The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Court-yard of the Tower.
Balder, solus.
Enter Dr. Paul.
Balder.
Doctor!

Doctor.
You're well? My patient?

Balder.
Only now
She went to sit beside the little grave.
Prithee, friend, wait awhile. It were ill-done
So soon to follow.

Doctor.
Is this pilgrimage
A manner with her?

Balder.

Thou may'st even trace
The path her feet have worn across the mead
Straight from our threshold. Many times a day
She rises up as who should hear a sound
Far off. I have gone with her hour by hour,
And still she hath the step of expectation,
Kneels by the woful mound and leans her ear
Upon the earth, lifts her wan cheek with flush
And gesture of surprise, feels one by one
The gaps and junctures of the ungrown sod
As 'twere new broken, and anon doth shake
Her piteous head, and look into my face

As if I wronged her; and so home in haste
Unresting. But she watcheth night and day
To steal unnoticed forth, and then she stays
Till someone lead her homeward. Drawing nigh
Beneath the twilight I perceive she sits
Upon a neighbouring stone, and by her lips
I think she sings, slow swaying to and fro,
As one who rocks a child. I give her way,
For fancy,—like the image that our boors
Set by their kine,—doth milk her of her tears,
And loose the terrible unsolved distress
Of tumid Nature. Under observance
She hath been silent since that mortal hour;
Lying close like a toiled bird, that with wide eyes
Is mute and strange, but, being alone, lets forth
Its sad wild cry.

Paul, I have heard that cry
Twice lately in the dark, here, where we sit!
How I have been so long both deaf and blind
Confounds invention, but my sense at last
Is opened, and I do perceive this ill
Is not a growth of yesterday. They tell
In sea tales of deaf men made whole amid
The roar of battle, who go forthwith mad,
Wild with the naked torment of the bruised
Unseasoned function. I do think my case
Is such a thunderous healing. What I hear
Strikes through the feeble garment of the flesh,

And stuns the very soul. My book stands still.
I am no carpet knight, and in my time
Have known hard knocks, but, callous as I am,
This breaks endurance.

Since the malady
That racked her, three short summers since, I held
Her sorrows to be no more than the toys
And creatures of a tender melancholy,
The honey-droppings of an atmosphere
So delicate that every mist and whiff
Which sails a grosser sky came down in rain.
But this is hell, and the infernal fall
Of burning snow.

Doctor.
Poor thing, poor thing, poor thing!
How long think you?

Balder.
An hour?

Doctor.
If it must be.
We men of drug and scalpel still are men
And have our feelings. I call us the gnomes
Of science, miners who scarce see the light
Working within the bowels of the world
Of beauty.

Balder.
But your toil, like theirs, gives wealth
And warmth, and glory, to a fairer sphere,
Brings forth the golden wonder, which in hand
Of prince or clown, of poet or of fool,
Is standard still; lights up the common hearth

Of household joy familiar, and makes bright
The jewelled front of kings.

Doctor.
Ah, my good friend,
I was a poet once, and thought strange things,
Very strange things. How I would walk alone
And mutter in my going, dare the heavens
As thus! clap sudden hand upon my brow,
Hold up a finger and cry hist! to the air,
Walk you a mile bareheaded in the rain,
Stop, gaze the ground, stamp like a bull, and sigh,
Sigh like a painted Boreas! or, in fierce
Obstetric frenzy of the labouring Muse,
Collar the astonished wayfarer with ‘Sir,
Your tablets!’ scare the woodman's hut with calls
For pen and paper, or make eloquent
The graphic bark of beech. Ah, those days when
I courted Sophonisba, long ago,
And we two loved the moonlight and wrote verses!
It melts my very heart to think on't!

Balder.
Love
Makes us all poets. Each man in his turn,
At culmination of one happy hour
Consummate of some sole and topmost day
Hath his apotheosis. Nature thus,
Ere she send forth her mintage to the world
Assays it for eternity, and sets
The stamp of sterling manhood. From the mount
Of high transfiguration you come down

Into your common life-time, as the diver
Breathes upper air a moment ere he plunge,
And, by mere virtue of that moment, lives
In breathless deeps and dark. We poets dwell
Upon the height, saying, as one of old,
‘Let us make tabernacles: it is good
To be here.’

Doctor.
Out of mortal sight! Ay, you
Live to posterity.

Balder.
Your pardon; no!

Doctor.
To the mere present?

Balder.
No. I do not scorn
Fame, and those wide and calmer after days
Where Time's thick flood grows quiet, letting down
Its golden grains to be the jealous wealth
Of nations; but I choose to say, ‘I live
To God and to myself.’ Of God I know
Little to satisfy a human heart
So fashioned to adore Him; of myself
Still less, yet somewhat; of posterity
This only,—that in circling cycles, come
What will come on the ever-rolling years,
The Ages will not outlive a true man
And his Divine Creator.

Doctor.
Well, well, poet,
If love makes heroes it makes fools. And Nature,
If, as you say, fresh from that crucible,
She marks us current, full as often signs

The cap of Momus as the bay of Cæsar.
Were you but where I am, and with my eyes
Saw as I see to what this love can bring
Men down.

Balder.
Not love, but passion, the mere dance
Of this gross body to the soul's sweet singing,
Which you mistake for love, because sometimes
The singer, high and pale, descends to join
(With haughtier step as consciously a god)
The Paphian measure of his mortal twin.
And strange reflection of the glowing flesh
Doth flush the soul.

Doctor.
I have walked far.

Balder.
We'll enter—
From the high window in the turret there,
I see the churchyard in the dale.

Doctor.
Dost spend
The day in watching?

Balder.
I keep vigil on her
As any star behind his golden face
Spends his great gifts upon his proper world,
And lights us with an idle faculty.

[They enter the Tower, and mount to the Study.
Doctor
A poet's studio! I have often passed
The lintel of your home, but ne'er before
The threshold of its penetralia. I
Long to behold your gods.

Balder.
Expect none, Paul.

Doctor.
How?

