard, - Heard Earth in her boundaries broad, - From bosom of singer or bird - A sweetness thus rich of the God - Whose harmonies always are sane. - She sang of furrow and seed, - The burial, birth of the grain, - The growth, and the showers that feed, - And the green blades waxing mature - For the husbandman’s armful brown. - O, the song in its burden ran pure, - And burden to song was a crown. - Callistes, a singer, skilled - In the gift he could measure and praise, - By a rival’s art was thrilled, - Though she sang but a Song of Days, - Where the husbandman’s toil and strife - Little varies to strife and toil: - But the milky kernel of life, - With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil! - The song did give him to eat: - Gave the first rapt vision of Good, - And the fresh young sense of Sweet: - The grace of the battle for food, - With the issue Earth cannot refuse - When men to their labour are sworn. - ’Twas a song of the God of the Muse - To the forehead of Morn. - - - IX. - - Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled: - Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack: - The fishing-boat havenward sailed, - Bent abeam, with a whitened track, - Surprised, fast hauling the net - As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook. - She said: Is it night? O not yet! - With a travail of thoughts in her look. - The mountain heaved up to its peak: - Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl: - Of bird or of branch rose the shriek. - Night? but never so fell a scowl - Wore night, nor the sky since then - When ocean ran swallowing shore, - And the Gods looked down for men. - Broke tempest with that stern roar - Never yet, save when black on the whirl - Rode wrath of a sovereign Power. - Then the youth and the shuddering girl, - Dim as shades in the angry shower, - Joined hands and descended a maze - Of the paths that were racing alive - Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways, - Incessant, with sound of a hive. - The height was a fountain-urn - Pouring streams, and the whole solid height - Leaped, chasing at every turn - The pair in one spirit of flight - To the folding pine-forest. Yet here, - Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt, - The stillness bred spectral fear - Of the awfulness ranging without, - And imminent. Downward they fled, - From under the haunted roof, - To the valley aquake with the tread - Of an iron-resounding hoof, - As of legions of thunderful horse - Broken loose and in line tramping hard. - For the rage of a hungry force - Roamed blind of its mark over sward: - They saw it rush dense in the cloak - Of its travelling swathe of steam; - All the vale through a thin thread-smoke - Was thrown back to distance extreme: - And dull the full breast of it blinked, - Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er, - Diminished, in strangeness distinct, - Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar: - An Enna of fields beyond sun, - Out of light, in a lurid web, - And the traversing fury spun - Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb; - As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn, - Retire, and in ravenous greed, - Inveterate, swell its return. - Up and down, as if wringing from speed - Sights that made the unsighted appear, - Delude and dissolve, on it scoured. - Lo, a sea upon land held career - Through the plain of the vale half-devoured. - Callistes of home and escape - Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech. - She gazed at the Void of shape, - She put her white hand to his reach, - Saying: Now have we looked on the Three. - And divided from day, from night, - From air that is breath, stood she, - Like the vale, out of light. - - - X. - - Then again in disorderly words - He muttered of home, and was mute, - With the heart of the cowering birds - Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot. - He gave her some redness that streamed - Through her limbs in a flitting glow. - The sigh of our life she seemed, - The bliss of it clothing in woe. - Frailer than flower when the round - Of the sickle encircles it: strong - To tell of the things profound, - Our inmost uttering song, - Unspoken. So stood she awhile - In the gloom of the terror afield, - And the silence about her smile - Said more than of tongue is revealed. - I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been: - It said: and not joylessly shone - The remembrance of light through the screen - Of a face that seemed shadow and stone. - She led the youth trembling, appalled, - To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise - Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called, - And the hurricane blackness had eyes. - It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt. - Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side - Would have clasped her and dared a revolt - Sacrilegious as ever defied - High Olympus, but vainly for strength - His compassionate heart shook a frame - Stricken rigid to ice all its length. - On amain the black traveller came. - Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm, - Clove the fountaining lake with a plough, - And the lord of the steeds was in form - He, the God of implacable brow, - Darkness: he: he in person: he raged - Through the wave like a boar of the wilds - From the hunters and hounds disengaged, - And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s. - Horror melted in anguish to hear. - Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path - Of the terrible Charioteer, - With the foam and torn features of wrath, - Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet; - And the steeds clove it, rushing at land - Like the teeth of the famished at meat. - Then he swept out his hand. - - - XI. - - This, no more, doth Callistes recall: - He saw, ere he dropped in swoon, - On the maiden the chariot fall, - As a thundercloud swings on the moon. - Forth, free of the deluge, one cry - From the vanishing gallop rose clear: - And: Skiágeneia! the sky - Rang: Skiágeneia! the sphere. - And she left him therewith, to rejoice, - Repine, yearn, and know not his aim, - The life of their day in her voice, - Left her life in her name. - - - XII. - - Now the valley in ruin of fields - And fair meadowland, showing at eve - Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields - After battle, bade men believe - That no other than wrathfullest God - Had been loose on her beautiful breast, - Where the flowery grass was clod, - Wheat and vine as a trailing nest. - The valley, discreet in grief, - Disclosed but the open truth, - And Enna had hope of the sheaf: - There was none for the desolate youth - Devoted to mourn and to crave. - Of the secret he had divined - Of his friend of a day would he rave: - How for light of our earth she pined: - For the olive, the vine and the wheat, - Burning through with inherited fire: - And when Mother went Mother to meet, - She was prompted by simple desire - In the day-destined car to have place - At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen, - And be drawn to the dear earth’s face. - She was fire for the blue and the green - Of our earth, dark fire; athirst - As a seed of her bosom for dawn, - White air that had robed and nursed - Her mother. Now was she gone - With the Silent, the God without tear, - Like a bud peeping out of its sheath - To be sundered and stamped with the sere. - And Callistes to her beneath, - As she to our beams, extinct, - Strained arms: he was shade of her shade - In division so were they linked. - But the song which had betrayed - Her flight to the cavernous ear - For its own keenly wakeful: that song - Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer - Of the husbandman’s heart made strong - Through droughts and deluging rains - With his faith in the Great Mother’s love: - O the joy of the breath she sustains, - And the lyre of the light above, - And the first rapt vision of Good, - And the fresh young sense of Sweet: - That song the youth ever pursued - In the track of her footing fleet. - For men to be profited much - By her day upon earth did he sing: - Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch - On the blossoms of tender Spring, - Immortal: and how in her soul - She is with them, and tearless abides, - Folding grain of a love for one goal - In patience, past flowing of tides. - And if unto him she was tears, - He wept not: he wasted within: - Seeming sane in the song, to his peers, - Only crazed where the cravings begin. - Our Lady of Gifts prized he less - Than her issue in darkness: the dim - Lost Skiágeneia’s caress - Of our earth made it richest for him. - And for that was a curse on him raised, - And he withered rathe, dry to his prime, - Though the bounteous Giver be praised - Through the island with rites of old time - Exceedingly fervent, and reaped - Veneration for teachings devout, - Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped, - And the wine-presses ruddily spout, - And the olive and apple are juice - At a touch light as hers lost below. - Whatsoever to men is of use - Sprang his worship of them who bestow, - In a measure of songs unexcelled: - But that soul loving earth and the sun - From her home of the shadows he held - For his beacon where beam there is none: - And to join her, or have her brought back, - In his frenzy the singer would call, - Till he followed where never was track, - On the path trod of all. - - - - -THE LARK ASCENDING. - - - He rises and begins to round, - He drops the silver chain of sound - Of many links without a break, - In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, - All intervolved and spreading wide, - Like water-dimples down a tide - Where ripple ripple overcurls - And eddy into eddy whirls; - A press of hurried notes that run - So fleet they scarce are more than one, - Yet changeingly the trills repeat - And linger ringing while they fleet, - Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear - To her beyond the handmaid ear, - Who sits beside our inner springs, - Too often dry for this he brings, - Which seems the very jet of earth - At sight of sun, her music’s mirth, - As up he wings the spiral stair, - A song of light, and pierces air - With fountain ardour, fountain play, - To reach the shining tops of day, - And drink in everything discerned - An ecstasy to music turned, - Impelled by what his happy bill - Disperses; drinking, showering still, - Unthinking save that he may give - His voice the outlet, there to live - Renewed in endless notes of glee, - So thirsty of his voice is he, - For all to hear and all to know - That he is joy, awake, aglow, - The tumult of the heart to hear - Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, - And know the pleasure sprinkled bright - By simple singing of delight, - Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, - Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained - Without a break, without a