Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

‘Orpheus laudes Deorum cantans et reboans, Sirenum voces confudit et summovit: meditationes enim rerum divinarum voluptates sensûs non tantum potestate, sed etiam suavitate superant.’—Lord Bacon, Sapientia Veterum.

High on the poop, with many a godlike peer,
With heroes and with kings, the flower of Greece,
That gathered at his word from far and near,
To snatch the guarded fleece,

Great Jason stood; nor ever from the soil
The anchor's brazen tooth unfastenëd,
Till, auspicating so his glorious toil,
From golden cup he shed

Libations to the Gods, to highest Jove,
To Waves and prospering Winds, to Night and Day,
To all by whom befriended they might prove
A favourable way.

With him the twins, one mortal, one divine,
Of Leda, and the Strength of Hercules;
And Tiphys, steersman through the perilous brine,
And many more with these:

Great father, Peleus, of a greater son,
And Atalanta, martial queen, was here;
And that supreme Athenian, nobler none,
And Idmon, holy seer:

Nor Orpheus pass unnamed, though from the rest
Apart, he leaned upon that lyre divine,
Which once in heaven his glory should attest,
Set there, a sacred sign:

But when auspicious thunders pealed on high,
Unto its chords and to his chant sublime
The joyful heroes, toiling manfully,
With measured strokes kept time.

Then when that keel divided first the waves,
Them Chiron cheered from Pelion's piny crown,
And wondering sea-nymphs rose from ocean caves,
And all the Gods looked down.

The bark divine, itself instinct with life,
Went forth, and baffled ocean's wildest shocks,
Eluding, though with pain and arduous strife,
Those huge encountering rocks;

And force and fraud o'ercome, and peril past,
The hard-won trophy raised in open view,
Through prosperous floods was bringing home at last
Its high heroic crew;

Till now they cried (Ææa left behind,
And the dead waters of the Cronian main),
‘No peril more upon our path we find,
Safe haven soon we gain:’

When, as they spake, sweet sounds upon the breeze
Came to them, melodies till then unknown,
And, blended into one delight with these,
Sweet odours sweetly blown—

Sweet odours wafted from the flowery isle,
Sweet music breathëd by the Sirens three,
Who there lie wait, all passers to beguile,
Fair monsters of the sea!

Fair monsters foul, that with their magic song
And beauty to the shipman wandering
Worse peril than disastrous whirlpools strong,
Or fierce sea-robbers bring.

Sometimes upon the diamond rocks they leant,
Sometimes they sate upon the flowery lea
That sloped towàrd the wave, and ever sent
Shrill music o'er the sea.

One piped, one sang, one swept the golden lyre;
And thus to forge and fling a threefold chain
Of linkëd harmony the three conspire,
O'er land and hoary main.

The winds, suspended by the charmëd song,
Shed treacherous calm about that fatal isle;
The waves, as though the halcyon o'er its young
Were always brooding, smile;

And every one that listens, presently
Forgetteth home, and wife, and children dear,
All noble enterprise and purpose high,
And turns his pinnace here,—

He turns his pinnace, warning taking none
From the plain doom of all that went before,
Whose bones lie bleaching in the wind and sun,
And whiten all the shore.

He cannot heed,—so sweet unto him seems
To reap the harvest of the promised joy;
The wave-worn man of such secure rest dreams,
So guiltless of annoy.

—The heroes and the kings, the wise, the strong,
That won the fleece with cunning and with might,
They too are taken in the net of song,
Snared in that false delight;

Till ever loathlier seemed all toil to be,
And that small space they yet must travel o'er,
Stretched, an immeasurable breadth of sea,
Their fainting hearts before.

‘Let us turn hitherward our bark,’ they cried,

Mr. Holden has done me the honour to include more than one translation from this poem in his Folia Silvulæ, pp. 342, 343. This is from his own pen.

Huc feriantes ibimus, ibimus,
Ridens amœnum quo vocat insula,
Paulisper obliti laboris
Præteriti simul ac futuri;
Et mox refecti corpora obibimus
Rursus laborem, si superest labor,
Rursusque pectemus marinam
Præpete canitiem carinâ?
Quo dia proles tenditis, immemor
Famæ prioris, sanguinis immemor?
Quid voltis? at quondam pigebit
Degeneres maculasse nomen.
Blandis sed illi vocibus illicum
Iam iamque prensant litora creduli;
Fractis nec advertere fœdam
Undique navigiis harenam,
Aut visa nullos incutiunt metus:
Neque usta ventis, usta caloribus,
Quis omnis albescebat ora
Ossa monent revocare gressum.

‘And, bathed in blisses of this happy isle,
Past toil forgetting and to come, abide
In joyfulness awhile;

‘And then, refreshed, our tasks resume again,
If other tasks we yet are bound unto;
Combing the hoary tresses of the main
With sharp swift keel anew.’

O heroes, that had once a nobler aim,
O heroes sprung from many a godlike line,
What will ye do, unmindful of your fame,
And of your race divine?

But they, by these prevailing voices now
Lured, evermore drew nearer to the land,
Nor saw the wrecks of many a goodly prow,
Which strewed that fatal strand;

Or seeing, feared not; warning taking none
From the plain doom of all that went before,
Whose bones lay bleaching in the wind and sun,
And whitened all the shore.

And some impel through foaming billows now
The hissing keel, and some tumultuous stand
Upon the deck, or crowd about the prow,
Waiting to leap to land.

And them this fatal lodestar of delight
Had drawn to ruin wholly, but for one
Of their own selves, who swept his lyre with might,
Calliope's great son.

He singing, (for mere words were now in vain,
That melody so led all souls at will),
Singing he played, and matched that earth-born strain
With music sweeter still.

Of holier joy he sang, more true delight,
In other happier isles for them reserved,
Who, faithful here, from constancy and right
And truth have never swerved;

How evermore the tempered ocean gales
Breathe round those hidden islands of the blest,
Steeped in the glory spread, when daylight fails
Far in the sacred West;

How unto them, beyond our mortal night,
Shines evermore in strength the golden day;
And meadows with purpureal roses bright
Bloom round their feet alway;

And plants of gold—some burn beneath the sea,
And some, for garlands apt, the land doth bear,
And lacks not many an incense-breathing tree,
Enriching all that air.

Nor need is more, with sullen strength of hand
To vex the stubborn earth, or cleave the main;
They dwell apart, a calm heroic band,
Not tasting toil or pain.

Nor sang he only of unfading bowers,
Where they a tearless painless age fulfil,
In fields Elysian spending blissful hours,
Remote from every ill;

But of pure gladness found in temperance high,
In duty owned, and reverenced with awe,
Of man's true freedom, which may only lie
In servitude to law;

And how 'twas given through virtue to aspire
To golden seats in ever calm abodes;
Of mortal men, admitted to the quire
Of high immortal Gods.

He sang—a mighty melody divine,
Waking deep echoes in the heart of each—
Reminded whence they drew their royal line,
And to what heights might reach.

And all the while they listened, them the speed
Bore onward still of favouring wind and tide,
That when their ears were vacant to give heed
To any sound beside,

The feeble echoes of that other lay,
Which held awhile their senses thralled and bound,
Were in the distance fading quite away,
A dull unheeded sound.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.
[_]

FROM THE FOURTH GEORGIC, 452-516.