Balder.
Expect none, my friend, if seeing me
Thou hast seen none. My word on it Æneas
Is godless, or ‘Penatiger Æneas.’

Doctor.
Thou Pagan! why the room is an Olympus!

Balder.
Olympus' top is a long way from heaven.

Doctor.
From heaven say you? The mason, by my count,
Is greater than the house, and I perceive
That old Italian, whose Uranian pride
When his great prince had forfeited the skies,
Built him another heaven, and filled the dome
With angels, like the first.

Balder.
Ay, dauntless Michael,
Who drew the Judgment, in some daring hope
That, seeing it, the gods could not depart
From so divine a pattern.

Doctor.
Ah! thou, too,
Sad Alighieri, like a waning moon
Setting in storm behind a grove of bays!

Balder.
Yes, the great Florentine, who wove his web
And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth
Immortal, having burned all that could burn,
And leaving only what shall still be found
Untouched, nor with the smell of fire upon it,
Under the final ashes of this world.

Doctor.
Shakspeare and Milton!

Balder.
Switzerland and home.

I ne'er see Milton, but I see the Alps,
As once sole standing on a peak supreme,
To the extremest verge summit and gulph
I saw, height after depth, Alp beyond Alp,
O'er which the rising and the sinking soul
Sails into distance, heaving as a ship
O'er a great sea that sets to strands unseen.
And as the mounting and descending bark
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going, and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it, so the soul
Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tost,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and still wet with drops of death
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum, but in frenzied sight
Of horizontal clouds and mists and skies
And the untried Inane, springs on the surge
Of things, and passing matter by a force
Material, thro' vacuity careers,
Rising and falling.

Doctor.
And my Shakspeare! Call
Milton your Alps, and which is he among
The tops of Andes? Keep your Paradise,

100

And Eves, and Adams, but give me the Earth
That Shakspeare drew, and make it grave and gay
With Shakspeare's men and women; let me laugh
Or weep with them, and you—a wager,—ay,
A wager by my faith—either his muse
Was the recording angel, or that hand
Cherubic which fills up the Book of Life,
Caught what the last relaxing gripe let fall
By a death-bed at Stratford, and henceforth
Holds Shakspeare's pen. Now strain your sinews, poet,
And top your Pelion,—Milton Switzerland,
And English Shakspeare—

Balder.
This dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloomed from hill to dell; but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart;
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes
For ever calm the unforgotten dead
In quiet graveyards willowed seemly round,
O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Thro' unremembered years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas

101

That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues thro' all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!

Doctor.
Your hand on it!

Balder.
The wicket swings, how now?

Doctor.
A tattered man.

Balder.
I must go down—

Doctor.
An aged peasant woman,
A chubby child beside her; by my soul
The rosy blossom and the withered crab,
Both on one bough? who are they?

Balder.
Pensioners.

Doctor.
Your's?

Balder.
Her's.

Doctor.
Some say the illumining sun is dark;
But poor as you are—

Balder.
Is this blossom sweet?

Doctor.
Most fragrant!

Balder.

Yet I plucked it on a rock
Where common grass had died. Learn this, my friend,
The secret that doth make a flower a flower,
So frames it that to bloom is to be sweet,
And to receive to give. The flower can die,
But cannot change its nature; though the earth
Starve it, and the reluctant air defraud,
No soil so sterile and no living lot

102

So poor but it hath somewhat still to spare
In bounteous odours. Charitable they
Who, be their having more or less, so have
That less is more than need, and more is less
Than the great heart's goodwill.

Here are books, here
A picture, still unpacked, from the great city,
Sent by an early college friend, who vows
A pilgrimage to these old hills; and there
(Arrived this morning from the muse knows where)
That strange sweet mystery, the early scrawl
Of young Ambition. Genius is born blind;
See how the nursling fumbles for the dug,
Lipping each barren likeness; now distent
As limpet on a rock, and sucking hard
The east-wind, and now drawing with a touch
Nectar for gods; 'twill help the hour on— (Going.)

Stay!
Paul, thou art somewhat of an antiquary;
Let these walls entertain thee; at thy leisure
Spell out these parchments, which my chamberlain,
The spider, deems too bare for such a presence,
And with his orfrays and embroidery
Decks an' I will or no. To my heart, Paul,
The mouldering stones of this old tottering tower
Are not more ancient; this, for all I feel,
Might be the dust of centuries!

Doctor.
What are they?

103

Balder.
Listen: when we came here, a bridal pair,
Joyous and young and poor, I took this room
For mine, the forge in which to beat my gifts
To the white heat that lights and warms the world;
And so I left it bare. We had small store,
And that I spent on her's. But still she came,
And sat beside me at her daily tasks
In happy silence; then I said ‘not here!’
But she said ‘here!’ and kissed me; oh those days!
She was so fair——

Doctor.
She was?

Balder.
She is; she was
So fair, so delicately bred; I saw
Her there, and all the strong unseemly place
Disturbed me. ‘Oh for cloth of gold,’ I cried,
‘To make a palace for thee!’ But she smiled.
When she came in I felt the cold grey air
Strike her like a stone, and when she walked methought,
Oft as she passed between me and the wall,
The rudeness of the unhewn and jagged rock,
Albeit that bodily it touched her not,
Harried her beauty; and, whene'er she sat
Looking her sweet content, stern histories
Sank from the dark roof thro' the dungeon day,
And fell upon her face like grinding dust
Upon the apple of mine eye. She knew
My trouble, saying, ‘Where thou art, to me
Heaven arches o'er thee, and I dwell in tents

104

Of azure; but, my husband! as thou wilt.
Nevertheless, not silver and not gold,
Silver and gold are not for me or thee;
But oh, my poet husband! what thou hast
Give me.’ And so I hung the room with Thought.
Morning and noon, and eve and night, and all
The changing seasons; scenes, or new or old,
Strange faces and familiar; forms of men
Or gods in valleys deep, or mountains high; And how she loved them! Tarry till I come.

[Goes.
Doctor
(unfolding a scroll).

What's here? sad heart! some withered primroses! (Reads.)

