The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

What strange wars and tribulations will the far-off voices have to sing!
Creeds and thrones of newer peoples: flowers of many another laughing spring:

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Sunrise over many a cornfield red with battle's blood-stains, it may be:
Moonlight over wastes of breakers, hideous shipwreck on full many a sea:

Love in many a grove and bower, burning love with many an honeyed word—
Love whose message old as history seems half whispered, never fully heard:

Love co-equal with the ages—love who though his singers fail and pass
Is as young as woman's beauty, or the dew-spheres on the morning grass.

Yet though grand the future singers, stately though their march of music be,
Our strange century hath been gladdened; woodland green and lake and silver sea,

These have heard our century's singers. What glad faces shone beneath the light
Of the passionate early morning, when the fields of Europe rang with fight!

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Far-off, very far, it seemeth. Close beside those early singers stood
Blood-smeared wild-eyed Revolution, and her spirit mingled with their mood.

Something of her ardent message Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, caught:
Somewhat of her fiery nature wove itself within their inmost thought.

But the mountains soon from Wordsworth hid the red and blood-streaked dawn of day:
To his spirit Revolution had but one pale far-off word to say.

Then he turned with growing rapture to the valleys' calm, the mountains' might;
Rested 'mid the solemn silence of the countless starlit peaks by night:

Chose amid the hills to ponder rather on the great Creator's plan
Than to hear mad Paris thunder from her cannon-throats the rights of man:

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Chose to hear the wild streams murmur, chose to watch the flashing waters gleam,
Joining in the green fields' gladness, sharing in the mountains' lonely dream.

Grey-haired venerable Landor full or classic passion lived and died:
Strong-browed drama-moulding Browning won our womanpoet for his bride.

She too was this century's singer,—she who into deathless music wrought
All the wealth of woman's passion, all man's sober strength of weightier thought;

She who taught the world for ever what a power resides in woman's soul
When the brain is there to guide it, and the sovereign genius to control.

Shelley, too, divinely laboured—made the half of life a lyric dream;
Into music wove the moonlight, made in song a lovelier starlight gleam:

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Made in verse the blossoms fairer, poured a nobler light on hill and plain;
Built in song a lyric Eden, brought to Adam spotless Eve again.

And he showed in noble drama, dealing with the old tale of deadly wrong,
That his hand could wield the lightning, not alone the lyre of loveliest song.

Later on our brother singers fought their battle vast beyond the wave:
Longfellow and Whittier struggled, hurling slavery to its blood-red grave.

Now at last the slave is chainless, through their power of brain and force of heart:
Lowell, Bryant, countless others—nobly each one played a giant's part.

Poe with mystic sweetness murmured—left us lyrics time's touch may not wrong:
Whitman spake but half his message, failing through the immenseness of his song;

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Failing through his very largeness of desire co-equal with the land
—Left a vast work unaccomplished, waiting for some even mightier hand.

Far in France Love found a singer, in whose rich voluptuous song should be
Somewhat of its own strange music—somewhat of Love's own eternity:

And the singer's heart responded, feeling Love's fair beauty overmuch,
Feeling all things else ephemeral, just mere foam-bells melting at the touch:

Love to Musset was so lovely that the whole world brightened at its feet;
When love passed the whole world darkened, when it vanished nothing else was sweet.

Yet for ever bears he witness what the world is like in love's first hour:
We may win the fruit he won not, for he never sought beyond the flower.

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We may see the soul he saw not fill the eyes of love with deathless light:
We may see the stars he saw not lift its veil of darkness from the night.

In the dawning of the era swift-eyed, seeing, the laurelled singers rose:
But the God-endowed blind singer, pale and patient, waited for its close.

Never yet the rolling waters held more might of colour than they hold,
Marston, in thy deep rich music; there the sunset breathes and burns with gold.

Was the tender heart of poet ever filled with tenderer sweeter things?
In thy song the roses whisper, heard of thee the “garden fairy” sings.

Lonely, many waited for thee—blind, that thou mightest give them eyes to see:
Jealous flowers and hills and rivers left forlorn by Shelley looked to thee;

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All the unsung heart of Nature, many a voiceless lake and silent stream:—
Many a star no singer heeded through thy music flashed its infant gleam.

For the whole of Nature never, bridelike, conquered by a single bard,
Kissed his lips and stood before him, loosed her purple deep hair golden-starred.