Aristæus, all whose bees have perished by disease and hunger, inquires of Proteus the cause of this disaster and the remedy. Proteus replies:

Not without wrath of heaven has thee this pest overtaken.
Great as thy plague was thy crime: his lost wife angrily mourning
Orpheus, meriting ill that grievous doom that befell him,
Stirs (if no fates avert), for thee these righteous revenges.
She, while she fled from thee in headlong haste and unwary,
Nigh to her death, that snake of folds enormous beheld not,
Coiled in the brake at her feet, and guarding the banks of the river.
But then the choir of her equals, the Dryads, with shrill lamentation
Filled the high mountain tops; nor wanted voices of weeping
All o'er that rugged land, by Mars beloved; and the rivers
Mourned, and with high Pangæum Athenian Orithyia.
He with his hollow shell his sick soul loving to solace,
Thee on the lonely sea shore, his sweetest partner, sang ever,

Thee when the day was breaking, and thee when the day had departed.
Yea, and the jaws of hell, the high portals of Pluto's dominion,
And that forest that glooms with a night of darkness and terror
Ent'ring, he came to the ghosts, he came to the Monarch, the dreadful,
Came to the hearts that know not to melt at man's supplication.
But, disturbed by his song, from the lowest recesses of Hades
Flitted the shadows thin, weak forms of the dwellers in darkness;
These than the birds not fewer, the thousands that hide in the branches,
Evening them from the mountains or storms of winter compelling;
Matrons, and men of old, and bodies of glorious heroes,
Left by the breath of life, and boys, and maidens unmarried,
And on the funeral pile youths stretched in the sight of their parents;
Whom the black slime all round, and the reed deform of Cocytus,
Whom with its sullen tide that marsh unlovely confined there
Keeps, and the river of hate with a ninefold girdle coerces.
Yea, and astonied then Death's halls and secret pavilions
Stood, and the Furies three, their locks with pale vipers enwoven;

While with his triple jaws stood Cerberus yawning, and hurt not;
And, by the storm undriven, stayed moveless the wheel of Ixion.
And now, retracing his path, he had every danger surmounted,
And his beloved and restored to the upper air was approaching,
Pacing behind—for such was the law Proserpina gave them—
When, too heedless a lover, him madness seized of a sudden,
Such as might well find grace, if grace dwelt ever in Hades.
His Eurydice he on the verge and confines of daylight,
Too, too fond and forgetful! must pause and look back on; with that look
Wasted was all his toil, and the laws of the tyrant remorseless
Broken; the Stygian pools three times with a shrieking resounded.
Orpheus,' she cried, ‘who thee and me has ruined, the wretched?
Whence this madness immense? lo! the cruel destinies call me
Back, and my swimming eyes with a weight of slumber are sealing.
And now adieu; I am borne by a night of darkness surrounded,
Stretching to thee,—ah, thine no longer,—the hands that are helpless.’
Thus exclaimed she, and straight, like smoke that mingles in thin air,
Out of his sight she vanished, another way fleeing; nor ever

Him idly grasping at shadows, and many things yearning to utter,
Saw she again at all; nor him hell's ferryman henceforth
Suffered to pass that lake which each from the other divided.
What should he do, or whither, of wife twice widowed, betake him?
Move with what voice, what weeping, the powers of hell or of heaven?
Cold in the Stygian bark she already was crossing the river:
Him they report for seven whole months in order unbroken,
Under a lofty rock, by Strymon's desolate waters,
This among icy caves to have wept and weeping recounted;
Soothing the tigers with song, and with song compelling the forest;
As when, mourning beneath some poplar shade, Philomela
Wails for her ravished young, whom the cruel ploughman observing
Has from the nest withdrawn, an unfledged brood; but the mother
Grieves on a bough all night, her pitiful descant repeating,
Descant forlorn, that fills wide spaces with sad lamentation.

NATURAL MYTHOLOGY.

THE PHŒNIX.
When Adam ate of that forbidden food,
Sole bird that shared not in his sin was I:
And so my life is evermore renewed,
And I among the dying never die.

THE PELICAN.
I am the bird that from my bleeding breast
Draw the dear stream which nourishes my brood;
And feebly unto men his love attest,
True pelican, that feeds them with his blood.

THE HALCYON.
For twice seven days, in winter's middle rage,
The winds are hushed, the billows are at rest;
Heaven all for me their fury doth assuage,
While I am brooding o'er my fluctuant nest.

THE COCK.
What time an ass with horrid bray you hear,
Believe he sees a wicked sprite at hand;
But when I make my carol loud and clear,
Know that an angel doth before me stand.

THE SAME.
I, clapping on my sides my wings with might,
First to myself the busy morn proclaim:
Who others will to tasks and toil incite,
Should first himself have summoned to the same.

THE PEACOCK.
I, glorying in my tail's extended pride,
See my foul legs, and then I shriek outright;
So shrieks a human soul, which has descried
Its baseness 'mid vainglorious self-delight.

THE EAGLE.
I no degenerate progeny will raise,
But try my callow offspring, which will look
In the sun's eye with peremptory gaze;
Nor feebler nurslings in my nest will brook.

THE ERMINE.
To miry places me the hunters drive,
Where I my robe of purest white must stain;
Then yield I, nor for life will longer strive;
For spotless death, not spotted life, is gain.

THE MANDRAKE.
I from the earth with bleeding roots am wrung,
With shriekings heard far off and keen lament:
So thou and all who to the world have clung
Shall from the world with piercing cries be rent.

THE BEES.
We light on fruits and flowers and purest things;
For if on carcasses or aught unclean,
When homeward we returned, with mortal stings
Would slay us the keen watchers round our queen.

THE DIAMOND.
I only polished am in mine own dust;
Nought else against my hardness will prevail:
And thou, O man, in thine own sufferings must
Be polished: every meaner art will fail.

THE NIGHTINGALE.
Leaning my bosom on a pointed thorn,
I bleed, and bleeding sing my sweetest strain;
For sweetest songs of saddest hearts are born,
And who may here dissever love and pain?

THE SNAKE.
Myself I force some narrowest passage through,
Leaving my old and wrinkled skin behind,
And issuing forth in splendour of my new:
Hard entrance into life all creatures find.

THE TIGER.
Hearing sweet music, as in fell despite,
Enraged, myself I do in pieces tear:
The melody of other men's delight
There are of you who can as little bear.

FALLING STARS.
Angels are we, who once from heaven exiled,
Would scale its crystal battlements again;
But have their keen-eyed watchers not beguiled,
Thrust by their glittering lances back amain.

THE YOUNG CHILDREN.
Fair sight are we, white doves, which refuge sure
Are finding in a tall rock's rifted side;
Types of a fairer thing, of children pure,
Which early did their lives with Jesu hide.

MORNING.
Day conquers: night, that was day's foe, is dead,
And right across the morning's threshold lies:
Day's golden sword its crimson blood hath shed,
Which overfloweth all the eastern skies.

THE FOUR EVANGELISTS.
As those four streams that had in Eden birth,
And did the whole world water, four ways going,
With spiritual freshness fill our thirsty earth
Four fountains from one sacred mountain flowing.

ST. STEPHEN (Στεφανος).
Of all which thou shouldst be thy glorious name
Was prophecy and omen long before,
Who, being Stephen, from the first didst claim
The crown at length thy conquering temples wore

[Oh thou of dark forebodings drear]

Oh thou of dark forebodings drear,
Oh thou of such a faithless heart,
Hast thou forgotten what thou art
That thou hast ventured so to fear?

