The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Oscar Wilde (#16 in our series by Oscar Wilde) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Poems Author: Oscar Wilde Release Date: October, 1997 [EBook #1057] [This file was first posted on September 24, 1997] [Most recently updated: August 8, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: US-ASCII
Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute
on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine
ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written
scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs
for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely
there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from
life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears
of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but
touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul’s
inheritance?
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save
their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care
to know,—
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy
reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions
like the sea
And give my rage a brother—! Liberty!
For
this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul,
else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob
nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved—and
yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God
knows it I am with them, in some things.
Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields
of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose
feet the worlds divide?
The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy
hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows
through a twilight land,
The spears of crimson-suited war,
The long white-crested waves
of fight,
And all the deadly fires which are
The torches of
the lords of Night.
The yellow leopards, strained and lean,
The treacherous Russian
knows so well,
With gaping blackened jaws are seen
Leap through
the hail of screaming shell.
The strong sea-lion of England’s wars
Hath left his sapphire
cave of sea,
To battle with the storm that mars
The stars
of England’s chivalry.
The brazen-throated clarion blows
Across the Pathan’s
reedy fen,
And the high steeps of Indian snows
Shake to the
tread of armèd men.
And many an Afghan chief, who lies
Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees,
Clutches
his sword in fierce surmise
When on the mountain-side he sees
The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes
To tell how he hath heard
afar
The measured roll of English drums
Beat at the gates
of Kandahar.
For southern wind and east wind meet
Where, girt and crowned
by sword and fire,
England with bare and bloody feet
Climbs
the steep road of wide empire.
O lonely Himalayan height,
Grey pillar of the Indian sky,
Where
saw’st thou last in clanging flight
Our wingèd dogs
of Victory?
The almond-groves of Samarcand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow,
And
Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go:
And on from thence to Ispahan,
The gilded garden of the sun,
Whence
the long dusty caravan
Brings cedar wood and vermilion;
And that dread city of Cabool
Set at the mountain’s scarpèd
feet,
Whose marble tanks are ever full
With water for the
noonday heat:
Where through the narrow straight Bazaar
A little maid Circassian
Is
led, a present from the Czar
Unto some old and bearded khan,—
Here have our wild war-eagles flown,
And flapped wide wings
in fiery fight;
But the sad dove, that sits alone
In England—she
hath no delight.
In vain the laughing girl will lean
To greet her love with love-lit
eyes:
Down in some treacherous black ravine,
Clutching his
flag, the dead boy lies.
And many a moon and sun will see
The lingering wistful children
wait
To climb upon their father’s knee;
And in each
house made desolate
Pale women who have lost their lord
Will kiss the relics of
the slain—
Some tarnished epaulette—some sword—
Poor
toys to soothe such anguished pain.
For not in quiet English fields
Are these, our brothers, lain
to rest,
Where we might deck their broken shields
With all
the flowers the dead love best.
For some are by the Delhi walls,
And many in the Afghan land,
And
many where the Ganges falls
Through seven mouths of shifting sand.
And some in Russian waters lie,
And others in the seas which
are
The portals to the East, or by
The wind-swept heights
of Trafalgar.
O wandering graves! O restless sleep!
O silence of the
sunless day!
O still ravine! O stormy deep!
Give up
your prey! Give up your prey!
And thou whose wounds are never healed,
Whose weary race is
never won,
O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield
For
every inch of ground a son?
Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,
Change thy glad
song to song of pain;
Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,
And
will not yield them back again.
Wave and wild wind and foreign shore
Possess the flower of English
land—
Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,
Hands that
shall never clasp thy hand.
What profit now that we have bound
The whole round world with
nets of gold,
If hidden in our heart is found
The care that
groweth never old?
What profit that our galleys ride,
Pine-forest-like, on every
main?
Ruin and wreck are at our side,
Grim warders of the
House of Pain.
Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?
Where is our English
chivalry?
Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,
And sobbing
waves their threnody.
O loved ones lying far away,
What word of love can dead lips
send!
O wasted dust! O senseless clay!
Is this the end!
is this the end!
Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead
To vex their solemn slumber
so;
Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head,
Up the
steep road must England go,
Yet when this fiery web is spun,
Her watchmen shall descry from
far
The young Republic like a sun
Rise from these crimson
seas of war.
Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these
white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured
world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the
age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded
hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but
fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which
we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant
demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this
the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell
spake the word Democracy!
Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
When far away upon
a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell
the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Or ride in
state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy
mother France, free and republican,
Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place
The better laurels
of a soldier’s crown,
That not dishonoured should thy soul
go down
To tell the mighty Sire of thy race
That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,
And found it sweeter
than his honied bees,
And that the giant wave Democracy
Breaks
on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.
Christ, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones
Still straitened
in their rock-hewn sepulchre?
And was Thy Rising only dreamed by
her
Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones?
For here the
air is horrid with men’s groans,
The priests who call upon
Thy name are slain,
Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain
From
those whose children lie upon the stones?
Come down, O Son of God!
incestuous gloom
Curtains the land, and through the starless night
Over
Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see!
If Thou in very truth didst burst
the tomb
Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might
Lest
Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!
There was a time in Europe long ago
When no man died for freedom
anywhere,
But England’s lion leaping from its lair
Laid
hands on the oppressor! it was so
While England could a great Republic
show.
Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care
Of Cromwell,
when with impotent despair
The Pontiff in his painted portico
Trembled
before our stern ambassadors.
How comes it then that from such
high estate
We have thus fallen, save that Luxury
With barren
merchandise piles up the gate
Where noble thoughts and deeds should
enter by:
Else might we still be Milton’s heritors.
Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where
every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows,
yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the
rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our
freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wherefore I love them not whose
hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For
no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence,
Honour, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
Or
Murder with his silent bloody feet.
This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:
Of all its ancient
chivalry and might
Our little island is forsaken quite:
Some
enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,
And from its hills that voice
hath passed away
Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it,
Come
out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit
For this vile traffic-house,
where day by day
Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,
And
the rude people rage with ignorant cries
Against an heritage of
centuries.
It mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of Art
And
loftiest culture I would stand apart,
Neither for God, nor for
his enemies.
It is full summer now, the heart of June;
Not yet the sunburnt
reapers are astir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
Rich
autumn time, the season’s usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold
to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and
spendthrift breeze.
Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the
Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The
harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering
reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June’s
messenger
The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus
loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of
their own loveliness some violets lie
That will not look the gold
sun in the face
For fear of too much splendour,—ah! methinks
it is a place
Which should be trodden by Persephone
When wearied of the flowerless
fields of Dis!
Or danced on by the lads of Arcady!
The hidden
secret of eternal bliss
Known to the Grecian here a man might find,
Ah!
you and I may find it now if Love and Sleep be kind.
There are the flowers which mourning Herakles
Strewed on the
tomb of Hylas, columbine,
Its white doves all a-flutter where the
breeze
Kissed them too harshly, the small celandine,
That
yellow-kirtled chorister of eve,
And lilac lady’s-smock,—but
let them bloom alone, and leave
Yon spirèd hollyhock red-crocketed
To sway its silent
chimes, else must the bee,
Its little bellringer, go seek instead
Some
other pleasaunce; the anemone
That weeps at daybreak, like a silly
girl
Before her love, and hardly lets the butterflies unfurl
Their painted wings beside it,—bid it pine
In pale virginity;
the winter snow
Will suit it better than those lips of thine
Whose
fires would but scorch it, rather go
And pluck that amorous flower
which blooms alone,
Fed by the pander wind with dust of kisses
not its own.
The trumpet-mouths of red convolvulus
So dear to maidens, creamy
meadow-sweet
Whiter than Juno’s throat and odorous
As
all Arabia, hyacinths the feet
Of Huntress Dian would be loth to
mar
For any dappled fawn,—pluck these, and those fond flowers
which are
Fairer than what Queen Venus trod upon
Beneath the pines of
Ida, eucharis,
That morning star which does not dread the sun,
And
budding marjoram which but to kiss
Would sweeten Cytheraea’s
lips and make
Adonis jealous,—these for thy head,—and
for thy girdle take
Yon curving spray of purple clematis
Whose gorgeous dye outflames
the Tyrian King,
And foxgloves with their nodding chalices,
But
that one narciss which the startled Spring
Let from her kirtle
fall when first she heard
In her own woods the wild tempestuous
song of summer’s bird,
Ah! leave it for a subtle memory
Of those sweet tremulous days
of rain and sun,
When April laughed between her tears to see
The
early primrose with shy footsteps run
From the gnarled oak-tree
roots till all the wold,
Spite of its brown and trampled leaves,
grew bright with shimmering gold.
Nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet
As thou thyself,
my soul’s idolatry!
And when thou art a-wearied at thy feet
Shall
oxlips weave their brightest tapestry,
For thee the woodbine shall
forget its pride
And veil its tangled whorls, and thou shalt walk
on daisies pied.
And I will cut a reed by yonder spring
And make the wood-gods
jealous, and old Pan
Wonder what young intruder dares to sing
In
these still haunts, where never foot of man
Should tread at evening,
lest he chance to spy
The marble limbs of Artemis and all her company.
And I will tell thee why the jacinth wears
Such dread embroidery
of dolorous moan,
And why the hapless nightingale forbears
To
sing her song at noon, but weeps alone
When the fleet swallow sleeps,
and rich men feast,
And why the laurel trembles when she sees the
lightening east.
And I will sing how sad Proserpina
Unto a grave and gloomy Lord
was wed,
And lure the silver-breasted Helena
Back from the
lotus meadows of the dead,
So shalt thou see that awful loveliness
For
which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war’s abyss!
And then I’ll pipe to thee that Grecian tale
How Cynthia
loves the lad Endymion,
And hidden in a grey and misty veil
Hies
to the cliffs of Latmos once the Sun
Leaps from his ocean bed in
fruitless chase
Of those pale flying feet which fade away in his
embrace.
And if my flute can breathe sweet melody,
We may behold Her
face who long ago
Dwelt among men by the AEgean sea,
And whose
sad house with pillaged portico
And friezeless wall and columns
toppled down
Looms o’er the ruins of that fair and violet
cinctured town.
Spirit of Beauty! tarry still awhile,
They are not dead, thine
ancient votaries;
Some few there are to whom thy radiant smile
Is
better than a thousand victories,
Though all the nobly slain of
Waterloo
Rise up in wrath against them! tarry still, there are
a few
Who for thy sake would give their manlihood
And consecrate their
being; I at least
Have done so, made thy lips my daily food,
And
in thy temples found a goodlier feast
Than this starved age can
give me, spite of all
Its new-found creeds so sceptical and so
dogmatical.
Here not Cephissos, not Ilissos flows,
The woods of white Colonos
are not here,
On our bleak hills the olive never blows,
No
simple priest conducts his lowing steer
Up the steep marble way,
nor through the town
Do laughing maidens bear to thee the crocus-flowered
gown.
Yet tarry! for the boy who loved thee best,
Whose very name
should be a memory
To make thee linger, sleeps in silent rest
Beneath
the Roman walls, and melody
Still mourns her sweetest lyre; none
can play
The lute of Adonais: with his lips Song passed away.
Nay, when Keats died the Muses still had left
One silver voice
to sing his threnody,
But ah! too soon of it we were bereft
When
on that riven night and stormy sea
Panthea claimed her singer as
her own,
And slew the mouth that praised her; since which time
we walk alone,
Save for that fiery heart, that morning star
Of re-arisen England,
whose clear eye
Saw from our tottering throne and waste of war
The
grand Greek limbs of young Democracy
Rise mightily like Hesperus
and bring
The great Republic! him at least thy love hath taught
to sing,
And he hath been with thee at Thessaly,
And seen white Atalanta
fleet of foot
In passionless and fierce virginity
Hunting
the tuskèd boar, his honied lute
Hath pierced the cavern
of the hollow hill,
And Venus laughs to know one knee will bow
before her still.
And he hath kissed the lips of Proserpine,
And sung the Galilaean’s
requiem,
That wounded forehead dashed with blood and wine
He
hath discrowned, the Ancient Gods in him
Have found their last,
most ardent worshipper,
And the new Sign grows grey and dim before
its conqueror.
Spirit of Beauty! tarry with us still,
It is not quenched the
torch of poesy,
The star that shook above the Eastern hill
Holds
unassailed its argent armoury
From all the gathering gloom and
fretful fight—
O tarry with us still! for through the long
and common night,
Morris, our sweet and simple Chaucer’s child,
Dear heritor
of Spenser’s tuneful reed,
With soft and sylvan pipe has
oft beguiled
The weary soul of man in troublous need,
And
from the far and flowerless fields of ice
Has brought fair flowers
to make an earthly paradise.
We know them all, Gudrun the strong men’s bride,
Aslaug
and Olafson we know them all,
How giant Grettir fought and Sigurd
died,
And what enchantment held the king in thrall
When lonely
Brynhild wrestled with the powers
That war against all passion,
ah! how oft through summer hours,
Long listless summer hours when the noon
Being enamoured of
a damask rose
Forgets to journey westward, till the moon
The
pale usurper of its tribute grows
From a thin sickle to a silver
shield
And chides its loitering car—how oft, in some cool
grassy field
Far from the cricket-ground and noisy eight,
At Bagley, where
the rustling bluebells come
Almost before the blackbird finds a
mate
And overstay the swallow, and the hum
Of many murmuring
bees flits through the leaves,
Have I lain poring on the dreamy
tales his fancy weaves,
And through their unreal woes and mimic pain
Wept for myself,
and so was purified,
And in their simple mirth grew glad again;
For
as I sailed upon that pictured tide
The strength and splendour
of the storm was mine
Without the storm’s red ruin, for the
singer is divine;
The little laugh of water falling down
Is not so musical, the
clammy gold
Close hoarded in the tiny waxen town
Has less
of sweetness in it, and the old
Half-withered reeds that waved
in Arcady
Touched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony.
Spirit of Beauty, tarry yet awhile!
Although the cheating merchants
of the mart
With iron roads profane our lovely isle,
And break
on whirling wheels the limbs of Art,
Ay! though the crowded factories
beget
The blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet!
For One at least there is,—He bears his name
From Dante
and the seraph Gabriel,—
Whose double laurels burn with deathless
flame
To light thine altar; He too loves thee well,
Who saw
old Merlin lured in Vivien’s snare,
And the white feet of
angels coming down the golden stair,
Loves thee so well, that all the World for him
A gorgeous-coloured
vestiture must wear,
And Sorrow take a purple diadem,
Or else
be no more Sorrow, and Despair
Gild its own thorns, and Pain, like
Adon, be
Even in anguish beautiful;—such is the empery
Which Painters hold, and such the heritage
This gentle solemn
Spirit doth possess,
Being a better mirror of his age
In all
his pity, love, and weariness,
Than those who can but copy common
things,
And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings.
But they are few, and all romance has flown,
And men can prophesy
about the sun,
And lecture on his arrows—how, alone,
Through
a waste void the soulless atoms run,
How from each tree its weeping
nymph has fled,
And that no more ’mid English reeds a Naiad
shows her head.
Methinks these new Actaeons boast too soon
That they have spied
on beauty; what if we
Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon
Of
her most ancient, chastest mystery,
Shall I, the last Endymion,
lose all hope
Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope!
What profit if this scientific age
Burst through our gates with
all its retinue
Of modern miracles! Can it assuage
One
lover’s breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more
beautiful, one day
More godlike in its period? but now the Age
of Clay
Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth
Hath borne again a noisy
progeny
Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth
Hurls them
against the august hierarchy
Which sat upon Olympus; to the Dust
They
have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must
Repair for judgment; let them, if they can,
From Natural Warfare
and insensate Chance,
Create the new Ideal rule for man!
Methinks
that was not my inheritance;
For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul
Passes
from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.
Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away
Her visage from the
God, and Hecate’s boat
Rose silver-laden, till the jealous
day
Blew all its torches out: I did not note
The waning hours,
to young Endymions
Time’s palsied fingers count in vain his
rosary of suns!
Mark how the yellow iris wearily
Leans back its throat, as though
it would be kissed
By its false chamberer, the dragon-fly,
Who,
like a blue vein on a girl’s white wrist,
Sleeps on that
snowy primrose of the night,
Which ’gins to flush with crimson
shame, and die beneath the light.