‘Spring, who did scatter all her wealth last year,
Had gone to heaven for more; and coming back
Flower-laden after three full seasons, found
The Earth, her mother, dead.

Far off, appalled
With the unwonted pallor of her face,
She flung her garlands down, and caught, distract,
The skirts of passing tempests, and thro' wilds
Of frozen air fled to her, all uncrowned
With haste,—a bunch of snowdrops in her breast,
Her charms dishevelled, and her cheeks as white
As winter with her woe. She fell upon
The corse, and warmed it. The maternal earth,
Which was not dead, but slept, unclosed her eyes.
Then Spring, o'erawed at her own miracle,
Fell on her knees; and then she smiled and wept.

105

Meanwhile the attendant birds her haste outstripped,
Chasing her voice, crowd round and fill the air
With jocund loyalty; and eager winds
Her suitors, at full speed with Love and wild,
Hie by her in the lusty cheer of March,
Crying her name. Laughed Spring to see them pass,
—Laughing in tears. Then it repented her
To see the old parental limbs of Earth
Lie stark as death; and fared she forth alone
To where she left her burden in the void
Beyond the south horizon; her fair hair
Streaming spring clouds among the vernal stars.
Returning, slow with flowers, she dressed the Earth,
Which had sat up, and, being naked, blushed,
And stretched her conscious arms to meet the Spring,
Who breathed upon her face, and made her young.
Then did her mother Earth rejoice in her;
And she with filial love and joy admired,
Weeping and trembling in the wont of maids.
Meantime her pious fame had filled the skies;
He that begat her, the almighty Sun,
Passing in regal state, did call her “child,”
And blessed her and her mother where they sat—
Her by the imposition of bright hands,
The Earth with kisses. Then the Spring would go,
Abashed with bliss, decorous in the face
Of love parental. But the Earth stood up,
And held her there; and, them encircling, came

106

All kind of happy shapes that wander space,
Brightening the air. And they two sang like gods
Under the answering heavens.’

Doctor
(unrolling another scroll).

Here Summer, (reads.)
‘Summer,
Mother of gods and men, with equal face
Unchangeable, and such wide eyes divine
As on the Athenian hill-top Phidian Jove
Inherited; whose universal sense
Seems made with ampler vision to behold
A larger world than ours. She leans in light
On rose-leaves, as a long and lazy cloud
Leans on the broad bed of the blushing west.
In her right hand a horn of plenty, red
With fragrant fruits exuberant; in her left
The early harvest; crowned with oak and ash,
Her hot feet slippered in the calid seas.
Her voice is like the murmur of the floods
Sluggard with noon, or the thick-leaved response
Of sultry forests to the languid winds
Dull with the dog-days.’

Nay, no more; one knows
This better out of doors. Now Autumn! blow
A windy morning, and a whirr of wings. [Unrolling another scroll, reads.

‘He stands beside a throne of golden hills,
And up the steep steps of the royal throne
The burdened forests climb like countless slaves

107

Laden with gold. He stands and heeds them not;
Meanwhile his hand, with air abstract and wan,
From the abounding tribute of the earth
Scatters imperial largesse. All her fields
Are his; they own their lord; his barns are full,
His rivers run with wine, and his red plains
Shout with the vintage. Yet he stands beside
His golden throne, and looketh up to heaven,
And sigheth in the melancholy winds,
And smileth sweeter sadness. He hath learned
The lesson of power; therefore his locks are sere,
Therefore there is no light in the sunk eyes
Which day and night reproach the sun and stars
With the unsated hunger of a soul
That is no richer tho' the world be won.’
Too sentimental! He should take a license
To kill game.—

(Unrolling another scroll.)

Autumn still? Corpo di Bacco!
A metamorphosis! ‘The Death of Autumn!’ [Reads.

‘Sometimes an aged king upon his bed,
He dieth 'mid the conscious hush of all
His reverent realm, and silent snows him wind.
Or, haply, at midnight a choir of winds
Chanting great anthems, bear him to his rest.
And sometimes doing battle with his fate,
A wreathed wrestler from a gorge of wine,
He falls in pride; a giant in his blood,

108

Dashed with the purple feast as to his robes
Of azure triumph and his golden crown
Olympic, while his dying eye on fire
Brings a red glow into the cheeks of Death,
His ghastly foe, and his felled stature shakes
The sounding halls.

And sometimes as a maid
Dead and undone, the pale and drowned year
Lies still and silent on the mortal shore,
With dank unmeaning lips and sightless eyes
Ooze-filled, and blanch limbs stark and stiff beyond
The draggled robes soaked with a colder death.
And sometimes as a trusting maid who waits
Her far false lover, and thro' long lone hours
Expects in vain, but as the sun goes down,
Chilled with the bitter day where love is not,
Blighted and mute, astonied beyond speech,
Stands utterless; while all within is changed
From life to death, and under that pale breast
Unheaving and those glittering eyes transacts
The alchemy of ruin. Nor she weeps,
Nor starts, nor shrieks, nor throws her arms to heaven,
But motionless and crimson with her wrong
Dies in her silence, and falls still as leaves
Thro' stiller air.’

Enough. Shall I try Winter?
[Unrolling another scroll, reads.
‘Who is he

109

That o'er green pastures of the latter year,
And on the mountain-tops, and through the woods
Passeth amid the pageant of the world
Silent and ceaseless, laying hand on nought?
Not as content, for greed is in his eye,
But patient in the confidence of fate.
Downward in face, and as to his bent head
Covered; by night and day, in sun or rain,
Unlooked for, unforeseen, but ever found,
And keeping ever on an aimless way
With the firm foot of purpose, as in dreams
We walk to airy biddings, and as on
A king's death-day, while all the court stand round
Power unresigned, the inevitable heir
Doth eye the crown and pace the palace floors
Expectant. But none know him for a king
Nor do him homage. The too-lusty green
Of the o'er-confident time unawed stands out
Into his path, and the insulting growth
Below retards his unrespected feet.
He sees, and a cold smile comes on his face
As moonlight upon ice; the shivering wind
Starts from his side, and fleeing ominous,
Spreads such a sign as in the latter day
Shall blow from chill Damascus; but no roll
Of answering thunder nor dread bolt of wrath
Smites the roused world that listens and forgets.
Yet some are wise. With him on hill-tops hoar