No weed on ocean's bosom cast,
Borne by its never-resting foam
This way and that, without a home,
Till flung on some bleak shore at last:

But thou the lotus, which above
Swayed here and there by wind and tide,
Yet still below doth fixed abide,
Fast rooted in the eternal Love.

THE OIL OF MERCY.

The traditions of a relation between the Tree of Life which was set in Paradise, and the Cross on which hung the Saviour of the world, are almost infinite; or, rather, the one deep idea of their identity has clothed itself in innumerable forms. They constitute one of the richest portions of what may perhaps, without offence, be termed the mythology of the Christian Church. That which I have followed here is given in the Evangelium Nicodemi, c. 19 (Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, vol. i. p. 684). They have been twice wrought up into sublime dramatic poems by Calderon; once in his Auto, El Arbol del mejor Fruto; and again in that which is indeed only the same poem in a later and more perfect form, La Sibila del Oriente. We have the same tradition of Seth going to the gates of Paradise in the fine old Cornish Mystery, The Creation of the World, and references to it are frequent in the popular literature of the Middle Ages; see, for instance, Goethe's recension of the Reineke Fuchs, the tenth book; and Mandeville's Travels. Rückert (see p. 24) gives the tradition in somewhat a different shape. This poem, which owes much to Calderon, is written in Spanish assonants, in which words are considered to rhyme which have the same vowel-sounds, though the consonants are different; thus angel and raiment, having the same vowel-sounds, a—e, are perfect assonant rhymes. As in the Persian Ghazel, one rhyme runs through the whole poem, in which all the alternate lines, beginning with the second, terminate: and of course the rhythmical effect must be judged, not by any half-dozen lines apart, but by the total impression which the poem continuously read leaves on the ear.

Many beauteous spots the earth
Still may keep; but brighter, fairer,
Did that long-lost Eden show
Than the loveliest that remaineth:
So what marvel, when our Sire
Was from thence expelled, he waited
Lingering with a fond regret
Round those holy happy places
Once his own, while innocence
Was his bright sufficient raiment?
Long he lingered there, and saw
Up from dark abysmal spaces
Four strong rivers rushing ever:
Saw the mighty wall exalted
High as heaven, and on its heights
Glimpses of the fiery Angel.
Long he lingered near, with hope
Which had never quite abated,
That one day the righteous sentence,
Dooming him to stern disgraces,
Should be disannulled, and he
In his first bliss reinstated.

But when mortal pangs surprised him,
By an unseen foe assailëd,

Seth he called, his dearest son,
Called him to his side, and faintly
Him addressed—‘My son, thou knowest
Of what sufferings partaker,
Of what weariness and toil,
Of what sickness, pain and danger
I have been, since that stern hour
Which from Eden's precincts drave me.
But thou dost not know that God,
When to exile forth I farëd,
Homeless wanderer through the world,
Thus with gracious speech bespake me:
—“Though thou mayst not here continue,
In these blessëd happy places,
As before from pain exempt,
Suffering, toil, and mortal ailment,
Think not thou shalt therefore be
Of my loving care forsaken:
Rather shall that Tree of Life,
In the middle garden planted,
Once a precious balm distil,
Which to thee applied, thine ailments
Shall be all removed, and thou
Made of endless life partaker.”—
With these words He cheered me then,
Words that have remained engraven
On my bosom's tablets since.
Go then, dear my son, oh hasten
Unto Eden's guarded gate,
Tell thine errand to the Angel;
And that fiery sentinel
To the Tree will guide thee safely,
Where it stands, aloft, alone,
In the garden's middle spaces:

Thence bring back that oil of mercy,
Ere my lamp of life be wasted.’

When his father's feeble words
Seth had heard, at once he hastened,
Hoping to bring back that oil,
Ere the light had wholly faded
From his father's eyes, the lamp
Of his life had wholly wasted.
O'er the plain besprent with flowers,
With ten thousand colours painted
In that spring time of the year,
By Thelassar on he hastened,
Made no pause, till Eden's wall
Rose an ever-verdant barrier,
High as heaven's great roof, that shines
As with bright carbuncles paven.
There the son of Adam paused,
For above him hung the Angel
In the middle air suspense,
With his swift sword glancing naked.
Down upon his face he fell,
By that sun-bright vision dazëd.
‘Child of man’—these words he heard,
‘Rise, and say what thing thou cravest.’
All his father's need he told,
And how now his father waited,
In his mighty agony
For that medicine yearning greatly.
‘But thou seekest’—(this reply
Then he heard) ‘thou seekest vainly
For that oil of mercy yet,
Nor will tears nor prayers avail thee.
Go then quickly back, and bring

These my words to him, thy parent,
Parent of the race of men.
He and they in faith and patience
Must abide, long years must roll
Ere the precious fruit be gathered,
Ere the Oil of Mercy flow
From the blessëd Tree and sacred,
In the Paradise of God:
Nor till then will be obtainëd
The strong medicine of life,
Healing every mortal ailment;
Nor thy sire till then be made
Of immortal life a sharer.
Fear not that his heart will sink
When these tidings back thou bearest,
Rather thou shalt straightway see
All his fears and pangs abated,
And by faith allayed to meekness
Every wish and thought impatient;
Hasten back then—thy return,
Strongly yearning, he awaiteth:
Hasten back then.’

On the word
To his father back he hastened,
Found him waiting his return
In his agony, his latest:
Told him of what grace to come,
Of what sure hope he was bearer:
And beheld him on that word,
Every fear and pang assuagëd,
And by faith allayed to meekness
Every wish and thought impatient,
Like a child resign himself
Unto sweet sleep, calm and painless.

THE TREE OF LIFE.

[_]

FROM AN OLD LATIN POEM.

There is a spot, of men believed to be
Earth's centre, and the place of Adam's grave,
And here a slip that from a barren tree
Was cut, fruit sweet and salutary gave—
Yet not unto the tillers of the land;
That blessëd fruit was culled by other hand.

The shape and fashion of the tree attend;
From undivided stem at first it sprung;
Thence in two arms its branches did outsend,
Like sail-yards whence the flowing sheet is hung,
Or as a yoke that in the furrow stands,
When the tired steers are loosened from their bands.

Three days the slip from which this tree should spring
Appeared as dead—then suddenly it bore,
(While earth and heaven stood awed and wondering)
Harvest of vital fruit;—the fortieth more
Beheld it touch heaven's summit with its height,
And shroud its sacred head in clouds of light.

Yet the same while it did put forth below
Branches twice six, these too with fruit endued,
Which stretching to all quarters might bestow
Upon all nations medicine and food,
Which mortal men might eat, and eating be
Sharers henceforth of immortality.

So fared it; but when fifty days were gone,
A breath divine, a mighty storm of heaven
On all the branches swiftly lighted down,
To which a rich nectareous taste was given,
And all the heavy leaves that on them grew
Distilled henceforth a sweet and heavenly dew.

Beneath that tree's great shadow on the plain
A fountain bubbled up, whose lymph serene
Nothing of earthly mixture might distain:
Fountain so pure not anywhere was seen
In all the world, nor on whose marge the earth
Put flowers of such unfading beauty forth.

And thither did all people, young and old,
Matrons and virgins, rich and poor, a crowd
Stream ever, who, whenas they did behold
Those branches with their golden burden bowed,
Stretched forth their hands, and eager glances threw
Towàrd the fruit distilling that sweet dew.