Come let us go, against the pallid shield
Of the wan sky the
almond blossoms gleam,
The corncrake nested in the unmown field
Answers
its mate, across the misty stream
On fitful wing the startled curlews
fly,
And in his sedgy bed the lark, for joy that Day is nigh,
Scatters the pearlèd dew from off the grass,
In tremulous
ecstasy to greet the sun,
Who soon in gilded panoply will pass
Forth
from yon orange-curtained pavilion
Hung in the burning east: see,
the red rim
O’ertops the expectant hills! it is the God!
for love of him
Already the shrill lark is out of sight,
Flooding with waves
of song this silent dell,—
Ah! there is something more in
that bird’s flight
Than could be tested in a crucible!—
But
the air freshens, let us go, why soon
The woodmen will be here;
how we have lived this night of June!
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently,
she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that
was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman,
so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my
heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life’s
buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
AVIGNON
I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned,
Italia, my Italia,
at thy name:
And when from out the mountain’s heart I came
And
saw the land for which my life had yearned,
I laughed as one who
some great prize had earned:
And musing on the marvel of thy fame
I
watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame
The turquoise
sky to burnished gold was turned.
The pine-trees waved as waves
a woman’s hair,
And in the orchards every twining spray
Was
breaking into flakes of blossoming foam:
But when I knew that far
away at Rome
In evil bonds a second Peter lay,
I wept to see
the land so very fair.
TURIN.
See, I have climbed the mountain side
Up to this holy house
of God,
Where once that Angel-Painter trod
Who saw the heavens
opened wide,
And throned upon the crescent moon
The Virginal white Queen
of Grace,—
Mary! could I but see thy face
Death could
not come at all too soon.
O crowned by God with thorns and pain!
Mother of Christ!
O mystic wife!
My heart is weary of this life
And over-sad
to sing again.
O crowned by God with love and flame!
O crowned by Christ the
Holy One!
O listen ere the searching sun
Show to the world
my sin and shame.
Was this His coming! I had hoped to see
A scene of wondrous
glory, as was told
Of some great God who in a rain of gold
Broke
open bars and fell on Danae:
Or a dread vision as when Semele
Sickening
for love and unappeased desire
Prayed to see God’s clear
body, and the fire
Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly:
With
such glad dreams I sought this holy place,
And now with wondering
eyes and heart I stand
Before this supreme mystery of Love:
Some
kneeling girl with passionless pale face,
An angel with a lily
in his hand,
And over both the white wings of a Dove.
FLORENCE.
Italia! thou art fallen, though with sheen
Of battle-spears
thy clamorous armies stride
From the north Alps to the Sicilian
tide!
Ay! fallen, though the nations hail thee Queen
Because
rich gold in every town is seen,
And on thy sapphire-lake in tossing
pride
Of wind-filled vans thy myriad galleys ride
Beneath
one flag of red and white and green.
O Fair and Strong! O
Strong and Fair in vain!
Look southward where Rome’s desecrated
town
Lies mourning for her God-anointed King!
Look heaven-ward!
shall God allow this thing?
Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall
come down,
And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain.
VENICE.
I wandered through Scoglietto’s far retreat,
The oranges
on each o’erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold
to shame the day;
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and
fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet
Like silver
moons the pale narcissi lay:
And the curved waves that streaked
the great green bay
Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very
sweet.
Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
‘Jesus
the son of Mary has been slain,
O come and fill His sepulchre with
flowers.’
Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
Had
drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain,
The Cross, the Crown, the
Soldiers and the Spear.
I.
The corn has turned from grey to red,
Since first my spirit
wandered forth
From the drear cities of the north,
And to
Italia’s mountains fled.
And here I set my face towards home,
For all my pilgrimage is
done,
Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun
Marshals the way
to Holy Rome.
O Blessed Lady, who dost hold
Upon the seven hills thy reign!
O
Mother without blot or stain,
Crowned with bright crowns of triple
gold!
O Roma, Roma, at thy feet
I lay this barren gift of song!
For,
ah! the way is steep and long
That leads unto thy sacred street.
II.
And yet what joy it were for me
To turn my feet unto the south,
And
journeying towards the Tiber mouth
To kneel again at Fiesole!
And wandering through the tangled pines
That break the gold
of Arno’s stream,
To see the purple mist and gleam
Of
morning on the Apennines
By many a vineyard-hidden home,
Orchard and olive-garden grey,
Till
from the drear Campagna’s way
The seven hills bear up the
dome!
III.
A pilgrim from the northern seas—
What joy for me to seek
alone
The wondrous temple and the throne
Of him who holds
the awful keys!
When, bright with purple and with gold
Come priest and holy
cardinal,
And borne above the heads of all
The gentle Shepherd
of the Fold.
O joy to see before I die
The only God-anointed king,
And
hear the silver trumpets ring
A triumph as he passes by!
Or at the brazen-pillared shrine
Holds high the mystic sacrifice,
And
shows his God to human eyes
Beneath the veil of bread and wine.
IV.
For lo, what changes time can bring!
The cycles of revolving
years
May free my heart from all its fears,
And teach my lips
a song to sing.
Before yon field of trembling gold
Is garnered into dusty sheaves,
Or
ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves
Flutter as birds adown the
wold,
I may have run the glorious race,
And caught the torch while
yet aflame,
And called upon the holy name
Of Him who now doth
hide His face.
ARONA.
Rome! what a scroll of History thine has been;
In the first
days thy sword republican
Ruled the whole world for many an age’s
span:
Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen,
Till in thy
streets the bearded Goth was seen;
And now upon thy walls the breezes
fan
(Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!)
The hated
flag of red and white and green.
When was thy glory! when in search
for power
Thine eagles flew to greet the double sun,
And the
wild nations shuddered at thy rod?
Nay, but thy glory tarried for
this hour,
When pilgrims kneel before the Holy One,
The prisoned
shepherd of the Church of God.
MONTRE MARIO.
Nay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring,
Sad olive-groves,
or silver-breasted dove,
Teach me more clearly of Thy life and
love
Than terrors of red flame and thundering.
The hillside
vines dear memories of Thee bring:
A bird at evening flying to
its nest
Tells me of One who had no place of rest:
I think
it is of Thee the sparrows sing.
Come rather on some autumn afternoon,
When
red and brown are burnished on the leaves,
And the fields echo
to the gleaner’s song,
Come when the splendid fulness of
the moon
Looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves,
And reap
Thy harvest: we have waited long.
The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon
the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like
some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe
more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal
red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour
and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide
wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought
in vain for any place of rest:
‘Foxes have holes, and every
bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise
my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’
Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,
For I am drowning
in a stormier sea
Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee:
The wine
of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered
land
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well
I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God’s
throne should stand.
‘He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the
chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name
From
morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.’
Nay, peace,
I shall behold, before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more
white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face.
I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched
face and hair with spray;
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned
in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous
gulls did flee:
‘Alas!’ I cried, ‘my life is
full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain
From
these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!’
My nets gaped
wide with many a break and flaw,
Nathless I threw them as my final
cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo! a sudden
glory! and I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The
argent splendour of white limbs ascend!
A lily-girl, not made for this world’s pain,
With brown,
soft hair close braided by her ears,
And longing eyes half veiled
by slumberous tears
Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:
Pale
cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,
Red underlip drawn
in for fear of love,
And white throat, whiter than the silvered
dove,
Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.
Yet,
though my lips shall praise her without cease,
Even to kiss her
feet I am not bold,
Being o’ershadowed by the wings of awe,
Like
Dante, when he stood with Beatrice
Beneath the flaming Lion’s
breast, and saw
The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold.
Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons
of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common
earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His
purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite’s
mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung
in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World’s
chivalry and might
Into the clamorous crimson waves of war!
Or didst thou rule the fire-laden moon?
In amorous Sidon was
thy temple built
Over the light and laughter of the sea
Where,
behind lattice scarlet-wrought and gilt,
Some brown-limbed girl
did weave thee tapestry,
All through the waste and wearied hours
of noon;
Till her wan cheek with flame of passion burned,
And
she rose up the sea-washed lips to kiss
Of some glad Cyprian sailor,
safe returned
From Calpé and the cliffs of Herakles!
No! thou art Helen, and none other one!
It was for thee that
young Sarpedôn died,
And Memnôn’s manhood was
untimely spent;
It was for thee gold-crested Hector tried
With
Thetis’ child that evil race to run,
In the last year of
thy beleaguerment;
Ay! even now the glory of thy fame
Burns
in those fields of trampled asphodel,
Where the high lords whom
Ilion knew so well
Clash ghostly shields, and call upon thy name.
Where hast thou been? in that enchanted land
Whose slumbering
vales forlorn Calypso knew,
Where never mower rose at break of
day
But all unswathed the trammelling grasses grew,
And the
sad shepherd saw the tall corn stand
Till summer’s red had
changed to withered grey?
Didst thou lie there by some Lethaean
stream
Deep brooding on thine ancient memory,
The crash of
broken spears, the fiery gleam
From shivered helm, the Grecian
battle-cry?
Nay, thou wert hidden in that hollow hill
With one who is forgotten
utterly,
That discrowned Queen men call the Erycine;
Hidden
away that never mightst thou see
The face of Her, before whose
mouldering shrine
To-day at Rome the silent nations kneel;
Who
gat from Love no joyous gladdening,
But only Love’s intolerable
pain,
Only a sword to pierce her heart in twain,
Only the
bitterness of child-bearing.
The lotus-leaves which heal the wounds of Death
Lie in thy hand;
O, be thou kind to me,
While yet I know the summer of my days;
For
hardly can my tremulous lips draw breath
To fill the silver trumpet
with thy praise,
So bowed am I before thy mystery;
So bowed
and broken on Love’s terrible wheel,
That I have lost all
hope and heart to sing,
Yet care I not what ruin time may bring
If
in thy temple thou wilt let me kneel.
Alas, alas, thou wilt not tarry here,
But, like that bird, the
servant of the sun,
Who flies before the north wind and the night,
So
wilt thou fly our evil land and drear,
Back to the tower of thine
old delight,
And the red lips of young Euphorion;
Nor shall
I ever see thy face again,
But in this poisonous garden-close must
stay,
Crowning my brows with the thorn-crown of pain,
Till
all my loveless life shall pass away.
O Helen! Helen! Helen! yet a while,
Yet for a little while,
O, tarry here,
Till the dawn cometh and the shadows flee!
For
in the gladsome sunlight of thy smile
Of heaven or hell I have
no thought or fear,
Seeing I know no other god but thee:
No
other god save him, before whose feet
In nets of gold the tired
planets move,
The incarnate spirit of spiritual love
Who in
thy body holds his joyous seat.
Thou wert not born as common women are!
But, girt with silver
splendour of the foam,
Didst from the depths of sapphire seas arise!
And
at thy coming some immortal star,
Bearded with flame, blazed in
the Eastern skies,
And waked the shepherds on thine island-home.
Thou
shalt not die: no asps of Egypt creep
Close at thy heels to taint
the delicate air;
No sullen-blooming poppies stain thy hair,
Those
scarlet heralds of eternal sleep.
Lily of love, pure and inviolate!
Tower of ivory! red rose of
fire!
Thou hast come down our darkness to illume:
For we,
close-caught in the wide nets of Fate,
Wearied with waiting for
the World’s Desire,
Aimlessly wandered in the House of gloom,
Aimlessly
sought some slumberous anodyne
For wasted lives, for lingering
wretchedness,
Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine,
And the
white glory of thy loveliness.
This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells
like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the
foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue
waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted
star the pale monks bear!
Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily
for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A
lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he
is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy
scales all green and gold.
The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina,
one would say
The mighty master’s hands were on the keys
Of
the Maria organ, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter
morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne
From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates
and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To
toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands
to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless
nations rest.
Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the
moon more fair than all
Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange,
a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the
Host across the Esquiline,
And now—those common poppies in
the wheat seem twice as fine.
The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower,
sweeter perfume bring
Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled
censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the
curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit
of corn and vine.
Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass
Were out of tune now,
for a small brown bird
Sings overhead, and through the long cool
grass
I see that throbbing throat which once I heard
On starlit
hills of flower-starred Arcady,
Once where the white and crescent
sand of Salamis meets sea.
Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when
the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid
leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the
heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths
across the farmyard gate.
And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind
that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling
bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet
the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs
that hang upon the red-brick wall,
And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last
violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis
sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia
where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance
about the wattled fold.
And sweet with young Lycoris to recline
In some Illyrian valley
far away,
Where canopied on herbs amaracine
We too might waste
the summer-trancèd day
Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,
While
far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.
But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot
Of some long-hidden
God should ever tread
The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute
Pressed
to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags,
ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced
flock to feed.
Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing’st
be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of
thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this
English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can
yield
Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose
Which all day long
in vales AEolian
A lad might seek in vain for over-grows
Our
hedges like a wanton courtesan
Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies
too
Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue
Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs
For swallows
going south, would never spread
Their azure tents between the Attic
vines;
Even that little weed of ragged red,
Which bids the
robin pipe, in Arcady
Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung
elegy
Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames
Which to
awake were sweeter ravishment
Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems
Of
brown bee-studded orchids which were meant
For Cytheraea’s
brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing
steer
There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from
afar,
Although one summer evening’s dew could fill
Its
little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd
to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted
gold
As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded
arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying
to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just
brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns
Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne’s
silver tapestry,—
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of
One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner
memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted
seas,
Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river’s
marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The
silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery
which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis
Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and
unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For
love’s own sake to leave the other’s side
Yet killing
love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves
of silent moonlit trees,
Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous
crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called
false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was
close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard
With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying
in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming
with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,
And far away the moil,
the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax
hurled the stone;
Of wingèd Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the
snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In
little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon
of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,
For well I know they are not dead at all,
The ancient Gods of
Grecian poesy:
They are asleep, and when they hear thee call
Will
wake and think ’t is very Thessaly,
This Thames the Daulian
waters, this cool glade
The yellow-irised mead where once young
Itys laughed and played.
If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird
Who from the leafy
stillness of thy throne
Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard
The
horn of Atalanta faintly blown
Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering
Through
Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,—
Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate
That pleadest for the moon against
the day!
If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate
On
that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and
leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,—
Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou
didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which
loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of
Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.
Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental
things take form again,
And the old shapes of Beauty walk among
The
simple garths and open crofts, as when
The son of Leto bare the
willow rod,
And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish
God.
Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here
Astride upon his
gorgeous Indian throne,
And over whimpering tigers shake the spear
With
yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,
While at his side the wanton
Bassarid
Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain
kid!
Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,
And steal the moonèd
wings of Ashtaroth,
Upon whose icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron
in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased
from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn
Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat
to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her
breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So
softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then
with shrilly laugh and leap will rush
Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath
the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample
the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their hornèd
master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a
wicker crate!
Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool
leaves Apollo’s lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled
boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And
ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated
deer the virgin maid will ride.
Sing on! and I the dying boy will see
Stain with his purple
blood the waxen bell
That overweighs the jacinth, and to me
The
wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,
And I will kiss her mouth and
streaming eyes,
And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon
lies!
Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse
and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free,
To
burn one’s old ships! and to launch again
Into the white-plumed
battle of the waves
And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered
caves!
O for Medea with her poppied spell!
O for the secret of the
Colchian shrine!
O for one leaf of that pale asphodel
Which
binds the tired brows of Proserpine,
And sheds such wondrous dews
at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian
sea,
Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily
on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The
deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had
harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick
and sunless day.
O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian
farm!
O that some antique statue for one hour
Might wake to
passion, and that I could charm
The Dawn at Florence from its dumb
despair,
Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast
my lair!
Sing on! sing on! I would be drunk with life,
Drunk with
the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted
strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless
vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms,
the dull insensate air!
Sing on! sing on! O feathered Niobe,
Thou canst make sorrow
beautiful, and steal
From joy its sweetest music, not as we
Who
by dead voiceless silence strive to heal
Our too untented wounds,
and do but keep
Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and murder pillowed
sleep.
Sing louder yet, why must I still behold
The wan white face
of that deserted Christ,
Whose bleeding hands my hands did once
enfold,
Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,
And
now in mute and marble misery
Sits in his lone dishonoured House
and weeps, perchance for me?
O Memory cast down thy wreathèd shell!
Break thy hoarse
lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor
dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost
the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned
song!
Cease, cease, or if ’t is anguish to be dumb
Take from
the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness
doth more become
This English woodland than thy keen despair,
Ah!
cease and let the north wind bear thy lay
Back to the rocky hills
of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.
