 | Poems with Fables in Prose |  |
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II:SHORTER POEMS
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Night under Monte Rosa
ODE FROM ITALY IN TIME OF WAR
I
We will go up for help unto the hills.Since in their tent together by a sword
The nations sleep divided; since the seas
Of memory sever; and the cauldrons formed
Of old time make wind-craters full of tongues
Opposed, and zones of different decrees;
Since hatred trembles in the singing chord,
And in ourselves still the old savage throngs
Lurk on, cave-dwellers in the gentle breast;
Since stone-age man sits as our right-hand guest,
And secular coils of chthonian energies,
Dark trains of purpose script will never know,
Involve in wrestlings blind the polities
And interlock the peoples to their woe;
In soul, aim, stature diverse, we are stormed
By battle yet, and are the sport of fears
Through the rushing of unstable atmospheres;
Since thus, thus, thus, and thus we fail,
And enmities exhaustless us assail,
Is it in vain for innocence we strive—
In vain that we are now alive?
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Be stampt in the very make of the globe itself,
What help, to look for help unto the hills?
Yet will we go.
We will go up and wrestle with the hills;
Not for their blessing, but their utterance.
Speak they our weal or woe, or naked'st Chance—
Until they speak we will not let them go.
II
Our dearest, our young sons, have gone to slay.But we, denied with them to march and die,
Angry-mooded yet at being disused,
Racked by the fray—
The wound in Europe's side from shore to shore—
To-night have climbed up from the plains confused
To foothills that look forth on Lombardy,
To the mountain of the herdsmen, prow
Of Mergozzòlo, flanked by torrents hoar,
Ship of granite and of porphyry,
Which, anchored between deep gulfs, keeps its bow
Toward Ossola's mighty vale's debouching snow,
Whence glaciers primordial southward pressed.
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It clove the invading glaciers on its breast,
So that one branch Orta scooped, and one the lake
Maggiore. Darkness falls. We have come far
By goat-foot path, shrine, ridge far-seen,
Round steep flanks dyked with rills,
Up from soft chestnut-woods to fell and scar;
Scaling the forest-dark ravine—
Where the mountain's ancient passion yields its tones
Dash'd broken, young and pure, against the stones—
To see the dawn from the cloud-bearing hills
Of shepherds, and with herdsmen to take rest.
III
The herd of glaciers from these brooks has run;
Huge boulders mark the sway
Of their moraines, rude confines of a day.
Through the same gates, fore-goers of the Hun,
Goth, Carthaginian, pressed and passed away.
We now, the riper peoples, rightly sure
We must withstand the harsh and immature,
The bitter-hearted, toss'd from dream to dream,
Fiercely unstable—in all things extreme—
These overlordship-seekers; we intent
That the spirit of every folk shall take its bent
Sunward, and wayward in experiment
Adventure,—each small nation stand uncurbed—
We shall put down the aggressors, unperturbed. . . .
What is life's enemy? Not they
But the sense of human life's futility.
The vainness of ourselves, as of our foes—
To that swift passage what can Man oppose,
Who, brawler between two lights, God and Death—
Sun-marshall'd and moon-tended—journeyeth?
What natures clear, enduring, can
Enter the hot and childish discord, Man?
Flowing or floating—what of worth can be
Establish'd?
Huge boulders mark the sway
Of their moraines, rude confines of a day.
Through the same gates, fore-goers of the Hun,
Goth, Carthaginian, pressed and passed away.
We now, the riper peoples, rightly sure
We must withstand the harsh and immature,
The bitter-hearted, toss'd from dream to dream,
Fiercely unstable—in all things extreme—
These overlordship-seekers; we intent
That the spirit of every folk shall take its bent
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Adventure,—each small nation stand uncurbed—
We shall put down the aggressors, unperturbed. . . .
What is life's enemy? Not they
But the sense of human life's futility.
The vainness of ourselves, as of our foes—
To that swift passage what can Man oppose,
Who, brawler between two lights, God and Death—
Sun-marshall'd and moon-tended—journeyeth?
What natures clear, enduring, can
Enter the hot and childish discord, Man?
Flowing or floating—what of worth can be
Establish'd?
Courage, Awareness, the pois'd Soul.
The rooted forest-people's polity
Profound; of forest verdure that stands true
And rooted in its own slopes' golden bowl
Spreads free. Here, every happy mead
Hath windflowers of a different hue;
And sun-born Love, the mountain flower, is bred,
And, family by starry family,
Spreads chalices, whereof each petal young
Is a new life: fresh Awareness—tenderly swung
And diffused, as moveth a breeze over grasses and trees—
Of more: all other men's lives, all other men's ease. . . .
Guard we this new Soul against tyrannies!
The soul is end enough, it nought else is
To come to flower against the precipice.
Yonder in Brescia bronze-wing'd Victory
Doth still in her subalpine temple stand,
Holding a vanish'd shield beneath her hand:
Her sons will not to the north's menace yield.
Rather than live unworthy of their land
Some will forgo existences and fames,—
Theirs will be written with the unknown names
Inscribed for ever on the vanish'd shield;
The viewless shield itself, their souls shall be!
The rooted forest-people's polity
Profound; of forest verdure that stands true
And rooted in its own slopes' golden bowl
Spreads free. Here, every happy mead
Hath windflowers of a different hue;
And sun-born Love, the mountain flower, is bred,
And, family by starry family,
Spreads chalices, whereof each petal young
Is a new life: fresh Awareness—tenderly swung
And diffused, as moveth a breeze over grasses and trees—
Of more: all other men's lives, all other men's ease. . . .
Guard we this new Soul against tyrannies!
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To come to flower against the precipice.
Yonder in Brescia bronze-wing'd Victory
Doth still in her subalpine temple stand,
Holding a vanish'd shield beneath her hand:
Her sons will not to the north's menace yield.
Rather than live unworthy of their land
Some will forgo existences and fames,—
Theirs will be written with the unknown names
Inscribed for ever on the vanish'd shield;
The viewless shield itself, their souls shall be!
IV
Therefore, O Latin barrier, when day breaks,Far as your sea-republics and faint shapes,
Floating islands, divine cities luminous,
Defiant nursed under the Rhaetian capes,
We, strangers, fast in spirit your allies—
Have you not framed, have you not founded us?—
Now will take counsel of your heads of white,
Snowy conclave of the arena bounded
By the Alps, the amphitheatre of peaks;
Pelasgian and Ligurian hear,—sea-races
Still surging, murmuring, creating, round your bases
Since Pytheas joined them to the Orcades;
That, when the silver tubes of Dawn are sounded
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Congiora and the tribes of promontories,
From Resegone to the Graian wall—
Padua to Monte Viso—when outleap
Cataracts of pure fire into the lakes,
And eyelids of the land Hesperia
Uplift, we also may shake off our sleep,
Put off the dark barbaric spell,
Arise, and thinking of the risen glow
When Hellas thrilled with rays the vine of night
Hesperia, watch her great plains boil with light,
As an olive holds her wide cup to the sun
In endless battle-furrows of that glebe:
And stand to hearken what yon silent say,
Tongues of white fire, immarcescible;
And grow to calm, if calm may be attained
And clear-soul'd Justice from on high be deigned.
V
The kine-herd's pipe comes home beneath the hillAlong Vergente's upland valley
Blocked by the snowcapt mountains; kine and sheep
Tawny and dark, slow following, graze their fill,
Neck-bells wander round the bastions steep,
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Melodies cool as water, soft as sleep. . . .
Dark heavens, that take no part in all our stir,
Dark heavens, that arbiter
The fellow vault of fire, the brain of man,
Now from that height and depth—your fastness
Confer on the ephemeral your vastness!
O stream of time, the sunrise-colour'd flood
Alive with tremour of ten thousand stars
Dissolved therein like memories in the blood,
Arouse us at this dawn to wake indeed!
But for the instant a street-door unbars
And lets be heard the storming multitude
Trampling the unjust fortress-prison doors,
Make us alive to those whom we succeed!
Make us alive to our inheritors!
We must not fail the hour for which they bleed,
But hear, within, the Pure and the Outlasting
Blow their sharp summons through the soul,
To become, in our turn, paean and forecasting.
Now on our ears, through gates of Death and Pain,
Let the rhythms incommensurable roll,—
And change. When we too must take up the strain
We join, above the tempests and expanses
That blindly move in ecstasies and trances,
Into an inner rite, which is not blind,
Where equanimity may reign,
The grave and the fraternal rite of Mind.
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VI
We cast off blankets, we who have not slept,
And cold grope forth uphill.
Night, fever-charged, numb, watchful Night, has crept,
Uneasy dying, towards tremendous Day.
Dawn is not yet: all's chill,
Cloud on drench'd grass, clouds washing round the fells,
Forth over battlements and deeps
A sea of curdled fugitive cloud—
Filmy panic-pale hordes, all in flight
One way—the ice-floes of an arctic strait;
But, through fissures, darknesses untold below.
And cold grope forth uphill.
Night, fever-charged, numb, watchful Night, has crept,
Uneasy dying, towards tremendous Day.
Dawn is not yet: all's chill,
Cloud on drench'd grass, clouds washing round the fells,
Forth over battlements and deeps
A sea of curdled fugitive cloud—
Filmy panic-pale hordes, all in flight
One way—the ice-floes of an arctic strait;
But, through fissures, darknesses untold below.
