Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

It was the hour when woods are cold
And there is no colour in all the sky,
Because night's blue is gone, and the gold
O' the dawn not coming till by and by:
It was the hour when vapours white
Are over the dark meer rolling slow
From the brewage brew'd by the water-sprite
Who inhabits the sunless deeps below.

2.

In the reed and rush, 'twixt meer and fen,
Two wild white Swans were fighting then;
For a wild white Swan-Bride fighting keen;
The lake's two lords for the lake's one queen.
And altho' both woo'd her, but one could wed,
And but one be victor, tho' both fought well.

162

And the vanquisht warrior, wounded, fled
Foom the wrath of his rival peer, and fell,
Over the reed-fenced rivage damp,
Into the filth of the fenny swamp;
Whence the sound of his funeral hymn rose clear
From the marsh to the woodland, and over the meer.

3.

Thro' the reeds he crushes, from the forest rushes
The bristly bulk of the fierce Wild Boar;
Crashing down bud and bush, pashing the mud and slush,
And scattering filth from his cleft feet four.
And “Who is it that calleth for help?” quoth he.
“Here, all who enter my subjects be.
Let the wronger beware! and, if fight he can,
Fight for his life, or fly with speed!
Eh, ... but, bless my bristles! ... a Swan?
And, if I mistake not, a Swan indeed!
Welcome, Cousin! Allow me, pray,
To ask what weather blew you this way?
Or is it, O lord of the lucid lake,
(Thou stateliest swimmer!) that thy white neck
Is weary of watching each snowy flake
Of its whiteness imaged without a speck
In the over-perfect purity
And tedious calm of the crystal flood?
And hast thou, too, learn'd, at last, to sigh
For the common, but more congenial, mud?
Hah! by each buffalo's cloven crest

163

In the herd of them put to flight by me,
I swear (for I love thee, noble guest!)
I will share mine acorn crops with thee,
If thou, contented, a swine with swine,
Wilt change those too-white plumes of thine
For the bristles and hair
We hogs do wear.
Already, thy haughty beauty wanes!
Fallen, tho' unresign'd, art thou.
And the spurted slime of the fen's drench stains
That princely bosom of spotless snow.
Thou that immaculate swammest the meer,
Wallow in mud, and be welcome, here!”

4.

Bleeding, aching, weary, and wan,
Bitterly listen'd the noble swan,
To those brutal words; and “O shame and grief!
He moan'd, “that in such a place—to me—
And with such a speech—the ignoble chief
Of an obscene herd should dare to proffer
His fulsome friendship filthy and free,
And a swan be shamed by a swinish offer!”

5.

With failing breath,
On the threshold of death,
By an effort vast
(His saddest and last)

164

He arose; and, quickly
Staunching his wound
With the grasses sickly
That grow on such ground,
Sprang forward; crying
“St Pelican!
I die; but, in dying,
Am still a swan!
St Pelican hear me,
And grant my cry!
In death be near me,
And let me die
As I lived, at least,
A swan, not a beast,
In mine own pure element's purity!”

6.

The Saint reprieved him.
The wave received him,
And, washing the stain from each wounded limb,
On his deathbed bathed and rebàptised him.

7.

Then, backward turning his stately head,
On the haunts of those he had scorn'd and fled
He gazed; and saw with a dying eye
Afar in the forest the filthy herd,
Profaning its sacred groves, rush by;
And the mirth of the wallowing monsters heard.

165

And “Each to his own!” the Wild Swan said,
“And his own to each! and I to mine!
As the Swan to his purity, so to his bed
In the mud he was born for, returneth the Swine.
For, if a Swan fall in the filth of the fen
Where the dew turns slime and the green grows sallow,
And even the strong foot slips, what then?
He doth but fall where the Swine doth wallow.
Suum cuique,
To live or die:
Hic et ubique
A Swan am I!”