A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,
Endymion would
have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still
Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To
lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens
half in joy and half afraid.
A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter
of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her
wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had thrust aside the branches
of her oak
To see the lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorting
yoke.
A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just
awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had
bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with
sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the
Nile
Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,
To shade those
slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,
Or else on yonder grassy
slope with bare
High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis
Had
bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green
ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.
Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy,
fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come
not with such despondent answering!
No more thou wingèd
Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs
of pain!
It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter
moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And
from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with
his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling
melody
So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate
note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which
is most nigh to tears and memory;
Poor mourning Philomel, what
dost thou fear?
Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion
is not here,
Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,
No woven web of
bloody heraldries,
But mossy dells for roving comrades made,
Warm
valleys where the tired student lies
With half-shut book, and many
a winding walk
Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple
talk.
The harmless rabbit gambols with its young
Across the trampled
towing-path, where late
A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng
Cheered
with their noisy cries the racing eight;
The gossamer, with ravelled
silver threads,
Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved
sheds
Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out
Where the swinked
shepherd drives his bleating flock
Back to their wattled sheep-cotes,
a faint shout
Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,
And
starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,
And the dim lengthening
shadows flit like swallows up the hill.
The heron passes homeward to the mere,
The blue mist creeps
among the shivering trees,
Gold world by world the silent stars
appear,
And like a blossom blown before the breeze
A white
moon drifts across the shimmering sky,
Mute arbitress of all thy
sad, thy rapturous threnody.
She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,
She knows
Endymion is not far away;
’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul
is as the reed
Which has no message of its own to play,
So
pipes another’s bidding, it is I,
Drifting with every wind
on the wide sea of misery.
Ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill
About the
sombre woodland seems to cling
Dying in music, else the air is
still,
So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing
Wander
and wheel above the pines, or tell
Each tiny dew-drop dripping
from the bluebell’s brimming cell.
And far away across the lengthening wold,
Across the willowy
flats and thickets brown,
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with
tremulous gold
Marks the long High Street of the little town,
And
warns me to return; I must not wait,
Hark ! ’t is the curfew
booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.
The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in
grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf:
and chill and cold
The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses’
walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul’s
Loomed
like a bubble o’er the town.
Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were
stirred
With country waggons: and a bird
Flew to the glistening
roofs and sang.
But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered
beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart
of stone.
The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields
are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks
under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush
goes hurrying by.
A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,
The
odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
The birds
are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth,
Hopping from
branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And
the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed
is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst
ring.
And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till
it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the
gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of
the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking
the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the
river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and
wounds the air.
To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught
Of all the
great things men have saved from Time,
The withered body of a girl
was brought
Dead ere the world’s glad youth had touched its
prime,
And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb
of some black pyramid.
But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the
Egyptian’s body,—lo! was found
Closed in the wasted
hollow of her hand
A little seed, which sown in English ground
Did
wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear
And spread rich odours through
our spring-tide air.
With such strange arts this flower did allure
That all forgotten
was the asphodel,
And the brown bee, the lily’s paramour,
Forsook
the cup where he was wont to dwell,
For not a thing of earth it
seemed to be,
But stolen from some heavenly Arcady.
In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white
At its own beauty,
hung across the stream,
The purple dragon-fly had no delight
With
its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam,
Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom
to kiss,
Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis.
For love of it the passionate nightingale
Forgot the hills of
Thrace, the cruel king,
And the pale dove no longer cared to sail
Through
the wet woods at time of blossoming,
But round this flower of Egypt
sought to float,
With silvered wing and amethystine throat.
While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue
A cooling wind
crept from the land of snows,
And the warm south with tender tears
of dew
Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose
Amid
those sea-green meadows of the sky
On which the scarlet bars of
sunset lie.
But when o’er wastes of lily-haunted field
The tired birds
had stayed their amorous tune,
And broad and glittering like an
argent shield
High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon,
Did
no strange dream or evil memory make
Each tremulous petal of its
blossoms shake?
Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years
Seemed but the
lingering of a summer’s day,
It never knew the tide of cankering
fears
Which turn a boy’s gold hair to withered grey,
The
dread desire of death it never knew,
Or how all folk that they
were born must rue.
For we to death with pipe and dancing go,
Nor would we pass
the ivory gate again,
As some sad river wearied of its flow
Through
the dull plains, the haunts of common men,
Leaps lover-like into
the terrible sea!
And counts it gain to die so gloriously.
We mar our lordly strength in barren strife
With the world’s
legions led by clamorous care,
It never feels decay but gathers
life
From the pure sunlight and the supreme air,
We live beneath
Time’s wasting sovereignty,
It is the child of all eternity.
The western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark AEgean sea,
And
at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come
down! the purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the
town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down,
come down!
She will not come, I know her well,
Of lover’s vows she
hath no care,
And little good a man can tell
Of one so cruel
and so fair.
True love is but a woman’s toy,
They never
know the lover’s pain,
And I who loved as loves a boy
Must
love in vain, must love in vain.
O noble pilot, tell me true,
Is that the sheen of golden hair?
Or
is it but the tangled dew
That binds the passion-flowers there?
Good
sailor come and tell me now
Is that my Lady’s lily hand?
Or
is it but the gleaming prow,
Or is it but the silver sand?
No! no! ’tis not the tangled dew,
’Tis not the silver-fretted
sand,
It is my own dear Lady true
With golden hair and lily
hand!
O noble pilot, steer for Troy,
Good sailor, ply the
labouring oar,
This is the Queen of life and joy
Whom we must
bear from Grecian shore!
The waning sky grows faint and blue,
It wants an hour still
of day,
Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,
O Lady mine, away!
away!
O noble pilot, steer for Troy,
Good sailor, ply the
labouring oar,
O loved as only loves a boy!
O loved for ever
evermore!
The apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The
sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But
yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
O
rising moon! O Lady moon!
Be you my lover’s sentinel,
You
cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
You
cannot choose but know my love,
For he a shepherd’s crook
doth bear,
And he is soft as any dove,
And brown and curly
is his hair.
The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The
grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily’s singing seneschal
Sleeps
in the lily-bell, and all
The violet hills are lost in gloom.
O
risen moon! O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
And
if my own true love you see,
Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
The
hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair,
The goat-skin wrapped
about his arm,
Tell him that I am waiting where
The rushlight
glimmers in the Farm.
The falling dew is cold and chill,
And no bird sings in Arcady,
The
little fauns have left the hill,
Even the tired daffodil
Has
closed its gilded doors, and still
My lover comes not back to me.
False
moon! False moon! O waning moon!
Where is my own true
lover gone,
Where are the lips vermilion,
The shepherd’s
crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,
Why
wear that veil of drifting mist?
Ah! thou hast young Endymion,
Thou
hast the lips that should be kissed!
My limbs are wasted with a flame,
My feet are sore with travelling,
For,
calling on my Lady’s name,
My lips have now forgot to sing.
O Linnet in the wild-rose brake
Strain for my Love thy melody,
O
Lark sing louder for love’s sake,
My gentle Lady passeth
by.
She is too fair for any man
To see or hold his heart’s
delight,
Fairer than Queen or courtesan
Or moonlit water in
the night.
Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
(Green leaves upon her
golden hair!)
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
Of
autumn corn are not more fair.
Her little lips, more made to kiss
Than to cry bitterly for
pain,
Are tremulous as brook-water is,
Or roses after evening
rain.
Her neck is like white melilote
Flushing for pleasure of the
sun,
The throbbing of the linnet’s throat
Is not so
sweet to look upon.
As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
White-seeded, is her crimson
mouth,
Her cheeks are as the fading stain
Where the peach
reddens to the south.
O twining hands! O delicate
White body made for love and
pain!
O House of love! O desolate
Pale flower beaten
by the rain!
A ring of gold and a milk-white dove
Are goodly gifts for thee,
And
a hempen rope for your own love
To hang upon a tree.
For you a House of Ivory,
(Roses are white in the rose-bower)!
A
narrow bed for me to lie,
(White, O white, is the hemlock flower)!
Myrtle and jessamine for you,
(O the red rose is fair to see)!
For
me the cypress and the rue,
(Finest of all is rosemary)!
For you three lovers of your hand,
(Green grass where a man
lies dead)!
For me three paces on the sand,
(Plant lilies
at my head)!
I.
He was a Grecian lad, who coming home
With pulpy figs and wine
from Sicily
Stood at his galley’s prow, and let the foam
Blow
through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
And holding wave and
wind in boy’s despite
Peered from his dripping seat across
the wet and stormy night.
Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear
Like a thin thread
of gold against the sky,
And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking
gear,
And bade the pilot head her lustily
Against the nor’west
gale, and all day long
Held on his way, and marked the rowers’
time with measured song.
And when the faint Corinthian hills were red
Dropped anchor
in a little sandy bay,
And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his
head,
And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray,
And
washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold
Brought out his linen
tunic and his sandals brazen-soled,
And a rich robe stained with the fishers’ juice
Which
of some swarthy trader he had bought
Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse,
And
was with Tyrian broideries inwrought,
And by the questioning merchants
made his way
Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the
labouring day
Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud,
Clomb the high hill,
and with swift silent feet
Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd
Of
busy priests, and from some dark retreat
Watched the young swains
his frolic playmates bring
The firstling of their little flock,
and the shy shepherd fling
The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang
His studded crook
against the temple wall
To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang
Of
the base wolf from homestead and from stall;
And then the clear-voiced
maidens ’gan to sing,
And to the altar each man brought some
goodly offering,
A beechen cup brimming with milky foam,
A fair cloth wrought
with cunning imagery
Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb
Dripping
with oozy gold which scarce the bee
Had ceased from building, a
black skin of oil
Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce
and white-tusked spoil
Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid
To please Athena, and
the dappled hide
Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade
Had
met the shaft; and then the herald cried,
And from the pillared
precinct one by one
Went the glad Greeks well pleased that they
their simple vows had done.
And the old priest put out the waning fires
Save that one lamp
whose restless ruby glowed
For ever in the cell, and the shrill
lyres
Came fainter on the wind, as down the road
In joyous
dance these country folk did pass,
And with stout hands the warder
closed the gates of polished brass.
Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,
And heard the
cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,
And the rose-petals falling from
the wreath
As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,
And
seemed to be in some entrancèd swoon
Till through the open
roof above the full and brimming moon
Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor,
When from his nook
up leapt the venturous lad,
And flinging wide the cedar-carven
door
Beheld an awful image saffron-clad
And armed for battle!
the gaunt Griffin glared
From the huge helm, and the long lance
of wreck and ruin flared
Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled
The Gorgon’s
head its leaden eyeballs rolled,
And writhed its snaky horrors
through the shield,
And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold
In
passion impotent, while with blind gaze
The blinking owl between
the feet hooted in shrill amaze.
The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp
Far out at sea off
Sunium, or cast
The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp
Of
horses smite the waves, and a wild blast
Divide the folded curtains
of the night,
And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy
fright.
And guilty lovers in their venery
Forgat a little while their
stolen sweets,
Deeming they heard dread Dian’s bitter cry;
And
the grim watchmen on their lofty seats
Ran to their shields in
haste precipitate,
Or strained black-bearded throats across the
dusky parapet.
For round the temple rolled the clang of arms,
And the twelve
Gods leapt up in marble fear,
And the air quaked with dissonant
alarums
Till huge Poseidon shook his mighty spear,
And on
the frieze the prancing horses neighed,
And the low tread of hurrying
feet rang from the cavalcade.
Ready for death with parted lips he stood,
And well content
at such a price to see
That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood,
The
marvel of that pitiless chastity,
Ah! well content indeed, for
never wight
Since Troy’s young shepherd prince had seen so
wonderful a sight.
Ready for death he stood, but lo! the air
Grew silent, and the
horses ceased to neigh,
And off his brow he tossed the clustering
hair,
And from his limbs he throw the cloak away;
For whom
would not such love make desperate?
And nigher came, and touched
her throat, and with hands violate
Undid the cuirass, and the crocus gown,
And bared the breasts
of polished ivory,
Till from the waist the peplos falling down
Left
visible the secret mystery
Which to no lover will Athena show,
The
grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of snow.
Those who have never known a lover’s sin
Let them not
read my ditty, it will be
To their dull ears so musicless and thin
That
they will have no joy of it, but ye
To whose wan cheeks now creeps
the lingering smile,
Ye who have learned who Eros is,—O listen
yet awhile.
A little space he let his greedy eyes
Rest on the burnished
image, till mere sight
Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries,
And
then his lips in hungering delight
Fed on her lips, and round the
towered neck
He flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion’s
will to check.
Never I ween did lover hold such tryst,
For all night long he
murmured honeyed word,
And saw her sweet unravished limbs, and
kissed
Her pale and argent body undisturbed,
And paddled with
the polished throat, and pressed
His hot and beating heart upon
her chill and icy breast.
It was as if Numidian javelins
Pierced through and through his
wild and whirling brain,
And his nerves thrilled like throbbing
violins
In exquisite pulsation, and the pain
Was such sweet
anguish that he never drew
His lips from hers till overhead the
lark of warning flew.
They who have never seen the daylight peer
Into a darkened room,
and drawn the curtain,
And with dull eyes and wearied from some
dear
And worshipped body risen, they for certain
Will never
know of what I try to sing,
How long the last kiss was, how fond
and late his lingering.
The moon was girdled with a crystal rim,
The sign which shipmen
say is ominous
Of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim,
And
the low lightening east was tremulous
With the faint fluttering
wings of flying dawn,
Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover
had withdrawn.
Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast
Clomb the brave
lad, and reached the cave of Pan,
And heard the goat-foot snoring
as he passed,
And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran
Like a
young fawn unto an olive wood
Which in a shady valley by the well-built
city stood;
And sought a little stream, which well he knew,
For oftentimes
with boyish careless shout
The green and crested grebe he would
pursue,
Or snare in woven net the silver trout,
And down amid
the startled reeds he lay
Panting in breathless sweet affright,
and waited for the day.
On the green bank he lay, and let one hand
Dip in the cool dark
eddies listlessly,
And soon the breath of morning came and fanned
His
hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly
The tangled curls from off
his forehead, while
He on the running water gazed with strange
and secret smile.
And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak
With his long crook
undid the wattled cotes,
And from the stack a thin blue wreath
of smoke
Curled through the air across the ripening oats,
And
on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed
As through the crisp and
rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed.
And when the light-foot mower went afield
Across the meadows
laced with threaded dew,
And the sheep bleated on the misty weald,
And
from its nest the waking corncrake flew,
Some woodmen saw him lying
by the stream
And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could
seem,
Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said,
‘It is young
Hylas, that false runaway
Who with a Naiad now would make his bed
Forgetting
Herakles,’ but others, ‘Nay,
It is Narcissus, his own
paramour,
Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure.’
And when they nearer came a third one cried,
‘It is young
Dionysos who has hid
His spear and fawnskin by the river side
Weary
of hunting with the Bassarid,
And wise indeed were we away to fly:
They
live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy.’
So turned they back, and feared to look behind,
And told the
timid swain how they had seen
Amid the reeds some woodland god
reclined,
And no man dared to cross the open green,
And on
that day no olive-tree was slain,
Nor rushes cut, but all deserted
was the fair domain,
Save when the neat-herd’s lad, his empty pail
Well slung
upon his back, with leap and bound
Raced on the other side, and
stopped to hail,
Hoping that he some comrade new had found,
And
gat no answer, and then half afraid
Passed on his simple way, or
down the still and silent glade
A little girl ran laughing from the farm,
Not thinking of love’s
secret mysteries,
And when she saw the white and gleaming arm
And
all his manlihood, with longing eyes
Whose passion mocked her sweet
virginity
Watched him awhile, and then stole back sadly and wearily.
Far off he heard the city’s hum and noise,
And now and
then the shriller laughter where
The passionate purity of brown-limbed
boys
Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air,
And now
and then a little tinkling bell
As the shorn wether led the sheep
down to the mossy well.
Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat,
The grasshopper
chirped idly from the tree,
In sleek and oily coat the water-rat
Breasting
the little ripples manfully
Made for the wild-duck’s nest,
from bough to bough
Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise
crept across the slough.
On the faint wind floated the silky seeds
As the bright scythe
swept through the waving grass,
The ouzel-cock splashed circles
in the reeds
And flecked with silver whorls the forest’s
glass,
Which scarce had caught again its imagery
Ere from
its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly.