110

The o'erruling spirits and attentive hours
Confer, and seek and take his high behest
In secret, and make peace with things to come.
And failing Autumn, like an aged king,
Talked with him on the field of cloth of gold,
And as he spake fell dead; and the lush powers,
And pleasures full, which ruled the summer reign
(Like ships on a calm sea, that, sinking slow,
Of all their gallant bulk above the wave
Leave but a naked mast) sank one by one
Into the earth, and in the wonted place
Were found in lesser fashion, daily less.
And now the fields are empty, but He walks
Hale and unminished to and fro and up
And down, and more and more the observance
Of the astonished year is turned and turned
Upon the Solitary, and the leaves
Grow wan with conscience, and a-sudden fall
Liege at his feet, and all the naked trees
Mourn audibly, lifting appealing arms.
Which when he knew, as a pale smoke that grows
Keeping its shape, he rose into the air
And froze it, and the broad land blanched with fear,
And every breathless stream and river stopped,
And thro' him, walking white and like a ghost
With grim unfurnished limbs, the cold light passed
And cast no shade. Then was he king indeed,
And all the undefended World he saw

111

Bare at his will. His brow grew black on her;
And with a sound that killed her shuddering heart,
He whistled for the North.’
Nay, rheumatism
Forbid! Let's have some sunshine
(unrolling scrolls)
—Æschylus—
Thor—Balder—a Viking—a Runic Skald—
Kun-y-a and the Gopees—Seeva-deo—
What next? Stay, here's some warmth in prospect. ‘Dawn.’
(Reads.)
‘See her in naked beauty, calm as snow,
And cradled in a cloud upon the east.
Unblushed, unconscious, with unopened lids,
Fair as the first of women where she lay
Among the asphodels of Paradise
Before God breathed for her the breath of life.’
Too cool, I long for morning. Here!
(Opening a scroll, and reading.)

‘Lo, Morn,
When she stood forth at universal prime,
The angels shouted, and the dews of joy
Stood in the eyes of earth. While here she reigned
Adam and Eve were full of orisons,
And could not sin. And so she won of God
That ever when she walketh in the world
It shall be Eden. And around her come
The happy wonts of early Paradise.
Again the mist ascendeth from the earth
And watereth the ground, and at the sign

112

Nature, that silent saw our woe, breaks forth
Into her olden singing, near and far
The full and voluntary chorus tune
Spontaneous throats, and the ten thousand strings
That by meridian day, being struck, give out
A muffled answer, peal their notes, and ring
Reverberating music. Once again
The heavens forget their limits, pinions bright
O'er-passing mix the ethereal bounds with ours,
And winds of morning lead between their wings
Ambrosial odours and celestial airs
Warm with the voices of a better world.
Dews to the early grass, Light to the eyes,
Brooks to the murmuring hills, Spring to the earth,
Sweet winds to opening flowers, morn to the heart!
But more than dew to grass or light to eyes
Or brooks to murmuring hills or spring to earth
Or winds to opening flowers, morn to the heart!
Once more to live is to be happy; Life
With backward-streaming hair and eyes of haste
That look beyond the hills, doth urge no more
Her palpitating feet; Her wild hair falls
Soft thro' the happy light upon her limbs,
She turns her wondering gaze upon herself,
Sweet saying—“It is good.” Once more the soul
Rises in Eden to immortal gifts,
And by the side of morning,—new from heaven,
Fresh from the stores of all things, and within

113

Her limpid face still wearing reflex bright
Of joys that shall be,—dances glad with strange
Unutterable Knowledge. We are healed;
The curse falls from our eyelids; all the thorns
And thistles that do plague us, clad in gems
Stand round; and we behold them as they are,
And call them jewelled friends. All fetters break;
From the tremendous girdle that doth round
The globe and keep her, to these heavy bonds
That bind us to her, and whose last stronghold
Is clenched in central fires. We are not dogs
Nailed to a needful den, but wingèd lions,
And walk the earth from choice,—the fair free earth
That willeth to be here, and cares not yet
To mount up like a coloured cloud to God.
The pulse of Being flows, the ill that ran
Along her veins, the hand of Incubus
Upon her throat, are gone like night! All things
Do well, and still his function is to each
Consummate welfare. As the unheeded garb
Upon the rising and the falling breast
Of beauty, that still moveth as she moves,
Breathes with her breath and quivers with her sighs,
So Nature's varied robe lies light on her,
The beautiful broad surface of the world
And all its kingdoms. Memory that stirred
And murmured thro' the helpless dreamy dark,
Snuffing the eternal air, sinks silent down

114

To utter sleep, for whereas day that is
Bendeth beneath the golden multitude
Of all the days that have been, each to-morrow
Heavier for yesterday, Morn hath no past.
Primeval, perfect, she, not born to toil,
Steppeth from under the great weight of life,
And stands as at the first.

The feast is spread,
And none know wherefore. Wherefore? who shall ask?
Who cannot feast? As a rich bride in smiles
And blushes for her much bliss eateth not,
And seeth that they serve a sacrament
And something more than wine, the poet sits.
While Who stood glorious at the shining head
Of jubilee, where men a light beheld
And he a presence, clad in sounding joy
Moves down the festal aisles. As a true queen,
In whose ennobling eyes her lowliest guests
Are princes, so she slow descends to far
Forgotten places, and with her mere smile
Rights the unequal board. Light shines to light
Down to the earth and upward to the heaven,
And whatsoe'er unknown it is whereof
Our lives default, whatever of divine
Whose all irreparable absence makes
The nameless dolour of a mortal day,
Returns in full. As love, that hath his cell
In the deep secret heart, doth with his breath

115

Enrich the precincts of his sanctuary
And glorify the brow and tint the cheek;
As in a summer garden one beloved
Whom roses hide, unseen fills all the place
With happy presence; as to the void soul
Beggared with famine and with drought, lo God!
And there is great abundance; so comes MORN,
Plenishes all things and completes the world.’
(Opening another scroll.)
Now for the matron sister, drowsy Noon,
The lotus-eater, nay, nay, I must keep
My eyes open; I'll pass her for the next.
This should be evening by its place. No title!
(Reads.)
‘And seest thou her who kneeleth clad in gold
And purple, with a flush upon her cheek,
And upturned eyes full of the love and sorrow
Of other worlds? 'Tis said that when the son
Of God did walk the earth, she loved a star
Which went aloft with God, but, lest she die,
Day after day looks out on her from heaven
At sunset smiling, so she wears her robe
Sad but imperial, as of right a queen.’
[Turns to another scroll, unrolls, and reads.
‘And lo the last strange sister, but tho' last
Elder and haught, called Night on earth, in heaven
Nameless, for in her far youth she was given,
Pale as she is, to pride, and did bedeck
Her bosom with innumerable gems,

116

And God, He said, “Let no man look on her
For ever,” and, begirt with this strong spell,
The moon in her wan hand she wanders forth,
Seeking for some one to behold her beauty,
And wheresoe'er she cometh eyelids close,
And the world sleeps.’

I'm sleepy too; Heigho!
Is this a dream?

(Opens a scroll and reads.)

‘I knew a family
Of fairies. Thou wouldst hear their history?
But how? I cannot speak of them apart;
Nay, hardly of the matter of this breath
May frame their common story. Our least word
Too palpable is grosser than the strength
Of all, as one bright water-drop contains
An animaicular people. Oberon,
Step forth, and let me fit thee with a sound
Wherein from top to toe thou wouldst not stand
Hid as an urchin in his grandsire's coat!
Their dwelling-place was by the water's edge
Under a stone. The mosses of the brink
Spread ample shade with branching arms at noon,
And there each day they lay at ease, all three
Singing a drowsy chorus like the hum
Of hovering gnat above a bed at night,
Heard when the house is still. Such needful rest
Concludes the daily feast;—a grain of grass
In no more honey-dew than loads an ant

117

Driven like an ass before them. Once a day
They fed at home, but morn and eve I saw
Where in green ambush under milking kine,
Looking up, all, as to a precipice,
They watched the pail, and when the white plash fell
Cupped in some patent floweret, gathering round,
Climbed the laborious stem, and bending o'er,
Drank deep; which done, they seek the lucid lake,
And sailing forth in pride, the emerald wing
Of summer beetle is a barge of state;
Her cock-boat, red and black, the painted scale
Of lady-fly aft in the fairy wake
Towed by a film, and tossed perchance in storm,
When airy martlet, sipping of the pool,
Touches it to a ripple that stirs not
The lilies. Thus I knew the tiny band,
Nor only so, but singly, and of each
The several favour; yet I can but speak
With organs made to tell of gods and men.
Thou who wouldst know them better think the rest,
And with some fine suggestion which has taste
Of a remembered odour, silent sweet,
Or what rare power divides the last result
Of mortal touch, and to the atomy
Gives an unnamed inferior, or what sense
Responds the tremors of the soul and takes
The sound of wings that, unbeheld by eyes,
Mystic and seldom thro' its upper air

118

Pass as in wandering flight; therewith behold
My vision, and therewith accept the parts
Of the so delicate whole which my strained care
Brought not unminished, nor could bring, but found
As 'twere an elfin draught in faëry cup,
And to be spilled by the mere pulse of hands
Like mine. Therewith attach each separate grace
Of those thus fair together; know what made
Each brother beauteous, what more subtle charm
The lovelier sister, and what golden hair
Hung over her as sometimes shimmereth light
From smallest dew-drop, else unseen, that crowns
The slimmest grass of all the shaven green
At morning. Love them by their names, for names
They had, and speech that any word of ours
Would drop between its letters uncontained;
Love them, but hope not for impossible knowledge.
In their small language they are not as we;
Nor could, methinks, deliver with the tongue
Our gravid notions; nor of this our world
They speak, tho' earth-born, but have heritage
From our confines, and property in all
That thro' the net of our humanity
Floats down the stream of things. Inheriting
Below us even as we below some great
Intelligence, in whose more general eyes
Perchance Mankind is one. Neither have fear
To scare them, drawing nigh, nor with thy voice

119

To roll their thunder. Thy wide utterance
Is silence to the ears it enters not,
Raising the attestation of a wind,
No more. As we, being men, nor hear but see
The clamour and the universal tramp
Of stars, and the continual Voice of God
Calling above our heads to all the world.’
I like this better. Shall I try again?
Wheugh! what a roomful; I'm not half-way round.
Courage, Paul! one more venture!

(Unrolls a scroll, and reads.)

‘Chamouni!’

‘If
Thou hast known anywhere amid a storm
Of thunder, when the Heavens and Earth were moved,
A gleam of quiet sunshine that hath saved
Thine heart; Or where the earthquake hath made wreck,
Knowest a stream, that wandereth fair and sweet
As brooks go singing thro' the fields of home;
Or on a sudden when the sea distent
With windy pride, upriseth thro' the clouds
To set his great head equal with the stars
Hast sunk Hell-deep, thy noble ship a straw
Betwixt two billows; Or in any wild
Barbaric, hast, with half-drawn breath, passed by
The sleeping savage, dreadful still in sleep,
Scarred by a thousand combats, by his side
His rugged spouse—in aught but sex a chief—
Their babe between; Or where the stark roof-tree

