The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley :: :: University of Virginia Library

Porphyry beams dull-rosy in their light,
With architraves of alabaster cold,
And column-heads expanding into slight
Long arabesques of intertwisting gold.

Around the ceiling runs the giant war;
And Jove in lurid halo: all his hand,
Poising to hurl Enceladus afar,
Red with the ruin of the Titan band.

So stately is the chamber, where a king,
Feeble, in dim eclipse of human power,
Lies with dull orbs or slowly widening
Eyelids, to stare away the vacant hour.

O faded eyes untouched with royal light,
Lean lips without desire of wine or bread;
O silent features folded with the night
Wherein is no man's deed remembered.

Thy gold is changed to dross, thy rose to weed;
Thy raiment is the grave's sepulchral sheet:
They push thee where no lute shall praise thy deed,
They fold thy yellow hands and parchment face.

341

In silk and silver blue thy reign begins:
Thine end is sore; and surely stricken worse
Than that goat limping to the sea of sins,
Sick with the burthen of a nation's curse.

And this disdain is fallen to thy last days,—
Who wast alone for glory, with thy throne
Built as a rock in sides of pleasant ways—
That all men tire of thee and wish thee gone.

Therefore, I hold the dead are more than kings:
They are not cold or hungry or dismayed.
They dwell together where no morning springs,
They waken to no toil; and are not paid

At even-tide with wage. No maiden's word
Hath given them mirth. At no lord's yoke they weep.
The song of love their silence never heard.
Their feet are tangled in deep nets of sleep.

God hath discarded them as broken things;
They shall not hear, descending from his throne,
Some angel with great amber sweep of wings.
He hath chidden them out as abjects from his own.

Yea, earth is weary that they were at all,
And hides them deep in some neglected place;
Where pale grass hangs above them like a pall,
And ivy splits the escutcheons of their race.

Therefore, old king, thy bed shall be sevenfold
More bitter, strewn with theirs; because thou must
For all thy beaming gates and treasure hold
Gain at God's hand some inches of red dust.

Yea, as dry boughs of some dismembered tree,
Numb from thy nape to thy heels buskin-shod,
Thy shrouded limbs and side-bound hands shall be
Crushed down in darkness from the face of God.

Yea, that white fluttered seraph choir of his
Hate thy lean bones as terrors; ay, they dread
To unbind the banded jaws, and eye-places
Where the balls wither inward at the head.

342

And, ere this come, such toil of heavy breath,
By this old royal phantom, runs to worse
Than yon gaunt image of sepulchral death.
Life is a garment burning like a curse,

When weary pulses flicker with disease,
And Pain draws Reason tortured from his seat:
To anguish and an age of maladies
Is not the grave a rest supremely sweet?

Better to sleep in barrows, where young lambs
Feed and repose in daisies o'er the dead;
Where, moving with a chime of necks, their dams
Graze round the belfry silent overhead.

Where in among the fleeces of the sheep,
Like small and burnished rooks, the starlings call,
Between black crosses in the field of sleep,
And make the mild spring weather musical.

Leave this bright dream; return, with bated breath,
Enter the shrouded palace where he lies;
Say, can the splendid precinct of his death
Like one field daisy soothe thine aching eyes,

Sick with all human artifice of gold?
The need of nature deepens in a breast
That, having laid its dead in hallowed mould,
Loathing at fame, finds nature comfort best.

All things are doomed and alter from their birth.
Man sighs at eve, who rose at morn to sing.
Gaze on this couch, and answer; is it worth
A loaf, a leaf, one feather to be king?

Sour Æsculapian vultures o'er thee stoop,
And heirs with greedy eyes peruse thy bed.
And itching fingers feel each signet hoop,
And eager chins examine, “Is he dead?”

He is not dead, if one lean lifted hand
Redeem him from thy nations, king of sleep—
As some brown sea-weed on the margin strand,
Torn from the inmost gardens of the deep,

343

Attains with earthly flowers no root or rest,
But lies and festers among sand and surge;
The hollow breakers hither heave and crest,
There haggard darnels taste the east wind's scourge.

Life in blue armour, crowned with ardent hair,
Hath scorned this outworn wreck of human breath,
And flung him forth beyond her temple stair
To wait the rising of the floods of death.

He is dying out, tho' under stately fanes
The arch-priest wrestles for his monarch still,
In organ-litanies; he is faint and wanes;
He is meaner than the lizard on the hill,

Who sniffs the early air with lithe grey throat.
Whose wild eyes taste the increase of the morn,
What time her olive interspaces float
In veins of ardent amber newly born.