But little care had he for any thing
Though up and down the
beech the squirrel played,
And from the copse the linnet ’gan
to sing
To its brown mate its sweetest serenade;
Ah! little
care indeed, for he had seen
The breasts of Pallas and the naked
wonder of the Queen.
But when the herdsman called his straggling goats
With whistling
pipe across the rocky road,
And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes
Boomed
through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode
Of coming storm,
and the belated crane
Passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull
big drops of rain
Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose,
And from the gloomy
forest went his way
Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close,
And
came at last unto a little quay,
And called his mates aboard, and
took his seat
On the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed
the dripping sheet,
And steered across the bay, and when nine suns
Passed down the
long and laddered way of gold,
And nine pale moons had breathed
their orisons
To the chaste stars their confessors, or told
Their
dearest secret to the downy moth
That will not fly at noonday,
through the foam and surging froth
Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes
And lit upon the
ship, whose timbers creaked
As though the lading of three argosies
Were
in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked,
And darkness straightway
stole across the deep,
Sheathed was Orion’s sword, dread
Mars himself fled down the steep,
And the moon hid behind a tawny mask
Of drifting cloud, and
from the ocean’s marge
Rose the red plume, the huge and hornèd
casque,
The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe!
And clad
in bright and burnished panoply
Athena strode across the stretch
of sick and shivering sea!
To the dull sailors’ sight her loosened looks
Seemed like
the jagged storm-rack, and her feet
Only the spume that floats
on hidden rocks,
And, marking how the rising waters beat
Against
the rolling ship, the pilot cried
To the young helmsman at the
stern to luff to windward side
But he, the overbold adulterer,
A dear profaner of great mysteries,
An
ardent amorous idolater,
When he beheld those grand relentless
eyes
Laughed loud for joy, and crying out ‘I come’
Leapt
from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam.
Then fell from the high heaven one bright star,
One dancer left
the circling galaxy,
And back to Athens on her clattering car
In
all the pride of venged divinity
Pale Pallas swept with shrill
and steely clank,
And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy
lover sank.
And the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew
With mocking hoots
after the wrathful Queen,
And the old pilot bade the trembling
crew
Hoist the big sail, and told how he had seen
Close to
the stern a dim and giant form,
And like a dipping swallow the
stout ship dashed through the storm.
And no man dared to speak of Charmides
Deeming that he some
evil thing had wrought,
And when they reached the strait Symplegades
They
beached their galley on the shore, and sought
The toll-gate of
the city hastily,
And in the market showed their brown and pictured
pottery.
II.
But some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare
The boy’s
drowned body back to Grecian land,
And mermaids combed his dank
and dripping hair
And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching
hand;
Some brought sweet spices from far Araby,
And others
bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby.
And when he neared his old Athenian home,
A mighty billow rose
up suddenly
Upon whose oily back the clotted foam
Lay diapered
in some strange fantasy,
And clasping him unto its glassy breast
Swept
landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest!
Now where Colonos leans unto the sea
There lies a long and level
stretch of lawn;
The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee
For
it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun
Is not afraid, for never through
the day
Comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play.
But often from the thorny labyrinth
And tangled branches of
the circling wood
The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth
Hurling
the polished disk, and draws his hood
Over his guilty gaze, and
creeps away,
Nor dares to wind his horn, or—else at the first
break of day
The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball
Along the reedy
shore, and circumvent
Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal
For
fear of bold Poseidon’s ravishment,
And loose their girdles,
with shy timorous eyes,
Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple
beard should rise.
On this side and on that a rocky cave,
Hung with the yellow-belled
laburnum, stands
Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave
Leaves
its faint outline etched upon the sands,
As though it feared to
be too soon forgot
By the green rush, its playfellow,—and
yet, it is a spot
So small, that the inconstant butterfly
Could steal the hoarded
money from each flower
Ere it was noon, and still not satisfy
Its
over-greedy love,—within an hour
A sailor boy, were he but
rude enow
To land and pluck a garland for his galley’s painted
prow,
Would almost leave the little meadow bare,
For it knows nothing
of great pageantry,
Only a few narcissi here and there
Stand
separate in sweet austerity,
Dotting the unmown grass with silver
stars,
And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars.
Hither the billow brought him, and was glad
Of such dear servitude,
and where the land
Was virgin of all waters laid the lad
Upon
the golden margent of the strand,
And like a lingering lover oft
returned
To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire
burned,
Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust,
That self-fed
flame, that passionate lustihead,
Ere grisly death with chill and
nipping frost
Had withered up those lilies white and red
Which,
while the boy would through the forest range,
Answered each other
in a sweet antiphonal counter-change.
And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand,
Threaded the
bosky dell, their satyr spied
The boy’s pale body stretched
upon the sand,
And feared Poseidon’s treachery, and cried,
And
like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade
Each startled Dryad
sought some safe and leafy ambuscade.
Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be
So dread a thing
to feel a sea-god’s arms
Crushing her breasts in amorous
tyranny,
And longed to listen to those subtle charms
Insidious
lovers weave when they would win
Some fencèd fortress, and
stole back again, nor thought it sin
To yield her treasure unto one so fair,
And lay beside him,
thirsty with love’s drouth,
Called him soft names, played
with his tangled hair,
And with hot lips made havoc of his mouth
Afraid
he might not wake, and then afraid
Lest he might wake too soon,
fled back, and then, fond renegade,
Returned to fresh assault, and all day long
Sat at his side,
and laughed at her new toy,
And held his hand, and sang her sweetest
song,
Then frowned to see how froward was the boy
Who would
not with her maidenhood entwine,
Nor knew that three days since
his eyes had looked on Proserpine;
Nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done,
But said, ‘He
will awake, I know him well,
He will awake at evening when the
sun
Hangs his red shield on Corinth’s citadel;
This
sleep is but a cruel treachery
To make me love him more, and in
some cavern of the sea
Deeper than ever falls the fisher’s line
Already a huge
Triton blows his horn,
And weaves a garland from the crystalline
And
drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn
The emerald pillars of our bridal
bed,
For sphered in foaming silver, and with coral crownèd
head,
We two will sit upon a throne of pearl,
And a blue wave will
be our canopy,
And at our feet the water-snakes will curl
In
all their amethystine panoply
Of diamonded mail, and we will mark
The
mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark,
Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold
Like flakes of crimson
light, and the great deep
His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold,
And
we will see the painted dolphins sleep
Cradled by murmuring halcyons
on the rocks
Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his
monstrous flocks.
And tremulous opal-hued anemones
Will wave their purple fringes
where we tread
Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies
Of fishes
flecked with tawny scales will thread
The drifting cordage of the
shattered wreck,
And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs
will deck.’
But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun
With gaudy pennon
flying passed away
Into his brazen House, and one by one
The
little yellow stars began to stray
Across the field of heaven,
ah! then indeed
She feared his lips upon her lips would never care
to feed,
And cried, ‘Awake, already the pale moon
Washes the trees
with silver, and the wave
Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy
dune,
The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave
The nightjar
shrieks, the fluttering bats repass,
And the brown stoat with hollow
flanks creeps through the dusky grass.
Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy,
For in yon stream
there is a little reed
That often whispers how a lovely boy
Lay
with her once upon a grassy mead,
Who when his cruel pleasure he
had done
Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the
sun.
Be not so coy, the laurel trembles still
With great Apollo’s
kisses, and the fir
Whose clustering sisters fringe the seaward
hill
Hath many a tale of that bold ravisher
Whom men call
Boreas, and I have seen
The mocking eyes of Hermes through the
poplar’s silvery sheen.
Even the jealous Naiads call me fair,
And every morn a young
and ruddy swain
Woos me with apples and with locks of hair,
And
seeks to soothe my virginal disdain
By all the gifts the gentle
wood-nymphs love;
But yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged
dove
With little crimson feet, which with its store
Of seven spotted
eggs the cruel lad
Had stolen from the lofty sycamore
At daybreak,
when her amorous comrade had
Flown off in search of berried juniper
Which
most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager
Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency
So constant as this
simple shepherd-boy
For my poor lips, his joyous purity
And
laughing sunny eyes might well decoy
A Dryad from her oath to Artemis;
For
very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss;
His argent forehead, like a rising moon
Over the dusky hills
of meeting brows,
Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon
Leads
from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse
For Cytheraea, the first
silky down
Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are
strong and brown;
And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds
Of bleating sheep upon
his meadows lie,
And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds
Is
in his homestead for the thievish fly
To swim and drown in, the
pink clover mead
Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe
on oaten reed.
And yet I love him not; it was for thee
I kept my love; I knew
that thou would’st come
To rid me of this pallid chastity,
Thou
fairest flower of the flowerless foam
Of all the wide AEgean, brightest
star
Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets
are!
I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first
The
dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring
Swelled in my green and
tender bark or burst
To myriad multitudinous blossoming
Which
mocked the midnight with its mimic moons
That did not dread the
dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous tunes
Startled the squirrel from its granary,
And cuckoo flowers fringed
the narrow lane,
Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy
Crept
like new wine, and every mossy vein
Throbbed with the fitful pulse
of amorous blood,
And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s
maidenhood.
The trooping fawns at evening came and laid
Their cool black
noses on my lowest boughs,
And on my topmost branch the blackbird
made
A little nest of grasses for his spouse,
And now and
then a twittering wren would light
On a thin twig which hardly
bare the weight of such delight.
I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place,
Beneath my
shadow Amaryllis lay,
And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis
chase
The timorous girl, till tired out with play
She felt
his hot breath stir her tangled hair,
And turned, and looked, and
fled no more from such delightful snare.
Then come away unto my ambuscade
Where clustering woodbine weaves
a canopy
For amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade
Of
Paphian myrtles seems to sanctify
The dearest rites of love; there
in the cool
And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool,
The ouzel’s haunt, the wild bee’s pasturage,
For
round its rim great creamy lilies float
Through their flat leaves
in verdant anchorage,
Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat
Steered
by a dragon-fly,—be not afraid
To leave this wan and wave-kissed
shore, surely the place was made
For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,
One arm around her
boyish paramour,
Strays often there at eve, and I have seen
The
moon strip off her misty vestiture
For young Endymion’s eyes;
be not afraid,
The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret
glade.
Nay if thou will’st, back to the beating brine,
Back to
the boisterous billow let us go,
And walk all day beneath the hyaline
Huge
vault of Neptune’s watery portico,
And watch the purple monsters
of the deep
Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias
leap.
For if my mistress find me lying here
She will not ruth or gentle
pity show,
But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere
Relentless
fingers string the cornel bow,
And draw the feathered notch against
her breast,
And loose the archèd cord; aye, even now upon
the quest
I hear her hurrying feet,—awake, awake,
Thou laggard in
love’s battle! once at least
Let me drink deep of passion’s
wine, and slake
My parchèd being with the nectarous feast
Which
even gods affect! O come, Love, come,
Still we have time
to reach the cavern of thine azure home.’
Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees
Shook, and the
leaves divided, and the air
Grew conscious of a god, and the grey
seas
Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare
Blew from
some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed,
And like a flame a barbèd
reed flew whizzing down the glade.
And where the little flowers of her breast
Just brake into their
milky blossoming,
This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest,
Pierced
and struck deep in horrid chambering,
And ploughed a bloody furrow
with its dart,
And dug a long red road, and cleft with wingèd
death her heart.
Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry
On the boy’s body
fell the Dryad maid,
Sobbing for incomplete virginity,
And
raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,
And all the pain of things
unsatisfied,
And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her
throbbing side.
Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan,
And very pitiful to see
her die
Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known
The joy
of passion, that dread mystery
Which not to know is not to live
at all,
And yet to know is to be held in death’s most deadly
thrall.
But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,
Who with Adonis all night
long had lain
Within some shepherd’s hut in Arcady,
On
team of silver doves and gilded wain
Was journeying Paphos-ward,
high up afar
From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning
star,
And when low down she spied the hapless pair,
And heard the
Oread’s faint despairing cry,
Whose cadence seemed to play
upon the air
As though it were a viol, hastily
She bade her
pigeons fold each straining plume,
And dropt to earth, and reached
the strand, and saw their dolorous doom.
For as a gardener turning back his head
To catch the last notes
of the linnet, mows
With careless scythe too near some flower bed,
And
cuts the thorny pillar of the rose,
And with the flower’s
loosened loneliness
Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd
lad in wantonness
Driving his little flock along the mead
Treads down two daffodils,
which side by aide
Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede
And
made the gaudy moth forget its pride,
Treads down their brimming
golden chalices
Under light feet which were not made for such rude
ravages;
Or as a schoolboy tired of his book
Flings himself down upon
the reedy grass
And plucks two water-lilies from the brook,
And
for a time forgets the hour glass,
Then wearies of their sweets,
and goes his way,
And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these
lovers lay.
And Venus cried, ‘It is dread Artemis
Whose bitter hand
hath wrought this cruelty,
Or else that mightier maid whose care
it is
To guard her strong and stainless majesty
Upon the hill
Athenian,—alas!
That they who loved so well unloved into
Death’s house should pass.’
So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl
In the great golden
waggon tenderly
(Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl
Just
threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry
Had not yet ceased to
throb, and still her breast
Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in
ambiguous unrest)
And then each pigeon spread its milky van,
The bright car soared
into the dawning sky,
And like a cloud the aerial caravan
Passed
over the AEgean silently,
Till the faint air was troubled with
the song
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all
night long.
But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where the wide
stair of orbèd marble dips
Its snows into the sea, her fluttering
soul
Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
And passed
into the void, and Venus knew
That one fair maid the less would
walk amid her retinue,
And bade her servants carve a cedar chest
With all the wonder
of this history,
Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest
Where
olive-trees make tender the blue sky
On the low hills of Paphos,
and the Faun
Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on
till dawn.
Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere
The morning bee had
stung the daffodil
With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair
The
waking stag had leapt across the rill
And roused the ouzel, or
the lizard crept
Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their
bodies slept.
And when day brake, within that silver shrine
Fed by the flames
of cressets tremulous,
Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine
That
she whose beauty made Death amorous
Should beg a guerdon from her
pallid Lord,
And let Desire pass across dread Charon’s icy
ford.
III
In melancholy moonless Acheron,
Farm for the goodly earth and
joyous day
Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun
Weighs
down the apple trees, nor flowery May
Chequers with chestnut blooms
the grassy floor,
Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets
mate no more,
There by a dim and dark Lethaean well
Young Charmides was lying;
wearily
He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel,
And with
its little rifled treasury
Strewed the dull waters of the dusky
stream,
And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like
a dream,
When as he gazed into the watery glass
And through his brown
hair’s curly tangles scanned
His own wan face, a shadow seemed
to pass
Across the mirror, and a little hand
Stole into his,
and warm lips timidly
Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their
secret forth into a sigh.
Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw,
And ever nigher
still their faces came,
And nigher ever did their young mouths
draw
Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame,
And longing
arms around her neck he cast,
And felt her throbbing bosom, and
his breath came hot and fast,
And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss,
And all her maidenhood
was his to slay,
And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss
Their
passion waxed and waned,—O why essay
To pipe again of love,
too venturous reed!
Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that
flowerless mead.
Too venturous poesy, O why essay
To pipe again of passion! fold
thy wings
O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay
Sleep hidden
in the lyre’s silent strings
Till thou hast found the old
Castalian rill,
Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s
golden quid!
Enough, enough that he whose life had been
A fiery pulse of
sin, a splendid shame,
Could in the loveless land of Hades glean
One
scorching harvest from those fields of flame
Where passion walks
with naked unshod feet
And is not wounded,—ah! enough that
once their lips could meet
In that wild throb when all existences
Seemed narrowed to one
single ecstasy
Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress
Of
too much pleasure, ere Persephone
Had bade them serve her by the
ebon throne
Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her
zone.
The sea is flecked with bars of grey,
The dull dead wind is
out of tune,
And like a withered leaf the moon
Is blown across
the stormy bay.
Etched clear upon the pallid sand
Lies the black boat: a sailor
boy
Clambers aboard in careless joy
With laughing face and
gleaming hand.
And overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky upland
grass
The young brown-throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes
against the sky.
To outer senses there is peace,
A dreamy peace on either hand
Deep
silence in the shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows cease.
Save for a cry that echoes shrill
From some lone bird disconsolate;
A
corncrake calling to its mate;
The answer from the misty hill.
And suddenly the moon withdraws
Her sickle from the lightening
skies,
And to her sombre cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of
yellow gauze.
Rid of the world’s injustice, and his pain,
He rests at
last beneath God’s veil of blue:
Taken from life when life
and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair
as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave,
no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave
on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke
for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter
of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water—it shall
stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As
Isabella did her Basil-tree.