Of the cordon of main Alps—no sign. . . .
From cloud a threatening tor outswells;
From far abyss one glimpsèd outlier
Couchant, of vassal buttresses; and lo!
White Horn, or Tagliaferro's rigid spine
Slanted, intense, along his ledges sheer. . . .
Ah, brothers, brothers, who could have believed
It cost so much that this wall should be heaved?
Writ in these fulgural archives
Of conflicts settled, of denuded hate,
Folded together are the hostile lives.
Here they are twinned, who strove to dominate!
How closely clasp'd, the writhings of the ridges!
Behold, the horror of the upturned edges—
Together the torn strata seek the sky!
From cloud a threatening tor outswells;
From far abyss one glimpsèd outlier
Couchant, of vassal buttresses; and lo!
White Horn, or Tagliaferro's rigid spine
Slanted, intense, along his ledges sheer. . . .
Ah, brothers, brothers, who could have believed
It cost so much that this wall should be heaved?
Writ in these fulgural archives
Of conflicts settled, of denuded hate,
Folded together are the hostile lives.
Here they are twinned, who strove to dominate!
How closely clasp'd, the writhings of the ridges!
Behold, the horror of the upturned edges—
Together the torn strata seek the sky!
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VII
Not all in vain ye dieWhose veins of blazing granite forge the lime
To marble, and the mean to the sublime.
Embraced, each fierce antagonist
Takes in the other's virtue, and so locked
Become they fountain-heads, on hard foundations,
That might not, but for your ambitions blocked—
Your gorges with the muddied glacier choked—
Your beautiful strengths, wasted on death—subsist,
To slake the thirsts of the divided nations.
VIII
And what do we deserve? By far
Better it is our generation perish,
Perish, till we remember what we are.
Better it is that Earth be purged of us;
She hath need of purer eyes.
We have forgot, in our inequities,
Our part in the selfless harmonies.
Better it is our generation perish,
Perish, till we remember what we are.
Better it is that Earth be purged of us;
She hath need of purer eyes.
We have forgot, in our inequities,
Our part in the selfless harmonies.
A sudden breeze lifts, rending off the pall—
Darkling Italy's white coronal
Appears. Crest of all the barrier
Wrathborn, unearthly in his fixèd mood,
Detached from multitude,
That struggler now so still,
Monte Rosa, in the lightless atmosphere.
Darkling Italy's white coronal
Appears. Crest of all the barrier
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Detached from multitude,
That struggler now so still,
Monte Rosa, in the lightless atmosphere.
IX
Alone he dreameth, ghostly sovranty—
A servant, fetter'd more than we,
But by acceptance free;
A tenuous presence, rime-cold, pale as rime,
Above the band of European cloud
Submerging like a slumber Italy,
The seven lakes, the cobweb cities proud,
The shadow Lombardy, the silt of time,
The march and countermarch of history—
The mountain waiteth, even as we.
A servant, fetter'd more than we,
But by acceptance free;
A tenuous presence, rime-cold, pale as rime,
Above the band of European cloud
Submerging like a slumber Italy,
The seven lakes, the cobweb cities proud,
The shadow Lombardy, the silt of time,
The march and countermarch of history—
The mountain waiteth, even as we.
Strahlhorn, Alphübel, Dom, and Allelin,
Phantom alps to the northward, shrink withdrawn
Away from orisons none dare disturb.
Southward his wilderness, tossed line beyond line—
Darkly surmised through heavy veil on veil—
Of toothèd basalts, bare of snow and pine.
Out over Orta's blind chasm giddily
Wings waver forth. No insect chirp sounds here,
No shred of whisper.
Phantom alps to the northward, shrink withdrawn
Away from orisons none dare disturb.
Southward his wilderness, tossed line beyond line—
Darkly surmised through heavy veil on veil—
Of toothèd basalts, bare of snow and pine.
Out over Orta's blind chasm giddily
Wings waver forth. No insect chirp sounds here,
No shred of whisper.
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What clash of cymbal armies now again
Noised upward from their golden plain
On wings of victory released, could fill
Time with an exultation like that hill
While unto space the hill lifts up his voice?
Though his desolation put no vesture on
Of light, the memory of fire, nor emerges
The faintest brilliance from beyond the verges,
He keeps night-measure with the vanished sun,
And answers, to a yet immenser poise.
Noised upward from their golden plain
On wings of victory released, could fill
Time with an exultation like that hill
While unto space the hill lifts up his voice?
Though his desolation put no vesture on
Of light, the memory of fire, nor emerges
The faintest brilliance from beyond the verges,
He keeps night-measure with the vanished sun,
And answers, to a yet immenser poise.
Now shall our soul-mate, Liberty—
The rock-bred daughter of the lightnings—she
Cradled in welter of these peaks at war—
Conceive, at the arising of a star?
He waiteth, that grey shape, far up, aloof:
As the night-watchman, ten years on the roof
Of Agamemnon, till the beacons' joy
Mutter'd from sea to sea the fall of Troy—
The mountain waiteth, even as we.
The rock-bred daughter of the lightnings—she
Cradled in welter of these peaks at war—
Conceive, at the arising of a star?
He waiteth, that grey shape, far up, aloof:
As the night-watchman, ten years on the roof
Of Agamemnon, till the beacons' joy
Mutter'd from sea to sea the fall of Troy—
The mountain waiteth, even as we.
X
And now, upon that watcher in the air,Outpost Promethean, Earth's protagonist,
That nothing saw beyond our realms of mist,
Slow from the zenith is downbreathed the rose.
(Hush, the world's candle!—every star grows pale)
Until the nine-peak'd ocean-mantling mass
Lit—every cleft and cranny of his snows
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The groaning precipices—with peace superb
Becomes the altar of the soul of Dawn.
Prostrate night-vapours travel down each vale
In darkness, the obscurers, and the frail—
But the ancient iron summit in his shroud
Of radiance, every pike and bastion dour
Belted with awe of glacier and crevasse,
Floats up, transfigured, at this limpid hour,
A walled and heavenly city, clear as glass—
A new acropolis of mourning rosed,
Aerial, lighter than a branch in flower—
An absolute, but of our strifes composed.
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Requiem of Archangels for the World
Hearts, beat no more! Earth's Sleep has come,
All iron stands her wrinkled tree,
The streams that sang are stricken dumb,
The snowflake fades into the sea.
Hearts, throb no more! your time is past;
Thousands of years for this pent field
Ye have done battle. Now at last
The flags may sink, the captains yield.
Sleep, ye great Wars, just and unjust!
Sleep takes the gate and none defends.
Soft on your craters' fire and lust,
Civilisations, Sleep descends.
Time it is, time to cease carouse.
Let the nations and their noise grow dim!
Let the lights wane within the house
And darkness cover, limb by limb!
Across your passes, Alps and plains,
A planetary vapour flows,
A last invader, and enchains
The vine, the woman, and the rose.
Sleep, Forests old! Sleep in your beds,
Wild-muttering Oceans and dark Wells!
Sleep be upon your shrunken heads,
Blind, everlasting Pinnacles!
Sleep now, most dread high-shining Kings,
Your torrent glories snapt in death.
Sleep, simple men—sunk water-springs,
And all the ground Man laboureth.
Sleep, Heroes, in your mountain walls—
The trumpet shall not wake again;
And ranged on sea-worn pedestals,
Sleep now, O sleepless Gods of men,
Nor keep wide your unchallenged orbs.
These troubled clans that make and mourn
Some heavy-lidded Cloud absorbs,
And the lulling snows of the Unborn.
Make ready thou, tremendous Night,
Stoop to the Earth, and shroud her scars,
And bid with chanting to the rite
The torches of thy train of stars!
All iron stands her wrinkled tree,
The streams that sang are stricken dumb,
The snowflake fades into the sea.
Hearts, throb no more! your time is past;
Thousands of years for this pent field
Ye have done battle. Now at last
The flags may sink, the captains yield.
Sleep, ye great Wars, just and unjust!
Sleep takes the gate and none defends.
Soft on your craters' fire and lust,
Civilisations, Sleep descends.
Time it is, time to cease carouse.
Let the nations and their noise grow dim!
Let the lights wane within the house
And darkness cover, limb by limb!
Across your passes, Alps and plains,
A planetary vapour flows,
A last invader, and enchains
The vine, the woman, and the rose.
Sleep, Forests old! Sleep in your beds,
Wild-muttering Oceans and dark Wells!
Sleep be upon your shrunken heads,
Blind, everlasting Pinnacles!
Sleep now, most dread high-shining Kings,
Your torrent glories snapt in death.
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And all the ground Man laboureth.
Sleep, Heroes, in your mountain walls—
The trumpet shall not wake again;
And ranged on sea-worn pedestals,
Sleep now, O sleepless Gods of men,
Nor keep wide your unchallenged orbs.
These troubled clans that make and mourn
Some heavy-lidded Cloud absorbs,
And the lulling snows of the Unborn.
Make ready thou, tremendous Night,
Stoop to the Earth, and shroud her scars,
And bid with chanting to the rite
The torches of thy train of stars!
Gloriously hath she offered up
From the thousand heaving plains of Time
Her sons, like incense from a cup,
Souls, that were made out of the slime.
She darkens, and yet all her dusk
Is but the sigh of him that breathes;
The thing unborn bursts from its husk,
The flash of the sublime unsheathes.