If the whole of Nature truly were one bride for one great king of song,
Would not kingly Victor Hugo lure her coy reluctant feet along?

Would not she the spirit of Nature who was girlish, young, when Shelley came,
Meet, mature, the century's singer, Hugo,—wreathe his brows with fadeless fame?

Other singers win the kisses of the flowers her handmaids sweet and white:
But for him her voice of ocean sounds, and calls him towards her through the night.

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He, the giant message hearing, leaves all friends and passes forth alone,
Knowing that the woman calls him, Nature, to be sharer of her throne:

Knowing that while other singers worship at her altar, then depart,
He may watch her eyes for ever, he the lord and ruler of her heart.

Yet the age hath room for others. When the chant of Wordsworth waxéd old
Tennyson, most English-hearted, sang to English cliff and English wold.

His the message not of ocean, not the kiss that floats across the sea;
His the calm heart of the valleys, filled with many a flower and golden tree:

His all English women's beauty, and the sweetness of our rose-hung lanes,
And the lovelier perfect sweetness that in English women's hearts remains:

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His the glory of the combat, clash of splintering spear and ringing shield,
Courteous strife of many a tourney, fiery strife of many a blood-stained field.

Fame of battle's wild narration, crown of martial verse, with Scott he shares—
Scott, through whom mankind for ever breathes the sweetness of the mountain-airs:

Scott, through whom mankind for ever hears the ancient border minstrels sing,
Tweed “repine” and Teviot murmur, and a thousand mountain-runnels ring:

Scott, through whom the world for ever grasps the grandeur of the feudal time;
Learns to love the grey old castles, grey with clambering lichen, red with crime.

At the feet of Europe's monarchs Danton in his huge Titanic mirth
Flung the head of Louis bleeding. Then another era dawned on earth.

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But two singers scorned the era, turned away with eager hearts and eyes;
Scott resought his grey old castles, Morris dreamed beneath far sunny skies.

Morris took the Greek wise legends,—made us hear through London's dreary roar
Witch Medea's luring laughter, and the wave that leaped from Jason's oar:

Sang to us wild Northern Sagas, many a weird old chant and mythic rune;
Made us love the Volsung Legend, love the grey-eyed wondrous queen Gudrun:

Made us with Pygmalion marvel as the white stone grew to woman's form,—
Cold eyes flashing into sunlight, marble changing into bosom warm:

Made us feel with Galatea what the glory of passion ought to be;
Made her break time's marble silence once, and then reseek eternity.

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Matthew Arnold felt the Zeit-Geist bear him into regions cold and dim;
Faith was only for the weak-brained, not the clear-souled poet—not for him.

All our century's sadness smote him: Science ruled him, ruled him to the last,
Though the Church enchained his father, loyal-souled, the servant of the past.

Never more would sign or portent—so the poet's keen-edged tongue proclaimed—
Flash upon a world turned sceptic, of faith's earlier follies grown ashamed.

Yet how brightly blossoms glitter, here and there, through his world-weary thought!
Gems of love and jewels of fancy that the poet's happier genius wrought.

So with Clough—the grim doubt seized him, drew him forth from sweet faith's golden shore:
This alone he knew for certain—that the old hope could avail no more.

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Not with Kingsley—he for ever, casting logic's dead weight overboard,
Held to the old faith, stern and stedfast; knotty points he settled—with his sword.

Fearless noble deathless singer! while his England still confronts the sea
Eyes shall soften, hearts shall tremble, at the pathos of the “Sands of Dee.”

Would he had written a thousand ballads!—even when he wore the bonds of prose
Brighter gleamed the ferns of Devon, lovelier colour glittered in the rose.

Round him thronged the Elizabethans, grand old worthies of the heroic time;
Is not “Westward Ho!” a poem rich in music though it lacks a rhyme?

Rhyming subtly came Rossetti—he who with the Italian music-force
Re-imbued the English sonnet, gave the sonnet-stream an altered course.

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Many a soul in many a sonnet, many a burst of lyric rapture, strove
Passion's tenderest lore to utter, stars to ravish from the brow of love:

He, with mightier touch, for ever in one sonnet sealed the depth, the height,
Sweetness, strangeness, awe of passion, all the mystery of the nuptial night.