ROME.
O singer of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost
thou remember Sicily?
Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in
state;
O Singer of Persephone!
Simaetha calls on Hecate
And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
Dost
thou remember Sicily?
Still by the light and laughing sea
Poor Polypheme bemoans his
fate;
O Singer of Persephone!
And still in boyish rivalry
Young Daphnis challenges his mate;
Dost
thou remember Sicily?
Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,
For thee the jocund shepherds
wait;
O Singer of Persephone!
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like
the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale-leaves
listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the
waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.
Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer
tangles spun
On the burnished disk of the marigold,
Or the
sunflower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the dark blue
night is done,
And the spear of the lily is aureoled.
And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the
ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or
the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus
drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.
I am weary of lying within the chase
When the knights are meeting
in market-place.
Nay, go not thou to the red-roofed town
Lest the hoofs of the
war-horse tread thee down.
But I would not go where the Squires ride,
I would only walk
by my Lady’s side.
Alack! and alack! thou art overbold,
A Forester’s son
may not eat off gold.
Will she love me the less that my Father is seen
Each Martinmas
day in a doublet green?
Perchance she is sewing at tapestrie,
Spindle and loom are not
meet for thee.
Ah, if she is working the arras bright
I might ravel the threads
by the fire-light.
Perchance she is hunting of the deer,
How could you follow o’er
hill and mere?
Ah, if she is riding with the court,
I might run beside her
and wind the morte.
Perchance she is kneeling in St. Denys,
(On her soul may our
Lady have gramercy!)
Ah, if she is praying in lone chapelle,
I might swing the censer
and ring the bell.
Come in, my son, for you look sae pale,
The father shall fill
thee a stoup of ale.
But who are these knights in bright array?
Is it a pageant the
rich folks play?
’T is the King of England from over sea,
Who has come
unto visit our fair countrie.
But why does the curfew toll sae low?
And why do the mourners
walk a-row?
O ’t is Hugh of Amiens my sister’s son
Who is lying
stark, for his day is done.
Nay, nay, for I see white lilies clear,
It is no strong man
who lies on the bier.
O ’t is old Dame Jeannette that kept the hall,
I knew
she would die at the autumn fall.
Dame Jeannette had not that gold-brown hair,
Old Jeannette was
not a maiden fair.
O ’t is none of our kith and none of our kin,
(Her soul
may our Lady assoil from sin!)
But I hear the boy’s voice chaunting sweet,
‘Elle
est morte, la Marguerite.’
Come in, my son, and lie on the bed,
And let the dead folk bury
their dead.
O mother, you know I loved her true:
O mother, hath one grave
room for two?
Seven stars in the still water,
And seven in the sky;
Seven
sins on the King’s daughter,
Deep in her soul to lie.
Red roses are at her feet,
(Roses are red in her red-gold hair)
And
O where her bosom and girdle meet
Red roses are hidden there.
Fair is the knight who lieth slain
Amid the rush and reed,
See
the lean fishes that are fain
Upon dead men to feed.
Sweet is the page that lieth there,
(Cloth of gold is goodly
prey,)
See the black ravens in the air,
Black, O black as
the night are they.
What do they there so stark and dead?
(There is blood upon her
hand)
Why are the lilies flecked with red?
(There is blood
on the river sand.)
There are two that ride from the south and east,
And two from
the north and west,
For the black raven a goodly feast,
For
the King’s daughter rest.
There is one man who loves her true,
(Red, O red, is the stain
of gore!)
He hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew,
(One
grave will do for four.)
No moon in the still heaven,
In the black water none,
The
sins on her soul are seven,
The sin upon his is one.
Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly
And heard sweet notes
of sylvan music blown
From antique reeds to common folk unknown:
And
often launched our bark upon that sea
Which the nine Muses hold
in empery,
And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,
Nor
spread reluctant sail for more safe home
Till we had freighted
well our argosy.
Of which despoilèd treasures these remain,
Sordello’s
passion, and the honeyed line
Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine
Driving
his pampered jades, and more than these,
The seven-fold vision
of the Florentine,
And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies.
The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring
To grey-eyed Pallas
crowns of olive-leaves!
Demeter’s child no more hath tithe
of sheaves,
And in the noon the careless shepherds sing,
For
Pan is dead, and all the wantoning
By secret glade and devious
haunt is o’er:
Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;
Great
Pan is dead, and Mary’s son is King.
And yet—perchance in this sea-trancèd isle,
Chewing
the bitter fruit of memory,
Some God lies hidden in the asphodel.
Ah
Love! if such there be, then it were well
For us to fly his anger:
nay, but see,
The leaves are stirring: let us watch awhile.
CORFU.
Two crownèd Kings, and One that stood alone
With no green
weight of laurels round his head,
But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,
And
wearied with man’s never-ceasing moan
For sins no bleating
victim can atone,
And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed.
Girt
was he in a garment black and red,
And at his feet I marked a broken
stone
Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees.
Now at
their sight, my heart being lit with flame,
I cried to Beatricé,
‘Who are these?’
And she made answer, knowing well
each name,
‘AEschylos first, the second Sophokles,
And
last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.’
The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky
Burned like a heated
opal through the air;
We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair
For
the blue lands that to the eastward lie.
From the steep prow I
marked with quickening eye
Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,
Ithaca’s
cliff, Lycaon’s snowy peak,
And all the flower-strewn hills
of Arcady.
The flapping of the sail against the mast,
The
ripple of the water on the side,
The ripple of girls’ laughter
at the stern,
The only sounds:- when ’gan the West to burn,
And
a red sun upon the seas to ride,
I stood upon the soil of Greece
at last!
KATAKOLO.
Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed
Gaunt cypress-trees
stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl
make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And,
where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of
yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim
warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.
Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother
of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In
the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder
in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
ROME.
The oleander on the wall
Grows crimson in the dawning light,
Though
the grey shadows of the night
Lie yet on Florence like a pall.
The dew is bright upon the hill,
And bright the blossoms overhead,
But
ah! the grasshoppers have fled,
The little Attic song is still.
Only the leaves are gently stirred
By the soft breathing of
the gale,
And in the almond-scented vale
The lonely nightingale
is heard.
The day will make thee silent soon,
O nightingale sing on for
love!
While yet upon the shadowy grove
Splinter the arrows
of the moon.
Before across the silent lawn
In sea-green vest the morning
steals,
And to love’s frightened eyes reveals
The long
white fingers of the dawn
Fast climbing up the eastern sky
To grasp and slay the shuddering
night,
All careless of my heart’s delight,
Or if the
nightingale should die.
(To my Friend Henry Irving)
The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,
The dead that travel
fast, the opening door,
The murdered brother rising through the
floor,
The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid,
And
then the lonely duel in the glade,
The broken swords, the stifled
scream, the gore,
Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er,—
These
things are well enough,—but thou wert made
For more august
creation! frenzied Lear
Should at thy bidding wander on the heath
With
the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo
For thee should lure his love,
and desperate fear
Pluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its
sheath—
Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to
blow!
(To Sarah Bernhardt)
How vain and dull this common world must seem
To such a One
as thou, who should’st have talked
At Florence with Mirandola,
or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should’st
have gathered reeds from a green stream
For Goat-foot Pan’s
shrill piping, and have played
With the white girls in that Phaeacian
glade
Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
Held thy wan dust, and
thou hast come again
Back to this common world so dull and vain,
For
thou wert weary of the sunless day,
The heavy fields of scentless
asphodel,
The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.
(To Ellen Terry)
I marvel not Bassanio was so bold
To peril all he had upon the
lead,
Or that proud Aragon bent low his head
Or that Morocco’s
fiery heart grew cold:
For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold
Which
is more golden than the golden sun
No woman Veronesé looked
upon
Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.
Yet fairer when
with wisdom as your shield
The sober-suited lawyer’s gown
you donned,
And would not let the laws of Venice yield
Antonio’s
heart to that accursèd Jew—
O Portia! take my heart:
it is thy due:
I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.
(To Ellen Terry)
In the lone tent, waiting for victory,
She stands with eyes
marred by the mists of pain,
Like some wan lily overdrenched with
rain:
The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,
War’s
ruin, and the wreck of chivalry
To her proud soul no common fear
can bring:
Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King,
Her
soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy.
O Hair of Gold! O Crimson
Lips! O Face
Made for the luring and the love of man!
With
thee I do forget the toil and stress,
The loveless road that knows
no resting place,
Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s
dread weariness,
My freedom, and my life republican!
(To Ellen Terry)
As one who poring on a Grecian urn
Scans the fair shapes some
Attic hand hath made,
God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,
And
for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn
And face the obvious
day, must I not yearn
For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,
When
in midmost shrine of Artemis
I see thee standing, antique-limbed,
and stern?
And yet—methinks I’d rather see thee play
That serpent
of old Nile, whose witchery
Made Emperors drunken,—come,
great Egypt, shake
Our stage with all thy mimic pageants!
Nay,
I am grown sick of unreal passions, make
The world thine
Actium, me thine Anthony!
Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to
deadlier delight,—
I am too young to live without desire,
Too
young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions
which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.
For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a
childless heritage,
One pulse of passion—youth’s first
fiery glow,—
Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
Vex
not thy soul with dead philosophy,
Have we not lips to kiss with,
hearts to love and eyes to see!
Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale,
Like water bubbling
from a silver jar,
So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
That
high in heaven she is hung so far
She cannot hear that love-enraptured
tune,—
Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late
and labouring moon.
White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,
The fallen
snow of petals where the breeze
Scatters the chestnut blossom,
or the gleam
Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these
Enough
for thee, dost thou desire more?
Alas! the Gods will give nought
else from their eternal store.
For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown
Of all our endless
sins, our vain endeavour
For wasted days of youth to make atone
By
pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,
Hearken they now to
either good or ill,
But send their rain upon the just and the unjust
at will.
They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,
Strewing with leaves
of rose their scented wine,
They sleep, they sleep, beneath the
rocking trees
Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,
Mourning
the old glad days before they knew
What evil things the heart of
man could dream, and dreaming do.
And far beneath the brazen floor they see
Like swarming flies
the crowd of little men,
The bustle of small lives, then wearily
Back
to their lotus-haunts they turn again
Kissing each others’
mouths, and mix more deep
The poppy-seeded draught which brings
soft purple-lidded sleep.
There all day long the golden-vestured sun,
Their torch-bearer,
stands with his torch ablaze,
And, when the gaudy web of noon is
spun
By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze
Fresh
from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon,
And the immortal
Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.
There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead,
Her grand white
feet flecked with the saffron dust
Of wind-stirred lilies, while
young Ganymede
Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,
His
curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare
The frightened boy from
Ida through the blue Ionian air.
There in the green heart of some garden close
Queen Venus with
the shepherd at her side,
Her warm soft body like the briar rose
Which
would be white yet blushes at its pride,
Laughs low for love, till
jealous Salmacis
Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for
pain of lonely bliss.
There never does that dreary north-wind blow
Which leaves our
English forests bleak and bare,
Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered
snow,
Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare
To wake
them in the silver-fretted night
When we lie weeping for some sweet
sad sin, some dead delight.
Alas! they know the far Lethaean spring,
The violet-hidden waters
well they know,
Where one whose feet with tired wandering
Are
faint and broken may take heart and go,
And from those dark depths
cool and crystalline
Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless
souls, and anodyne.
But we oppress our natures, God or Fate
Is our enemy, we starve
and feed
On vain repentance—O we are born too late!
What
balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed
Who crowd into one finite
pulse of time
The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite
crime.
O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,
Wearied of pleasure’s
paramour despair,
Wearied of every temple we have built,
Wearied
of every right, unanswered prayer,
For man is weak; God sleeps:
and heaven is high:
One fiery-coloured moment: one great love;
and lo! we die.
Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole
Nears his black shallop
to the flowerless strand,
No little coin of bronze can bring the
soul
Over Death’s river to the sunless land,
Victim
and wine and vow are all in vain,
The tomb is sealed; the soldiers
watch; the dead rise not again.
We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what
we touch and see,
With our heart’s blood each crimson sun
is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames
into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen
are, all life is one, and all is change.
With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs
through earth’s giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being
roll
From nerveless germ to man, for we are part
Of every
rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey
on us, and one with what we kill.
From lower cells of waking life we pass
To full perfection;
thus the world grows old:
We who are godlike now were once a mass
Of
quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,
Unsentient or of joy
or misery,
And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept
sea.
This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn
Will make some
meadow blaze with daffodil,
Ay! and those argent breasts of thine
will turn
To water-lilies; the brown fields men till
Will
be more fruitful for our love to-night,
Nothing is lost in nature,
all things live in Death’s despite.
The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell,
The
man’s last passion, and the last red spear
That from the
lily leaps, the asphodel
Which will not let its blossoms blow for
fear
Of too much beauty, and the timid shame
Of the young
bridegroom at his lover’s eyes,—these with the same
One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions
hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak
know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming
wood,
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is
good.
So when men bury us beneath the yew
Thy crimson-stainèd
mouth a rose will be,
And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with
dew,
And when the white narcissus wantonly
Kisses the wind
its playmate some faint joy
Will thrill our dust, and we will be
again fond maid and boy.
And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain
In some
sweet flower we will feel the sun,
And from the linnet’s
throat will sing again,
And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes
will run
Over our graves, or as two tigers creep
Through the
hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep
And give them battle! How my heart leaps up
To think of
that grand living after death
In beast and bird and flower, when
this cup,
Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,
And
with the pale leaves of some autumn day
The soul earth’s
earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey.
O think of it! We shall inform ourselves
Into all sensuous
life, the goat-foot Faun,
The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed
Elves
That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn
Upon
the meadows, shall not be more near
Than you and I to nature’s
mysteries, for we shall hear
The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow,
And the
wan snowdrop sighing for the sun
On sunless days in winter, we
shall know
By whom the silver gossamer is spun,
Who paints
the diapered fritillaries,
On what wide wings from shivering pine
to pine the eagle flies.
Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows
If yonder daffodil
had lured the bee
Into its gilded womb, or any rose
Had hung
with crimson lamps its little tree!
Methinks no leaf would ever
bud in spring,
But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’
lips that sing.
Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned
earth less fair,
That we are nature’s heritors, and one
With
every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across
the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory
to the grass.
And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but
the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot
arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal
whole,
And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles
through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World’s throbbing
heart shall be
One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years
Have
lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall
be our Immortality.
The sky is laced with fitful red,
The circling mists and shadows
flee,
The dawn is rising from the sea,
Like a white lady from
her bed.
And jagged brazen arrows fall
Athwart the feathers of the night,
And
a long wave of yellow light
Breaks silently on tower and hall,
And spreading wide across the wold
Wakes into flight some fluttering
bird,
And all the chestnut tops are stirred,
And all the branches
streaked with gold.
How steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are
For exile-wearied
feet as mine to tread,
And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which
falls from this Hound’s table,—better far
That I had
died in the red ways of war,
Or that the gate of Florence bare
my head,
Than to live thus, by all things comraded
Which seek
the essence of my soul to mar.
‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this?
He hath
forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day’—
Nay
peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars
I do possess what
none can take away
My love, and all the glory of the stars.
Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of
gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose
brightest threads are each a wasted day?
Is it thy will—Love that I love so well—
That my
Soul’s House should be a tortured spot
Wherein, like evil
paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth
not?
Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at
the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And
sorrow dig its grave within my heart.
Perchance it may be better so—at least
I have not made
my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly
feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds
the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common
sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,
Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
Passed on wide pinion
through the lofty air,
To where some steep untrodden mountain height
Caught
the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.
Or how the little flower he trod upon,
The daisy, that white-feathered
shield of gold,
Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun
Content
if once its leaves were aureoled.
But surely it is something to have been
The best belovèd
for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and
seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s
heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty,
known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priest
When first
he takes from out the hidden shrine
His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,
And
eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,
Feels not such awful wonder as I felt
When first my smitten
eyes beat full on thee,
And all night long before thy feet I knelt
Till
thou wert wearied of Idolatry.
Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,
Through all
those summer days of joy and rain,
I had not now been sorrow’s
heritor,
Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.
Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal,
Tread
on my heels with all his retinue,
I am most glad I loved thee—think
of all
The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!
As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and
reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A
single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my
lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some
wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which
was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work
me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and
my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou
to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of
unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.