120

Of a burnt home blackened and sear lies dark,
Betwixt the gaunt-ribbed ruin, hast thou seen
The rose of peace; Or in some donjon deep,
Rent by a giant in the blasted rock
And proof against his peers,—hast thou beheld
Prone in the gloom, naked and shining sad
In her own light of loveliness, a fair
Daughter of Eve: Then as thou seest God
In some material likeness, less and more,
Thou hast seen Chamouni, 'mid sternest Alps
The gentlest valley; bright meandering track
Of summer when she winds among the snows
From Land to Land. Behold its fairest field
Beneath the bolt-scarred forehead of the hills
Low lying, like a heart of sweet desires,
Pulsing all day a living beauty deep
Into the sullen secrets of the rocks.
Tender as Love amid the Destinies
And Terrors; whereabout the great heights stand
Down-gazing, like a solemn company
Of gray heads met together to look back
Upon a far fond memory of youth.
Northward and southward of my hut, from heaven
To earth, two gates of ice shut in the scene,
As tho' between twin icebergs a green sea
Had melted, and the summer sun and sky
Shone in the waters. All the vale is flowers.
Take thy staff shod with iron, gird thy loins

121

For conflict. Let us to the northern gate!
Is this a wood of pines? Are these but rocks,
Hurled by the winter tempest? Did a chance
O'erthrow these trunks—in the stern wont of war
Supine? Or was it here the Thunderer smote
The Giants—And the battered remnant stand
Astonied giving glory to the Heavens?
Aye, these are pines; but thou shalt turn and break
The hugest on thy knee, having once passed
Out of their umbrage, and in open day
Fronted the everlasting looks of them
Who sit beyond in council; round whose feet
Are wrapped the shaggy forests, and whose beards,
Down from the great height unapproachable,
Descend upon their breasts. There, being old,
All days and years they maunder on their thrones
Mountainous mutterings, or thro' the vale
Roll the long roar from startled side to side
When whoso, lifting up his sudden voice,
A moment speaketh of his meditation,
And thinks again. There shalt thou learn to stand
One in that company, and to commune
With them, saying, “Thou, oh Alp, and thou, and thou
And I.” Nathless, proud equal, look thou take
Heed of thy peer, lest he perceive thee not,—
Lest the wind blow his garment, and the hem
Crush thee, or lest he stir, and the mere dust
In the eternal folds bury thee quick!

122

The forest now behind thee, at thy feet
The torrent, thrust thine head back as who seeks
The polestar; and above the mountains green,
And o'er the shepherd's shealing,—less than nest
On tree-top—and o'er woods that are as moss,
Black on a ruin,—over the icy sea
—A billowy Sibir of ten thousand hills
As tho' yon white rocks, bending evermore
So potently above the floods, begat
A likeness, and from out their yielding breasts
Compelled a brood of stone—o'er naked crags,—
Aye, above where the shyest roe unseen
Draws the thin breath, and marmot cannot pass
The inexorable famine,—over wilds
For ever dead, and snow, and upper snow,
And wastes above the snow, see nearer heaven
The base of a great pyramid, and rise
Slow to this peak, like a grey pinnacle
Of the towered earth piercing the cloudless skies.
To us how calm and lonely, tenantless
And silent as the still and empty air,
But to that height the seldom mountaineer
Looks from the extremest footing of some ridge
Incredible, three times beyond our ken,
And to his keen and upward-straining eyes
Round it midway the circling eagles sail,
As daws that round some thin and distant spire
On English hill, scarce seen thro' lucent air

123

Are motes in the evening sun.

Drop from the Alp to lowest vale remote
Breathless; nor be the first in that great fall.
So yon dark glacier from his native snows
Fell on the narrow valley, which beneath,
Like a poor foundered skiff, when some vast whale
In his unwieldy death-pang leaps and falls,
Is sunk and lost. Grim with mortality,
War-stained he lies in heavy length, and bleeds,
A hill of death. Behold aloft the seas
Whence he came down, unmelting seas of snow
Well-named, the ocean of a frozen world.
A marble storm in monumental rage,
Ploughed on the fragment of a shattered moon.
Passion at nought and strength still strong in vain,
A wrestling giant, spell-bound, but not dead.
As tho' the universal deluge passed
These confines, and when forty days were o'er
Knew the set time obedient and arose
In haste: but Winter lifted up his hand
And stayed the everlasting sign which strives
For ever to return. Cold crested tides
And cataracts more white than wintry foam
Eternally in act of the great leap
That never may be ta'en, these fill the gorge
And rear upon the steep uplifted waves
Immoveable, that proudly feign to go,—

124

And on the awful ramparts of the rock
Bend forward, as in motion—side by side
Mixed manifold, rank after mingling rank,
In all the throng of multitude, but each
Condign, and in a personality
Confest. Nor from the valley seen as waves.
But as lone shepherd, on some battle hill,
At setting of a chill moon on the wane,
Beholds his heroes from their unknown graves
Snow-cold, with blades of ice, out of the night,
The peopled peopling night, o'er airy crag
Crowding unstaunched invasion, with consent
Of hands that point advance, and martial gaze
Of helmèd heads, silent, majestical,—
All ghosts! Or as some great acropolis,
Above the wondering eyes of ancient men,
On sacred feast, a statuary host,
Sent out her idols round the incandent hill,
And all her marble deities went by
In solemn march, tall, white, innumerable,
Each after each divine; while far beneath,
Lone, like some shattered pillar of the skies,
Half-buried by his fall, headlong and prone,
The broken worship of a ruder race,
A Greater lay. Or so methinks of old,
Below a mount of Jewry, Dagon fell
Before the Highest; and in him subdued
From their high seats, fair bowers, dim haunts beloved,

125

And temples of the abdicated earth,
Upon a day the great mythology
Came forth by legions to behold the sign.
Dethroned, discrowned, divestured; with bare brows
Paler than men; proud whispering as they pass,
In murmur of a thousand waterfalls,
While somewhat like the finger of the world
Pointeth above their heads into the heavens,
And crash as of avenging thunderbolts
Pursues them,—nor can haste the step of gods.
Low in the abject earth lies Chamouni,—
Low in the last profound, whose narrow deep
Seems from yon midway and diminished peak—
So hunters say—who, clinging to the rock,
Dizzy look down—a gulph of mountain-mist,
Rainbowed, or if substantial, sunk and lost,
Drowned in the abyss of air, and lapsed below
Terrestrial, hopeless in a void of dreams.
Beheld as one should spy from upper wave
Of seas unsounded fathomless and dark,
Low, thro' mysterious waters infinite,
Illumined by a gleam, some jewelled mine
Emerald and ruby flashing dreamy gold,
Rent in the nether bed of the mid-main.
Nor less above yon midway crag the calm
Unventured summit, than if who descried
The deep-sea gulph, with sudden gaze revert,
Sees from his span of footing on the wave

126

Far in unearthly ether unassailed,
A great white cloud serene in sacred light
And happy skies.