They strove, the Many and the One,
And all their strivings intervolved
Enlarged Thy Self-dominion;
Absolute, let them be absolved!
Fount of the time-embranching fire,
O waneless One, that art the core
Of every heart's unknown desire,
Take back the hearts that beat no more!
From the thousand heaving plains of Time
Her sons, like incense from a cup,
Souls, that were made out of the slime.
She darkens, and yet all her dusk
Is but the sigh of him that breathes;
The thing unborn bursts from its husk,
The flash of the sublime unsheathes.
They strove, the Many and the One,
And all their strivings intervolved
Enlarged Thy Self-dominion;
Absolute, let them be absolved!
Fount of the time-embranching fire,
O waneless One, that art the core
Of every heart's unknown desire,
Take back the hearts that beat no more!
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SONG OF THE VINE
IN ENGLAND
133
Ovine along my garden wall
Could I thine English slumber break,
And thee from wintry exile disenthral,
Where would thy spirit wake?
Vine
I would wake at the hour of dawning in May in Italy,
When rose mists rise from the Magra's valley plains
In the fields of maize and olives around Pontrémoli,
When peaks grow golden and clear and the starlight wanes:
I would wake to the dance of the sacred mountains, boundlessly
Kindling their marble snows in the rite of fire,
To them my newborn tendrils softly and soundlessly
Would uncurl and aspire.
When rose mists rise from the Magra's valley plains
In the fields of maize and olives around Pontrémoli,
When peaks grow golden and clear and the starlight wanes:
I would wake to the dance of the sacred mountains, boundlessly
Kindling their marble snows in the rite of fire,
To them my newborn tendrils softly and soundlessly
Would uncurl and aspire.
I would hang no more on thy wall a rusted slumberer,
Listless and fruitless, strewing the pathways cold,
I would seem no more in thine eyes an idle cumberer,
Profitless alien, bitter and sere and old.
In some warm terraced dell where the Roman rioted,
And still in tiers his stony theatre heaves,
Would I festoon with leaf-light his glory quieted
And flake his thrones with leaves.
Listless and fruitless, strewing the pathways cold,
I would seem no more in thine eyes an idle cumberer,
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In some warm terraced dell where the Roman rioted,
And still in tiers his stony theatre heaves,
Would I festoon with leaf-light his glory quieted
And flake his thrones with leaves.
Doves from the mountain belfries would seek and cling to me
To drink from the altar, winnowing the fragrant airs;
Women from olived hillsides by turns would sing to me
Beating the olives, or stooping afield in pairs;
On gala evenings the gay little carts of labourers
Swinging from axles their horns against evil eye
And crowded with children, revellers, pipers and taborers
Chanting would pass me by. . . .
To drink from the altar, winnowing the fragrant airs;
Women from olived hillsides by turns would sing to me
Beating the olives, or stooping afield in pairs;
On gala evenings the gay little carts of labourers
Swinging from axles their horns against evil eye
And crowded with children, revellers, pipers and taborers
Chanting would pass me by. . . .
There go the pale blue shadows so light and showery
Over sharp Apuan peaks—rathe mists unwreathe—
Almond trees wake, and the paven yards grow flowery—
Crocuses cry from the earth at the joy to breathe;
There through the deep-eaved gateways of haughty-turreted
Arno—house-laden bridges of strutted stalls—
Mighty white oxen drag in the jars richspirited,
Grazing the narrow walls!
Over sharp Apuan peaks—rathe mists unwreathe—
Almond trees wake, and the paven yards grow flowery—
Crocuses cry from the earth at the joy to breathe;
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Arno—house-laden bridges of strutted stalls—
Mighty white oxen drag in the jars richspirited,
Grazing the narrow walls!
Wine-jars I too have filled, and the heart was thrilled with me!
Brown-limbed on shady turf the families lay,
Shouting they bowled the bowls, and old men filled with me
Roused the September twilight with songs that day.
Lanterns of sun and moon the young children flaunted me,
Plaiters of straw from doorway to window cried—
Borne through the city gates the great oxen vaunted me,
Swaying from side to side.
Brown-limbed on shady turf the families lay,
Shouting they bowled the bowls, and old men filled with me
Roused the September twilight with songs that day.
Lanterns of sun and moon the young children flaunted me,
Plaiters of straw from doorway to window cried—
Borne through the city gates the great oxen vaunted me,
Swaying from side to side.
Wine-jars out of my leafage that once so vitally
Throbbed into purple, of me thou shalt never take:
Thy heart would remember the towns on the branch of Italy,
And teaching to throb I should teach it, perchance, to break.
It would beat for those little cities, rock-hewn and mellowing,
Festooned from summit to summit, where still sublime
Murmur her temples, lovelier in their yellowing
Than in the morn of time.
Throbbed into purple, of me thou shalt never take:
Thy heart would remember the towns on the branch of Italy,
And teaching to throb I should teach it, perchance, to break.
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Festooned from summit to summit, where still sublime
Murmur her temples, lovelier in their yellowing
Than in the morn of time.
I from the scorn of frost and the wind's iniquity
Barren, aloft in that golden air would thrive:
My passionate rootlets draw from that hearth's antiquity
Whirls of profounder fire in us to survive—
Serried realms of our fathers would swell and foam with us—
Juice of the Latin sunrise; your own sea-flung
Rude and far-wandered race might again find home with us,
Leaguing with old Rome, young.
Barren, aloft in that golden air would thrive:
My passionate rootlets draw from that hearth's antiquity
Whirls of profounder fire in us to survive—
Serried realms of our fathers would swell and foam with us—
Juice of the Latin sunrise; your own sea-flung
Rude and far-wandered race might again find home with us,
Leaguing with old Rome, young.
137
Epitaph on an Infant
House upon the Earth, be sad,
Lacking me thou might'st have had!. . .
Many aeons did I wait
For admission to the Gate
Of the Living. But to see
Much was not vouchsafed to me,
Dazzled, in my little span.
I, that hoped to be a man,
Like a snowflake incarnated
Seem for three days' light created.
Lacking me thou might'st have had!. . .
Many aeons did I wait
For admission to the Gate
Of the Living. But to see
Much was not vouchsafed to me,
Dazzled, in my little span.
I, that hoped to be a man,
Like a snowflake incarnated
Seem for three days' light created.
I saw two Eyes, and break of Day,
Gold on spires of Nineveh.
But, ere I one comrade made,
Or with a fellow Beastling played—
Even while voices I forget
Called from cloud and minaret
Men to wake—I stood once more
With the Dreams, outside the door.
Gold on spires of Nineveh.
But, ere I one comrade made,
Or with a fellow Beastling played—
Even while voices I forget
Called from cloud and minaret
Men to wake—I stood once more
With the Dreams, outside the door.
141
Song of the Larks at Dawn
I
Shepherds who pastures seekAt dawn may see
From Falterona's peak
Above Camaldoli
Gleam, beyond forests and wildernesses bleak,
Both shores of Italy.
Fallen apart are the terrible clouds of the morning
And men lift up their eyes.
II
Birds that have circled and woundThrough the chasms below
Disappear into belts profound
Of fleet cloud, hail and snow.
The stripling land they behold not, nor high sea-bound;
Out of harsh ravines they know,
Out of night—the Earth's own shadow from orbèd morning—
They fear, they fear to rise.
142
III
Heaven's troubled continentsAre rifted, torn:
Thunders in their forest tents
Still seethe and sullenly mourn,
When aloft, from the gulfs and the sheer ascents,
Is a music born.
Hark to that music, laggard mists of the morning,
And, men, lift up your eyes!
IV
For scarce can eye see lightWhen the ear's aware
That virginals exquisite
Are raining from the air—
With sun and pale moon mingling their delight—
Adorations everywhere!
The grass hears not, nor the stony summits of morning,
But men lift up their eyes.
V
Eddy of fiery dust—Halo of rays—
Thrilling up, up, as they must
Die of the life they praise—
143
Only their sleeping-place,
From rugged wolds and rock-bound valleys of morning
The larks like mist arise.
VI
Earth sends them up from hills,Her wishes small,
Her cloud of griefs, her wills
To burst from her own thrall,
And to burn away what chains the soul or chills
In the God and fount of all.
Open your gates, O ye cities faint for morning,
And, men, lift up your eyes!
VII
Open, Night's blue Pantheon,Thy dark roof-ring
For that escaping paean
Of tremblers on the wing
At the unknown threshold of the empyrean
In myriads soft to sing.
Give way before them, temple-veils of the morning,
And, men, lift up your eyes!
144
VIII
O throngs, caught unaware,Whose glee is finding
The sun your father—who dare,
On the dark gales upwinding,
Spill out on burning air your gossamer
Of songs heaven-blinding—
Who beat the bounds and the wild marches of morning,
And take as yours the skies!
IX
They ascend, ere the red beamOn heaven grows strong,
Into that amazing stream
Of Dawn; and float along
In the future, for the future is their dream
Who roof the world with song.
Open your flowers, O ye mountains spread for morning,
And, men, lift up your eyes!
X
They hang above the wave,And are the voice
Of that light for which we crave,
They flee from poise to poise,
145
In garlands they rejoice;
They dance upon the golden surge of morning
That breaks our brooding skies.