The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and
his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth
bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here
I trow
I made that vow,
Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull
loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
It
shall be, I said, for eternity
’Twixt you and me!
Dear
friend, those times are over and done;
Love’s web is spun.
Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer
air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown,
but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring
mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.
Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that
we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On
some outward voyaging argosy,—
Ah! can it be
We have
lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.
Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never
lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses
burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour
in some bay,
And so we may.
And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and
part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,—you
your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for
two
Like me and you.
Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts’
full pleasure—You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship
are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.
Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping
is my gladness fled,
Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion,
And
Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.
But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre,
or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That
sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.
To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry
age’s gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To
mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,
And be mere Fortune’s
lackeyed groom,—I swear
I love it not! these things are less
to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than
the thistledown of summer air
Which hath no seed: better to stand
aloof
Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
Knowing
me not, better the lowliest roof
Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn
in,
Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
Where my
white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.
It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle
huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The
autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers,
but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though
it blew
From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the
sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of
a summer’s day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon
the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the
hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep
From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate,
and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead
in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted
stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools
crack
Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his
wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon;
across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And
a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of
snow against the dull grey sky.
Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
His load of faggots
from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and
flings
The sappy billets on the waning fire,
And laughs to
see the sudden lightening scare
His children at their play, and
yet,—the spring is in the air;
Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
And soon yon blanchèd
fields will bloom again
With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,
For
with the first warm kisses of the rain
The winter’s icy sorrow
breaks to tears,
And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes
the rabbit peers
From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
And treads one
snowdrop under foot, and runs
Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds
fly
Across our path at evening, and the suns
Stay longer with
us; ah! how good to see
Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of
laughing greenery
Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
(That sweet repentance
of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathèd emerald and
disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the
bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine,
and daffadillies all in bloom.
Then up and down the field the sower goes,
While close behind
the laughing younker scares
With shrilly whoop the black and thievish
crows,
And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
And on
the grass the creamy blossom falls
In odorous excess, and faint
half-whispered madrigals
Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons
Each breezy
morn, and then white jessamine,
That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
With
lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
In dusty velvets clad usurp
the bed
And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed
Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their
purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload
their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold
withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless
haw.
O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
Soon will your queen
in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the
lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to
the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green leaves will
float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.
Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
The flower which
wantons love, and those sweet nuns
Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
Will
tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
With mitred dusky leaves
will scent the wind,
And straggling traveller’s-joy each
hedge with yellow stars will bind.
Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,
That canst give
increase to the sweet-breath’d kine,
And to the kid its little
horns, and bring
The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,
Where
is that old nepenthe which of yore
Man got from poppy root and
glossy-berried mandragore!
There was a time when any common bird
Could make me sing in
unison, a time
When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
To
quick response or more melodious rhyme
By every forest idyll;—do
I change?
Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce
range?
Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek
To vex with
sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my
cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall
each wronged and restless spirit dare
To taint such wine with the
salt poison of own despair!
Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul
Takes discontent
to be its paramour,
And gives its kingdom to the rude control
Of
what should be its servitor,—for sure
Wisdom is somewhere,
though the stormy sea
Contain it not, and the huge deep answer
‘’Tis not in me.’
To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect
In natural honour,
not to bend the knee
In profitless prostrations whose effect
Is
by itself condemned, what alchemy
Can teach me this? what herb
Medea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?
The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering
brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies
a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with
blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns
which never rise.
The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little
dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle ΧΑΙΡΕ
of the Attic tomb,—
Were not these better far than to return
To
my old fitful restless malady,
Or spend my days within the voiceless
cave of misery?
Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god
Is like the
watcher by a sick man’s bed
Who talks of sleep but gives
it not; his rod
Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
Death
is too rude, too obvious a key
To solve one single secret in a
life’s philosophy.
And Love! that noble madness, whose august
And inextinguishable
might can slay
The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must
From
such sweet ruin play the runaway,
Although too constant memory
never can
Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian
Which for a little season made my youth
So soft a swoon of exquisite
indolence
That all the chiding of more prudent Truth
Seemed
the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence
Thou huntress deadlier
than Artemis!
Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous
bliss.
My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,—
Though
Love himself should turn his gilded prow
Back to the troubled waters
of this shore
Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
The
chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
Hence! Hence!
I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.
More barren—ay, those arms will never lean
Down through
the trellised vines and draw my soul
In sweet reluctance through
the tangled green;
Some other head must wear that aureole,
For
I am hers who loves not any man
Whose white and stainless bosom
bears the sign Gorgonian.
Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
And kiss his mouth,
and toss his curly hair,
With net and spear and hunting equipage
Let
young Adonis to his tryst repair,
But me her fond and subtle-fashioned
spell
Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.
Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy
Who from Mount
Ida saw the little cloud
Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy
And
knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed
In wonder at her feet,
not for the sake
Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple
take.
Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!
And, if my lips be musicless,
inspire
At least my life: was not thy glory hymned
By One
who gave to thee his sword and lyre
Like AEschylos at well-fought
Marathon,
And died to show that Milton’s England still could
bear a son!
And yet I cannot tread the Portico
And live without desire,
fear and pain,
Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
The
grave Athenian master taught to men,
Self-poised, self-centred,
and self-comforted,
To watch the world’s vain phantasies
go by with unbowed head.
Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
Those eyes that
mirrored all eternity,
Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
Hath
come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
Is childless; in the night which
she had made
For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself
hath strayed.
Nor much with Science do I care to climb,
Although by strange
and subtle witchery
She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time
Unrolls
her gorgeous-coloured tapestry
To no less eager eyes; often indeed
In
the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read
How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war
Against a little town,
and panoplied
In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,
White-shielded,
purple-crested, rode the Mede
Between the waving poplars and the
sea
Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae
Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,
And on the nearer
side a little brood
Of careless lions holding festival!
And
stood amazèd at such hardihood,
And pitched his tent upon
the reedy shore,
And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept
at midnight o’er
Some unfrequented height, and coming down
The autumn forests
treacherously slew
What Sparta held most dear and was the crown
Of
far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew
How God had staked an evil
net for him
In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page
grows dim,
Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel
With such a goodly
time too out of tune
To love it much: for like the Dial’s
wheel
That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon
Yet
never sees the sun, so do my eyes
Restlessly follow that which
from my cheated vision flies.
O for one grand unselfish simple life
To teach us what is Wisdom!
speak ye hills
Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
Shunned
your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which
living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own
century!
Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye
sheltered, that pure soul
Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
Through
lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
Where love and duty mingle!
Him at least
The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s
feast;
But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote
The clarion
watchword of each Grecian school
And follow none, the flawless
sword which smote
The pagan Hydra is an effete tool
Which
we ourselves have blunted, what man now
Shall scale the august
ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?
One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!
Gone is that last dear
son of Italy,
Who being man died for the sake of God,
And
whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,
O guard him, guard him well,
my Giotto’s tower,
Thou marble lily of the lily town! let
not the lour
Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or
The Arno with its tawny
troubled gold
O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror
Clomb
the high Capitol in the days of old
When Rome was indeed Rome,
for Liberty
Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale
Mystery
Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell
With an old man
who grabbled rusty keys,
Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell
With
which oblivion buries dynasties
Swept like a wounded eagle on the
blast,
As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.
He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,
He drave the
base wolf from the lion’s lair,
And now lies dead by that
empyreal dome
Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
By Brunelleschi—O
Melpomene
Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!
Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
That Joy’s
self may grow jealous, and the Nine
Forget awhile their discreet
emperies,
Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine
Lit
for men’s lives the light of Marathon,
And bare to sun-forgotten
fields the fire of the sun!
O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower!
Let some
young Florentine each eventide
Bring coronals of that enchanted
flower
Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,
And deck the
marble tomb wherein he lies
Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen
of mortal eyes;
Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,
Being tempest-driven
to the farthest rim
Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings
Of
the eternal chanting Cherubim
Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed
away
Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and
clay,
He is not dead, the immemorial Fates
Forbid it, and the closing
shears refrain.
Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!
Ye
argent clarions, sound a loftier strain
For the vile thing he hated
lurks within
Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.
Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous
mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The
Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in
loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless
For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the
heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can
wake to passionate voice the silent dust
Which was Mazzini once!
rich Niobe
For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,
What Easter Day shall make her children rise,
Who were not Gods
yet suffered? what sure feet
Shall find their grave-clothes folded?
what clear eyes
Shall see them bodily? O it were meet
To
roll the stone from off the sepulchre
And kiss the bleeding roses
of their wounds, in love of her,
Our Italy! our mother visible!
Most blessed among nations and
most sad,
For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell
That
day at Aspromonte and was glad
That in an age when God was bought
and sold
One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,
See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves
Bind the sweet feet
of Mercy: Poverty
Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp
knives
Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,
And no
word said:- O we are wretched men
Unworthy of our great inheritance!
where is the pen
Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword
Which slew its master
righteously? the years
Have lost their ancient leader, and no word
Breaks
from the voiceless tripod on our ears:
While as a ruined mother
in some spasm
Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm
Genders unlawful children, Anarchy
Freedom’s own Judas,
the vile prodigal
Licence who steals the gold of Liberty
And
yet has nothing, Ignorance the real
One Fraticide since Cain, Envy
the asp
That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp
Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed
For whose dull appetite
men waste away
Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
Of
things which slay their sower, these each day
Sees rife in England,
and the gentle feet
Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each
unlovely street.
What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
By weed and worm, left
to the stormy play
Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
By
more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay
Will wreathe its
ruins with some loveliness,
But these new Vandals can but make
a rain-proof barrenness.
Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
Through Lincoln’s
lofty choir, till the air
Seems from such marble harmonies to ring
With
sweeter song than common lips can dare
To draw from actual reed?
ah! where is now
The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn
branches bow
For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One
Who
loved the lilies of the field with all
Our dearest English flowers?
the same sun
Rises for us: the seasons natural
Weave the same
tapestry of green and grey:
The unchanged hills are with us: but
that Spirit hath passed away.
And yet perchance it may be better so,
For Tyranny is an incestuous
Queen,
Murder her brother is her bedfellow,
And the Plague
chambers with her: in obscene
And bloody paths her treacherous
feet are set;
Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!
For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
Of living in the healthful
air, the swift
Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
And
women chaste, these are the things which lift
Our souls up more
than even Agnolo’s
Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er
the scroll of human woes,
Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair
White as her own
sweet lily and as tall,
Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,—
Ah!
somehow life is bigger after all
Than any painted angel, could
we see
The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity
Which curbs the passion of that level line
Of marble youths,
who with untroubled eyes
And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s
shrine
And mirror her divine economies,
And balanced symmetry
of what in man
Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at
least within the span
Between our mother’s kisses and the grave
Might so inform
our lives, that we could win
Such mighty empires that from her
cave
Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin
Would walk
ashamed of his adulteries,
And Passion creep from out the House
of Lust with startled eyes.
To make the body and the spirit one
With all right things, till
no thing live in vain
From morn to noon, but in sweet unison
With
every pulse of flesh and throb of brain
The soul in flawless essence
high enthroned,
Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,
Mark with serene impartiality
The strife of things, and yet
be comforted,
Knowing that by the chain causality
All separate
existences are wed
Into one supreme whole, whose utterance
Is
joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance
Of Life in most august omnipresence,
Through which the rational
intellect would find
In passion its expression, and mere sense,
Ignoble
else, lend fire to the mind,
And being joined with it in harmony
More
mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,
Strike from their several tones one octave chord
Whose cadence
being measureless would fly
Through all the circling spheres, then
to its Lord
Return refreshed with its new empery
And more
exultant power,—this indeed
Could we but reach it were to
find the last, the perfect creed.
Ah! it was easy when the world was young
To keep one’s
life free and inviolate,
From our sad lips another song is rung,
By
our own hands our heads are desecrate,
Wanderers in drear exile,
and dispossessed
Of what should be our own, we can but feed on
wild unrest.
Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,
And of all
men we are most wretched who
Must live each other’s lives
and not our own
For very pity’s sake and then undo
All
that we lived for—it was otherwise
When soul and body seemed
to blend in mystic symphonies.
But we have left those gentle haunts to pass
With weary feet
to the new Calvary,
Where we behold, as one who in a glass
Sees
his own face, self-slain Humanity,
And in the dumb reproach of
that sad gaze
Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can
raise.
O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn!
O chalice
of all common miseries!
Thou for our sakes that loved thee not
hast borne
An agony of endless centuries,
And we were vain
and ignorant nor knew
That when we stabbed thy heart it was our
own real hearts we slew.
Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,
The night that covers
and the lights that fade,
The spear that pierces and the side that
bleeds,
The lips betraying and the life betrayed;
The deep
hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we
Lords of the natural world
are yet our own dread enemy.
Is this the end of all that primal force
Which, in its changes
being still the same,
From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,
Through
ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,
Till the suns met in
heaven and began
Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and
the Word was Man!
Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though
The bloody sweat
falls from our brows like rain
Loosen the nails—we shall
come down I know,
Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole
again,
No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,
That which is
purely human, that is godlike, that is God.
Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault
was, had I not been
made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed
yet,
seen the fuller air, the larger day.
From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
struck a better,
clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
with
some Hydra-headed wrong.
Had my lips been smitten into music by the
kisses that but made
them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
that
verdant and enamelled mead.
I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
the suns of seven
circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,
as
they opened to the Florentine.
And the mighty nations would have crowned
me, who am crownless
now and without name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling
on
the threshold of the House of Fame.
I had sat within that marble circle where the
oldest bard is
as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the
lyre’s
strings are ever strung.
Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out
the poppy-seeded
wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,
clasped
the hand of noble love in mine.
And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush
the burnished
bosom of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would
have
read the story of our love.
Would have read the legend of my passion,
known the bitter secret
of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as
we
two are fated now to part.
For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by
the cankerworm
of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered
petals
of the rose of youth.
Yet I am not sorry that I loved you—ah! what
else had
I a boy to do,—
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and
the
silent-footed years pursue.
Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and
when once the storm
of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death
the
silent pilot comes at last.
And within the grave there is no pleasure, for
the blindworm
battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree
of
Passion bears no fruit.
Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s
own mother
was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an
argent
lily from the sea.
I have made my choice, have lived my poems,
and, though youth
is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover’s crown of
myrtle better
than the poet’s crown of bays.
In the glad springtime when leaves were green,
O merrily the
throstle sings!
I sought, amid the tangled sheen,
Love whom
mine eyes had never seen,
O the glad dove has golden wings!
Between the blossoms red and white,
O merrily the throstle sings!
My
love first came into my sight,
O perfect vision of delight,
O
the glad dove has golden wings!
The yellow apples glowed like fire,
O merrily the throstle sings!
O
Love too great for lip or lyre,
Blown rose of love and of desire,
O
the glad dove has golden wings!
But now with snow the tree is grey,
Ah, sadly now the throstle
sings!
My love is dead: ah! well-a-day,
See at her silent
feet I lay
A dove with broken wings!
Ah, Love! ah, Love! that
thou wert slain—
Fond Dove, fond Dove return again!
Αιλινον, αιλινον ειπε, το δ’ ευ νικατω
O well for him who lives at ease
With garnered gold in wide
domain,
Nor heeds the splashing of the rain,
The crashing
down of forest trees.
O well for him who ne’er hath known
The travail of the
hungry years,
A father grey with grief and tears,
A mother
weeping all alone.
But well for him whose foot hath trod
The weary road of toil
and strife,
Yet from the sorrows of his life.
Builds ladders
to be nearer God.
. . . αναyκαιως δ’
εχει
Βιον θεριζειν
ωστε καρπιμον
σταχυν,
και τον
yεν ειναι τον δε
yη.
Thou knowest all; I seek in vain
What lands to till or sow with
seed—
The land is black with briar and weed,
Nor cares
for falling tears or rain.
Thou knowest all; I sit and wait
With blinded eyes and hands
that fail,
Till the last lifting of the veil
And the first
opening of the gate.
Thou knowest all; I cannot see.
I trust I shall not live in
vain,
I know that we shall meet again
In some divine eternity.
The lily’s withered chalice falls
Around its rod of dusty
gold,
And from the beech-trees on the wold
The last wood-pigeon
coos and calls.
The gaudy leonine sunflower
Hangs black and barren on its stalk,
And
down the windy garden walk
The dead leaves scatter,—hour
by hour.
Pale privet-petals white as milk
Are blown into a snowy mass:
The
roses lie upon the grass
Like little shreds of crimson silk.
A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this
wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion’s eye
Out of a
mane of tawny clouds.
The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom;—
And
in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.
The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving
dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves
like ravelled lace.