Can there be a greater glory than this crown man's judgment hath conferred?
Even that, singing after Shakespeare, still Rossetti spake a wanting word.

Edwin Arnold's “Light of Asia” turned our eyes from English bowers of green,
Turned our thoughts from strife of moderns, from our Europe's over-crowded scene;

From the clash of sects and parties, all that makes our Western life a storm,—
Set before us in the old sunlight, calm and restful, Buddha's princely form.

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Generations pale and vanish—stars that now are old were fair and young
When that “Light” shone forth resplendent which the poet of to-day has sung.

Somewhat as of Buddha's greatness, somewhat of his strength that cannot cease,
Fills his singer's soul that points us past the storms of time to timeless peace:

Peace that reigned in the early ages, ere our Western warrior-life begun;
Peace,—and Arnold's song resumes it, full of light and fervent with the sun

But the century hath another whom the thunder crowned and sought for bard;
Whom the lightning kissed, and loved him; for whose soul the sea-wind wrestled hard.

Byron! still the lonely Jura seeks thee, widowed, weary,— and her sighs
Rolling through the rolling thunder find no kindred heart nor song-replies:

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Unto thee, as unto Musset, passion was the gift of perfect worth,
Light of woman's eyes the loveliest light that left the heaven and sought the earth:

Unto thee—not unto Musset—was the dark-blue ocean-waste divine;
Through thy song a thousand wave-crests curl and sparkle, rise and leap and shine.

Yet the wild sea's stormy message through a younger fiery singer thrills,
And his heart hath caught the rapture somewhat of the green far foam-flecked hills.

Swinburne! somewhat of the eternal might and wrath and rapture of the sea
Through thy sealike song hath sounded, somewhat of the soul of all things free:

And the heart of many a goddess left forlorn through many a weary day
Dares to glance up, and rejoices hearing the old note within thy lay.

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Bowed and full of desolation was full many a goddess' golden head
When along the viewless valleys rang the news that bright-souled Keats was dead:

Eyes long dry and tearless wept him, pale was Venus watching at his tomb,
Stars put off their robes of splendour, and for years no rose won all its bloom.

Now the gods shake off their mourning. Lo! again the trembling water glows
Round about the form of Venus, wakeful after over-long repose:

Once again a lovelier music than the music of our hills and streams
Brings again the thought of Sappho, thrills the evening with the morning's dreams.

Yet a note of sadness mingles with our song that praises these who sing.
All must pass. One century forward, just as blue shall gleam the swallow's wing.

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Pink the early almond-blossom still amid the branches brown shall shine,
And the bees shall hum for ever through the ivy and round about the vine.

One live flower shall have the magic all dead things and bloodless to surpass:
Who can dream on dead pale singers, when the kingcups glitter through the grass?

Who will ponder on our singing, when the very queen of song is there?
We may sing of passion's sweetness, but the songless lips will find it fair.

All our crowns of blood-stained laurel are not worth the crown the maiden brings,
Giving passion to her lover, giving but one glance to him who sings.

Though our singing live for ever, little is our sweetest singing worth;
Deathless value is in the love-song of the glad old everlasting earth.

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Deathless glory is in the love-song of the blue old everlasting seas:
Endless sweetness in the chanting of the pure fatigueless mountain-breeze.

We shall pass, but love shall linger,—linger while the golden mornings gleam;
Linger while the last white lily tells its love-tale to the listening stream.

We shall pass, but love shall linger while the light in woman's eyes is young,
Fair as if no soul had seen it, undescribed as if no soul had sung.

Ghosts may wander through the starlight, ghosts of poets crowned with phantom bays;
All dead songs shall miss the magic of one thoughtless throstle's living lays.

Every night the night's star thrilleth at the marriage-message of the sea:
What grows old and grey in Nature? Nought that Nature fashions; only we.

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Not more snowy was the primal than last April's dazzling chestnut-bloom:
Bright last night the star-hosts glittered, bright as when they flashed on Eden's gloom.

Round about each new-born poet arms most white his virgin era flings:
“Never have I heard sweet singing”—so she whispers to the soul that sings.

“Never have I owned a lover!” so she says with glance half shy, half wild:
“What is love?” she whispers gently, nestling closer like a loving child.

“What is love?” she whispers softly,—and will whisper while the starlit deep
Watches over woman's beauty, passion's flower, and fragrant-bosomed sleep.