XI
Hark! it grows less and less,But nothing mars
That rapture beyond guess,
Beyond our senses' bars;
They drink the virgin light, the measureless,
And in it fade, like stars.
They have gone past, the dew-like spirits of morning,
Beyond the uplifted eyes.
XII
Between two lamps suspendedOf Life and Death,
Sun-marshalled and moon-tended
Man's swift soul journeyeth
To be borne out of the life it hath transcended
Still, still on a breath.
For a day we, too, are the wingèd sons of the morning,
To-day we will arise!
Falterona is the highest peak of the Apennines. Camaldoli is a monastery of silent monks at the foot of the mountain.
146
Bitter Serenade
VENICE, 15---
(He speaks, touching the chords)
Lanterns of silk down the lagoons are vanished,
Brilliance, uproar, and sweep of masquerade;
Their eddies swell—the firefly world is banish'd,
All your canal is shade.
Brilliance, uproar, and sweep of masquerade;
Their eddies swell—the firefly world is banish'd,
All your canal is shade.
Magnolia-bloom is here my only candle,
White petals wash, and break, along the wall;
That clumsy lute, the lute with the scorched handle,
Is here to tell you all.
White petals wash, and break, along the wall;
That clumsy lute, the lute with the scorched handle,
Is here to tell you all.
Do you remember—yes, you will remember—
The ballad of a lute of curious tone,
Wrought—a charr'd log—out of a great hearth's ember?
The great hearth was your own.
The ballad of a lute of curious tone,
Wrought—a charr'd log—out of a great hearth's ember?
The great hearth was your own.
Firelight was all our light. Your endless gazes—
Contemptuous of all living—forth would float,
Half-terrible in beauty, down those mazes
As in a flame-winged boat.
Contemptuous of all living—forth would float,
Half-terrible in beauty, down those mazes
As in a flame-winged boat.
147
Urania's locks, with horror in their starkness,
Enlapt you, pale as an Aegean gem,
Enwound your ears with silence, and of darkness
Made you a diadem.
Enlapt you, pale as an Aegean gem,
Enwound your ears with silence, and of darkness
Made you a diadem.
What eyes were yours that made the witless falter,
The beating of the heart forget to beat,
Some Arab prisoner's on a desert altar,
And sleepless with defeat.
The beating of the heart forget to beat,
Some Arab prisoner's on a desert altar,
And sleepless with defeat.
Yet with that smile that seemed no smile of woman
Frowningly once—floating on light—you cried
As in a vision: Friend, not like your Roman
Cynthia, by the roadside
Frowningly once—floating on light—you cried
As in a vision: Friend, not like your Roman
Cynthia, by the roadside
Would I be tomb'd—close to the dust and rumbling—
But childless, by some playground; that at hours
Oft I may hear the wicked children tumbling
Forth, like a tide of flowers! . . .
But childless, by some playground; that at hours
Oft I may hear the wicked children tumbling
Forth, like a tide of flowers! . . .
By God! to the chords wherewith you then endowed us
(Something in you gave frame and strings a voice)
Now you must listen, in the hours allowed us,
Listen, you have no choice! . . .
(Something in you gave frame and strings a voice)
Now you must listen, in the hours allowed us,
Listen, you have no choice! . . .
148
(He sings)
THE SONG
O heart thrice-noble, to the quick bereavèd,
In beauty wasted, and in weakness dire
Maintaining 'gainst the Gods that have deceivèd
Such cold unwavering ire!
In beauty wasted, and in weakness dire
Maintaining 'gainst the Gods that have deceivèd
Such cold unwavering ire!
The very stars grow dread with tense forefeeling
Of dawn; the bell-towers darken in the sky
As they would groan before they strike, revealing
New day to such as I.
Of dawn; the bell-towers darken in the sky
As they would groan before they strike, revealing
New day to such as I.
There comes a day too merciless in clearness,
Worn to the bone the stubborn must give o'er;
There comes a day when to endure in nearness
Can be endured no more.
Worn to the bone the stubborn must give o'er;
There comes a day when to endure in nearness
Can be endured no more.
A man can take the buffets of the tourney,
But there's a hurt, lady, beyond belief;
A grief the Sun finds not upon his journey
Marked on the map of grief.
But there's a hurt, lady, beyond belief;
A grief the Sun finds not upon his journey
Marked on the map of grief.
Fate smote you young. Death young would now frustrate you.
I have but lived—as alchemists for gold—
In my mad pity's flame to re-create you,
Heavenly one, waning, cold!
I have but lived—as alchemists for gold—
In my mad pity's flame to re-create you,
Heavenly one, waning, cold!
149
Planet dark! Strange and hostile desolation
Whereto no ray serene hath ever gone
Nor touched with the one kiss of evocation—
You might have loved and shone!
Whereto no ray serene hath ever gone
Nor touched with the one kiss of evocation—
You might have loved and shone!
Was I not bred of the same clay and vapour
And lightning of the universe as you?
Had I the self-same God to be my shaper,
Or cracks the world in two?
And lightning of the universe as you?
Had I the self-same God to be my shaper,
Or cracks the world in two?
It cannot be, though I have nought of merit,
That man may hold so dear, and with such pain
Enfold with all the tendrils of the spirit,
Yet not be loved again;
That man may hold so dear, and with such pain
Enfold with all the tendrils of the spirit,
Yet not be loved again;
It cannot be that such intensest yearning,
Such fierce and incommunicable care
Starred on your face, as through a crystal burning,
Is wasted on the air;
Such fierce and incommunicable care
Starred on your face, as through a crystal burning,
Is wasted on the air;
It cannot be I gave my soul, unfolding
To you its very inmost, like a child
Utterly giving faith—no jot withholding—
By you to be beguiled;
To you its very inmost, like a child
Utterly giving faith—no jot withholding—
By you to be beguiled;
It cannot be to look on us, despising,
That yonder great-puls'd Sun englobes the wave
With crocus fire—releasing and arising—
To break upon the slave;
That yonder great-puls'd Sun englobes the wave
With crocus fire—releasing and arising—
To break upon the slave;
150
No. In rich Venice, riotous and human,
That shrinks for me to sandbanks and a sky,
You hold the love I bear you a thing common.
Enough. So let it die,
That shrinks for me to sandbanks and a sky,
You hold the love I bear you a thing common.
Enough. So let it die,
Die from your waves away—O, pale, pale wonder!
The gaunt ships out—toss'd petals—to the main
Be suck'd—the iron bands be snapt asunder!
But Night, Death, you—remain.
The gaunt ships out—toss'd petals—to the main
Be suck'd—the iron bands be snapt asunder!
But Night, Death, you—remain.
(He ceases to sing; and speaks, touching the chords)
In the outer flood, and plunging at his tether,
One sullen hulk complains against the quays;
Rusty, and timbered ill for such fine weather,
He thinks on the high seas.
One sullen hulk complains against the quays;
Rusty, and timbered ill for such fine weather,
He thinks on the high seas.
My hand forgets the strings. May be for travel
It trembles to be gone, to steer the fleet!
There's the secret of the Indies to unravel,
And then the Turks to beat!
It trembles to be gone, to steer the fleet!
There's the secret of the Indies to unravel,
And then the Turks to beat!
153
The Challenge
Not from a Godlike State
Of iron laws
Set above right as Fate
Our strength, our wisdom draws;
But from things weaker than straws,
From childish hands and love left desolate.
Of iron laws
Set above right as Fate
Our strength, our wisdom draws;
But from things weaker than straws,
From childish hands and love left desolate.
And as one shall walk at ease
On battle bent
Who knows the battle frees
In him the great event—
Sing we, with deep consent,
The ancient cause, the never-ending cause!
On battle bent
Who knows the battle frees
In him the great event—
Sing we, with deep consent,
The ancient cause, the never-ending cause!
No cavern'd foe can hide.
Now sharp and clear
The bulks of storm divide,
The combatants appear;
Between that grasp of Fear,
And Freedom, lies the unresolvèd cause!
Now sharp and clear
The bulks of storm divide,
The combatants appear;
Between that grasp of Fear,
And Freedom, lies the unresolvèd cause!
The thinking tyrants all
That kept not troth
Struck falsely, to forestal;
The thinking tyrants loathe
The invisible forest's growth,
The quickening roar in its sea-summits wroth.
That kept not troth
Struck falsely, to forestal;
The thinking tyrants loathe
The invisible forest's growth,
The quickening roar in its sea-summits wroth.
154
Like falcons from the wrist
They toss'd afar
On sleepers in the mist
To plunge from Alp and scaur
Giant-minded vultures—War's
Foul chasm-born Hungers,—Hates that men resist.
They toss'd afar
On sleepers in the mist
To plunge from Alp and scaur
Giant-minded vultures—War's
Foul chasm-born Hungers,—Hates that men resist.
How shall that Cyclops state
Whose subtilty
Upheaved the fields, create
A murderous sovranty?
Pure must our wisdom be,
Innocence keep the keepers of our gate.
Whose subtilty
Upheaved the fields, create
A murderous sovranty?
Pure must our wisdom be,
Innocence keep the keepers of our gate.
O World, this is our Fire,
Our highest Name,
Wherein we do aspire
And all our temples frame,
Freedom of soul's the flame—
The guarded hearth of our organic cause!
Our highest Name,
Wherein we do aspire
And all our temples frame,
Freedom of soul's the flame—
The guarded hearth of our organic cause!