Yet touch they might not these, much less allay
Their hunger, howsoe'er they might desire,
Till the foul tokens of their former way
They had washed off, the dust and sordid mire,
And cleansed their bodies in that holy wave,
Able from every spot and stain to save.

But when within their mouths they had received
Of that immortal fruit the gust divine,
Straight of all sickness were their souls relieved,
The weak grew strong;—and tasks they did decline
As overgreat for them, they shunned no more,
And things they deemed they could not bear, they bore.

But woe, alas! some daring to draw near
That sacred stream, did presently retire,
Drew wholly back again, and did not fear
To stain themselves in all their former mire,
That fruit rejecting from their mouths again,
Not any more their medicine, but their bane.

Oh happy they, who not withdrawing so,
First in that fountain make them pure and fair,
And who from thence unto the branches go,
With power upon the fruitage hanging there:
Thence by the branches of the lofty tree
Ascend to heaven—The Tree of Life oh, see!

THE TREE OF LIFE.

[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF RÜCKERT.

When Adam's latest breath was nearly gone,
To Paradise the Patriarch sent his son;

A branch to fetch him from the Tree of Life,
Hoping to taste of it ere life was done.

Seth brought the branch, but ere he had arrived,
His father's spirit was already flown.

Then planted they the twig on Adam's grave,
And it was tended still from son to son.

It grew while Joseph in the dungeon lay,
It grew while Israel did in Egypt groan.

Sweet odours gave the blossoms of the tree,
When David harping sat upon his throne.

Dry was the tree, when from the ways of God
Went erring in his wisdom Solomon:

Yet the world hoped it would revive anew,
When David's stock should give another Son.

Faith saw in spirit this, the while she sat
Mourning beside the floods of Babylon.

And when the eternal lightning flashed from heaven.
The tree asunder burst with jubilant tone.

To the dry trunk this grace from God was given,
The wood of Passion should from thence be won.

The blind world fashioned out of it the Cross,
And its Salvation nailed with scorn thereon.

Then bore the Tree of Life ensanguined fruit,
Which whoso tasteth, life shall be his loan.

Oh look, oh look, how grows the Tree of Life;
By storms established more, not overthrown.

May the whole world beneath its shadow rest!
Half has its shelter there already won.

PARADISE.

[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF RÜCKERT.

Oh! Paradise must show more fair
Than any earthly ground;
And therefore longs my spirit there
Right quickly to be found.

In Paradise a stream must flow
Of everlasting love:
Each tear of longing shed below
Therein a pearl will prove.

In Paradise a breath of balm
All anguish must allay,
Till every anguish growing calm,
Even mine shall flee away.

And there the tree of stillest peace
In verdant spaces grows:
Beneath it can one never cease
To dream of blest repose.

A cherub at the gate must be,
Far off the world to fray,
That its rude noises reach not me,
To fright my dream away.

My heart, that weary ship, at last
Safe haven there will gain,
And on the breast will slumber fast
The wakeful infant, Pain.

For every thorn that pierced me here
The rose will there be found;
With joy, earth's roses brought not near,
My head will there be crowned.

There all delights will blossom forth,
That here in bud expire,
And from all mourning weeds of earth
Be wove a bright attire.

All here I sought with vain pursuit,
Will freely meet me there,
As from green branches golden fruit,
Fair flowers from gardens fair.

My youth, that by me swept amain,
On swift wing borne away,
And Love, that suffered me to drain
His nectar for a day,—

These, never wishing to depart,
Will me for ever bless,
Their darling fold unto the heart,
And comfort and caress.

And there the Loveliness, whose glance
From far did on me gleam,
But whose unveilëd countenance
Was only seen in dream,

Will, meeting all my soul's desires,
Unveil itself to me,
When to the choir of starry lyres
Shall mine united be.

THE HOLY EUCHARIST.

[_]

FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON.

Honey in the lion's mouth,
Emblem mystical, divine,
How the sweet and strong combine;
Cloven rock for Israel's drouth;
Treasure-house of golden grain,
By our Joseph laid in store,
In his brethren's famine sore
Freely to dispense again;
Dew on Gideon's snowy fleece;
Well from bitter changed to sweet;
Shew-bread laid in order meet,
Bread whose cost doth not increase
Though no rain in April fall;
Horeb's manna, freely given,
Showered in white dew from heaven,
Marvellous, angelical;
Weightiest bunch of Canaan's vine;
Cake to strengthen and sustain
Through long days of desert pain;
Salem's monarch's bread and wine;—
Thou the antidote shalt be
Of my sickness and my sin,
Consolation, medicine,
Life and Sacrament to me.

THE PRODIGAL.

Why feedest thou on husks so coarse and rude?
I could not be content with angels' food.

How camest thou companion to the swine?
I loathed the courts of heaven, the choir divine.

Who bade thee crouch in hovel dark and drear?
I left a palace wide to hide me here.

Harsh tyrant's slave who made thee, once so free?
A father's rule too heavy seemed to me.

What sordid rags float round thee on the breeze?
I laid immortal robes aside for these.

An exile through the world who bade thee roam?
None, but I wearied of a happy home.

Why must thou dweller in a desert be?
A garden seemed not fair enough to me.

Why sue a beggar at the mean world's door?
To live on God's large bounty seemed so poor.

What has thy forehead so to earthward brought?
To lift it higher than the stars I thought.

LINES WRITTEN ON THE FIRST TIDINGS OF THE CABUL MASSACRES.

January 1842.

We sat our peaceful hearths beside,
Within our temples hushed and wide
We worshipped without fear:
With solemn rite, with festal blaze,
We welcomed in the earliest days
Of this new-coming year.

O ye that died, brave hearts and true,
How in those days it fared with you
We did not then surmise;
That bloody rout which still must seem
The fancy of a horrid dream,
Was hidden from our eyes:

But haunts us now by day and night
The vision of that ghastly flight,
Its shapes of haggard fear:
While still from many a mourning home
The wails of lamentation come,
And fill our saddened ear.

O England, bleeding at thy heart
For thy lost sons, a solemn part
Doth Heaven to thee assign.
High wisdom hast thou need to ask,
For vengeance is a fearful task,
And yet that task is thine.

Oh then fulfil it, not in pride,
Nor aught to passionate hate allied;
But know thyself to be
The justicer of righteous Heaven;
That unto thee a work is given,
A burden laid on thee.

So thine own heart from guilty stains
First cleanse, and then, for what remains,
That do with all thy might;
That with no faltering hand fulfil,
With no misgiving heart or will,
As dubious of the right:

That do, not answering wrong for wrong,
But witnessing that truth is strong,
And, outraged, bringeth woe.
'Tis this by lessons sad and stern,
To men who no way else would learn,
Which thou art set to show.

MOOLTAN.