fall, - Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, - Perennial, quavering up the chord - Like myriad dews of sunny sward - That trembling into fulness shine, - And sparkle dropping argentine; - Such wooing as the ear receives - From zephyr caught in choric leaves - Of aspens when their chattering net - Is flushed to white with shivers wet; - And such the water-spirit’s chime - On mountain heights in morning’s prime, - Too freshly sweet to seem excess, - Too animate to need a stress; - But wider over many heads - The starry voice ascending spreads, - Awakening, as it waxes thin, - The best in us to him akin; - And every face to watch him raised, - Puts on the light of children praised, - So rich our human pleasure ripes - When sweetness on sincereness pipes, - Though nought be promised from the seas, - But only a soft-ruffling breeze - Sweep glittering on a still content, - Serenity in ravishment. - - For singing till his heaven fills, - ’Tis love of earth that he instils, - And ever winging up and up, - Our valley is his golden cup, - And he the wine which overflows - To lift us with him as he goes: - The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine - He is, the hills, the human line, - The meadows green, the fallows brown, - The dreams of labour in the town; - He sings the sap, the quickened veins, - The wedding song of sun and rains - He is, the dance of children, thanks - Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, - And eye of violets while they breathe; - All these the circling song will wreathe, - And you shall hear the herb and tree, - The better heart of men shall see, - Shall feel celestially, as long - As you crave nothing save the song. - - Was never voice of ours could say - Our inmost in the sweetest way, - Like yonder voice aloft, and link - All hearers in the song they drink: - Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, - Our passion is too full in flood, - We want the key of his wild note - Of truthful in a tuneful throat, - The song seraphically free - Of taint of personality, - So pure that it salutes the suns - The voice of one for millions, - In whom the millions rejoice - For giving their one spirit voice. - - Yet men have we, whom we revere, - Now names, and men still housing here, - Whose lives, by many a battle-dint - Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, - Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet - For song our highest heaven to greet: - Whom heavenly singing gives us new, - Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, - From firmest base to farthest leap, - Because their love of Earth is deep, - And they are warriors in accord - With life to serve and pass reward, - So touching purest and so heard - In the brain’s reflex of yon bird: - Wherefore their soul in me, or mine, - Through self-forgetfulness divine, - In them, that song aloft maintains, - To fill the sky and thrill the plains - With showerings drawn from human stores, - As he to silence nearer soars, - Extends the world at wings and dome, - More spacious making more our home, - Till lost on his aërial rings - In light, and then the fancy sings. - - - - -PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS. - - - I. - - When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, - Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, - Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, - Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod! - Mindful were the shepherds as now the noon severe - Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, - How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere, - Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - II. - - Chirping none the scarlet cicalas crouched in ranks: - Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk gray: - Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks: - Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay. - Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard, - Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate: - Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd, - Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s gate. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - III. - - Water, first of singers, o’er rocky mount and mead, - First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill, - Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed, - Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill. - Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool, - Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook, - Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool - Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - IV. - - Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields: - Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high: - Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields, - Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry! - Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins - Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice rose: - Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins; - Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - V. - - Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft: - Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s teeth - Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft; - Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe! - Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped - Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new gold. - Hung the hooky beak up aloft the arrowhead - Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - VI. - - Tales we drank of giants at war with gods above: - Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air! - Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love - Ease because the creature was all too fair. - Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good - Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast. - He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood - Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - VII. - - Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known, - Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame. - Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone, - After he had taught how the sweet sounds came. - Stretched about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see - Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind. - So began contention to give delight and be - Excellent in things aimed to make like kind. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - VIII. - - You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats, - You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew! - Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats! - Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few! - You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays, - You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent: - He has been our fellow, the morning of our days! - Us he chose for housemates, and this way went. - God! of whom music - And song and blood are pure, - The day is never darkened - That had thee here obscure. - - - - -MELAMPUS. - - - I. - - With love exceeding a simple love of the things - That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; - Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings - From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; - Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; - Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; - The good physician Melampus, loving them all, - Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. - - - II. - - For him the woods were a home and gave him the key - Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. - The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we - To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours: - And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined - Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows - In them, in us, from the source by man unattained - Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose. - - - III. - - And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast - Embracing tenderly each little motive shape, - The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best - Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape: - For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk, - As babes they learn where her motherly help is great: - They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk, - And need they medical antidotes find them straight. - - - IV. - - Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods, - Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain - Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods - Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane - The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns - To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life - Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns - Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife. - - - V. - - Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire, - A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret - That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire, - Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set - Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue - Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears - A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung, - He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears! - - - VI. - - A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech - Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves - To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach; - He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves. - No fears have I of a man who goes with his head - To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand: - I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed; - I pipe him much for his good could he understand. - - - VII. - - Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist: - He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard. - Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs thick intertwist, - He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird. - His cushion mosses in shades of various green, - The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake - Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene, - It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake. - - - VIII. - - Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full, - As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth, - Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool - To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth. - The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream; - The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew; - Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam, - The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew. - - - IX. - - He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed - Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one - They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed - For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun, - Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings, - Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned: - He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings, - The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned. - - - X. - - Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet, - By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth - With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat, - Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth, - The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze, - Revealing wherefore it bloomed uninviting, bent, - Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease, - The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument. - - - XI. - - So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates - We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged - With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates, - With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged. - Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute, - He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled, - To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root - A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled. - - - XII. - - Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form - Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave, - Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm, - And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave, - And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire, - And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere; - And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre, - He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear. - - - XIII. - - Sweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze - In heat, the run of the river on root and stone, - All senses joined, as the sister Pierides - Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own. - In stately order, evolved of sound into sight, - From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried - The growths of Earth, his adored, like day out of night, - Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied. - - - XIV. - - And there vitality, there, there solely in song, - Resides, where Earth and her uses to men, their needs, - Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong, - The Master said: and the studious eye that reads, - (Yea, even as Earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), - In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. - Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount - To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground. - - - XV. - - Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage, - He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed, - Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage - Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. - He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings - Melodious: as the God did he drive and check, - Through love exceeding a simple love of the things - That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck. - - - - -LOVE IN THE VALLEY. - - - Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward, - Couched with her arms behind her golden head, - Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, - Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. - Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, - Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, - Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: - Then would she hold me and never let me go? - - * * * * * - - Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, - Swift as the swallow along the river’s light - Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, - Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. - Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, - Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, - She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, - Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! - - * * * * * - - When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, - Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, - Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, - More love should I have, and much less care. - When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror - Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, - Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, - I should miss but one for many boys and girls. - - * * * * * - - Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows - Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. - No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder: - Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. - Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure, - Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: - Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones - Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. - - * * * * * - - Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping - Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. - Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, - Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. - Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: - So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. - Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, - Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. - - * * * * * - - Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, - Arm in arm, all against the raying West, - Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, - Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. - Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking - Whispered the world was; morning light is she. - Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless; - Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free. - - * * * * * - - Happy happy time, when the white star hovers - Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, - Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, - Threading it with colour, as yewberries the yew. - Thicker crowd the shades while the grave East deepens - Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. - Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; - Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells. - - * * * * * - - Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting - Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, - Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter - Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. - Ay, but shows the South-West a ripple-feathered bosom - Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend - Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset - Rich, deep like love in beauty without end. - - * * * * * - - When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window - Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, - Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily - Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. - When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle - In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, - Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily - Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. - - * * * * * - - Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight, - Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim, - Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, - Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. - Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet, - Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. - Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever - Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. - - * * * * * - - All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; - Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. - My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters, - Eyes the bent anemones, and hangs her hands. - Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, - Coming the rose: and unaware a cry - Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, - Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. - - * * * * * - - Kerchiefed head and chin she darts between her tulips, - Streaming like a willow gray in arrowy rain: - Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel - She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. - Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way: - She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. - So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder - Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. - - * * * * * - - Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, - Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please. - I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones: - O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. - You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, - Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, - They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, - You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way. - - * * * * * - - Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, - Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. - Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine - Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. - Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest? - Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, - Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine - Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths. - - * * * * * - - Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades; - Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-gray leaf; - Yellow with stone-crop; the moss-mounds are yellow; - Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf: - Green-yellow bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; - Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine: - Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, - Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. - - * * * * * - - This I may know: her dressing and undressing - Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport - Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder - Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port - White sails furl; or on the ocean borders - White sails lean along the waves leaping green. - Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight - Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. - - * * * * * - - Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse - Open with the morn, and in a breezy link - Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard, - Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. - Busy in the grass the early sun of summer - Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes - Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: - Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats! - - * * * * * - - Cool was the woodside: cool as her white dairy - Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, - Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine; - O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! - Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher - Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. - Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, - Said, ‘I will kiss you:’ she laughed and leaned her cheek. - - * * * * * - - Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof - Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. - Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway - Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. - Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, - Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. - Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, - Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. - - * * * * * - - O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful - O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced - O the treasure-tresses one another over - Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! - Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet - Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist, - Gathered, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness! - O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! - - * * * * * - - Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops, - Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: - Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise, - Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. - Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree - Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I. - Here may life on death or death on life be painted. - Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die! - - * * * * * - - Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber - Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. - ‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers, - Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. - Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled: - Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. - Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy - Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet. - - * * * * * - - Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, - Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise - High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; - Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. - Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming, - Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.-- - Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, - Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names. - - * * * * * - - Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise. - Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, - Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, - Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. - Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. - Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring! - Sing from the South-West, bring her back the truants, - Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing. - - * * * * * - - Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April - Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you, - Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, - Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: - Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry: - Fair as in image my seraph love appears - Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids: - Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. - - * * * * * - - Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, - I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. - Every woodland tree is flushing like the dog-wood, - Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. - Flushing like the dog-wood crimson in October; - Streaming like the flag-reed South-West blown; - Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: - All seem to know what is for heaven alone. - - - - -THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD. - - - Carols nature, counsel men. - Different notes as rook from wren - Hear we when our steps begin, - And the choice is cast within, - Where a robber raven’s tale - Urges passion’s nightingale. - - Hark to the three. Chimed they in one, - Life were music of the sun. - Liquid first, and then the caw, - Then the cry that knows not law. - - - I. - - As the birds do, so do we, - Bill our mate, and choose our tree. - Swift to building work addressed, - Any straw will help a nest. - Mates are warm, and this is truth, - Glad the young that come of youth. - They have bloom i’ the blood and sap - Chilling at no thunder-clap. - Man and woman on the thorn, - Trust not Earth, and have her scorn. - They who in her lead confide, - Wither me if they spread not wide! - Look for aid to little things, - You will get them quick as wings, - Thick as feathers; would you feed, - Take the leap that springs the need. - - - II. - - Contemplate the rutted road: - Life is both a lure and goad. - Each to hold in measure just, - Trample appetite to dust. - Mark the fool and wanton spin: - Keep to harness as a skin. - Ere you follow nature’s lead, - Of her powers in you have heed; - Else a shiverer you will find - You have challenged humankind. - Mates are chosen marketwise: - Coolest bargainer best buys. - Leap not, nor let leap the heart: - Trot your track, and drag your cart. - So your end may be in wool, - Honoured, and with manger full. - - - III. - - O the rosy light! it fleets. - Dearer dying than all sweets. - That is life: it waves and goes; - Solely in that cherished Rose - Palpitates, or else ’tis death. - Call it love with all thy breath. - Love! it lingers: Love! it nears: - Love! O Love! the Rose appears, - Blushful, magic, reddening air. - Now the choice is on thee: dare! - Mortal seems the touch, but makes - Immortal the hand that takes. - Feel what sea within thee shames - Of its force all other claims, - Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be - Heavenly Rose to swelling sea. - - - - -THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH. - - - I chanced upon an early walk to spy - A troop of children through an orchard gate: - The boughs hung low, the grass was high; - They had but to lift hands or wait - For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky. - - They shouted, running on from tree to tree, - And played the game the wind plays, on and round. - ’Twas visible invisible glee - Pursuing; and a fountain’s sound - Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me. - - I could have watched them till the daylight fled, - Their pretty bower made such a light of day. - A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! head!’ - The rest to comfort her straightway - Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red. - - The tiny creature flashing through green grass, - And laughing with her feet and eyes among - Fresh apples, while a little lass - Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung: - That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass. - - My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, - Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers; - Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains, - Across a heath I walked for hours, - And met its rival tenants, rays and rains. - - Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared, - When, under a patched channel-bank enriched - With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared, - Behold, a family had pitched - Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared. - - Here, too, were many children, quick to scan - A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth: - In many-coloured rags they ran, - Like iron runlets of the heath. - Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can. - - Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea - Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid - From either ridge unequally), - Lean, swift, and voluble, bestrid - A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee. - - They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke - In act to follow, but as one they snuffed - Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke - Of provender, its pale flame puffed, - And rolled athwart dwarf furzes gray-blue smoke. - - Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam, - The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat, - Paused for its bubbling-up supreme: - A dog upright in circle sat, - And oft his nose went with the flying steam. - - I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now - The moor-faced sunset broaden’d with red light; - Threw high aloft a golden bough, - And seemed the desert of the night - Far down with mellow orchards to endow. - - - - -MARTIN’S PUZZLE. - - - I. - - There she goes up the street with her book in her hand, - And her Good morning, Martin! Ay, lass, how d’ye do? - Very well, thank you, Martin!--I can’t understand! - I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe! - I can’t understand it. She talks like a song; - Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass; - She seems to give gladness while limping along, - Yet sinner ne’er suffer’d like that little lass. - - - II. - - First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart. - Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade-- - Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart! - His heart!--where’s the leg of the poor little maid! - Well, that’s not enough; they must push her downstairs, - To make her go crooked: but why count the list? - If it’s right to suppose that our human affairs - Are all ordered by heaven--there, bang goes my fist! - - - III. - - For if angels can look on such sights--never mind! - When you’re next to blaspheming, it’s best to be mum. - The parson declares that her woes weren’t designed; - But, then, with the parson it’s all kingdom-come. - Lose a leg, save a soul--a convenient text; - I call it Tea doctrine, not savouring of God. - When poor little Molly wants ‘chastening,’ why, next - The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod. - - - IV. - - But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles - To read books to sick people!--and just of an age - When girls learn the meaning of ribands and smiles! - Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage. - The more I push thinking the more I revolve: - I never get farther:--and as to her face, - It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve, - And says, ‘This crush’d body seems such a sad case.’ - - - V. - - Not that she’s for complaining: she reads to earn pence; - And from those who can’t pay, simple thanks are enough. - Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense? - Howsoever, she’s made up of wonderful stuff. - Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord; - She sings little hymns at the close of the day, - Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord, - And only one leg to kneel down with to pray. - - - VI. - - What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear, - If there’s Law above all? Answer that if you can! - Irreligious I’m not; but I look on this sphere - As a place where a man should just think like a man. - It isn’t fair dealing! But, contrariwise, - Do bullets in battle the wicked select? - Why, then it’s all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes, - She holds a fixed something by which I am checked. - - - VII. - - Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall, - If you eye it a minute’ll have the same look: - So kind! and so merciful! God of us all! - It’s the very same lesson we get from the Book. - Then, is Life but a trial? Is that what is meant? - Some must toil, and some perish, for others below; - The injustice to each spreads a common content; - Ay! I’ve lost it again, for it can’t be quite so. - - - VIII. - - She’s the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark. - On earth there are engines and numerous fools. - Why the Lord can permit them, we’re still in the dark; - He does, and in some sort of way they’re his tools. - It’s a roundabout way, with respect let me add, - If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught: - But, perhaps, it’s the only way, though it’s so bad; - In that case we’ll bow down our heads,--as we ought. - - - IX. - - But the worst of me is, that when I bow my head, - I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust, - And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead - Of humble acceptance: for, question I must! - Here’s a creature made carefully--carefully made! - Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and why? - The answer seems nowhere: it’s discord that’s played. - The sky’s a blue dish!--an implacable sky! - - - X. - - Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit. - They tell us that discord, though discord, alone, - Can be harmony when the notes properly fit: - Am I judging all things from a single false tone? - Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls - From devils to angels? I’m blind with the sight. - It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls! - I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night. - - - - -EARTH AND MAN. - - - I. - - On her great venture, Man, - Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast - Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, - And fair to scan. - - - II. - - More aid than that embrace, - That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart - Involves his fate; and she who urged the start - Abides the race. - - - III. - - For he is in the lists - Contentious with the elements, whose dower - First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour - If he desists. - - - IV. - - His breath of instant thirst - Is warning of a creature matched with strife, - To meet it as a bride, or let fall life - On life’s accursed. - - - V. - - No longer forth he bounds - The lusty animal, afield to roam, - But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome - Strange themes propounds. - - - VI. - - By hunger sharply sped - To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use, - In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews, - An infant’s head. - - - VII. - - And ever that old task - Of reading what he is and whence he came, - Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame - Across her mask. - - - VIII. - - She hears his wailful prayer, - When now to the Invisible he raves - To rend him from her, now his mother craves - Her calm, her care. - - - IX. - - The thing that shudders most - Within him is the burden of his cry. - Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye - The eyeless Ghost. - - - X. - - Or sometimes she will seem - Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, - Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, - With gold-buds dim. - - - XI. - - Once worshipped Prime of Powers, - She still was the Implacable: as a beast, - She struck him down and dragged him from the feast - She crowned with flowers. - - - XII. - - Her pomp of glorious hues, - Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile - Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile - With symbol-clues. - - - XIII. - - The mystery she holds - For him, inveterately he strains to see, - And sight of his obtuseness is the key - Among those folds. - - - XIV. - - He may entreat, aspire, - He may despair, and she has never heed. - She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, - Not his desire. - - - XV. - - She prompts him to rejoice, - Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud. - He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed - A wanton’s choice. - - - XVI. - - Albeit thereof he has found - Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain; - Has half transferred the battle to his brain, - From bloody ground; - - - XVII. - - He will not read her good, - Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; - Through that old devil of the thousand lures, - Through that dense hood: - - - XVIII. - - Through terror, through distrust; - The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live - Through all that makes of him a sensitive - Abhorring dust. - - - XIX. - - Behold his wormy home! - And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave - Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave - To waste in foam. - - - XX. - - Therefore the wretch inclines - Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith, - Can raise him high: with vows of living faith - For little signs. - - - XXI. - - Some signs he must demand, - Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few, - To satisfy the senses it is true, - And in his hand, - - - XXII. - - This miracle which saves - Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch, - By virtue of his worth, contrasting much - With brutes and knaves. - - - XXIII. - - From dust, of him abhorred, - He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth. - ‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth! - Me take, dear Lord!’ - - - XXIV. - - She hears him. Him she owes - For half her loveliness a love well won - By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, - Their common foes. - - - XXV. - - He builds the soaring spires, - That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws, - Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, - Her purest fires. - - - XXVI. - - Through him hath she exchanged, - For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, - Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown - Where monsters ranged. - - - XXVII. - - And order, high discourse, - And decency, than which is life less dear, - She has of him: the lyre of language clear, - Love’s tongue and source. - - - XXVIII. - - She hears him, and can hear - With glory in his gains by work achieved: - With grief for grief that is the unperceived - In her so near. - - - XXIX. - - If he aloft for aid - Imploring storms, her essence is the spur. - His cry to heaven is a cry to her - He would evade. - - - XXX. - - Not elsewhere can he tend. - Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins; - Those her revulsions from the skull that grins - To ape his end. - - - XXXI. - - And her desires are those - For happiness, for lastingness, for light. - ’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night - The hoped dawn-rose. - - - XXXII. - - Fair fountains of the dark - Daily she waves him, that his inner dream - May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, - A quivering lark: - - - XXXIII. - - This life and her to know - For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee - To feel stern joy her origin: not he - The child of woe. - - - XXXIV. - - But that the senses still - Usurp the station of their issue mind, - He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind: - As yet he will; - - - XXXV. - - As yet he will, she prays, - Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;-- - The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf - In shifting rays;-- - - - XXXVI. - - That captain of the scorned; - The coveter of life in soul and shell, - The fratricide, the thief, the infidel, - The hoofed and horned;-- - - - XXXVII. - - He singularly doomed - To what he execrates and writhes to shun;-- - When fire has passed him vapour to the sun, - And sun relumed, - - - XXXVIII. - - Then shall the horrid pall - Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine, - ‘Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,’ - Will hear her call. - - - XXXIX. - - Whence looks he on a land - Whereon his labour is a carven page; - And forth from heritage to heritage - Nought writ on sand. - - - XL. - - His fables of the Above, - And his gapped readings of the crown and sword, - The hell detested and the heaven adored, - The hate, the love, - - - XLI. - - The bright wing, the black hoof, - He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined, - And never unfaith clamouring to be coined - To faith by proof. - - - XLII. - - She her just Lord may view, - Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned - With all her gifts to reach the light discerned - Her spirit through. - - - XLIII. - - Then in him time shall run - As in the hour that to young sunlight crows; - And--‘If thou hast good faith it can repose,’ - She tells her son. - - - XLIV. - - Meanwhile on him, her chief - Expression, her great word of life, looks she; - Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree, - Or dated leaf. - - - - -A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT. - - - I. - - See the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath - The ever-falling fountain of green leaves - Round the white bending stem, and like a wreath - Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through, - To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves: - Is one for me? is one for you? - - - II. - - --Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place, - And you shall choose among us which you will, - Without the idle pastime of the chase, - If to this treaty you can well agree: - To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil. - He who’s for us, for him are we! - - - III. - - --Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth, - A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells, - And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth - In the first