For this we founded States
Time shall inherit,
To grow to rule our fates—
The joy of the free spirit
For all! Let them that fear it
Declare their vision of a higher cause!
Time shall inherit,
To grow to rule our fates—
The joy of the free spirit
For all! Let them that fear it
Declare their vision of a higher cause!
155
We would be free to know,
Yea, free to make
Finelessly on—to grow
More free for freedom's sake:
Let us fail, let us mistake,
But let Earth's undiscover'd springs outbreak!
Yea, free to make
Finelessly on—to grow
More free for freedom's sake:
Let us fail, let us mistake,
But let Earth's undiscover'd springs outbreak!
One spirit, Lord of Life,
Beauty, Truth, Deed—
Is ventured on this strife
Commanding us, “Be freed!”
Spirit, our battle lead,
Be thou, against the oppressors, all our cause!
Beauty, Truth, Deed—
Is ventured on this strife
Commanding us, “Be freed!”
Spirit, our battle lead,
Be thou, against the oppressors, all our cause!
The nations are thy boughs,
The dead, thy seed—
The dreamers are thy vows,
The fighters are thy deed!
By them 'tis Thou art freed—
Moving in them thy passion and thy cause!
The dead, thy seed—
The dreamers are thy vows,
The fighters are thy deed!
By them 'tis Thou art freed—
Moving in them thy passion and thy cause!
Therefore let him beware,
Beneath the sea,
Or hung in middle air,
Who now opposes Thee!
Breath of humanity,
Uplift us in that cause, which is thy cause!
Beneath the sea,
Or hung in middle air,
Who now opposes Thee!
Breath of humanity,
Uplift us in that cause, which is thy cause!
August 1914.
157
MILO
LINES TO A CERTAIN NATION, WRITTEN DURING THE BATTLE OF VERDUN
159
I
Milo, the wrestler oiled, whom victories—
Six times the Pythian, six the Olympian—crowned,
Could shoulder a bullock, run the stadium round,
And in a day devour the beast with ease.
Thrice-happy too, in philosophic strength,
Showed sumptuous ladies paths to Hera's shrine
And crushed his fellow-Greeks of Sybaris,
Haling their treasure to Crotona. In fine
This subtlest of protagonists at length
Taught his folk, force was all, and all force his.
Six times the Pythian, six the Olympian—crowned,
Could shoulder a bullock, run the stadium round,
And in a day devour the beast with ease.
Thrice-happy too, in philosophic strength,
Showed sumptuous ladies paths to Hera's shrine
And crushed his fellow-Greeks of Sybaris,
Haling their treasure to Crotona. In fine
This subtlest of protagonists at length
Taught his folk, force was all, and all force his.
Sybaris was thy kin. Why then, Crotona,
Did Milo lead thee to crush Sybaris?
Why tortured he the men of Sybaris?
He coveted their golden port, Crotona!
Did Milo lead thee to crush Sybaris?
Why tortured he the men of Sybaris?
He coveted their golden port, Crotona!
At sunfall as the titan athlete went,
His mighty self-love nursing discontent,
By a forest path, some Dionysian storm
Of impulse spurred him to a feat enorm.
Cresting the Sila's granites, a strange tree—
A boulder wedged its cloven trunk—to sea
Spread limbs of shade forth, westward, north, south, east.
Its high fantastic-rooted talons capt
The granite. It stood desolation-wrapt.
Mysterious, wounded, long, long had it stood
Deep-rifted, but a kindly fortitude. . . .
And Milo's pride of thew, restless, on edge,
Heaved out the boulder, made himself the wedge,
Thrust the gap wider—that old wound increased—
(Faint shivers running through the foliage)
Until the great bole writhed, sprang, caught him fast,
One arm locked in the yawning of the wood,
No more out of its shade to be released;—
Unless he transmigrate into this tree
His body turns to a fetter, a prison, a grave!
His mighty self-love nursing discontent,
By a forest path, some Dionysian storm
Of impulse spurred him to a feat enorm.
Cresting the Sila's granites, a strange tree—
A boulder wedged its cloven trunk—to sea
160
Its high fantastic-rooted talons capt
The granite. It stood desolation-wrapt.
Mysterious, wounded, long, long had it stood
Deep-rifted, but a kindly fortitude. . . .
And Milo's pride of thew, restless, on edge,
Heaved out the boulder, made himself the wedge,
Thrust the gap wider—that old wound increased—
(Faint shivers running through the foliage)
Until the great bole writhed, sprang, caught him fast,
One arm locked in the yawning of the wood,
No more out of its shade to be released;—
Unless he transmigrate into this tree
His body turns to a fetter, a prison, a grave!
Could such dumb wills, outside his will-to-be,
Have their own wounded being? Or did he rave?
That grip was real. Skywards without end
Its branch'd nerves did most curiously extend,
As they might be the fibrils of a brain—
Stood he within the ganglions of some brain?
Have their own wounded being? Or did he rave?
That grip was real. Skywards without end
Its branch'd nerves did most curiously extend,
As they might be the fibrils of a brain—
Stood he within the ganglions of some brain?
With what a movement strange the whole tree moves,
In thick-running waves of umbratility!
The heavy-fronded murmurer of the groves
Is dash'd by sudden inward beams—it moves,
And lo! a pattern in its vapoury
Spirals unwreathing, spirals without end
Shaped into glimmering lights, a scatter'd train,
Corollas luminous, green nebulæ. . . .
In thick-running waves of umbratility!
161
Is dash'd by sudden inward beams—it moves,
And lo! a pattern in its vapoury
Spirals unwreathing, spirals without end
Shaped into glimmering lights, a scatter'd train,
Corollas luminous, green nebulæ. . . .
Beneath stood Milo, prisoned. To the last,
Madness and ghostly wolves approaching fast,
Still in delirium, still defiantly,
Milo bragged on, shouting up boughs divine,
“Who, then, art Thou, whose hold outwrestles mine?”
Silence fell round him, that for him was worse
Than mortal.
Madness and ghostly wolves approaching fast,
Still in delirium, still defiantly,
Milo bragged on, shouting up boughs divine,
“Who, then, art Thou, whose hold outwrestles mine?”
Silence fell round him, that for him was worse
Than mortal.
But to You (whose name
Verse will not utter, lest it darken verse),
Who were a greater Milo by your fame,
But a Nation, that, before the Multiverse
Fountain of souls, seems one whom nothing awes,—
To You, light-headed with your own applause,
Taunting the world whose agony You cause—
Crying with the lips of Milo still the same
Insult—“Who art thou, to imprison me?”
Immense boughs whisper back, “Humanity!”
Innumerable leaves, “Humanity!”
Verse will not utter, lest it darken verse),
Who were a greater Milo by your fame,
But a Nation, that, before the Multiverse
Fountain of souls, seems one whom nothing awes,—
To You, light-headed with your own applause,
Taunting the world whose agony You cause—
Crying with the lips of Milo still the same
Insult—“Who art thou, to imprison me?”
Immense boughs whisper back, “Humanity!”
Innumerable leaves, “Humanity!”
162
II
For with a movement strange the whole tree moves,
That hath its roots down in the kingdoms pale
Of Hela, and whose boughs do overspread
The highest heaven. We ripen, we are shed—
But lo! a pattern in its vapoury
Spirals unwreathing, spirals without end
Shaped into glimmering lights, a scatter'd veil,
Corollas luminous, green nebulæ
Whirled up in figured dance, each soul in station
(This fan-like rise of petals seems of souls)
Ascending, throbbing—systoles—diastoles—
By generations! Old Pythagoras
These may have numbered in his secret glass—
These, carrying up the spirals of creation;
These, that alone change forces into loves!
That hath its roots down in the kingdoms pale
Of Hela, and whose boughs do overspread
The highest heaven. We ripen, we are shed—
But lo! a pattern in its vapoury
Spirals unwreathing, spirals without end
Shaped into glimmering lights, a scatter'd veil,
Corollas luminous, green nebulæ
Whirled up in figured dance, each soul in station
(This fan-like rise of petals seems of souls)
Ascending, throbbing—systoles—diastoles—
By generations! Old Pythagoras
These may have numbered in his secret glass—
These, carrying up the spirals of creation;
These, that alone change forces into loves!
These glowing cores, the chaliced families,
What suns draw from a source deeper than these—
Nebulæ, wreathing upwards from their fount,
Majestic in their dreams and in their traces?
They throw off paler confraternities,
The temple-guilds, religions of the races,
Formed but to echo their august vibration—
Image forth perpetually their solemn rise!
Floating up warm from narrow native ground
Even in the very need of each man's toil
And the very pang that bids defend his soil,
They become aware of other chalices,
Until with sense of all the rest inwound
They break, towards one will, within their bound,
And feel themselves as one, nation by nation,
Enlarging so the spirals of creation:—
What suns draw from a source deeper than these—
Nebulæ, wreathing upwards from their fount,
Majestic in their dreams and in their traces?
They throw off paler confraternities,
The temple-guilds, religions of the races,
Formed but to echo their august vibration—
Image forth perpetually their solemn rise!
Floating up warm from narrow native ground
Even in the very need of each man's toil
163
They become aware of other chalices,
Until with sense of all the rest inwound
They break, towards one will, within their bound,
And feel themselves as one, nation by nation,
Enlarging so the spirals of creation:—
But neither in men themselves, nor what they change
Or make, do lie the centres of the strange
Movement, wherewith the whole tree moves
Spacing men's mind to measured harmony.