‘A company of Moolraj's Muzubees, or outcasts turned Sikhs, led on the mob. It was an appalling sight; and Sirdar Khan Sing begged of Mr. Agnew to be allowed to wave a sheet, and sue for mercy. Weak in body from loss of blood, Agnew's heart failed him not. He replied, “The time for mercy is gone; let none be asked for. They can kill us two if they like, but we are not the last of the English; thousands of Englishmen will come down here when we are gone, and annihilate Moolraj, and his soldiers, and his fort!” The crowd now rushed in with horrible shouts; made Khan Sing prisoner, and pushing aside the servants with the butts of their muskets, surrounded the two wounded officers. Lieutenant Anderson, from the first, had been too much wounded even to move; and now Mr. Agnew was sitting by his bedside, holding his hand, and talking in English. Doubtless, they were bidding each other farewell for all time. . . . . . Anderson was hacked to death with swords, and afterwards the two bodies were dragged outside, and slashed and insulted by the crowd, then left all night under the sky.’—Edwardes, Year on the Punjaub Frontier, vol. ii. p. 58. ‘The besieging army did not march away to other fields without performing its last melancholy duty to the memory of Agnew and Anderson. The bodies of those officers were carefully—I may say affectionately—removed from the careless grave where they lay side by side; and, wrapped in Cashmere shawls, (with a vain but natural desire to obliterate all traces of neglect,) were borne by the soldiers of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers (Anderson's own regiment) to an honoured resting-place on the summit of Moolraj's citadel. By what way borne? Through the gate where they had been first assaulted? Oh, no! through the broad and sloping breach, which had been made by the British guns in the walls of the rebellious fortress of Mooltan.’—The Same, p. 588.

Bear them gently, bear them duly, up the broad and sloping breach
Of this torn and shattered city, till their resting-place they reach.

In the costly cashmeres folded, on the stronghold's top-most crown,
In the place of foremost honour, lay these noble relics down.

Here repose, for this is meetest, ye who here breathed out your life,
Ah! in no triumphant battle, but beneath the assassin's knife.

Hither bearing England's message, bringing England's just command,
Under England's ægis came ye to the chieftain of the land:

In these streets beset and wounded, hardly borne with life away,
Faint, and bleeding, and forsaken, in your helplessness ye lay.

But the wolves that once have tasted blood, will ravin still for more;
From the infuriate city rises high the wild and savage roar.

Near and nearer grows the tumult of the gathering murderous crew;
Tremble round those helpless couches an unarmed but faithful few:

‘Profitless is all resistance: let us then this white flag wave;
Ere it be too late, disdain not mercy at their hands to crave.’

But to no unworthy pleading would descend that noble twain:
‘Nay, for mercy sue not; ask not what to ask from these were vain.

‘We are two, betrayed and lonely; human help or hope is none;
Yet, O friends, be sure that England owns beside us many a son.

‘They may slay us; in our places multitudes will here be found,
Strong to hurl this guilty city with its murderers to the ground;

‘Yea, who stone by stone would tear it from its deep foundations strong,
Rather than to leave unpunished them that wrought this bloody wrong.’

Other words they changed between them, which none else could understand,
Accents of our native English, brothers grasping hand in hand.

So they died, the gallant-hearted! so from earth their spirits past,
Uttering words of lofty comfort each to each unto the last;

And we heed, but little heeded their true spirits far away,
All of wrong and coward outrage, heaped on the unfeeling clay.

—Lo! a few short moons have vanished, and the promised ones appear,
England's pledged and promised thousands, England's multitudes are here.

Flame around the blood-stained ramparts loud-voiced messengers of death,
Girdling with a fiery girdle, blasting with a fiery breath;

Ceasing not, till choked with corpses low is laid the murderers' hold,
And in his last lair the tiger toils of righteous wrath enfold.

Well, oh well—ye have not failed them who on England's truth relied,
Who on England's name and honour did in that dread hour confide:

Now one last dear duty render to the faithful and the brave,
What of earth they left behind them rescuing for a worthier grave.

Oh then, bear them, hosts of England, up the broad and sloping breach
Of this torn and shattered city, till their resting-place they reach.

In the costly cashmeres folded, on the rampart's topmost crown,
In the place of foremost honour, lay these noble relics down.

THE LOREY-LEY.

[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINE.

What makes me so heavy-hearted,
I ask of my heart in vain:
But a tale of the times departed
Haunts ever my heart and brain.

In the cool air it waxes dimmer,
And quietly flows the Rhine:
And the mountain summits glimmer
In the sunny evening shine.

There sits on the rocks a maiden,
In marvellous beauty there;
With gold her apparel is laden,
And she combs her golden hair:

And the comb is of gold and glistens,
And thereto she sings a song,
Which for every soul that listens
Has a potent spell and strong.

The boatman in light boat speeding,
When he hears it utters a cry,
No longer the rapids heeding,
But only gazing on high.

The stream is its wild waves flinging
O'er boat and boatman anon,
And 'tis this with her fairy singing
That the Lorey-ley has done.

HYMN TO OCEAN.

[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF RÜCKERT.

O cradle, whence the suns ascend, old Ocean divine;
O grave, whereto the suns descend, old Ocean divine:

O spreading in the calm of night thy mirror, wherein
The moon her countenance doth bend, old Ocean divine.

O thou that dost in midnights still thy chorus of waves
With dances of the planets blend, old Ocean divine:

The morning and the evening blooms are roses of thine,
Two roses that for thine are kenned, old Ocean divine.

O Amphitrite's panting breast, whose breathing doth make
The waves to fall and to ascend, old Ocean divine:

O womb of Aphrodite, bear thy beautiful child,
Abroad thy glory to commend, old Ocean divine.

Oh sprinkle thou with pearly dew earth's garland of spring,
For only thou hast pearls to spend, old Ocean divine.

All Naiads that from thee had sprung, commanded by thee,
Back to thy Nereid-dances tend, old Ocean divine.

What ships of thought sail forth on thee! Atlantis doth sleep
In silence at thine utmost end, old Ocean divine.

The goblets of the gods, from high Olympus that fall,
Thou dost on coral boughs suspend, old Ocean divine.

A diver in the sea of love my song is, that fain
Thy glory would to all commend, old Ocean divine.

I like the moon beneath thy waves with yearning would plunge;
Thence might I like the sun ascend, old Ocean divine.

SUNSET.
[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE.

Faust is watching the setting sun, and after some mournful reflections exclaims:

Yet the rich blessing which this hour bestows
Let us not mar with mournful thoughts like these:
See yonder where the sun of evening glows,
How gleam the green-girt cottages.
He stoops, he sinks—and overlived is day:
But he hastes on, to kindle life anew.
Ah! that no wing lifts me from earth away
Him to pursue, and evermore pursue:
Then should I in eternal evening-light
The hushed world at my feet behold,
See every vale in calm, and flaming every height,
And silver brooks see lost in floods of gold.
Then would not the wild mountain hinder more
My course divine with all its rugged heads:
Its heated bays even now the ocean spreads
My wondering eyes before.
Yet the god seems at last away to sink;
But the new impulse stirs with might:
I hasten his eternal beams to drink,
The day before me, and behind the night,
The heaven above me spread, and under me the sea:
Fair dream! which while I dwell on, he is gone.
Ah! that an actual wing may not so soon
Unto our spirit's wing united be,

And yet it is to each inbred.
That still his spirit forward, upward springs,
When hidden in blue spaces overhead
The lark his shattering carol sings;
When over pine-clad mountains soars
The eagle, spread upon the air,
When over seas and over moors
The crane doth to its home repair.

CONFIDENCES.

Sternly tolls the castle bell,
A departing sinner's knell.

‘Husband, truth must now be spoken
I to thee my faith have broken.’

‘Truth with truth repaid must be—
Wife, and I have poisoned thee.’

SONNET.

ON A BROTHER AND SISTER WHO DIED AT THE SAME TIME, ABERGELE, AUGUST 20, 1868.