Here, in the lowest vale,
Sit we beside the torrent, till the goats
Come tinkling home at eve, with pastoral horn
Slow down the winding way, plucking sweet grass
Amid the yellow pansies and harebells blue.

“The milk is warm,
The cakes are brown;
The flax is spun,
The kine are dry;
The bed is laid,
The children sleep;
Come, husband, come,
To home and me.”

So sings the mother as she milks within
The chalet near thee; singing so for him
Whom every morn she sendeth forth alone
Into the waste of mountains, to return
At close of day as a returning soul
Out of the infinite; lost in the whirl
Of clanging systems and the wilderness
Of all things, but to one remembered tryst,
One human heart and unforgotten cell,
True in its ceaseless self, and in its time
Restored. But now the dusk which like a tarn
Lay long since in the hollows of the hills,

127

Swells from deep caves and tributary glens
Unnumbered, till the lower mountain tops
Are covered, and the dull and dead sea line
Rests tideless on a shore of sacred snow.
And now an unknown trouble has made cold
Those higher Alpine foreheads whence supreme
Over our darkness a serener day
Looked westward and to all that we saw not,
The glory and the loss. For they do watch
The journey of the setting sun as one
Who when the weaker inmates of the house
Have sunk about his feet in dews and shades
Of sorrow, watches still with brow of light
And manly eye a brother on his way;
But when the lessening face shines no return
Thro' distance slowly lengthening and sinks slow
Behind the hill-top, nor him. looking back,
The straining sense discerns, nor the far sound
Of wheels, stands fixed in sudden gloom profound,
And thoughts more stern than woe.

Over those heights
Untrod, nor to be trodden, let thy soul
Pass like a fleeting sunshine. Let it glide
Over the summit, southward, and descend
Where, thro' black mountains, a great river of snow
Banked by two Alps, from the eternal source
Whiter than clouds between the awful shores
Shines to the valley. Meantime we below

128

Tread the dark vale uplooking; or sit long,
With hopeless upturned eyes, as one let down
Into the abyss of everlasting night,
From the impossible deep should gaze in vain
Up through the silent chaos to the skirts
Of ordered Nature. What is he, unseen,
Who with the dreadful glacier as a sceptre
Touches the vale, and in his left hand holds
Yon rounded summit as an orb of state?
Thou canst not see them now, but forth to meet
The sovereign symbol, venerable woods
Climb the huge steep where age and pride allow,
And send their lither progeny to scale
The bleaker rock, ambitious. These, inured,
Attain the lower precipice, nor blench,
Storm-bred: but these fall back aghast in sight
Of everlasting Winter, where, snow-borne,
In his white realm, for ever white, he sits
Invisible to men; and in his works
Gives argument of that which, seen, makes faint
Aspiring Nature, and his throne a mount
Not to be touched. On either wilderness
A snow-land spreads along the level skies.
Now from the eastward midnight draweth nigh,
When all things rest from labour. As she goes
Her vestments floating shut out moon and stars
Mysterious; and she breathes before her face
Darkness where all is dark. Mute goeth she,

129

And silently on either hand unyokes
The willing mountains from beneath their load
Even now dispersing while the valley shakes,
And in his bed the sleeping peasant stirs,
And dreams of thunder. They, beheld no more,
Leave only to the cataracts, and thee,
The great snow baseless in mid-heaven, self-shown,
Out-stretched and equal, like supporting wings,
Or thro' the windy and tumultuous dark
Down the long glacier sounding to the vale.
There was a legend wild, whispered at eve,
Late round the dying watch-fires to awed men,
In those dead seasons whence our Danish sires,
Of the Great Arctic Ghost, the efficient power
And apparition of the frozen North,
The mystic swan of Norna, the dread bird
Of destiny, world wide, with roaring wings,
Flapping the ice-wind and the avalanche,
And white and terrible as polar snows.
By them unseen behold it! thro' the night
Swooping from heaven, its head to earth, its neck
Down-streaming from the cloud; above the cloud
Its great vans thro' a rolling dust of stars
Thunderous descending in the rush of fate.’

After Mont Blanc one may sit down unblamed.
Eh! this is tempting—these old eyes were dull
Not to see this at room's-length! A veiled frame!

130

Reverently set in honour, and once wreathed,
It seems, with living flowers now long, long, dead!
The veil of funeral black, embrowned with dust!
A portrait as I guess—I'll see it.

Enter Balder.
Balder.
Hold!
'Tis sacred!

Doctor.
Pardon, friend, you make me nervous,—
I thought these heads said ‘Hold.’

Balder.
They had cried out
If I had held my peace. A time may come
To raise that veil. Not now.

Doctor.
Your invalid?

Balder.
Not yet returned. I'll fetch her.
[Goes to window.
Look here, Paul!
That figure stealing down the linden grove!
'Tis Evening, or 'tis she! she comes! she comes!

Doctor.
'Tis a most happy symptom. Let her take
Her will. I'll wait.

Balder.
Good God! she turns aside
From the field-path into the winding track
We used in other days.

Doctor.
Still happier sign!
Nay, I'll not hurry her.

Balder.
Thanks, thanks.

Doctor.
But, friend,

131

Hast thou no song to wear the hour away:
I'm weary.

Balder.
Paul, thou art an emperor!
Decree.

Doctor.
Thou hadst of old ‘a song of seasons,’
With dainty amours and a fire-side close
Most comfortable.