Its centres lie in little glowing cores,
Them that alone change forces into loves.
Or make, do lie the centres of the strange
Movement, wherewith the whole tree moves
Spacing men's mind to measured harmony.
Its centres lie in little glowing cores,
Them that alone change forces into loves.
164
Warm Bask the Vines, Light-thrilled
I
Warm bask the vines, light-thrilled, along your steeps,Azure the fleet of islands hangs in azure,
On lichen'd rock the wrinkled lizard sleeps—
The shore's pine-odour, lifting, sighs for pleasure,
Telaro, Telaro!
Nets, too, festooned about your elfin port
Rough-carved out of the Etrurian mountainside,
Ripplings from golden luggers scarce distort
The image of the belfry where they ride.
Yet, on a black volcanic night long gone,
That bell-tower on the mole
Summon'd, while smouldering heaven with lightnings shone,
Scared and half-naked sleepers by its toll
And choked, delirious in its monotone,
All the narrow channels of your hamlet's soul.
II
Why beats the alarm? Fire? Shipwreck? Treachery?165
For Genoa's raid—the oppressor's piracy—
Or the Falcon of Sarzana that it rings,
Telaro, Telaro?
Is the boat-guild's silver plunder'd? Blood shall pay!
Hard-won the footing of your fishers' clan,
The sea-cloud watchers. Clash'd above the spray
That stinging iron cry, the appeal of man—
Enough, enough, the jeopardies of day—
Washes through tempest on!
And blood is up, and searchers seek to slay—
The tower shows empty! By the lightnings wan
They find no human ringer in the room.
The bell-rope quivers, out in the sea-spume.
III
A creature fierce, soft, witless of itself,A morbid mouth, circled by writhing arms,
By its own grasp entangled on that shelf
Has dragged the rope and spread your deathalarms,
Telaro, Telaro!
From murk deeps light-forgotten, up from slime,
From ambush of sea-chasms issuing for prey
166
The spawn of sunken times hath, late in time,
Clamber'd, and griefs upon man's grief imposed
Blindly. But fishers closed
The blind mouth, and cut off the suckers cold!
Two thousand fathoms your disturber rolled
From trough to trough into the gulf Tyrrhene;
And fear sank back into its night obscene.
IV
Yes, though 'twill surge again, this monstrous PastTo lash the ramparts of our little town—
Upheaves the despot, with his tangles vast,
Or fell Chance rises and the floods drag down,
Telaro, Telaro!
From cliffs of light our noblest in its coil—
Here the wild breakers closed over Shelley's head,
Pale furies swift, unconscious of their spoil,
Flung on your sea-cave's floor the dreamless dead—
Yet Power, elder than Time, terrible, bright,
Dwells in our race of care.
On the breast of Chance we are not parasite;
When the multiverse ungovernable Might
Confronts itself with dark bale and despair,
Then the Spirit of Man, pure spirit, shineth bare!
167
Advance on the Somme
I
Wild airman, you, the battle's eyes,Who, hovering over forest air,
Can every belt of cloud despise
And through them fall without despair,
No cannon's sound to you can rise.
But, say, how goes the battle there,
As they advance?
II
Be dumb, choked heart! for they are dumb—Our men advancing. All's at stake!
The woods are bullet-stript—with hum
Of cannon all the pastures shake;
And some will cross the crest, and some
Will halt for ever in the brake,
As they advance.
III
The ground is bubbling—pit and mire—And blackened with the blood of sons.
Death rains on every yard; and fire
Shuttles the veil with woof of guns.
Dread is flag those weavers dire
Unroll to shroud our gallant ones
As they advance!
168
IV
They followed once—who rode so well—As brave a hunt as e'er blew horn:
And now through warren'd woods of hell
They follow till the fateful morn.
And them the mudstain'd sentinel
Shall watch, and see an age newborn
As they advance!
July 1916.
169
Three Hours, O Christ
Three hours, O Christ,Us to set free
Did thy body hang
On the bitter tree.
Longer, Prometheus,
Thou! Age-long
Did the ridge of Asia
Support thy wrong.
But Man, whom ye loved—
Man, in whose dream
Ye did deliver,
Ye did redeem—
Whose weightless body
At last hath wings,
Leaves not the mount
Of your sufferings:—
Of his own creatures
Become afraid,
Gnawn by the vultures
Himself hath made;
Man, in whom vision
Outsoars the will,
To Earth, war-weary,
Is nailèd still.
August 1914.
173
Battle of the Marne
This action was in truth a chain of five battles in a curved line. Those who know the ground will recognise in this poem the middle battle.
“Attila's namesake, the young prince,” refers to Eitel Friedrich, son of William II. His private correspondence was found in a trench in a low plantation on the plain under Mont Aout, between Broussy and La Fère Champenoise.
The name of Attila was transformed by German chroniclers and bards into Atli, Azzilo, Ezzilo, and, in the Nibelungenlied, Etzel. Now the name Etzel, sometimes written Aiezelin, is derived from the Celtic root aidu, meaning “fire,” and refers to purity of race (Förstemann, Altdeutsches Namenbuch, vol. i. Personennamen, pp. 43, 45). Eitel, from a common root (cf. the stem eit, meaning “fire,” and eiten, “to burn”; and the Latin aedes, that is, “firestead,” “house,” “hearth”), also means “of high, or fire-pure, race” (Grimm, vol. iii. p. 384); and was attached to princes of that house and other houses before the year 1400 (Stokvis, Manuel d'hist., de généalogie et de chronologie, vol. iii. p. 166). No more than this is implied by the words, “Attila's namesake.”
I
Sing we of that whereof all song hath sense,That sovran mystery unnamed
That makes a nation in its just defence
So stern in confidence,
Stronger by far than it is bodily,
A thing not with the body to be tamed.
Beaten Antaeus-like to ground
It springs up like a forest tree.
Marne knows it not, impetuous for the sea,
But well ye know it, ye
Deep-minded, formidable listeners,
O Forests of the Marne!
II
Marne's stately water,That melancholy many-winding river,
Hath many a battle known
Since by her island of the beechen copses,
Boar-hunting palace of the Merovings
And full this month of autumn-glancing wings,
Pale Fredegonda drowned her lover's son—
But like this battle, none.
Marne, who beneath this chalky spur
From woods of Gault and forest of Traonne,
Herself doth milky tribute rivers drain,—
Marne, the far-wanderer,
Stretches not wide as this day's battle line.
174
Beneath the ruined castle Mondement
Look down, look there,
Towards Champenoise La Fère,
Over moon-barren heaths, the vast chalk plain,
Bald moors of high Champagne
Scattered with spindling woods of birch and pine
By the straggled marsh-belt of Saint Gond,—
By Reuves and Broussy, Oyes and Bannes,
Little marsh-villages with scarce a name,
There hangs your lot and mine.
Nightlong the marshfire Death hangs flickering
Above the pale-lipp'd middle of the line,
Watching—from Verdun wall to Paris wall—
Whether we stand or fall,
Whether the European liberties
Pass into dust
Like a thing temporal
That dureth no long while
Or shall outlast us all.
These are the claims august,
And this the fate that shall be settled there.
III
Here, Forests of the Marne,Where still your birds are calling,
Your streams of light in all directions falling
On floors with ivy sheen'd, room beyond room,
Your stems, the elder brothers of our house,
175
Of France our mother, she that drains
The wild cloud from the shoreless height
Of suns, in your twice-dropping rains,
Staunches your heavings day and night—
Nerves you against the tempest's strains
And soothes the lightning from your veins,
Dark rivers of the light.
But now is light forgot,
Forests of Gault, Traonne;
Here lightning is that she soothes not,
Lightning from human fears.
Blasted and wreckt
The zigzag mire of trenches runs,
About the ruin'd castle Mondement,
Amid your glades blood-fleck'd
That tremble all with guns.
At Charleroi defeated
France hath retreated,
Whelm'd are her wise and tomb-embedded walls
Inwrought with statues in heroic fragments,
Founded on famous written stones;
Beauty's time-chartered capitals,
Her royal towns,
Reims, Soissons, Laon,
Are fallen. What else falls?
And what though Attila was check'd
And headed back to the Hercynian wood
From these same Catalaunian fields
176
Never, since Autumn was,
Hath tempest strown the grass
Nor charged the spirit-life of atmospheres
With ruin rich as this tremendous Year's—
For here the soul of France
Hath baulk'd the great advance
Of all their cannoniers.
IV
And here your armies, leopard-like, well shielded,Leaf-strewn and shadow-mottled in the dews
As the moths that shower about their torch-lit blades,
Are couch'd in the wet glades,
The young men in their flower
Lying in their shoddy coats of shabby blue;
And heavy on their hearts
Lies all that ground of France that they have yielded.
From her they ask no thanks,
They who to-day will choose
That they must die. They know
How lovely is the world that they must lose:
This bracken smell, these rivulets floating by,
177
A surge of joy along the endless ranks—
The bayonets rise, the young men rise and go.
V
France watched that ordered nation
Its miracle perform—
Saw Germany transform
Her summer veil of spies
To a tempest of horses and of guns.
Though France be loved with fire and fear,
With what allies can France confront them here?