God folds away his night and calls the red:
The creeping thing hath pleasure in his deed.
In these dim eyes, where reason's light is dead,
The rosebud is one colour with the reed.

Mock him with sounding pomp no more. In vain
Number to him the nations, where he is
By name as god incarnate. Ah, refrain
The irony of bending knees to this!

The weary sunbeams crawl themselves away.
The walls are laned with shadow in the moon.
He is almost gone each turn of night and day,
He wanes from swoon to sleep, from sleep to swoon.

And scribes are busy in great parchment scrolls
To set his acts and annals chronicled;
And paint large letters all along the rolls,
Gold for his glory, for his warfare red.

In the sun-death raught his empire bounds;
Far to his footstool from the dawning place
Came orient kings to watch his eyes, as hounds
Who whimper chidden before a master's face.

344

To the firm west he flung a blast of war,
On the light east he strengthened his array;
“All men are foes, who yet unconquered are,
My faulchion holds a rebel world at bay.”

He cried, almighty in his silver hall;
Peace knew his smile, his frown concluded death.
At his approach the watch-tower on the wall
Trembled, the rampart melted at his breath.

In virgin waves his mariners held oars,
His merchants traded in secluded fairs.
Strange Triton gods beheld thro' temple doors
His sails, as floated sea-birds, unawares.

His multitude of rowing sailors sate
Strong-handed at their benches. The black deep
In bitter furrow hoarse against them. Fate
Ready to whelm them in each water-heap.

Yet in the teeth of death with wrist and arm
They pushed a passage on. The blind wind died
Vexed at their masterdom. The surf ran calm,
Or washed faint edges on the galley's side.

Till where the hungry deep wrought yesterday
Are laid its morsels: violet water-shells,
And starry orange creatures of the spray,
And leathery bladder-weeds with egg-like cells;

And washed mosaics out of wave-worn floors,
And limpet shells unanchored from rock-root,
With small dried rearing horseheads of the shore,
By prickly balls of sea like chestnut fruit;

And drifts of nether ocean rough in thorn—
All sea-wrack wafted harvest, lord, for thee.
The villagers gleaned coral-branches torn
In far deeps from the rosy mother tree.

They sought sweet calamus in reedy wands,
And capes with spice-trees under their ravines;
And orchard havens up in austere lands
To bring choice berries to delight thy queens.

345

Strange oil they brought thee from no olive tree;
Where float the frozen islands thou didst man
Thy boats to row Cimmerian glooms of sea,
And fling the barb against leviathan.

And from secluded gardens of the east,
They found thee singing children, blue at eyes,
Bright as the rain is, beautiful; the least
Among them worth a city's ransom price.

They bought sleek girls with silver to thy will,
And thou didst take thy joy with each of these.
Their voices were as some low chiming rill,
Their stature as a hedge of almond trees.

And red-grey fisher cities, terraced in
With bushes on some broken headland's face,
Drew down each dawn their grating keels to win
The shell reserved for princes and their race.

So thou didst bathe thy mantle in its dyes;
The bearded murex for thy purple bled:
Thou satest sanguine as the morning skies,
With bands of burning jewels on thy head.

So some were almost slain to gaze on thee
In thy full royalty and glory seat.
Strong men, in spirit melting utterly,
Beheld with failing knees and feeble feet.

So like a moon thy soul shone lifted up,
By reason of thy worship, and it said,—
“The incense of a world perfumes my cup,
The wheat of empires ambers for my bread.”

“God hath set morning lights for me in heaven
To quicken my uprising; he unbinds
The sweet rain in my homage: mine the seven
Great northern stars, mine the four region winds.

“I yoke all nations on my wagon wheel;
All fruit of earth is mine; all bales as well
The strong ships carry; all thou dost conceal
Their grey gigantic sea unsearchable.

346

“All toil and increase to my feet are brought;
My palace is a cage, where each delight
Dwells; as a bright bird hunted down and caught
To sleek her pretty feathers in my sight.

“Against the ruddy lamp of my renown,
As some great Pharos light in stormy heaven,
The lesser princedoms shatter wildly blown,
And rend their helmless realms, as foam is riven.”

“I am set for God, to rivet or unwind,
To establish or remove at my decree.
I alter and abolish, break or bind;
Shall any power perplex my deity?

“I am for ever; no decay makes wan
The eternal crown that gleams against my brow.
Death is my bondsman, Pain my wage-woman,
Age is at league with me.” Behold thee now!