O beautiful star with the crimson mouth!
O moon with the brows
of gold!
Rise up, rise up, from the odorous south!
And light
for my love her way,
Lest her little feet should stray
On
the windy hill and the wold!
O beautiful star with the crimson
mouth!
O moon with the brows of gold!
O ship that shakes on the desolate sea!
O ship with the wet,
white sail!
Put in, put in, to the port to me!
For my love
and I would go
To the land where the daffodils blow
In the
heart of a violet dale!
O ship that shakes on the desolate sea!
O
ship with the wet, white sail!
O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note!
O bird that sits
on the spray!
Sing on, sing on, from your soft brown throat!
And
my love in her little bed
Will listen, and lift her head
From
the pillow, and come my way!
O rapturous bird with the low, sweet
note!
O bird that sits on the spray!
O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air!
O blossom with lips
of snow!
Come down, come down, for my love to wear!
You will
die on her head in a crown,
You will die in a fold of her gown,
To
her little light heart you will go!
O blossom that hangs in the
tremulous air!
O blossom with lips of snow!
We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit
street,
And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.
Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians
play
The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The
shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like
black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went
sidling through the slow quadrille,
Then took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their
laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her
breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon
the steps like a live thing.
Then, turning to my love, I said,
‘The dead are dancing
with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.’
But she—she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered
in:
Love passed into the house of lust.
Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the
waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.
And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled
feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
This winter air is keen and cold,
And keen and cold this winter
sun,
But round my chair the children run
Like little things
of dancing gold.
Sometimes about the painted kiosk
The mimic soldiers strut and
stride,
Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide
In the bleak
tangles of the bosk.
And sometimes, while the old nurse cons
Her book, they steal
across the square,
And launch their paper navies where
Huge
Triton writhes in greenish bronze.
And now in mimic flight they flee,
And now they rush, a boisterous
band—
And, tiny hand on tiny hand,
Climb up the black
and leafless tree.
Ah! cruel tree! if I were you,
And children climbed me, for
their sake
Though it be winter I would break
Into spring blossoms
white and blue!
These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in
secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain
and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse
of passion quote
The merchant’s price. I think they
love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That
small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.
Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some
soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To
wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of
a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?
The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned
in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with
its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow
of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That
hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen
Winter’s hand.
But who is this who cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up
and wonder!) Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments from
the South?
It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
The
yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
And I shall weep and worship,
as before.
Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade
There stands a little
ivory girl,
Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl
With pale
green nails of polished jade.
The red leaves fall upon the mould,
The white leaves flutter,
one by one,
Down to a blue bowl where the sun,
Like a great
dragon, writhes in gold.
The white leaves float upon the air,
The red leaves flutter
idly down,
Some fall upon her yellow gown,
And some upon her
raven hair.
She takes an amber lute and sings,
And as she sings a silver
crane
Begins his scarlet neck to strain,
And flap his burnished
metal wings.
She takes a lute of amber bright,
And from the thicket where
he lies
Her lover, with his almond eyes,
Watches her movements
in delight.
And now she gives a cry of fear,
And tiny tears begin to start:
A
thorn has wounded with its dart
The pink-veined sea-shell of her
ear.
And now she laughs a merry note:
There has fallen a petal of
the rose
Just where the yellow satin shows
The blue-veined
flower of her throat.
With pale green nails of polished jade,
Pulling the leaves of
pink and pearl,
There stands a little ivory girl
Under the
rose-tree’s dancing shade.
Against these turbid turquoise skies
The light and luminous
balloons
Dip and drift like satin moons,
Drift like silken
butterflies;
Reel with every windy gust,
Rise and reel like dancing girls,
Float
like strange transparent pearls,
Fall and float like silver dust.
Now to the low leaves they cling,
Each with coy fantastic pose,
Each
a petal of a rose
Straining at a gossamer string.
Then to the tall trees they climb,
Like thin globes of amethyst,
Wandering
opals keeping tryst
With the rubies of the lime.
I have no store
Of gryphon-guarded gold;
Now, as before,
Bare
is the shepherd’s fold.
Rubies nor pearls
Have I to
gem thy throat;
Yet woodland girls
Have loved the shepherd’s
note.
Then pluck a reed
And bid me sing to thee,
For I would
feed
Thine ears with melody,
Who art more fair
Than fairest
fleur-de-lys,
More sweet and rare
Than sweetest ambergris.
What dost thou fear?
Young Hyacinth is slain,
Pan is not
here,
And will not come again.
No hornèd Faun
Treads
down the yellow leas,
No God at dawn
Steals through the olive
trees.
Hylas is dead,
Nor will he e’er divine
Those little
red
Rose-petalled lips of thine.
On the high hill
No
ivory dryads play,
Silver and still
Sinks the sad autumn day.
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And,
here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy
wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs
along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple
elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod
of rippled jade.
Out of the mid-wood’s twilight
Into the meadow’s
dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!
He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And
I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!
O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else
moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!
I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From
a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.
For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love
will waft it till it settles
On your hair.
And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It
will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.
Go, little book,
To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,
Sang
of the white feet of the Golden Girl:
And bid him look
Into
thy pages: it may hap that he
May find that golden maidens dance
through thee.
(To L. L.)
Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,
Were it worth the
pleasure,
We never could learn love’s song,
We are parted
too long.
Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead,
Could
we live it all over again,
Were it worth the pain!
I remember we used to meet
By an ivied seat,
And you warbled
each pretty word
With the air of a bird;
And your voice had a quaver in it,
Just like a linnet,
And
shook, as the blackbird’s throat
With its last big note;
And your eyes, they were green and grey
Like an April day,
But
lit into amethyst
When I stooped and kissed;
And your mouth, it would never smile
For a long, long while,
Then
it rippled all over with laughter
Five minutes after.
You were always afraid of a shower,
Just like a flower:
I
remember you started and ran
When the rain began.
I remember I never could catch you,
For no one could match you,
You
had wonderful, luminous, fleet,
Little wings to your feet.
I remember your hair—did I tie it?
For it always ran riot—
Like
a tangled sunbeam of gold:
These things are old.
I remember so well the room,
And the lilac bloom
That beat
at the dripping pane
In the warm June rain;
And the colour of your gown,
It was amber-brown,
And two
yellow satin bows
From your shoulders rose.
And the handkerchief of French lace
Which you held to your face—
Had
a small tear left a stain?
Or was it the rain?
On your hand as it waved adieu
There were veins of blue;
In
your voice as it said good-bye
Was a petulant cry,
‘You have only wasted your life.’
(Ah, that was
the knife!)
When I rushed through the garden gate
It was all
too late.
Could we live it over again,
Were it worth the pain,
Could
the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead!
Well, if my heart must break,
Dear love, for your sake,
It
will break in music, I know,
Poets’ hearts break so.
But strange that I was not told
That the brain can hold
In
a tiny ivory cell
God’s heaven and hell.
The seasons send their ruin as they go,
For in the spring the
narciss shows its head
Nor withers till the rose has flamed to
red,
And in the autumn purple violets blow,
And the slim crocus
stirs the winter snow;
Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom
again
And this grey land grow green with summer rain
And send
up cowslips for some boy to mow.
But what of life whose bitter hungry sea
Flows at our heels,
and gloom of sunless night
Covers the days which never more return?
Ambition,
love and all the thoughts that burn
We lose too soon, and only
find delight
In withered husks of some dead memory.
I
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And
what remains to us of thee?
No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled
fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy
beard of gold,
And what remains to us of thee?
And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are
chill and cold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad
wold,
And what remains to us of thee?
Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O
goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?
II
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This
modern world hath need of thee.
No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
For Faun and nymph are old
and grey,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This is the land where liberty
Lit grave-browed Milton on his
way,
This modern world hath need of thee!
A land of ancient chivalry
Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
Ah,
leave the hills of Arcady!
This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
This England lacks some stronger
lay,
This modern world hath need of thee!
Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe
away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath
need of thee!
(To Marcel Schwob in friendship and in admiration)
In a dim corner of my room for longer than
my fancy thinks
A
beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me
through the shifting
gloom.
Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she
does not stir
For
silver moons are naught to her and naught
to her the suns that
reel.
Red follows grey across the air, the waves of
moonlight ebb
and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go and in the
night-time
she is there.
Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and
all the while this
curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of
satin
rimmed with gold.
Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the
tawny throat of her
Flutters
the soft and silky fur or ripples to her
pointed ears.
Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent,
so statuesque!
Come
forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman
and half animal!
Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and
put your head upon
my knee!
And let me stroke your throat and see your
body spotted
like the Lynx!
And let me touch those curving claws of yellow
ivory and grasp
The
tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round
your heavy velvet paws!
A thousand weary centuries are thine
while I have hardly seen
Some
twenty summers cast their green for
Autumn’s gaudy liveries.
But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the
great sandstone obelisks,
And
you have talked with Basilisks, and you
have looked on Hippogriffs.
O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to
Osiris knelt?
And
did you watch the Egyptian melt her union
for Antony
And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend
her head in mimic
awe
To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny
from the
brine?
And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon
on his catafalque?
And
did you follow Amenalk, the God of
Heliopolis?
And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear
the moon-horned
Io weep?
And know the painted kings who sleep beneath
the
wedge-shaped Pyramid?
Lift up your large black satin eyes which are
like cushions
where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me
all
your memories!
Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered
with the Holy Child,
And
how you led them through the wild, and
how they slept beneath your
shade.
Sing to me of that odorous green eve when
crouching by the marge
You
heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the
laughter of Antinous
And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and
watched with hot
and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with
his
pomegranate mouth!
Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-
formed bull was
stalled!
Sing to me of the night you crawled across the
temple’s
granite plinth
When through the purple corridors the screaming
scarlet Ibis
flew
In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the
moaning
Mandragores,
And the great torpid crocodile within the tank
shed slimy tears,
And
tare the jewels from his ears and staggered
back into the Nile,
And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as
in your claws
you seized their snake
And crept away with it to slake your passion
by
the shuddering palms.
Who were your lovers? who were they
who wrestled for you in
the dust?
Which was the vessel of your Lust? What
Leman
had you, every day?
Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you
on the reedy banks?
Did
Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on
you in your trampled couch?
Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward
you in the mist?
Did
gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with
passion as you passed
them by?
And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what
horrible Chimera came
With
fearful heads and fearful flame to breed
new wonders from your
womb?
Or had you shameful secret quests and did
you harry to your
home
Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious
rock crystal
breasts?
Or did you treading through the froth call to
the brown Sidonian
For
tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or
Behemoth?
Or did you when the sun was set climb up the
cactus-covered
slope
To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was
of polished
jet?
Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped
down the grey Nilotic
flats
At twilight and the flickering bats flew round
the temple’s
triple glyphs
Steal to the border of the bar and swim across
the silent lake
And
slink into the vault and make the Pyramid
your lúpanar
Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the
painted swathèd
dead?
Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned
Tragelaphos?
Or did you love the god of flies who plagued
the Hebrews and
was splashed
With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had
green
beryls for her eyes?
Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more
amorous than the
dove
Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the
Assyrian
Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose
high above
his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red and ribbed
with
rods of Oreichalch?
Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and
lay before your
feet
Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-
coloured nenuphar?
How subtle-secret is your smile! Did you
love none then?
Nay, I know
Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with
you
beside the Nile!
The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when
they saw him come
Odorous
with Syrian galbanum and smeared with
spikenard and with thyme.
He came along the river bank like some tall
galley argent-sailed,
He
strode across the waters, mailed in beauty,
and the waters sank.
He strode across the desert sand: he reached
the valley where
you lay:
He waited till the dawn of day: then touched
your
black breasts with his hand.
You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame:
you made the hornèd
god your own:
You stood behind him on his throne: you called
him
by his secret name.
You whispered monstrous oracles into the
caverns of his ears:
With
blood of goats and blood of steers you
taught him monstrous miracles.
White Ammon was your bedfellow! Your
chamber was the steaming
Nile!
And with your curved archaic smile you watched
his passion
come and go.
With Syrian oils his brows were bright:
and wide-spread as a
tent at noon
His marble limbs made pale the moon and lent
the
day a larger light.
His long hair was nine cubits’ span and coloured
like
that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garment’s hem the
merchants
bring from Kurdistan.
His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of
new-made wine:
The
seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure
of his eyes.
His thick soft throat was white as milk and
threaded with thin
veins of blue:
And curious pearls like frozen dew were
broidered
on his flowing silk.
On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was
too bright to look
upon:
For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous
ocean-emerald,
That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of
the Colchian caves
Had
found beneath the blackening waves and
carried to the Colchian
witch.
Before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed
corybants,
And
lines of swaying elephants knelt down to
draw his chariot,
And lines of swarthy Nubians bare up his litter
as he rode
Down
the great granite-paven road between the
nodding peacock-fans.
The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon
in their painted
ships:
The meanest cup that touched his lips was
fashioned
from a chrysolite.
The merchants brought him cedar chests of rich
apparel bound
with cords:
His train was borne by Memphian lords: young
kings
were glad to be his guests.
Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon’s
altar day
and night,
Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through
Ammon’s
carven house—and now
Foul snake and speckled adder with their young
ones crawl from
stone to stone
For ruined is the house and prone the great
rose-marble
monolith!
Wild ass or trotting jackal comes and couches
in the mouldering
gates:
Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the
fallen
fluted drums.
And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced
ape of Horus sits
And
gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars
of the peristyle
The god is scattered here and there: deep
hidden in the windy
sand
I saw his giant granite hand still clenched in
impotent
despair.
And many a wandering caravan of stately
negroes silken-shawled,
Crossing
the desert, halts appalled before the
neck that none can span.
And many a bearded Bedouin draws back his
yellow-striped burnous
To
gaze upon the Titan thews of him who was
thy paladin.
Go, seek his fragments on the moor and
wash them in the evening
dew,
And from their pieces make anew thy mutilated
paramour!
Go, seek them where they lie alone and from
their broken pieces
make
Thy bruisèd bedfellow! And wake mad passions
in
the senseless stone!
Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns! he loved
your body! oh,
be kind,
Pour spikenard on his hair, and wind soft rolls
of
linen round his limbs!
Wind round his head the figured coins! stain
with red fruits
those pallid lips!
Weave purple for his shrunken hips! and purple
for
his barren loins!
Away to Egypt! Have no fear. Only one
God has ever
died.
Only one God has let His side be wounded by a
soldier’s
spear.
But these, thy lovers, are not dead. Still by the
hundred-cubit
gate
Dog-faced Anubis sits in state with lotus-lilies
for
thy head.
Still from his chair of porphyry gaunt Memnon
strains his lidless
eyes
Across the empty land, and cries each yellow
morning
unto thee.
And Nilus with his broken horn lies in his black
and oozy bed
And
till thy coming will not spread his waters on
the withering corn.
Your lovers are not dead, I know. They will
rise up and
hear your voice
And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to
kiss
your mouth! And so,
Set wings upon your argosies! Set horses to
your ebon
car!
Back to your Nile! Or if you are grown sick of
dead
divinities
Follow some roving lion’s spoor across the copper-
coloured
plain,
Reach out and hale him by the mane and bid
him be your
paramour!
Couch by his side upon the grass and set your
white teeth in
his throat
And when you hear his dying note lash your
long
flanks of polished brass
And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber
sides are flecked
with black,
And ride upon his gilded back in triumph
through
the Theban gate,
And toy with him in amorous jests, and when
he turns, and snarls,
and gnaws,
O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise
him
with your agate breasts!
Why are you tarrying? Get hence! I
weary of your
sullen ways,
I weary of your steadfast gaze, your somnolent
magnificence.
Your horrible and heavy breath makes the light
flicker in the
lamp,
And on my brow I feel the damp and dreadful
dews of
night and death.
Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver
in some stagnant
lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances
to fantastic
tunes,
Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your
black throat is
like the hole
Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic
tapestries.
Away! The sulphur-coloured stars are hurrying
through
the Western gate!
Away! Or it may be too late to climb their
silent
silver cars!
See, the dawn shivers round the grey gilt-dialled
towers, and
the rain
Streams down each diamonded pane and blurs
with tears
the wannish day.
What snake-tressed fury fresh from Hell, with
uncouth gestures
and unclean,
Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you
to
a student’s cell?
What songless tongueless ghost of sin crept
through the curtains
of the night,
And saw my taper burning bright, and knocked,
and
bade you enter in?
Are there not others more accursed, whiter with
leprosies than
I?
Are Abana and Pharphar dry that you come here
to slake
your thirst?