Can flesh and blood resist
The whining ever keener
Of that blast out of the east,
And the heavy undertone
Of yon wheeling symphony of storms?
You shall see the world's substructure
Laid bare unto the bone,
Yet by the high demeanour
Of the chief protagonist
What mighty forms live on.
Its miracle perform—
Saw Germany transform
Her summer veil of spies
To a tempest of horses and of guns.
Though France be loved with fire and fear,
With what allies can France confront them here?
Can flesh and blood resist
The whining ever keener
Of that blast out of the east,
And the heavy undertone
Of yon wheeling symphony of storms?
You shall see the world's substructure
Laid bare unto the bone,
Yet by the high demeanour
Of the chief protagonist
What mighty forms live on.
But how near her breath was gone!
To her sons, as they retreated,
“Fall back,” she cried, “to Aisne,
To Marne, to Aube, to Seine,
Ere I can strike again
And my battle be completed!”
Unshaken was her strain
Though near her life was gone.
To her sons, as they retreated,
“Fall back,” she cried, “to Aisne,
178
Ere I can strike again
And my battle be completed!”
Unshaken was her strain
Though near her life was gone.
VI
And trembling masses of the reeds
In the marshes of Saint Gond—
Like their holy eremite
Retreated waist-deep to these waters cold,
Thirsting for desolation here
That they might only hear
The frog's lone flute
Amidst their shivering maze,
Or cry of wild duck sheer
Down the still waterways,—
Hear now exchange of salvoes rolled
From Mont Aout to Toulon La Montagne,
Cannon from the scarped vineyard-crests
Of Congy's northern height
That look on the bleak plain.
And who would guess the embrace
Of conflict for man's soul?
The alder covert's trysting-place
Of wood-wren and of oriole
Still on the marshy bank's short grasses
Hoopoe or little bittern passes
To hunt food for their young.
In the brown reeds, reed-warblers great and small
Flit and yet flit.
In the marshes of Saint Gond—
Like their holy eremite
Retreated waist-deep to these waters cold,
Thirsting for desolation here
That they might only hear
The frog's lone flute
Amidst their shivering maze,
Or cry of wild duck sheer
Down the still waterways,—
Hear now exchange of salvoes rolled
From Mont Aout to Toulon La Montagne,
Cannon from the scarped vineyard-crests
Of Congy's northern height
That look on the bleak plain.
And who would guess the embrace
Of conflict for man's soul?
The alder covert's trysting-place
Of wood-wren and of oriole
Still on the marshy bank's short grasses
Hoopoe or little bittern passes
To hunt food for their young.
179
Flit and yet flit.
But why
Makes he such scrutiny,
Attila's namesake, the young prince,
Knelt in the white and shallow pit
Beside the marshes and stunt pines?
Steadily gazing into the sky
He sees the harrier-hawk, to feed his mate
Fluttering below him in blue air,
Let the clutcht lizard fall.
Tumbling, six feet below in air,
Backward she catches it
And bears off to her tussock'd nest
In the reed-beds of Saint Gond.
The young prince smiles to see them play
So featly with a prey.
Nine armies lie behind him on the crest
Along that line of scarpèd heights
Of Congy and of La Chenaille;
From Verdun wall to Paris wall
Swooping wing-shadows of the eagle fall
Who drops to his mate to-day
The shrivell'd lizard France.
Not even the ruin'd castle Mondement,
Warden of all the marshes' realm,
Remembers that beyond
The rushes, in those waters of Saint Gond,
Beneath the she-hawk's tussock'd nest
Sleeps Attila's lost golden helm. . . .
Cloaking Man's long misdeeds
Hold they their gentle bitter colloquy
Remote, the ceaselessly
Trembling masses of the reeds.
Makes he such scrutiny,
Attila's namesake, the young prince,
Knelt in the white and shallow pit
Beside the marshes and stunt pines?
Steadily gazing into the sky
He sees the harrier-hawk, to feed his mate
Fluttering below him in blue air,
Let the clutcht lizard fall.
Tumbling, six feet below in air,
Backward she catches it
And bears off to her tussock'd nest
In the reed-beds of Saint Gond.
The young prince smiles to see them play
So featly with a prey.
Nine armies lie behind him on the crest
Along that line of scarpèd heights
Of Congy and of La Chenaille;
From Verdun wall to Paris wall
Swooping wing-shadows of the eagle fall
Who drops to his mate to-day
The shrivell'd lizard France.
Not even the ruin'd castle Mondement,
Warden of all the marshes' realm,
Remembers that beyond
The rushes, in those waters of Saint Gond,
Beneath the she-hawk's tussock'd nest
Sleeps Attila's lost golden helm. . . .
180
Hold they their gentle bitter colloquy
Remote, the ceaselessly
Trembling masses of the reeds.
VII
Even should She perish, stunned,Why for this patch of ground
While vintaged suns are blithe
And dancing in the glass,
Now should it come to pass
That men must drop before the scythe,
Bound by the same religion as the grass?
What, after all, is France?
'Tis she who since Rome's wane
Hath been man's leader these two thousand years.
She, always first to bear the throe
Europe must after undergo,
Who beneath the centralising touch of pain
Winces into control by brain—
Her very hurts become for her an eye—
Who first among the nations seems to attain
Most near to conscious personality;
Until her rudest sea-washt frontier-part
Is yet repeated at her heart,
And something of her wingèd whole
Glass'd upon every Pyrenean herdboy's soul.
181
Rallying the bare clans of the plaided Gael,
Alone defeated the great Caesar's dint;
She, who at Alesia
Massed on her long green mountain's table head,
Took for all time the noble Caesar's print
Of valour rein'd, and wisdom humanised,
And conquest by compassion fortified.
Steadfastly to diffuse
Her simple hearth-gods use
She to expanding thought from Hellas wins,
And, beside the freedom she extols,
She to imagine law for souls
Through the Roman and the Christian disciplines;
Slow pinnacle by feudal pinnacle
Hath laboured ages without stint
To make the many-chambered habitation
Of her exalted spirit swell,
And by many an anchoret's faint-candled cell,
Or flame-lit vestal, like her vestal Joan,
Hath from the Alban mount brought down
Into your wild green commonwealth of trees
The sacred fire familial,
And let it on her nation's altar dwell
To raise for mother and child a roof sublime.
182
VIII
To knit this fabric out of chivalriesHer reason charmed so well,
By sheer enchanting measure to enthral
She chained as Orpheus by a spell
Intense, the stubborn'st rock of adversaries,
Gascon, Burgundian, Breton, Provencal,
Into the very substance of her wall,
To be its buttresses, nay, pillars vast,
Projecting on the future the brave past,
That she by grace and force reciprocal
Their countervailing valours did subsume.
Her lifting voice
Ensheaved these mighty rebel strains to poise
Into a nation, ruling us and time.
IX
By gift of the life communal she reignedWho never yet to Christendom played false
Nor yet the light belied,
Belying that through which she had attained.
Yet, still unsatisfied,
France, the propylon of the west,
Forecourt of ecstasy's imaginings,
With crowded front of half a thousand kings
And saints, like Reims's doors eternal,
Rose-window'd, deep-recess'd,
Hath raised her triple portal—
Free, equal, and fraternal—
183
Long as her state body from soul divide
She knows her state is but the destined portal
Into another that shall make more free.
Leader is she to us
Because with such a self unsatisfied;
And, she being perill'd thus,
Voices not ours in her defence
(Like some troubled and illumined sense
Exchanged between the sun's and the earth's desire)
Descend and call on us
To defend, and to fulfil.
X
Ah! Forests of the Marne,Forests of Gault, Traonne,
Of what avail is all your stubborn toil,
Of what avail is hers,
Rising resistant through so many years,
If now, from coast to coast,
This noble France be lost?
If now this golden France from beach to beach,
Her women, sisters of the race of Rome,
Her mothers, and that Mother divine, her soil,
Be wrest from us by force?
We have no need for speech.
Harden'd are we by Life: its iron pains,
Its shunless endings, do we know;
184
And so much more—
Since she that bore, that fed us with the Earth's
Breast-love, before we heard of chains
Or guess'd the pangs of birth,
Save us, hath now no more resource;—
Since she whose shining colour'd plains,
Streams, fresh leaves, fire and dew,
Ran in our eyes and veins
When we ourselves were new
And ran about with flower-like breath
Before we ever knew
There was a thing call'd Death—
Herself is like to die,—
She, the convergence of our rays,
The Eternal smiling on our days,—
To pass from us, to die!—
Silent as you, O Forests of the Marne,
In her defence
Our deaths must be our eloquence.
XI
Some message flies through all,Men are made integral,
We lay down cares, we bid good-bye,
Embrace in the public eye,
Stoop to the children, and depart.
Stranger to stranger passing by
Opens his long-forgotten heart,
185
The ineffable stark simple truth.
The lads and maidens in their throngs
Outbreaking like the mountain waterfalls
Beneath the breach'd Republic's walls
Flood by, singing the old songs
Of equal, free, fraternity.
Men march out through the barriers
To the last infrangible frontiers,
And the old men with the step of youth.
Some message, fusing all,
Moulds and makes integral;
Men feel again after their perfect wholes,
Arise the maimed and scattered members
Of all this wounded ground of France.
Out of the plain the leaves that seemed September's
Are gathered by a great wind that controls,
There comes a sob of flame upon the embers—
A wordless breathing on the coals
Passes by; Man remembers
The unity of souls.