plucking of them, past us flew - To labour, singing rustic ritornells: - Had they a cause? are they of you? - - - IV. - - --Sirs, they are as unthinking armies are - To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs. - When they know men they know the state of war: - But now they dream like sunlight on a sea, - And deem you hold the half of happy pairs. - He who’s for us, for him are we! - - - V. - - --Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames; - Judicial in the robe and wig; secure - As venerated portraits in their frames; - And they denounced some insurrection new - Against sound laws which keep you good and pure. - Are you of them? are they of you? - - - VI. - - --Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes, - And by as much: let them together chime: - It is an ancient bell within their throats, - Pulled by an aged ringer; with what glee - Befits the yellow yesterdays of time. - He who’s for us, for him are we. - - - VII. - - --Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit; - Dowered of all favours and all blessed things - Whereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit; - Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew, - Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings? - Who is for love must be for you. - - - VIII. - - --The manners of the market, honest sirs, - ’Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares. - You flatter us, or perchance our milliners - You flatter; so this vain and outworn She - May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs! - A higher lord than Love claim we. - - - IX. - - --One day, dear lady, missing the broad track, - I came on a wood’s border, by a mead, - Where golden May ran up to moted black: - And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review, - With Love before her throne in act to plead. - Take him for me, take her for you. - - - X. - - --Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known. - Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt: - She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throne - The shadow of his back froze witheringly, - And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt. - O not such slaves of Love are we! - - - XI. - - --Love, lady, like the star above that lance - Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud, - Sad as the last line of a brave romance!-- - Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw - Beams of fresh fire while Beauty waned and bowed. - Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you. - - - XII. - - --Called she not for her mirror, sir? Forth ran - Her women: I am lost, she cried, when lo, - Love in the form of an admiring man - Once more in adoration bent the knee - And brought the faded Pagan to full blow: - For which her throne she gave: not we! - - - XIII. - - --My version, madam, runs not to that end. - A certain madness of an hour half past, - Caught her like fever: her just lord no friend - She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew - The prim acerbity, sweet Love’s outcast. - Great heaven ward off that stroke from you! - - - XIV. - - --Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous: - How generous likewise that you do not name - Offended nature! She from all of us - Couched idle underneath our showering tree, - May quite withhold her most destructive flame; - And then what woeful women we! - - - XV. - - --Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youth - May run to drought in visionary schemes: - And a late waking to perceive the truth, - When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu, - Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams: - And that may be in store for you. - - - XVI. - - --O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t in the skies, - Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours? - But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes - That look on it! the diverse things they see, - According to their thirst for fruit or flowers! - Pass on: it is the truth seek we. - - - XVII. - - --Lady, there is a truth of settled laws - That down the past burns like a great watch-fire. - Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause, - Whetting its edge to cut the race in two, - Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre, - Much honour and much glory you! - - - XVIII. - - --Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride, - And not as cat and serpent and poor slave, - Wherewith we walked in union by your side? - Spare to false womanliness her delicacy, - Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave: - In our defence thus chained are we. - - - XIX. - - --Yours, madam, were the privileges of life - Proper to man’s ideal; you were the mark - Of action, and the banner in the strife: - Yea, of your very weakness once you drew - The strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark: - Wrapped in a robe of flame were you! - - - XX. - - --Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, when we were chill, - You clothed us warmly; all in honour! when - We starved you fed us; all in honour still: - Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably! - Deep is the gratitude we owe to men, - For privileged indeed were we! - - - XXI. - - --You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad, - But come in the red struggle of our growth - Alas, that I should have to say it! bad - Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do - Shows animal impatience, mental sloth: - Man monstrous, pining seraphs you! - - - XXII. - - --I fain would ask your friend ... but I will ask - You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague, - Your sad exceptions were to break that mask - They wear for your cool mind historically, - And blaze like black lists of a _present_ plague? - But in that light behold them we. - - - XXIII. - - --Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world, - Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof - And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled - In his hard-earned oblivion! You are few, - Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof, - I have lived, and have known none like you. - - - XXIV. - - --We may be blind to men, sir: we embrace - A future now beyond the fowler’s nets. - Though few, we hold a promise for the race - That was not at our rising: you are free - To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes. - He who’s for us, for him are we. - - - XXV. - - --Ah! madam, were they puppets who withstood - Youth’s cravings for adventure to preserve - The dedicated ways of womanhood? - The light which leads us from the paths of rue, - That light above us, never seen to swerve, - Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you. - - - XXVI. - - --Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we perchance - Shall not abandon, though we see not how, - Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advance - Beside our lords in any real degree, - Unless we move: and to advance is now - A sovereign need, think more than we. - - - XXVII. - - --So push you out of harbour in small craft, - With little seamanship; and comes a gale, - The world will laugh, the world has often laughed, - Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue, - When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale, - How swift to the old nest fly you! - - - XXVIII. - - --What thinks your friend, kind sir? We have escaped - But partly that old half-tamed wild beast’s paw - Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped: - Men too have known the cramping enemy - In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe: - Him our deliverer, await we! - - - XXIX. - - --Delusions are with eloquence endowed, - And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres - To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed, - Deliverer, lady! but like summer dew - O’er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears, - Who see the awakening for you. - - - XXX. - - --Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps not. - O sir, delusion mounting like a sun - On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot, - Giving it warmth and movement! if this be - Delusion, think of what thereby was won - For men, and dream of what win we. - - - XXXI. - - --Lady, the destiny of minor powers, - Who would recast us, is but to convulse: - You enter on a strife that frets and sours; - You can but win sick disappointment’s hue; - And simply an accelerated pulse, - Some tonic you have drunk moves you. - - - XXXII. - - --Thinks your friend so? Good sir, your wit is bright - But wit that strives to speak the popular voice, - Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light; - Curfew, would seem your conqueror’s decree - To women likewise: and we have no choice - Save darkness or rebellion, we! - - - XXXIII. - - --A plain safe intermediate way is cleft - By reason foiling passion: you that rave - Of mad alternatives to right and left - Echo the tempter, madam: and ’tis due - Unto your sex to shun it as the grave, - This later apple offered you. - - - XXXIV. - - --This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet; - Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouth - Are little wooed by it; yet we would eat: - We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea: - We have thirsted long: this apple suits our drouth: - ’Tis good for men to halve, think we. - - - XXXV. - - --But say, what seek you, madam? ’Tis enough - That you should have dominion o’er the springs - Domestic and man’s heart: those ways, how rough, - How vile, outside the stately avenue - Where you walk sheltered by your angel’s wings, - Are happily unknown to you. - - - XXXVI. - - --We hear women’s shrieks on them. We like your phrase, - Dominion domestic! And that roar, - ‘What seek you?’ is of tyrants in all days. - Sir, get you something of our purity, - And we will of your strength: we ask no more. - That is the sum of what seek we. - - - XXXVII. - - --O for an image, madam, in one word, - To show you, as the lightning night reveals, - Your error and your perils: you have erred - In mind only, and the perils that ensue - Swift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels - Address your hopes of safety you! - - - XXXVIII. - - --To err in mind, sir ... your friend smiles: he may! - To err in mind, if err in mind we can, - Is grievous error you do well to stay. - But O how different from reality - Men’s fiction is! how like you in the plan, - Is woman, knew you her as we! - - - XXXIX. - - --Look, lady, where yon river winds its line - Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face - The splendour of fair life: to be divine, - ’Tis nature bids you be to nature true, - Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace, - Reflecting heaven in clearness you. - - - XL. - - --Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes. - To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse, - Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes - Who is not wholly of the nursery, - Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse: - Together shake it off, say we! - - - XLI. - - --Hear, then, my friend, madam! Tongue-restrained he stands - Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched - With traceries of the artificer’s hands, - Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view. - Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched! - Heed him not! Traitress beauties you! - - - XLII. - - --We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage! - --Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast! - --Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage. - --Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key. - --Then are there fresher mornings mounting East - Than ever yet have dawned, sing we! - - - XLIII. - - --False ends as false began, madam, be sure! - --What lure there is the pure cause purifies! - --Who purifies the victim of the lure? - --That soul which bids us our high light pursue. - --Some heights are measured down: the wary wise - Shun Reason in the masque with you! - - - XLIV. - - --Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks. - Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal; - A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks! - But could she give more loyal guarantee - Than wooing wisdom, that in her a soul - Has risen? Adieu: content are we! - - - XLV. - - Those ladies led their captive to the flood’s - Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most - Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds. - Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too? - For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast - His comrade over me and you. - - - XLVI. - - Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed - Over the sea of blood the blushing star, - That Beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed, - When not possessing her (for such is he!), - Might in a wondering season seen afar, - Be tamed to say not ‘I,’ but ‘we’? - - - XLVII. - - And shall they make of Beauty their estate, - The fortress and the weapon of their sex? - Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate, - More queenly than of old, how we must woo, - Ere she will melt? The halter’s on our necks, - Kick as it likes us, I and you. - - - XLVIII. - - Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained - Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high: - If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained. - But can she keep her followers without fee? - Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry, - He who’s for us, for him are we! - - - - -SONNETS - - - - -LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT. - - - On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. - Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend - Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, - Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. - Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. - And now upon his Western wing he leaned, - Now his huge bulk o’er Africa careened, - Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. - Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars - With memory of the old revolt from Awe, - He reached a middle height, and at the stars, - Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. - Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, - The army of unalterable law. - - - - -THE STAR SIRIUS. - - - Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales - To dotlings under moonlight still art keen - With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien - Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales: - Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails, - Reducing many lustrous to the lean: - Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen - To show what source divine is, and prevails. - Long watches through, at one with godly night, - I mark thee planting joy in constant fire; - And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire - Life to the spirit, passion for the light, - Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight - Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre. - - - - -SENSE AND SPIRIT. - - - The senses loving Earth or well or ill, - Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. - The mind is in their trammels, and lights not - By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will - To find in nature things which less may chill - An ardour that desires, unknowing what. - Till we conceive her living we go distraught, - At best but circle-windsails of a mill. - Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life - Creatively has given us blood and breath - For endless war and never wound unhealed, - The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field - Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife - To read her own and trust her down to death. - - - - -EARTH’S SECRET. - - - Not solitarily in fields we find - Earth’s secret open, though one page is there; - Her plainest, such as children spell, and share - With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. - Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, - In turbid cities, can the key be bare. - It hangs for those who hither thither fare, - Close interthreading nature with our kind. - They, hearing History speak, of what men were, - And have become, are wise. The gain is great - In vision and solidity; it lives. - Yet at a thought of life apart from her, - Solidity and vision lose their state, - For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. - - - - -THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE. - - - Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsoured - He knew thy sons. He probed from hell to hell - Of human passions, but of love deflowered - His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well. - Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips, - The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails - Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips, - Yet full of speech and intershifting tales, - Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh - We feel is thine: broad as ten thousand beeves - At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff - From grain, bid sick Philosophy’s last leaves - Whirl, if they have no response--they enforced - To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced. - - - - -THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE: - -CONTINUED. - - - How smiles he at a generation ranked - In gloomy noddings over life! They pass. - Not he to feed upon a breast unthanked, - Or eye a beauteous face in a cracked glass. - But he can spy that little twist of brain - Which moved some weighty leader of the blind, - Unwitting ’twas the goad of personal pain, - To view in curst eclipse our Mother’s mind, - And show us of some rigid harridan - The wretched bondmen till the end of time. - O lived the Master now to paint us Man, - That little twist of brain would ring a chime - Of whence it came and what it caused, to start - Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart. - - - - -INTERNAL HARMONY. - - - Assured of worthiness we do not dread - Competitors; we rather give them hail - And greeting in the lists where we may fail: - Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head! - My betters are my masters: purely fed - By their sustainment I likewise shall scale - Some rocky steps between the mount and vale; - Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed. - So that I draw the breath of finer air, - Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn, - Nor rivals tightly belted for the race. - Good speed to them! My place is here or there; - My pride is that among them I have place: - And thus I keep this instrument in tune. - - - - -GRACE AND LOVE. - - - Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she - I love fills daily, mindful but of one: - And close behind pale morn she, like the sun - Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see, - Clear water in the cup, and into me - The image of herself: and that being done, - Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run - In climbers or in creepers or the tree, - She ranges with unerring fingers fine, - To harmony so vivid that through sight - I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold - Beyond the senses, where such love as mine, - Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold - Their starry more from her and me, unite. - - - - -APPRECIATION. - - - Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, - Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born: - And thou when I lay hidden wert as morn - At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; - To none by her fresh wingedness endeared; - Unwelcome unto revellers outworn. - I the last echoes of Diana’s horn - In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered. - No longer wert thou then mere light, fair soul! - And more than simple duty moved thy feet. - New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame, - From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll - May men read on the heart I taught to beat: - That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim. - - - - -THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM. - - - Rich labour is the struggle to be wise, - While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. - Else better were it in some bower of peace - Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. - You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, - As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: - She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, - Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. - So following her, your hewing may attain - The right to speak unto the mute, and shun - That sly temptation of the illumined brain, - Deliveries oracular, self-spun. - Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain - To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun. - - - - -THE STATE OF AGE. - - - Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg - Honours from aught about thee. Light the young. - Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, - O gray one! pendant on a loosened peg. - Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, - Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue, - Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung; - Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg. - Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. - But hast thou in thy season set her fires - To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, - Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: - Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I - Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash. - - - - -PROGRESS. - - - In Progress you have little faith, say you: - Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, - By force, and gentle women choose their mates - Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: - The human heart Bellona’s mad halloo - Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. - ‘Now at this time,’ says History, ‘those two States - ‘Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. - ‘They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes - ‘Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight - ‘Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred - ‘The bloody settlement of their disputes - ‘Till God should bless them better.’ They did right. - And naming Progress, both shall have the word. - - - - -THE WORLD’S ADVANCE. - - - Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline - To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. - You have perchance observed the inebriate’s track - At night when he has quitted the inn-sign: - He plays diversions on the homeward line, - Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack: - A hedge may take him, but he turns not back, - Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine. - ‘Spiral,’ the memorable Lady terms - Our mind’s ascent: our world’s advance presents - That figure on a flat; the way of worms. - Cherish the promise of its good intents, - And warn it, not one instinct to efface - Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place. - - - - -A CERTAIN PEOPLE. - - - As Puritans they prominently wax, - And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks. - Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks, - They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks. - But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks - When Peace another door in them unlocks, - Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox - Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe. - Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, - Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. - They need their pious exercises less - Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief - That these are devilish only to their thief, - Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput. - - - - -THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS. - - - That Garden of sedate Philosophy - Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap, - A shining spot upon a shaggy map; - Where mind and body, in fair junction free, - Luted their joyful concord; like the tree - From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap. - Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature’s lap, - Of gentlemen the happy nursery. - That Garden would on light supremest verge, - Were the long drawing of an equal breath - Healthful for Wisdom’s head, her heart, her aims. - Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge, - And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims - The crucifix that came of Nazareth. - - - - -A LATER ALEXANDRIAN. - - - An inspiration caught from dubious hues, - Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased; - For they lead farther than the single-faced, - Wave subtler promise when desire pursues. - The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse, - His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste. - Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced, - And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews. - Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled - Responsively: he sang not Nature’s own - Divinest, but his lyric had a tone, - As ’twere a forest-echo of her voice: - What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled - From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice. - - - - -AN ORSON OF THE MUSE. - - - Her son, albeit the Muse’s livery - And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts, - Naked and hairy in his savage haunts, - To Nature only will he bend the knee; - Spouting the founts of her distillery - Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants - Being Nature’s, civil limitation daunts - His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he. - Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate, - The Muse will hearken to with graver ear - Than many of her train can waken: him - Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear - Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight, - If in no vessel built for sea they swim. - - - - -THE POINT OF TASTE. - - - Unhappy poets of a sunken prime! - You to reviewers are as ball to bat. - They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat - With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime - On you the excommunicates of Rhyme, - Because you sing not in the living Fat. - The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat - Is verse that shuns their self-producing time. - Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, - Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, - You win their pleased attention. But, bright God - O’ the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud! - Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump - Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs. - - - - -CAMELUS SALTAT. - - - What say you, critic, now you have become - An author and maternal?--in this trap - (To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap - On instruments as like as drum to drum. - You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum, - So like the nose fly-teased in its noon’s nap. - You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap - With that between the fingers and the thumb. - It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch, - Which bade our public gobble or reject. - O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked, - Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch! - What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere, - You dealt?--the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer. - - - - -CAMELUS SALTAT: CONTINUED. - - - Oracle of the market! thence you drew - The taste which stamped you guide of the inept.-- - A north-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept, - A sturdy and a briny, once men knew. - He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, - To roll ingurgitation till he slept, - Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: - And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew. - At last this dancer to the Polar star - Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, - To drink the sea and pilot him to land. - O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched, - Know, while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are - Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand. - - - - -TO J. M. - - - Let Fate or Insufficiency provide - Mean ends for men who what they are would be: - Penned in their narrow day no change they see - Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. - Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide: - And whether Earth’s great offspring, by decree, - Must rot if they abjure rapacity, - Not argument but effort shall decide. - They number many heads in that hard flock; - Trim swordsmen they push forth; yet try thy steel. - Thou fighting for poor humankind wilt feel - The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew - A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, - And bring the army of the faithful through. - - - - -TO A FRIEND LOST. - -(T. T.) - - - When I remember, friend, whom lost I call, - Because a man beloved is taken hence, - The tender humour and the fire of sense - In your good eyes; how full of heart for all, - And chiefly for the weaker by the wall, - You bore that lamp of sane benevolence; - Then see I round you Death his shadows dense - Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall. - For surely are you one with the white host, - Spirits, whose memory in our vital air - Through the great love of Earth they had: lo, these, - Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas, - Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost, - Partakers of a strife they joyed to share. - - - - -MY THEME. - - - Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt: - The song of gladness one straight bolt can check. - But I have never stood at Fortune’s beck: - Were she and her light crew to run atilt - At my poor holding little would be spilt; - Small were the praise for singing o’er that wreck. - Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck; - He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt. - Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell - With other than those votaries she deals - The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift. - I say but that this love of Earth reveals - A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, - Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift. - - - - -MY THEME: CONTINUED. - - - ’Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts - Through contemplation from a heart unbent - By many tempests may be stained and rent: - The summer flies it mightily attracts. - Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts, - Which scarce give breathing of the sty’s content - For their diurnal carnal nourishment: - Which treat with Nature in official pacts. - The deader body Nature could proclaim. - Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath - Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth. - But during calms the flies of idle aim - Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst - For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst. - - - - -TIME AND SENTIMENT. - - - I see a fair young couple in a wood, - And as they go, one bends to take a flower, - That so may be embalmed their happy hour - And in another day, a kindred mood, - Haply together, or in solitude, - Recovered what the teeth of Time devour, - The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power, - Wherewith by their young blood they are endued - To move all enviable, framed in May, - And of an aspect sisterly with Truth: - Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed: - Who will be prompted on some pallid day - To lift the hueless flower and show that dead, - Even such, and by this token, is their youth. - - - - -PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS. - -The measure runs: - -[Illustration] - - -MELAMPUS. - -[Illustration] - - -LOVE IN THE VALLEY: - -Trochaic, variable in short syllables according to stress of the accent. - - A sketch of this poem appeared in a volume published many years - back, now extinct. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF -EARTH *** - -***** This file should be named 63672-0.txt or 63672-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/6/7/63672/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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