Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

For ages standing, still for ages stood
(To stand and to withstand was all his care)
A Rock: whose feet were in the unfathom'd flood,
His forehead in the illimitable air.
Upon his brow the centuries beat,
And left it, as they found it, bare;
The rolling waters round his feet
Roll'd, and roll'd otherwhere.

2

And those cold feet of his the fawning waves
Lick'd, slave-like, ever with a furtive sigh;
Save when at times they rose, and (still like slaves)
In rebel scum, with insubordinate cry,
Strove, and, tho' fiercely, strove in vain
To drag down him that stood so high;
Then fell; and at his feet again
Fawn'd—with a furtive sigh.

3

The Storm and he were brothers; but in feud.
One lived a station'd, one a wandering, life:
This to subdue, that to be unsubdued,
Put forth his strength in unfraternal strife.
The burden of one weary brother
Was to resist, and to remain:
A fiercer fate impell'd the other
To strive, and strive in vain.

4

A homeless wanderer over the wide world,
A sullen spirit with a fleeting form,
That pass'd in soil'd and tumid mantle furl'd,
For ever and for ever roam'd the Storm.
But o'er the sea, with shoulders bent
And backward scowl before the blast,
He, flying, to his discontent
Beheld the Rock stand fast;

5

And lingering hover'd, restless, round and round,
To vex the rest that vex'd him. But the Rock,
Beaten and buffeted, yet not uncrown'd,
Stood, and withstood; and sadly seem'd to mock
The Force which cries from age to age
In accent fierce “Give way!”

With that which, ignorant of rage,
For ever answers “Nay!”

6

Then stoop'd the Storm, and whisper'd to the waves,
“Are ye so many, and afraid of one?
The world is yours, if ye but knew, poor slaves!
Dare to be lords, and lo, the world is won!”
To that wild tempter's whisper rose
Their hundred heads, soon dasht in spray;
But these succeeding fast to those
Renew'd the frustrate fray;

7

Until the Storm could lift the waves no higher;
Then, with a scornful sigh letting them fall,
And self-pursued by unappeased desire,
He left them, as he found them, slaves. And all
That strife without result for ever
Ends only to begin again;
Subsiding but for fresh endeavour,
Eternal, yet in vain.

8

But, in the intervals of time, among
The fissures of the Rock, have birds of prey
Built themselves nests: who, fishing for their young,
Dive in the waves, and snatch the fish away.

And heaven its feather'd generations
Renews to vex from year to year
The sea's folk, as their scaly nations
Appear, and disappear.

9

The fishes needs must suffer and endure,
Unable to retaliate on the birds;
And of their fishy wrongs which find no cure
The wide-mouth'd fools complain in watery words,
“Hath Providence for pasture given
The weak for ever to the strong?
Is there no justice, then, in Heaven?
No sense of right and wrong?”

10

The Storm (that never leaves it long at rest)
Return'd anon to trouble the still sea,
But that eternal revolutionist
Seem'd to these short-lived sufferers to be
A young deliverer, waited long,
Whom, in the fulness of late time,
Heaven raised to rectify the wrong,
And punish prosperous crime.

11

And when the devastating waves roll'd high,
And drave the birds, and drench'd their dwellings thro',

The fishes cried, exulting, “Verily
There is a judge that judgeth just and true!
The judgment day hath dawn'd at last:
Now strikes the final judgment hour:
The future shall redeem the past,
And lift the poor to power!”

12

The Rock stood fast—tho' bare of nest and bird:
The Storm was spent: the sunk sea ceased from striving,
And, in the stillness, that grey hermit heard
This fuss of exultation and thanksgiving.
The water trickled from his wet
Wave-ravaged crest, and dripp'd below,
As, after battle, drops the sweat
Down from a hero's brow.

13

“Is it for this,” within him mused the strong
And melancholy spirit of his life,
“For this, that I stand here — who knoweth how long,
Who knoweth wherefore?—in eternal strife!
And gaze into the nether deep
And up to heaven's huge hollowness,
And, while the ages o'er me sweep,
Question the void abyss,

14

“Sad, yet supreme; and weary, yet awake!
And must I listen still, and still must hear,
How of a final judgment—for their sake—
(Their sake, who but appear to disappear!)
These sprats and sparrows gurgle and twitter?”
So mused the Rock; his gray
Bare summit redden'd by the glitter
Of the departing day.

15

And, whilst he mused, athwart the trembling plain
His shade, unnoticed, sped with stealthy flight
Far on the dim horizon to attain
The obscurely safe asylum of the night;
As tho', for once, unvext, unview'd,
That Rock's soul fain would be
From the eternal solitude
Of his own greatness free.

16

But greatness grants to greatness no escape.
Fierce on the timorous vagrant's furtive track
The sudden sunrise flashing smote this shape
Of baffled darkness to its birthplace back;
And there, where Splendour seem'd to mock
Its slave whose flight was vain,
Deep in his own brave heart the Rock
Buried his shade again.