And with whose overruling Form do we entwine,
Sparks from the forges, blown through space?
Or that thou, rising evermore
Whirl'd leaf, art becomes a sign,
That the chill husk becomes a core
And the strange mask, a face,
And the one man, a race,
And that race, a thing divine?
186
That stems the great advance
Of all their cannoniers.
XII
“Continue, O continue,” cry her dreams,
And the very fibres of her stems;
Floating forest voices bode
And break like a sea over the continents,
“Continue, O continue,” cry her faiths,
Her wisdoms, savour of continuity,
Sweeping from node to node
Her mounting sap, her sapience,
Like her green glens
Of brooks that pour the sky from fall to fall
Her grave religions to the labourer call,
“Thou art required, infinitesimal!
Now comes the day of pang
Of which thy fathers sang,
When at the edge of death
Thou must pass on
That high contagion,
Her life, that gave thee breath.”
“Continue, O continue,” cries her noble Reason,
“Thy life but serves, creating in due orders
The floating judgments of the invisible
Hearths, throng'd within my borders;
And for the free play of the soul's
Most intimate loneliness and fire!
Upon their counter'd voices, joined, depend
All judgment, and all justice, in the end.”
And the very fibres of her stems;
Floating forest voices bode
And break like a sea over the continents,
“Continue, O continue,” cry her faiths,
Her wisdoms, savour of continuity,
Sweeping from node to node
Her mounting sap, her sapience,
Like her green glens
Of brooks that pour the sky from fall to fall
Her grave religions to the labourer call,
“Thou art required, infinitesimal!
Now comes the day of pang
Of which thy fathers sang,
When at the edge of death
Thou must pass on
That high contagion,
Her life, that gave thee breath.”
“Continue, O continue,” cries her noble Reason,
“Thy life but serves, creating in due orders
The floating judgments of the invisible
Hearths, throng'd within my borders;
And for the free play of the soul's
Most intimate loneliness and fire!
187
All judgment, and all justice, in the end.”
'Tis thus the soul of France
Hath stemm'd the great advance
Of yonder cannoniers.
Hath stemm'd the great advance
Of yonder cannoniers.
XIII
Four nights along the marshy zone of mistsThe sleepless line of France resists;
And four nights end those days
With apocalyptic blaze,
Uncertain darkness shot with rays,
And golden smoke
Rolls out over the thick reeds
Deepening the mystery of those dead waters.
The eyeless Chateau Mondement,
Towering and hollow guard,
That like another Lear
Stands at the marshes' end and narrow gate,
Upon his bosky mountain spur
By Poirier's hill white-scarr'd—
Besieged and lost
By either host,
Lighteth no more for the marsh-wanderer
Upon his naked-rafter'd turret spire,
The kindly signal fire
That he for centuries was wont to raise.
Summon'd in vain to be strife's arbiter
He with insane dark gaze
188
Smitten with gun on gun,
And feels beneath his trembling woods,
And about his deep-ravined and dusky base,
The arms of great and little Morin run
Thrilled with the fate of all that they embrace.
XIV
Four nights doth parching battle swayTowards the fourth inexorable day;
Then outbreaks autumn tempest, rain and hail
Towards evening of the day.
And, with the rising of that sunset gale,
When at last the long-awaited Forty-second
Division rode down to Corroy
Everywhere then came leapings of the heart!
Whisperers strange upstart,
Leaf-hosts in whirl'd careers
Down Marne's cliffs, willow'd reaches, swollen weirs,
Over the bridge of Lagny's foundered piers
And St. Rémy's cannon-lighted heart;
From vineyard, marsh, heath, copse,
Caught up to mix above the forest tops,
And blazon'd on a hundred winds to dance
Upon the glowing misty airs
With low and feverish cries
Whirls the whole realm of leaves.
189
Above the woods of Gault and forests of Traonne,
And from the seven poplar'd roads
Threading the marshland zone,
Behold the voyage of those torn leaves
And, launched above their spiral rise
Out of all her deep and stubborn families,
They see ascend the wingèd feet of France
Terribly to repel.
“Behold her,” cry the leaves and winds eternal,
“Thrice holy, the maternal,
Thrice holy, the son-shaper,
Herself our radiant eddy of star vapour
Out of whirlwinds of the planet, plant and shell,
Emerging to repair her wounded cell.”
They remember her, red leaves, and with no fears.
Not in the day serene,
In cities of the vintage proud,
Plainly by them was this Immortal seen,
But now, against the midnight thundercloud,
Above the shell-pits of our field of dead.
Her lineaments are clear, devoid of dread,
The glories of her wings are bow'd
To us, when our light fails
And to the inconsolable her face unveils.
The soul of one called France—
190
Stronger than any France—
Hath turned the tide of war
And baulk'd the great advance
Of yonder cannoniers.
XV
By the first hour of dawnUp Congy's steep vine-glades
Retreat the tunics grey,
And through forests of Compiègne
Northwards by stealth, by night,
The enemy his rearguards hath withdrawn—
The wolf's jaw broken by the bite—
To camp upon the brows of Aisne.
Then, as a Chinese juggler standing far away
Will shower his volley'd blades
Round a pale woman's patient face
And delicate throat, leant back, unscored
By the fringe of knives fixed quivering in the board,
He rains from the hills his fire
On Reims, the sea of house-roofs round the base
Of the mountainous Basilica twin-towered,
And spares it in the midst, crushing them all,
To be his witness and memorial
Of skill and grace.
191
XVI
The birds flit unafraidThrough the great cannonade;
And, O Cannoniers, though ill
The forests take your skill,
And as by winter nipp'd
Scatter leaves bullet-stript
Down the shell-ravaged road—
Still in its dark abode,
In the branches of God,
The Soul sings on alone.
You may blow the dead from their crypt—
Not the dream from its throne.
XVII
They shall conquer who becomeChasm—leaping flashes, spirits self-transcendent—
Transmitters of the harmonies of honour
Breaking familial from the wasted Earth.
XVIII
We are not last, we are not highest,
Upon the topless scale of being.
Closing above our heads,
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
With crests beyond our seeing,
(That may be real, and yet may never be)
Arise, with lighted chalices,
The things in truth most dear to us—
Forms of the half-seen sacred Families
Bearing, and yet unborn—
Seeking, and ever seeking, the perfect flower!
And within their cells translucent
As in a second womb
Our whole lives rise and pass;
Each petal in its station,
Each body in its sheath.
For above, around, beneath
The narrow and clear-lighted ring
Of each work-day intelligence,
There hangs in deep penumbra
Whence only beauty speaketh,
The Will that upward seeketh,
Tossing the pattern of our streaming wills
Up hotly from our childhood's plains and hills
In ever-widening spiral sweep
That yet its steady core doth keep.
Upon the topless scale of being.
Closing above our heads,
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
With crests beyond our seeing,
192
Arise, with lighted chalices,
The things in truth most dear to us—
Forms of the half-seen sacred Families
Bearing, and yet unborn—
Seeking, and ever seeking, the perfect flower!
And within their cells translucent
As in a second womb
Our whole lives rise and pass;
Each petal in its station,
Each body in its sheath.
For above, around, beneath
The narrow and clear-lighted ring
Of each work-day intelligence,
There hangs in deep penumbra
Whence only beauty speaketh,
The Will that upward seeketh,
Tossing the pattern of our streaming wills
Up hotly from our childhood's plains and hills
In ever-widening spiral sweep
That yet its steady core doth keep.
It is the race creates our soul
By touches many-fingered.
It is our land that makes the soul to sing,
In beauty like the forest's murmuring.
As prisoners speak from cell to cell
By beatings on the wall,
So speaks to us out of her shrine,
This sea-beat France, this Gaul,
As a god might speak unto a vine
Travelling across his temple wall,—
By impulse from the divine,
Upheaved through the familiar ground—
Throbbings of our own heart-beats, our own nation.
By touches many-fingered.
It is our land that makes the soul to sing,
In beauty like the forest's murmuring.
As prisoners speak from cell to cell
By beatings on the wall,
So speaks to us out of her shrine,
This sea-beat France, this Gaul,
As a god might speak unto a vine
193
By impulse from the divine,
Upheaved through the familiar ground—
Throbbings of our own heart-beats, our own nation.
And Beauty is that language of the race,
O beauty is the tongue,
In which—be it lived or sung—
With utter selflessness of mood,
Into the daring instant's time and place
The small immediate life is flung
With the careless gesture of infinitude.
O beauty is the tongue,
In which—be it lived or sung—
With utter selflessness of mood,
Into the daring instant's time and place
The small immediate life is flung
With the careless gesture of infinitude.
Thus is upheaved the Nation,
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
Closing above our heads—
Content that, while we sink, it spreads
Abroad on the sunn'd wave of Time
Wider its flowering incandescences;
A many-voiced, a many-thirsted thing—
As full of eyes as heaven hath stars—a thing
Ascending to the future like a song
Moulded of fineless will and meditation.
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
Closing above our heads—
Content that, while we sink, it spreads
Abroad on the sunn'd wave of Time
Wider its flowering incandescences;
A many-voiced, a many-thirsted thing—
As full of eyes as heaven hath stars—a thing
Ascending to the future like a song
Moulded of fineless will and meditation.
| Poems with Fables in Prose | |