Balder.
Ay, an evensong.
[Goes to his harp, and sings.
In the spring twilight, in the coloured twilight,
Whereto the latter primroses are stars,
And early nightingale
Letteth her love adown the tender wind,
That thro' the eglantine
In mixed delight the fragrant music bloweth
On to me,
Where in the twilight, in the coloured twilight,
I sit beside the thorn upon the hill.
The mavis sings upon the old oak tree
Sweet and strong,
Strong and sweet,
Soft, sweet, and strong,
And with his voice interpreteth the silence
Of the dim vale when Philomel is mute!
The dew lies like a light upon the grass,
The cloud is as a swan upon the sky,
The mist is as a brideweed on the moon.
The shadows new and sweet

132

Like maids unwonted in the dues of joy
Play with the meadow flowers,
And give with fearful fancies more and less,
And come, and go, and flit
A brief emotion in the moving air,
And now are stirred to flight, and now are kind,
Unset, uncertain, as the cheek of Love.
As tho' amid the eve
Stood Spring with fluttering breast,
And like a butterfly upon a flower,
Spreading and closing with delight's excess,
A-sudden fanned and shut her tinted wings.
In the spring twilight, in the coloured twilight,
Ere Hesper, eldest child of Night, run forth
On mountain-top to see
If Day hath left the dale,
And hears, well-pleased, the dove
From ancient elm and high
In murmuring dreams still bid the sun good-night,
And sound of lowing kine,
And echoes long and clear,
And herdsman's evening call,
And bells of penning folds,
Sweet and low;
Oh maid, as fair as thou
Behold the young May moon!
Oh! happy, happy maid,
With love as young as she

133

In the spring twil ght, in the coloured twilight,
Meet, meet me, by the thorn upon the hill.
[Interlude of Music.
At the midsummer, at the high midsummer,
Deep in the darkness let me sit embowered
All alone;
What time the children of the earth and heaven,
As of two houses whom a feud divides,
Meet in the mingling mystery of midnight,
And melting clouds sink low with woers' tears,
Felt but unseen, dropping a balm of joy
Whereto the love-touched leaves
Tremble and whisper thro' the gentle land.
The incense riseth and the incense falleth
And all the stolen hour is stirred with kisses,
And silent loves constrain the passionate time;
Rich loves that as they list
Exchange and take and give
Unmeted mede and debts for ever due.
And sweets are mixed along the languid air
Like balmy breath of lovers warm and near,
And glowing faces meeting thro' the dark.
Hush! for the world stands still
Held in mere joy, as nought on earth would lose
The happy place and moment where it stood.
Hush! o'er a stillness, still as Love's delight,
Hearts gushing, bosoms heaving, moving arms
Winding, unwinding; lips that close and part

134

And love still ending and beginning; Hush!
Put back the dawn, O Phosphor! Set again!
Fall like a sweet drop from the honeyed heavens!
Go down, and carried by a tender cloud!
The exquisite best moment of the night
Sinks down with thee. This is the ecstasy!
It sheds, it sheds! The night is filled with flowers,
——The viewless night, faint night, the yielding night,
The favouring night,—with flowers and happy rain!
As tho' to-morrow's blossoms spreading odours
As they float
Soft thro' the season, shy thro' the dark season,
Like a warm dew sank murmuring from the skies.
[Interlude of Music.

Fall, fall, fall,
Fall, fall, fall,
Oh orchard fruit fall from the fading tree,
Fall fruit of Autumn on the sullen sod,
Heavy and dead as clods into a grave.
Fall, fall, fall,
Fall, fall, fall,
Lone lingering rose thou knowest all must die!
Canst thou convince the breeze of spring, or blush
The summer thro' the cheeks of sallow day?
Thou, sick with solitude, and blanched with tears?
Fall, fall, fall,
Fall, fall, fall,
Sere leaf that quiverest thro' the sad still air,

135

Sere leaf that waverest down the sluggish wind,
Sere leaf that whirlest on the Autumn gust,
Free in the ghastly anarchy of death.
The sad still air which as a alkahest,
Potent and silent doth dissolve the year;
The sluggish wind that as a red stream slow
With carnage welters dull, and steams with death;
The sudden gust that like a headsman wild,
Uplifteth Beauty by her golden hair,
To show the world that she is dead indeed!
Fall, fall, fall,
Fall, fall, fall,
Fall twilight rain that dost not strive nor cry,
But chillest all the time with silent sorrow;
And not a wind does violence, nor a plaint
Stirs the dank quiet of the latter leaves;
But—as in speechless looks of him who stands,
Withered and wan by the wayside of Fate,
Timeless, unwelcome, all his better lot
Outlived, and the dear fashion of his day
And race forgotten, bended to his ill,
And lifting not the unavailing voice
Which no man heedeth—lorn and stillest tears
Grow in the fade eyes of the relict world.

[Interlude of Music.

Trim the lamp,
Pile the fire;
Brim the cup,

136

Touch the strings;
Sigh of love,
Sing of joy;
Trill of maids,
Chant of men!

Oh the young,
And the fair;
Oh the love,
And the wine;
Log of Yule,
Log of Yule,
In thy glamour
They shine!

For an hour
We are gods,
And of all
Love hath given
Lacking none
From our world
See the sun
Of our days!

Round the forms
That to-day
Blushed with life
Meet and smile
All the shapes

137

Of the past
In the light
Glimmer pale.

Early loves,
Friends of yore,
Ancient eyes,
Voices old,
Where the blaze
Charms the air
By our hearth
Come again.

And the sounds
And the dreams
And the quick
And the dead
In spell-dance
Move round me,
In murmur
And maze.

Oh ye Loves!
Oh ye Days!
Oh ye Dead!
Oh ye Dreams!
Bar the door,
Bar the door,
With a shout,
Shut them in!

138

For all the outer world is rocked in war!
The powers of harm break faith, and in mad might
Yell for the rout and will not be denied!
Even now the hungry sea begins to wreck,
And the impatient storms, eager for ill,
Bide not the expected signal, but blow out
The lingering Light that flickered in the west.
To-day is dead an hour before his time!
Good spells are broken, and the shrieking night,
Down from the haunted and mysterious hills,
Comes black and shuddering, wrapped about with snows,
Like a starved Ethiop sheeted from the grave.