Men said, who saw the tender love they bare
Each to the other, and their hearts so bound
And knit in one, that neither sought or found
A nearer tie than that affection rare—
How with the sad survivor will it fare,
When death shall for a season have undone
The links of that close love; and taking one,
The other leaves to draw unwelcome air?
And some perchance who loved them, would revolve
Sadly the sadness which on one must fall,
The lonely left by that dividing day.
Vain fears! for He who loved them best of all,
Mightier than we life's mysteries to solve,
In one fire-chariot bore them both away.

SONNET.

ON THE REVIEW OF THE VOLUNTEERS IN HYDE-PARK BY THE QUEEN, 1860.

No pause, no stay—a glorious hour or more,
And that loud-clashing music is not dumb,
For still the close battalions come and come,
As though all England the long pent-up store
Of her deliberate valour would outpour,
Not flaunting in war's liveries rich and gay,
But all in sober green and working gray,
O Lady of the land, thy feet before.
High beats thine heart, the Lady of a land
That breeds such men; and theirs beat proud and high,
Who only with step statelier and more grand
Would move beneath thy recompensing eye,
Girt, if that day should call them, to reply
On some dread field to duty's last demand.

IN MEMORIAM, G. P. C.

FEB. 27, 1881.

Gentle and brave, well skilled in that dread lore
Which mightiest nations dare not to unlearn;
Fair lot for thee had leapt from Fortune's urn,
Just guerdon of long toil; and more and more
We deemed was for her favourite in store;
Nor failed prophetic fancy to descry
Wreaths of high praise, and crowns of victory,
Which in our thought thy brows already wore.

But He who portions out our good and ill,
Willed an austerer glory should be thine,
And nearer to the Cross than to the Crown.
Then lay, ye mourners, there your burden down,
And hear calm voices from the inner shrine,
That whisper, Peace, and say, Be still, be still.

SONNET.

[He bade, as he was passing to his rest]

‘THE LATE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, DEAN STANLEY, DESIRED THAT HIS FUNERAL SERMON MIGHT BE PREACHED BY HIS DROTHER-IN-LAW BECAUSE HE HAD KNOWN HIM THE LONGEST.’

He bade, as he was passing to his rest,
And mused on some who might hereafter yearn
More of the fashion of his life to learn,
He bade that this by one might be expressed
Who knew him longest, and who knew him best;
And so, committing to skilled hands and true
The holding that life up in open view
From night to light, from death to life he prest.

O happy who in face of friend and foe
Dare, humbly bold, to challenge the dead years
All which they keep most hidden to reveal;
Who with the Christ depositing their fears,
Bid those who them did most entirely know
To set upon their lives Truth's final seal.

SONNET.

THE OPENING OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, MAY 1, 1862.

Sweet, and yet sad, those thousand voices rung,
Winding and travelling through the long defiles
Of courts and galleries and far-reaching aisles;
And bright the banners from proud arches sprung;
But not the less their drooping folds among
Lurked a dim hoard of grief; while over all,
Chastening, not marring, our high festival,
The shadow of an absent Greatness hung;
Absent, and yet in absence present more,
For all we owe to him, and might have owed,
For the rich gifts which, missing, we deplore,
Than if he were rejoicing at this hour,
We with him, that the seed his wisdom sowed
Had blossomed in this bright consummate flower.

[Man, the pomp and pride of earth]

[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF RÜCKERT.

Man, the pomp and pride of earth
Were not merely spread for thee;
Nature bade some part have birth
For her own delight and glee.

Therefore sings the nightingale,
While thou sleepest, in the night;
Flowers, the fairest ones, unveil
Half their beauty ere daylight.

Soars the loveliest butterfly
All untracked by eye of thine;
Pearls in ocean's bosom lie,
Jewels in the unwrought mine.

Richly, child, are sky and plain
Furnished for thee; be content
That thy mother too retain
For herself some ornament.

THE CURSE OF CORN-HOARDERS.

Oh, time it was of famine sore,
That ever sorer grew;
And many hungered, who before
Rich plenty only knew.

For year by year the labouring hind
Bewailed his fruitless toil,
And ever seemed some spell to bind
The hard, unthankful soil.

His seed-corn rotted in the ground,
And did not more appear;
Or if in blade and stalk was found,
It withered in the ear.

And now unseasonable rains,
And now untimely drought,
Or blight and mildew, all his pains
And hopes to nothing brought.

And ever did that keen distress
In wider circles spread;
Who once with alms did others bless,
Now lacked their daily bread.

One only, who was never known
To bless another's board—
In all that Suabian land alone
This cruel, impious lord,

Did all the while exempt appear
From this wide-reaching ill;
With largest bounties of the year
His broad fields laughing still.

The autumn duly had outpoured
For him its plenteous horn,
And safe in ample granaries stored
He saw his golden corn;

And high he reared new granaries vast,
Of hewn stone builded strong,
And made with bars of iron fast,
And fenced from every wrong.

Till safe, as seemed, from every foe,
He now, as if the sight
Of others' want and others' woe
Enhanced his own delight,

Sate high, and with his minions still
Did keep continual feast;
Long nights with waste and wassail fill,
Which not with morning ceased;

Till oft-times they who wandered near
Those halls at early day,
Culling wild herbs and roots in fear,
Their hunger to allay,

Heard sounds of fierce and reckless mirth
Borne from those halls of pride,
While famine's feeble wail went forth
From all the land beside;

And strange thoughts rose in many a breast,
Why God's true servants pined,
And largest means this man unblest
Did still for riot find;

Which stranger grew, as more and more
He did his coffers fill
With gold and every precious store,
Wrung from men's cruel ill;

As he each poor man's field was fain
To add unto his own—
To the wide space of his domain,
Now daily wider grown.

For some, their lives awhile to save,
Had sold him house and lands;
And some to bonds their children gave,
As grew his stern demands:

Yet not a whit for poor man's curse
This evil churl did care;
He said,—it passed, nor left him worse—
That words were only air.

He, if they cried ‘For Jesu's sake,
That so may light on thee
God's blessing,’ answer proud would make,
‘What will that profit me?

‘I ask no blessing, yet my fields
Have store of precious grain:
The earth to me its fatness yields
The sky its sun and rain,

‘And high my granaries stand, and strong,
Huge-vaulted, ribbed with stone:
What need I fear? from any wrong
I can defend mine own.’—

Thus ever fierce and fiercer rose
His words of scorn and pride;
And more he mocked at mortal woes,
And earth and heaven defied.

And thus it chanced upon a day,
As oft had been before,
That from his gates he spurned away
A widow, old and poor;

When to his presence entered in
A servant, pale with fear,
And did with trembling words begin:—
‘O dread my lord, give ear!

‘As me perchance my business drew
Thy storehouse vast beside,
I heard unwonted sounds, and through
The iron grating spied.

‘The thing I saw, if like it seemed
To any thing on earth,
I might some huge black bull have deemed
That hellish monstrous birth.

‘Yet how should beast have entrance found
Into that guarded place,
Which strangely now it wandered round,
With wild unresting pace?

Oh, here must be some warning meant,
Which do not now deride:
Oh, yet have pity, and relent,
Nor speak such words of pride.’

Slight heed his tale of fear might find,
Slight heed his counsel true;
That utterance of his faithful mind
He now had learned to rue,

But that, even then, another came,
Worse terror in his mien:
—‘Three monstrous creatures, breathing flame,
These eyes but now have seen;

‘They toss about thy hoarded store,
And greedily they eat,
Consuming thus a part, but more
They stamp beneath their feet.