Get hence, you loathsome mystery! Hideous
animal, get
hence!
You wake in me each bestial sense, you make me
what
I would not be.
You make my creed a barren sham, you wake
foul dreams of sensual
life,
And Atys with his blood-stained knife were
better than
the thing I am.
False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx
old Charon,
leaning on his oar,
Waits for my coin. Go thou before, and
leave
me to my crucifix,
Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches
the world with
wearied eyes,
And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps
for
every soul in vain.
(In memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse
Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896)
I
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And
blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The
poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A
cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But
I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon
that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And
at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And
was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When
a voice behind me whispered low,
‘That fellow’s
got to swing.’
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And
the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And,
though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He
looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man
had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some
do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The
coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they
are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the
hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so
soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some
do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For
each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor
have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor
drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.
He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who
watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who
watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.
He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The
shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And
the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.
He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While
some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and
nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are
like horrible hammer-blows.
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s
throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips
through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That
the throat may thirst no more.
He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor,
while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross
his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.
He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He
does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor
feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.
II
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby
grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed
light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully
at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon
that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And
at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To
try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He
only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But
he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With
open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot
if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched
with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.
And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and
gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the
day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to
pay.
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the springtime
shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten
root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its
fruit!
The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings
try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And
through a murderer’s collar take
His last look at the sky?
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To
dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But
it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by
day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same
way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul
may stray.
At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And
I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock’s dreadful
pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God’s sweet
world again.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each
other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We
had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But
in the shameful day.
A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men we were:
The
world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And
the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.
III
In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping
wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the
leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the
man might die.
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and
day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched
to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold
of its prey.
The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor
said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day
the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract.
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His
soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often
said that he was glad
The hangman’s hands were near.
But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For
he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task,
Must
set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.
Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And
what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What
word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother’s soul?
With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools’
Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil’s
Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry
masquerade.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We
rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining
rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered
with the pails.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty
drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated
on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying
still.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And
we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till
once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The
very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And
we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.
Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The
hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And
each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.
That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And
up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And
through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The
watchers watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How
one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand.
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have
wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
That
endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another’s
terror crept.
Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another’s guilt!
For,
right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And
as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not
spilt.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked
door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on
the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed
before.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a
corse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon
a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of
Remorse.
The grey cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And
crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And
each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through
a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn
and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms
kept their tryst.
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About,
about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned
grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed
tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their
grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For
they sang to wake the dead.
‘Oho!’ they cried, ‘The world is wide,
But
fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is
a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In
the secret House of Shame.’
No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such
glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet
might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most
terrible to see.
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking
pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the
stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped
us at our prayers.
The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through
its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And,
as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till
like a wheel of turning steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O
moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?
At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move
right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And
I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was
red.
At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was
still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison
seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had
entered in to kill.
He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three
yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows’ need:
So
with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We
did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope:
Something
was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve
aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly
stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous
parricide!
We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with
thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That
makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For
the best man and the worst.
We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So,
like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But
each man’s heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a
drum!
With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And
from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like
the sound that frightened marshes hear
From some leper in his lair.
And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We
saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And
heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
Strangled into a scream.
And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And
the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For
he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
IV
There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The
Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too
wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should
look upon.
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang
the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened
each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each
from his separate Hell.
Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For
this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s
face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully
at the day.
I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon
that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And
at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.
But there were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast
head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have
died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived,
Whilst
they had killed the dead.
For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And
draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And
makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
And makes it bleed in vain!
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently
we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently
we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.
Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The
Memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And
Horror stalked before each man,
And Terror crept behind.
The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their
uniforms were spick and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But
we knew the work they had been at,
By the quicklime on their boots.
For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only
a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And
a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.
For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep
down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies,
with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It
eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by day,
It
eats the flesh and bone by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.
For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For
three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And
look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.
They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple
seed they sow.
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
Is
kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The
white rose whiter blow.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For
who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings His will to light,
Since
the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s
sight?
But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison-air;
The
shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For
flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.
So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On
that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To
tell the men who tramp the yard
That God’s Son died for all.
Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and
round,
And a spirit may not walk by night
That is with fetters
bound,
And a spirit may but weep that lies
In such unholy
ground,
He is at peace—this wretched man—
At peace, or will
be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror
walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has
neither Sun nor Moon.
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll
A
requiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But
hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.
They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the
flies:
They mocked the swollen purple throat,
And the stark
and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In
which their convict lies.
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave:
Nor
mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because
the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.
Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life’s appointed
bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken
urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always
mourn
V
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All
that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And
that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since
first Man took his brother’s life,
And the sad world began,
But
straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
This too I know—and wise it were
If each could know the
same—
That every prison that men build
Is built with
bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How
men their brothers maim.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly
sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things
are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!
The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison-air;
It
is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale
Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both
night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And
gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And
none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And
the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And
all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And
the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And
Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder
fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills
and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes
one’s heart by night.
With midnight always in one’s heart,
And twilight in one’s
cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate
Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of
a brazen bell.
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And
the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And
by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.
And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And
some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But
God’s eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is
as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And
filled the unclean leper’s house
With the scent of costliest
nard.
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How
else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How
else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
And he of the swollen purple throat,
And the stark and staring
eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And
a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.
The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three
little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul’s strife,
And
cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that
held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only
tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became
Christ’s snow-white seal.
VI
In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And
in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning
winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him
lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy
sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had
to die.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some
do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The
coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
(Newdigate prize poem recited in the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford June 26th, 1878.
To my friend George Fleming author of ‘The Nile Novel’ and ‘Mirage’)
I.
A year ago I breathed the Italian air,—
And yet, methinks
this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the
flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The
cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that
race across the sky;
And fair the violet’s gentle drooping
head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that
burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon
of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all
the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred
daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And
breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like
a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While
the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago!—it seems
a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where
flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps
the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it was—and by rich flowering
vines,
Dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines,
I rode at
will; the moist glad air was sweet,
The white road rang beneath
my horse’s feet,
And musing on Ravenna’s ancient name,
I
watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame,
The turquoise
sky to burnished gold was turned.
O how my heart with boyish passion burned,
When far away across
the sedge and mere
I saw that Holy City rising clear,
Crowned
with her crown of towers!—On and on
I galloped, racing with
the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I
stood within Ravenna’s walls at last!
II.
How strangely still! no sound of life or joy
Startles the air;
no laughing shepherd-boy
Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the
day
Comes the glad sound of children at their play:
O sad,
and sweet, and silent! surely here
A man might dwell apart from
troublous fear,
Watching the tide of seasons as they flow
From
amorous Spring to Winter’s rain and snow,
And have no thought
of sorrow;—here, indeed,
Are Lethe’s waters, and that
fatal weed
Which makes a man forget his fatherland.
Ay! amid lotus-meadows dost thou stand,
Like Proserpine, with
poppy-laden head,
Guarding the holy ashes of the dead.
For
though thy brood of warrior sons hath ceased,
Thy noble dead are
with thee!—they at least
Are faithful to thine honour:- guard
them well,
O childless city! for a mighty spell,
To wake men’s
hearts to dreams of things sublime,
Are the lone tombs where rest
the Great of Time.
III.
Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain,
Marks where the bravest
knight of France was slain,—
The Prince of chivalry, the
Lord of war,
Gaston de Foix: for some untimely star
Led him
against thy city, and he fell,
As falls some forest-lion fighting
well.
Taken from life while life and love were new,
He lies
beneath God’s seamless veil of blue;
Tall lance-like reeds
wave sadly o’er his head,
And oleanders bloom to deeper red,
Where
his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.
Look farther north unto that broken mound,—
There, prisoned
now within a lordly tomb
Raised by a daughter’s hand, in
lonely gloom,
Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,
Sleeps
after all his weary conquering.
Time hath not spared his ruin,—wind
and rain
Have broken down his stronghold; and again
We see
that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust
must fall
Mighty indeed their glory! yet to me
Barbaric king, or
knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,
Beside
the grave where Dante rests from pain.
His gilded shrine lies open
to the air;
And cunning sculptor’s hands have carven there
The
calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,
The eyes that flashed
with passionate love and scorn,
The lips that sang of Heaven and
of Hell,
The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,
The weary
face of Dante;—to this day,
Here in his place of resting,
far away
From Arno’s yellow waters, rushing down
Through
the wide bridges of that fairy town,
Where the tall tower of Giotto
seems to rise
A marble lily under sapphire skies!
Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain
Of meaner lives,—the
exile’s galling chain,
How steep the stairs within kings’
houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man’s
nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful
for thy song;
Our nations do thee homage,—even she,
That
cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,
Who bound with crown of thorns
thy living brow,
Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,
And
begs in vain the ashes of her son.
O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:
Thy soul walks now
beside thy Beatrice;
Ravenna guards thine ashes: sleep in peace.
IV.
How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!
No minstrel now
wakes echoes in these halls.
The broken chain lies rusting on the
door,
And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:
Here
lurks the snake, and here the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking
in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long
years—a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet
suffered not his royal soul to fade,
Or lyre to break, or lance
to grow less keen,
’Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.
For
from the East there came a mighty cry,
And Greece stood up to fight
for Liberty,
And called him from Ravenna: never knight
Rode
forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight!
None fell more bravely
on ensanguined field,
Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield!
O
Hellas! Hellas! in thine hour of pride,
Thy day of might,
remember him who died
To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling
chain:
O Salamis! O lone Plataean plain!
O tossing waves
of wild Euboean sea!
O wind-swept heights of lone Thermopylae!
He
loved you well—ay, not alone in word,
Who freely gave to
thee his lyre and sword,
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon:
And England, too, shall glory in her son,
Her warrior-poet,
first in song and fight.
No longer now shall Slander’s venomed
spite
Crawl like a snake across his perfect name,
Or mar the
lordly scutcheon of his fame.
For as the olive-garland of the race,
Which lights with joy
each eager runner’s face,
As the red cross which saveth men
in war,
As a flame-bearded beacon seen from far
By mariners
upon a storm-tossed sea,—
Such was his love for Greece and
Liberty!
Byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green:
Red leaves of rose
from Sapphic Mitylene
Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for
thee,
In hidden glades by lonely Castaly;
The laurels wait
thy coming: all are thine,
And round thy head one perfect wreath
will twine.
V.
The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze
With the hoarse
murmur of the wintry seas,
And the tall stems were streaked with
amber bright;—
I wandered through the wood in wild delight,
Some
startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all
the blossoms; at my feet,
Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi
lay,
And small birds sang on every twining spray.
O waving
trees, O forest liberty!
Within your haunts at least a man is free,
And
half forgets the weary world of strife:
The blood flows hotter,
and a sense of life
Wakes i’ the quickening veins, while
once again
The woods are filled with gods we fancied slain.
Long
time I watched, and surely hoped to see
Some goat-foot Pan make
merry minstrelsy
Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid
In
girlish flight! or lurking in the glade,
The soft brown limbs,
the wanton treacherous face
Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the
chase,
White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride,
And
leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side!
Or Hylas mirrored in
the perfect stream.
O idle heart! O fond Hellenic dream!
Ere long, with melancholy
rise and swell,
The evening chimes, the convent’s vesper
bell,
Struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers.
Alas!
alas! these sweet and honied hours
Had whelmed my heart like some
encroaching sea,
And drowned all thoughts of black Gethsemane.
VI.
O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in
the days of old:
Two thousand years have passed since thou didst
see
Caesar ride forth to royal victory.
Mighty thy name when
Rome’s lean eagles flew
From Britain’s isles to far
Euphrates blue;
And of the peoples thou wast noble queen,
Till
in thy streets the Goth and Hun were seen.
Discrowned by man, deserted
by the sea,
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery!
No longer
now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys
ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The
weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are
free to come and go
Where Adria’s purple waters used to flow.
O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness
thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia’s
royal warrior hath passed
Rome’s lordliest entrance, and
hath worn his crown
In the high temples of the Eternal Town!
The
Palatine hath welcomed back her king,
And with his name the seven
mountains ring!
And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,
And mocks her tyrant!
Venice lives again,
New risen from the waters! and the cry
Of
Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,
Is heard in lordly Genoa,
and where
The marble spires of Milan wound the air,
Rings
from the Alps to the Sicilian shore,
And Dante’s dream is
now a dream no more.
But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,
Thy ruined palaces
are but a pall
That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name
Burns
like a grey and flickering candle-flame
Beneath the noonday splendour
of the sun
Of new Italia! for the night is done,
The night
of dark oppression, and the day
Hath dawned in passionate splendour:
far away
The Austrian hounds are hunted from the land,
Beyond
those ice-crowned citadels which stand
Girdling the plain of royal
Lombardy,
From the far West unto the Eastern sea.
I know, indeed, that sons of thine have died
In Lissa’s
waters, by the mountain-side
Of Aspromonte, on Novara’s plain,—
Nor
have thy children died for thee in vain:
And yet, methinks, thou
hast not drunk this wine
From grapes new-crushed of Liberty divine,
Thou
hast not followed that immortal Star
Which leads the people forth
to deeds of war.
Weary of life, thou liest in silent sleep,
As
one who marks the lengthening shadows creep,
Careless of all the
hurrying hours that run,
Mourning some day of glory, for the sun
Of
Freedom hath not shewn to thee his face,
And thou hast caught no
flambeau in the race.
Yet wake not from thy slumbers,—rest thee well,
Amidst
thy fields of amber asphodel,
Thy lily-sprinkled meadows,—rest
thee there,
To mock all human greatness: who would dare
To
vent the paltry sorrows of his life
Before thy ruins, or to praise
the strife
Of kings’ ambition, and the barren pride
Of
warring nations! wert not thou the Bride
Of the wild Lord of Adria’s
stormy sea!
The Queen of double Empires! and to thee
Were
not the nations given as thy prey!
And now—thy gates lie
open night and day,
The grass grows green on every tower and hall,
The
ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall;
And where thy mailèd
warriors stood at rest
The midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O
fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the
toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But
a dull shield, a crown of withered bays!
Yet who beneath this night of wars and fears,
From tranquil
tower can watch the coming years;
Who can foretell what joys the
day shall bring,
Or why before the dawn the linnets sing?
Thou,
even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose
To crimson splendour from
its grave of snows;
As the rich corn-fields rise to red and gold
From
these brown lands, now stiff with Winter’s cold;
As from
the storm-rack comes a perfect star!
O much-loved city! I have wandered far
From the wave-circled
islands of my home;
Have seen the gloomy mystery of the Dome
Rise
slowly from the drear Campagna’s way,
Clothed in the royal
purple of the day:
I from the city of the violet crown
Have
watched the sun by Corinth’s hill go down,
And marked the
‘myriad laughter’ of the sea
From starlit hills of
flower-starred Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As
to its forest-nest the evening dove.
O poet’s city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers
cast their doublets green
For Autumn’s livery, would seek
in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell
thy days of glory;—poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd’s
reed,
Where the loud clarion’s blast should shake the sky,
And
flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly:
yet I know
That never felt my heart a nobler glow
Than when
I woke the silence of thy street
With clamorous trampling of my
horse’s feet,
And saw the city which now I try to sing,
After
long days of weary travelling.
VII.
Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago,
I stood and watched the crimson
sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The
sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from
the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A
royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas
of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light.
Yet here the gentle stillness of the night
Brings back the swelling
tide of memory,
And wakes again my passionate love for thee:
Now
is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come
On meadow and tree the
Summer’s lordly bloom;
And soon the grass with brighter flowers
will blow,
And send up lilies for some boy to mow.
Then before
long the Summer’s conqueror,
Rich Autumn-time, the season’s
usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see
it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;
And after that the Winter
cold and drear.
So runs the perfect cycle of the year.
And
so from youth to manhood do we go,
And fall to weary days and locks
of snow.
Love only knows no winter; never dies:
Nor cares
for frowning storms or leaden skies
And mine for thee shall never
pass away,
Though my weak lips may falter in my lay.
Adieu! Adieu! yon silent evening star,
The night’s
ambassador, doth gleam afar,
And bid the shepherd bring his flocks
to fold.
Perchance before our inland seas of gold
Are garnered
by the reapers into sheaves,
Perchance before I see the Autumn
leaves,
I may behold thy city; and lay down
Low at thy feet
the poet’s laurel crown.
Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our
midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding
well
Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell.
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