‘Oh, Sir, full often God doth take
What we refuse to give;
But yet to Him large offering make,
And all our souls may live.’

—‘Fool !—let another hasten now,
But if he shall not see
The self-same vision, fellow, thou
Shalt hang on yonder tree.’

He said—when, lo! in rushed a third
Within the briefest space:—
—‘Of horses wild and bulls a herd
Is filling all the place.

‘The numbers of that furious rout
Wax ever high and higher;
And from their mouths smoke issues out,
And from their nostrils fire.

‘From side to side they leap and bound,
The hoarded corn they eat,
They toss and scatter on the ground,
And stamp beneath their feet.

‘My lord, these portents do not scorn;
Thy granary doors throw wide,
And poor men's prayers even yet may turn
The threatened wrath aside.’

—‘What, all conspiring in one tale!
Or fooled by one deceit!
Yet think not ye shall so prevail,
Or me so lightly cheat.

‘Come with me;—fling the portals back;
I too this sight would see:
What! one and all this courage lack?
Give me the ponderous key.’

In fear the vassal multitude
Fell back on either side:
Before the doors he singly stood,
He singly—in his pride.

But them, or ere he touched, asunder
Some hand unbidden threw;
With lightning flash, with sound like thunder
The gates wide open flew.

How shook then underneath the tread
Of thousand hoofs the earth!
Day darkened into night with dread,
So weird a troop rushed forth!

And all who saw like dead men stood,
As swept that wild troop by,
Till lost within a neighbouring wood
For aye from mortal eye.

But when that hurricane was past
Of hideous sight and sound,
And when they breathed anew, they cast
Their fearful glances round:

They lifted up a blackened corse,
Where scorched and crushed it lay,
And scarred with hoofs of fiery force,—
Then bore in awe away;

They bore away, but not to hide
In any holy ground;
Who in his height of sin had died
No hallowed burial found.

THE CORREGAN.

A BALLAD OF BRITTANY.

They were affianced, a youthful pair;
In youth, alas! they divided were.

Lovely twins she has brought to light,
A boy and a girl, both snowy white.

—‘What shall now for thee be done,
Who hast brought me this longed-for son?

Shall I fetch thee fowl from the sedgy mere?
Or strike in the greenwood the flying deer?’

—‘Wild deer's flesh would please me best,
Yet wherefore go to the far forèst?’

He snatched his spear, he mounted his steed;
He to the greenwood is gone with speed.

When there he came, a milk-white hind
Started before him as swift as wind.

He pursued it with foot so fleet,
On his forehead stood the heat,

And down his courser's flanks it ran;
—Evening now to close began;

When he espied a stream that flowed
Near the Corregan's abode.

Smoothest turf encircled its brink;
Down from his steed he alit to drink.

By its margin was seated there
The Corregan, combing her golden hair,

Combing it with a comb of gold;
Richly clad, and bright to behold.

—“Thou art bolder than thou dost know,
Daring to trouble my waters so.

“Me shalt thou on the instant wed,
Or in three days shalt be dead.”

—‘I will not wed on the instant thee,
Nor yet in three days dead will be.

‘When God pleases I shall die,
And already wedded am I;

‘And besides I had rather died
Than to make a fairy my bride.’

—‘Sick am I, mother, at heart; oh, spread,
If thou lovest me, my death-bed.

‘Me the fairy has looked to death:
In three days shall I yield my breath.

‘Yet though my body in earth they lay,
To her I love, oh, nothing say.’

—Three days after, ‘O mother, tell,’
She exclaimed, ‘why tolls the bell?

‘Why do the priests so mournfully go,
Clad in white, and chanting low?’

—“A beggar we lodged died yesternight;
They bury him with the morning light.”

—‘O mother, where is my husband gone?’
—“He from the town will return anon.”

—‘O mother, I would to church repair;
Tell me what were meetest to wear:

‘Shall it be my robe of blue,
Or my vest of scarlet hue?’

—“It is now the manner to wear
Garments of black, my daughter, there.”

When she came to the churchyard ground,
Her husband's grave was the first she found.

—‘Death of kin I have not heard,
Yet this earth has been newly stirred.’

—“My daughter, the truth I needs must show;
’Tis thy husband that lies below.”

Down she fell upon that floor;
Thence she rose not any more.

But the night next after the day,
When by his body her body lay,

Two tall oaks, both stately and fair,
Marvel to see! arose in air;

And upon their uppermost spray
Two white doves, delightsome and gay:

At dawn of morn they sweetly sung;
And lightly toward heaven at noon they sprung.

THE ETRURIAN KING.

See Mrs, Hamilton Gray's Sepulcres of Etruria.

One only eye beheld him in his pride,
The old Etrurian monarch,—as he died,

And as they laid him on his bier of stone,
Shield, spear, and arrows laying at his side;

In golden armour, with his crown of gold,
One only eye the kingly warrior spied:

Nor that eye long—for in the common air
The wondrous pageant might not long abide,

Which had in sealëd sepulchre the wrongs
Of time for thirty centuries defied.

That eye beheld it melt and disappear,
As down an hour-glass the last sand-drops glide.

A few short moments,—and a shrunken heap
Of common dust survived, of all that pride:

And so that gorgeous vision will remain
For evermore to other eye denied:

And he who saw must oftentimes believe
That him his waking senses had belied;

Since what if all the pageants of this earth
Melt soon away, and may not long abide,

Yet when did ever doom so swift before
Even to the glories of the world betide?

THE PRIZE OF SONG.

Challenged by the haughty daughters
Of the old Emathian king,
Strove the Muses at the waters
Of that Heliconian spring—
Proved beside those hallowed fountains
Unto whom the prize of song,
Unto whom those streams and mountains
Should of truest right belong.

First those others in vexed numbers
Mourned the rebel giant brood,
Whom the earth's huge mass encumbers,
Or who writhe, the vulture's food;
Mourned for earth-born power, which faileth
Heaven to win by might and main;
Then, thrust back, for ever waileth,
Gnawing its own heart in pain.

Nature shuddered while she hearkened,
Through her veins swift horror ran:
Sun and stars, perturbed and darkened,
To forsake their orbs began.
Back the rivers fled; the ocean
Howled upon a thousand shores,
As it would with wild commotion
Burst its everlasting doors.

Hushed was not that stormy riot,
Till were heard the sacred Nine,
Singing of the blissful quiet
In the happy seats divine;
Singing of those thrones immortal,
Whither struggling men attain,
Passing humbly through the portal
Of obedience, toil and pain.

At that melody symphonious
Joy to Nature's heart was sent,
And the spheres, again harmonious,
Made sweet thunder as they went:
Lightly moved, with pleasure dancing,
Little hills and mountains high,
Helicon his head advancing,
Till it almost touched the sky.

—Thou whom once those Sisters holy
On thy lonely path have met,
And, thy front thou stooping lowly,
There their sacred laurel set,
Oh be thine, their mandate owning,
Aye with them to win the prize,
Reconciling and atoning
With thy magic harmonies:

An Arion thou, whose singing
Rouses not a furious sea,
Rather the sea-monsters bringing
Servants to its melody;
An Amphion, not with passion
To set wild the builders' mind,
But the mystic walls to fashion,
And the stones in one to bind.

TIMOLEON.

[_]

SEE ‘PLUTARCH'S LIVES.’

The night before he sailed for Sicily,
Timoleon, leader of a noble band,
Did to the partners of his glorious toil
These words address, or words much like to these—

‘Friends, fellows with me in one grand emprise,
Who wait but for the early light, prepared
Soon as the pale east glimmers into gold,
Boldly to launch into the open sea;
Friends, who shall not the temper of your souls
One jot abate, till Sicily once more
Is nurse of beauteous arts, of kindly men,
And haunt once more of Presences divine;
Some pages in the story of my life
To you are known; 'twere well you should know all.
The Sun-god with his crown of light and robes
Of rosy red is yet far off, and gives
No signals of his coming: hearken then;
The story may do more than cheat the time.

‘My brother,—he was known to some of you;
By some, I think, was loved. I loved him well;
And bear upon my body to this hour
The print of Argive spears, which, meant for him,
Prone lying, headlong from his saddle thrown,
I took for mine on one disastrous day.

Well pleased I saw him step by step ascend
From high to higher, till our common weal
Owned none that owned a greater name than his.
But ah! the pang, when great among the great
Seemed not to him enough: he must be all;
And so, misusing power too lightly lent,
He changed our laws at will, and citizens
Sent uncondemned, untried, to bloody dooms.
In vain I warned him there was wrath abroad,
That this proud city of the double sea
Had never unto tyrants bowed the neck,
And would not now; and more than this I did.
Two taking with me of our chief of men,
A suppliant at his feet I knelt, I fell;
Only to find, too often found before,
Derision and a fierce resolve that bad
Should grow to worse. In the end I stood aside,
And in my mantle, weeping, hid my face,
While the dread deed that should make Corinth free
Was acted. When the rumour of it spread,
Some said it was well done, and some said ill;
Some called me fratricide, and some were fain
To honour, as men honour saviour gods.
I could have borne the praise, or borne the blame,
And lived my own life, little heeding either;
But presently thick darkness fell on me,
When she that bare, and once had loved us both,
Stern mother, took the part of her dead son
Against the living; me saw never more,
Refused to look upon my face again,
And, granting no forgiveness, lived and died.

‘I meanwhile, laden with a mother's curse,
By those avenging goddesses pursued,

That fright the doers of strange deeds of blood,
In solitary places far astray,
On the wild hills, beside the lone sea-shore,
Wandered, a man forbidden and forlorn:
The glory and the gladness of my youth,
Its unreturning opportunities,
All gone;—how then I hated streets and schools,
And all the faces that one met in them;
And hated most of all myself, until
It little lacked but that with hands profane
I had laid waste the temple of my life,
And ended all.

‘While thus it fared with me,
The slow years dragging on their sullen length,
A cry of anguish travelled o'er the deep
From that fair island of the western wave,
Dear to the goddess of the foodful earth,
Dear to the pale Queen of the underworld;
Which now, as daughter unto mother fleeing,
Bemoaned her sad self, wrecked and shorn and torn
Scorched and consumed in Moloch's furnace fires,
A solitude of hate,—where nothing lived,
But what deserved to die,—till now the grass
Grew rank in her untrodden streets, and worse
Than wild beasts harboured in her marble halls.

‘You know the rest,—what pity filled all hearts
When the sad story of her wrongs was heard,
Which now is Cynosure of all our eyes;
And yet withal how hard it proved to choose
A captain of the liberating host;
And some cried one, and some another name,
While this man doubted of himself, and that

Was doubted of by others; till at last
One from the concourse cried ‘Timoleon,’
Name strange to lips of men for twice ten years.
Some say it was a voice from heaven, and some
The word of a plain simple countryman.
I know not. It perchance was both in one.
But this or that, all hailed it as the thought
And inspiration of the holy gods:
And one whose word went far, bespake me thus:
“Do well, and we shall count thee tyrant-slayer:
Do ill, and name we name not shall be thine.”
So be it; by this law I will be judged.

‘The end proves all; and that is still to come;
And yet sometimes I nigh persuade myself
I have drunk out the bitter of my life;
And if I only keep the truth, and keep
My hands and heart from things accursed, you few,
My few, shall scatter Afric's alien hordes,
Chase worse than wild beasts from their treacherous lairs;
The stars shall in their courses fight for us;
And all the elements shall work for us;
And the sweet gods of Hellas, by the shrieks
Of immolated children scared away,
These, girt already for their glad return,
Shall show how easy all things prove for them
That have immortal Helpers on their side.
And there shall wait on me, on me who seemed
Exiled for ever from the tenderness
Of human hearts, from all things good and fair,
The golden tribute of a people's love.
And when my work is ended, multitudes
Apparelled all in white, and crowned with flowers,
As for a great day of high festival,

Shall with large tears of sorrow and of joy
Bear me, a victor, to my funeral pyre:
So limns itself the future to my sight.

‘But lo! enough. The day is breaking fast,
And we are called. Hyperion's eager steeds,
The tempest-footed coursers of the dawn,
Are straining up the slope of eastern heaven,
And from their fiery nostrils blow the morn.’

ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES

MARCH 10, 1863.

O merchantman who, seeking some fair pearl,
Whose orient splendours should enrich thy life,
And having found one fairest, hast been wise
To win, and make for ever thine and ours,
Henceforth a cynosure of all our eyes,
Set in thine own and England's coronet;
Oh fortunate!—yet not that round thee throng
A people happy in thy happiness,
Nor that boon nature empties in thy lap
Her golden tributes of a golden time,
Nor that the rod of empire may be thine,
The sceptre of the islands of the sea;
Oh happy, not in aught that would divide,
But most in that which links thee with thy kind—
Most happy, that, Heaven favouring, thou hast found
Of thy life's orb the absent hemisphere,
The fulness, and mysterious complement;
Which they who miss, earth's wealthiest, wisest, greatest
Wander disconsolate, and reap no joy
From life defeated and half unfulfilled,
While they who find, though poorest, are most rich.
Oh well is thee, that in two commonest names,
Yet holiest, names first heard in Paradise,
That in the names of husband and of wife
The sum of thy pure happiness, and hers
Who has fulfilled thy life, is all contained.

University of Virginia Library

ORPHEUS AND THE SIRENS.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.[_] FROM THE FOURTH GEORGIC, 452-516.

NATURAL MYTHOLOGY.

[Oh thou of dark forebodings drear]

THE OIL OF MERCY.

THE TREE OF LIFE.

THE TREE OF LIFE.

PARADISE.

THE HOLY EUCHARIST.

THE PRODIGAL.

LINES WRITTEN ON THE FIRST TIDINGS OF THE CABUL MASSACRES.

MOOLTAN.

THE LOREY-LEY.

HYMN TO OCEAN.

SUNSET.[_] FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE.

CONFIDENCES.

SONNET.

ON A BROTHER AND SISTER WHO DIED AT THE SAME TIME, ABERGELE, AUGUST 20, 1868.

SONNET.

ON THE REVIEW OF THE VOLUNTEERS IN HYDE-PARK BY THE QUEEN, 1860.

IN MEMORIAM, G. P. C.

SONNET.

[He bade, as he was passing to his rest]

SONNET.

THE OPENING OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, MAY 1, 1862.

[Man, the pomp and pride of earth]

THE CURSE OF CORN-HOARDERS.

THE CORREGAN.

A BALLAD OF BRITTANY.

THE ETRURIAN KING.

THE PRIZE OF SONG.

TIMOLEON.

ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.
[_]

FROM THE FOURTH GEORGIC, 452-516.

SUNSET.
[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE.