Poems with Fables in Prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

This narrative poem, published some years before the plays, “Deirdre” of Synge, or the “Deirdre” of W. B. Yeats, does not cover any of the ground touched by these poets. In fact the episode of thirty hours, narrated by the Three Voices, does not, with the exception of two incidents, occur in any of the versions of the famous “Tragical Tale of the Sons of Usnach.” The manner of Deirdre's wooing of Naois is, however, based on an occurrence in a Gaelic version of that tale, in which, on a day (although not, as in this narrative, her marriage day) Deirdre and her women companions “were out on the hillock behind the house enjoying the scene and drinking in the sun's heat. What did they see coming but three men a-journeying. Deirdre was looking at the men that were coming, and wondering at them. When the men neared them, Deirdre remembered the language of the huntsmen, and she said to herself that these were the three sons of Usnach, and that this was Naois, he having what was above the bend of his two shoulders above the men of Erin all.” The three brothers went past without taking any notice of them, and without even glancing at the young girls on the hillock. “What happened but that love for Naois struck the heart of Deirdre, so that she could not but follow after him. She trussed her raiment and went after the three men that went past the base of the knoll, leaving her women attendants there. Aillean and Ardan had heard of the woman that Connachar, King of Ulster, had with him, and they thought that if Naois their brother saw her he would have her himself, more especially as she was not married to the king.” They perceived the woman coming, and called on one another to hasten their steps as they had a long distance to travel and the dusk of night was coming on. They did so. She cried three times, “Naois, son of Usnach, wilt thou leave me?” “What cry is that which it is not well for me to answer, and not easy for me to refuse?” Twice the brothers put him off with excuses. “But the third time Naois and Deirdre met, and Deirdre kissed Naois three times, and a kiss to each of his brothers.” The other incidents in the episodic poem “Deirdre Wedded” are new. They are grounded on knowledge of the localities named.

Fintan; Urmael; Cir

These were old bards. A tomb like that of Cir, caverned through a hill-ridge, has been found and explored not far from Eman and Armagh, just as it is described in the poem. But the curious may rediscover it for themselves.

Connachar

This king, or terrestrial divinity, is generally known as Conchobar, or Conor, King of Ulster (Uladh) and Arch-King of Ireland. He is chronicled as reigning about the time of the incarnation of Christ.

Eman

Eman, or Emain Macha, was the chief palace of Connachar. It is still seen and named in the “Navan Ring”—enormous earthworks on a hill about two miles west of Armagh. The people from the town and countryside still go up to dance there on holidays. Traces of the Lake of Pearls—into which jewels were cast on a sudden flight—lie in a marsh under Eman. The Callan, or “loud-sounding” river, runs not very far off.

Dun Aengus

A pre-historic stone fortress—singularly vast —on the edge of the cliffs of Arran Môr, one of the Aran Islands in the Atlantic, west of Galway. The walls are very massive, and were originally built half-cricle-wise, as though half of the ring had broken off and fallen into the sea.

I: THE CHANTERS

I

I stood on the Hill of Time when the sun was fled,
And my vision sought where to rest, till it knew the plains
Of my country, the Night's harp, and the moonless bed
Of rivers and bristling forests and sea-board chains.

II

And from many a chanter's mound—none is nameless there—
Could I hear, amid rumour eternal, the voice ascend.
With the bones of man endureth his floating hair,
And the song of his spirit on earth is slow to end.

III

Speak to me, speak to me, Fintan, dark in the south,
From the west Urmael, and Cir, lying under the pole,
Some chant that ye made, who never spake mouth to mouth,
But over the ridge of ages from soul to soul!

IV

And a strain came out of Dun Tulcha, the yew's shores,
From Fintan, the elder than yews, the too old for tears,
“Let us tell him of Deirdre wed, that his heart's doors
Resound, as when kings arrive, with the trees of spears.”

2: VOICE OF FINTAN

Out of the First Century

O sightless and rare-singing brotherhood!
It was the night when Connachar, high king
Of the four kingdoms, took to wife at last
Deirdre, the wise one, the thrice-beautiful;
It was the night of marriage. Word had sped,
Tokens gone out to every rath and ring
And every pasture on the woody knolls
Green about Eman, of the slaughter blithe
Of sheep and boar, of badger and of stag,
Reddening the ways up to the kingly house—
Of sheep and goats and of the stintless food
That should be poured out to his beggary
By Connachar, that all time should remember
The night he wed the girl from the elf-mound.
Yonside of Assaroe his swineherd found her
Bred in a peaty hillock of the west
By one old crone. Though tribeless she and wild—
Barefoot, and in the red wool chasing cattle
Connachar saw and took, biding his time,
And let queens give her skill the winter long
In webs and brews and dyes and broideries
Up to this night of marriage.

Fabulous,

O friends, and dark, and mighty, was his house,
The beam-work in its dome of forest trunks—
They that had been the chantries of the dawn
To blacken songless through a thousand years:—
But never since they sway'd buds in the glens
Or spun the silken-floating violet gleam
Had those spars groan'd above so fierce a breath
Rich with the vapour of the boar! For now
Hundreds with ruddy-glistening faces ran
Jostling round the nine shadows of the blaze
And spread with skins the lengthy beds of men
And soused warm spice of herbs in ale. Here—thither—
Was rousing of age-slumber'd horns, arranging
Smooth banks throughout the house, strawing of rushes,
And cauldrons humm'd before the empty throne
Set high in the shadow of the wall, and bubbled
Inaudible, impatient for the king.

But while outside the black roof on the mount
Wide-wafted sank the sun's divinity
On swooning wings, the Lake of Pearls far down
Curdled beneath the unseen seed of rain.
Ramparts run there that by-gone prisoners
Bore once in bags of slime up from the lake
For barriers of the house they most abhorr'd.

And on the hill-side, where that rampart old
Dips lowest to the lakeward, Deirdre stood,
Hearing from distant ridges the faint bleat
Of lambs perturb the dusk—bleats shivering out
Like wool from thorns—there the young Deirdre stood,
Like the moon whose climbing beauty pales the world,
Looking far off on hills whence she was come.
Mountains that lift the holiness of Fire!
Fortitudes, ye that take the brunt of fate!
Send her across the bog a little cloud
Full of the ancient savours, full of peace,
And for its drops she will hold up her heart,
O ye that stand in heaven, far removed!
She ask'd aloud, Wherefore were greens so bare
That but an hour ago shook with the thud
Of racers and of hurlers? Was it late?
The wrinkled nurse replied, Had the child eyes?
Back from a hosting and a desperate prey
For corn and mares and rustless brass and beeves
Naois, with the rest of Usnach's sons,
Had come. She had seen him weary go but now
Heavily up the steep through the king's hedge.
Now on the hill-top, while the woman spoke,

So chanced it. Hanging on the young man's lips
The hosts sway'd round him, and above the press
Connachar, glittering all in torques of gold
And writhen armlets, listen'd from the mound
Of judgment, by the doom-oak at his door.
His beak'd helm took the sunset, but he held
His flint-red eyes in shadow and averse.
And when before him, dark as a young pine,
Unmoved the son of Usnach had told all;
How half his folk had perish'd in the task
By plague or battle, and how poor a spoil
Was driven home, the king cried: “Paragon!
We must go griddle cakes in honey for him!
Bring lavers of pale gold to wash off blood
So precious to us!” Since for many moons
This champion had forsworn the face of softness
And stretched his hungers to the sleety rock,
Call in the smile of women to unlatch
From his grim ribs the iron:—Faugh! Away!
Let Usnach's sons take out again that night
Their broken clans, their piteous cattle thence;
Defeated men should see his gates no more.

The son of Usnach turn'd and went. He ran
Down hill and to the loch to wash his wounds
Chanting—his dark curls waver'd in the wind—

Chanting he strode, tossing a brace of spears,
Lest we should think him humbled. Halfway down
The shapes of women loiter'd in the dusk
And one held backward out her arms to take
The latchets of her cloak. But as Naois
Pass'd by them, closely as is heard a sigh—
His vehement flood of soul fierce for the mere—
Glancing not right nor left, O then I saw
The foot of Deirdre stricken motionless—
I saw the stiff cloak many-colour'd sink
Slow to the grass, wrinkling its blazon'd skins
Behind her.

Gloom suck'd in the banqueters;
And from the warmth of drinking at his feast
Connachar sent forth to the women's house;
And heralds bade bring also the grey seer,
Cathva, though Cathva had not will'd to come.
But hardly had those erranders gone out
When rose the door-hide: the grey seer came in
Noiseless. He was of fog the night hath spun,
Earth in his hair and on his meagre cheek,
Consumed and shaking, ragged as seaweed,
And to the throne he cried: “Why hast thou called
Me to carousal? Is this bed my work?
Nay—too great clearness underneath the thunder
Shew'd insupportably the things to be.

Too long have I, with glamours, drops and runes
Shook round her cabin low my skirts of storm,
Far hence, round her peaty hillock in the west,
To shield thee from that devastating face.
My fault is only that I slew her not.
Know! it was I that, seeing those cradled limbs
Bright with disaster for the realm and thee,
When she no more was than a litling babe
Flung her away among sea-warding Mountains.
But Muilréa to Ben Gorm said:What is this?
What glee is this disturbs our desolation?
I hear another than the wild duck sheering
Sidelong the wind. Tall as a rush is she,
Sweet as the glitter of the netted lakes!
And Ben Gorm answer'd:We are sick alone:
Let us distil the heavens into a child!
Yea, let our bones appear, the black goat starve
Upon our heads, yet shall this wafted seed
Superabound with ripeness we forgo.
Dark space shall come to heart—silvers of mists— And thou, blue depth of gorges! Connachar,
I heard the plotters, but I let her live!”
And the king ask'd, “Hath any seen her there?”
And Cathva answer'd, “Till thy herdsman found her

She knew not that men were.” Then Connachar
Commanded yet again, “Bring us in Deirdre!”
Straightway a woman like the claw of birds,
Decrepit, bright of eye, and innocent,
Stood up beyond the fire. Her fingers play'd—
Play'd with a red stone at her breast. He ask'd,
“Who gave thee, hag, the jewel on thy bosom?”
Now every drinker from the darkest stalls
Perceived the brooch was Deirdre's, and a gift
To her from Connachar. Aghast, the woman
Fumbled at her sere breast, and wept and said,
“It was a gift to me, O Connachar,
This night.” And he, consummate lord of fear,
Our never-counsell'd lord, the Forest-odour'd,
That kept about his heart a zone of chill,
Smiled, though within the gateway of his fort
A surmise crept, as 'neath a load of rushes
Creeps in the stabber. “Fix the pin, Levarcham,
For she that loses such a brooch will grieve.
Why comes not Deirdre?” “Sir, she is not yet
Duly array'd, and so is loth to come.”
O, then, believe me, all the floor was hush,
But a mad discordancy like fifes, drums, brasses,—
Bondmen of old was on the winds released—
Shook every beam and pillar of the house;
And the king said—“Thou hear'st out of the marsh

Scream of my stallions mounting on the gale?”
And she said, “Yea.” “Thou knowest round these walls
How many chariots now are tilted up?”
And she said, “Yea.” “Then, woman, bring with haste
Deirdre, thy charge, into this presence now,
Or limb from limb upon the pleasant grass
Those wheels shall parcel thee at dawn!” And she,
Levarcham that was nurse to Deirdre's childhood,
Lifted her hands and closed her eyes and sang:
“She will come back, but I, I shall not bring her!
O rainbow breathed into the dreadful pine,
Why art thou gone from me? Dearer to me
Than the sobbing of the cuckoo to the shore,
Why art thou gone from me?” She bow'd and wept.
And Connachar came from the throne, and grasping,
As if he felt no heat, the cauldron's brims,
Lean'd through its steams, watching the nurse and said,
“Will these afflicting tears bring Deirdre in?”
But she look'd up and said: “How shall I bring her?
Look now outside thy door, O Connachar!
The black oak with the vision-dripping boughs

Whose foot is in thy father's blood of pride
Stagger'd as I came up in the night-blast.
In vain it stretches angers to the sky:
It cannot keep the white moon from escape
To sail the tempest; nor, O king, canst thou!”
The cheek of him that listened grew thrice-pale
And his thick nostrils swell'd, his half-shut eyes
Fang'd sheen, and slow dilated; stubbornly
He clutch'd to steady his convulsive frame
The sea-full cauldron; quick, with efforts vast,
Upheaved and swung and pillar'd it on high—
And hoarsely bade, “Take torches!” Every man
Kindled in silence at the hearth divine.
Then Connachar pour'd out upon the blaze
The flood within the vat. The roofs were fill'd
With darkness foul, with hissings and with smoke. . . .

3: VOICE OF CIR

Out of a Century more remote, but unknown

As a horseman breaks on a sea-gulf enwombed in the amber woods
Where tide is at ebb, and out on the airy brim
Glass'd upon cloud and azure stand multitudes
Of the flame-white people of gulls—to the sky-line dim

All breast to the sun,—and his hoofs expand the desolate strait
Into fevers of snows and ocean-wandering cries:
Even so, chanters divine, in some woman's fate
At coming of him to be loved do her dreams arise.

And Deirdre, the exquisite virgin, pale as the coat of swans,
Took the flame of love in her heart at the time of dew,
And clad her in ragged wool from a coffer of bronze,
And walked in the chill of night, for her soul was new.

“Why thick with the berries of sweetness, ye barren thorns of the spring?
I could drink up this tempest cold as a burning wine.
Why laugh, my grief, for art thou not bride of a king,
And the drinkers drink to a couch array'd to be thine?”

Where the wounded toss without sleep in the warrior's hive of stones—
The house Bron Bhearg—she laid her cheek to the wall
And bless'd them by stealth, with no pang at the sound of groans,
Having that in her rich heart which could heal them all.

To the fortress-gate on the steep that looketh toward Creeve Roe
She fled, and spied, not a sling-cast off, the flare
Of a torch, and the skull fixed over the gate. And lo,
To the right hand watchmen paced by the water there.

And the shag-hair'd guard, with a mock, laid spears in their passage house
Athwart; for who was this phantom over the grass

Like a filcher of food? And Deirdre uncover'd her brows
And cried, “I am Deirdre!” And sullen they gave her the pass.

And towards Creeve Roe the dip of the cuckoo's vale was dark
To blindness. She pluck'd her steps on that miry road
Through copses alive with storm, till at length a spark
Shew'd the forge where the smith on the heroes' way abode.

Now Culann, the smith, was wise; and leaping her spirit stirr'd
With the soft roar of his hide-wing'd fire as it soar'd:
“Has the son of Usnach pass'd?” “Yea, gone back!” With the word
He smote on a ribbon of iron to make him a sword.

And the argentine din of anvils behind her steadily dwindling
The woman fled to the wastes, till she came to a Thorn
Black, by the well of a God, with stars therein kindling
And over it rags fluttering from boughs forlorn.

And she knelt and shore with a knife a lock of her deathless hair,
And leash'd the black-shuddering branch with that tress, and pray'd:
“Sloe-tree, thou snow of the darkness, O hear my prayer,
And thou, black Depth, bubble-breather, vouchsafe thine aid;

“From Connachar's eyes of love let me hide as a grey mole,
Sons of the Earth's profound, that no weeper spurn!
I have look'd on a face, and its kindness ravish't my soul,
But deliverance pass'd; unto you for escape I turn.”

And loud as the sloven starlings in winter whistle and swarm
Came the banish'd of Usnach nigh, thrice fifty strong,
As they drove from Eman away on that night of storm;
And Naois spoke with his brothers behind the throng:

“O Aillean, O Ardan, hark! What cry was that? For some cry
Rang on my soul's shield; hark! hear ye it now?”

But they rein'd not their weary chariots, shouting reply:
“It was fate, 'twas the curs't hag that is crouch'd on a bough!”

Tossing they drove out of sight, Naois the last, and his hood
Rain-dripping mantled the wind. One ran like a roe,
And call'd on that great name from the night-bound wood:
“Stay, long-awaited, stay! for with thee I go!”

And his brothers cried, “Halt not! the host of the air makes moan,
Or a gang of the wild geese, going back to the lake!”
But Naois rear'd up the deep-ribb'd Srōn: “Good Srōn,
Thou and I needs must turn for our fame's sake.”

And he heard a voice: “Son of Usnach, take me to be thy wife!”
He bent from the withers, the blaze of her, trembling, drew
The breath from his lips and the beat from his heart's life;
And he said, “Who art thou, Queen?” But himself knew.

And he mutter'd, “Return, return, unto him that I hate! For know,
Him least of all I rob, least of all that live!”
But she cried: “Am I then a colt, that ye snare from a foe
With a bridle's shaking? I am mine own to give!”

“Thy beauty would crumble away in the spate of my wild nights,
And famine rake out thine embers, the lean paw
Of jeopardy find thee. He is not rich in delights
Whose harp is the grey fell in the winter's flaw!”

And she laid her arm round the neck of Srōn: “Hast heard,
Horse swollen-vein'd from battle, insulter of death—
Whose back is only a perch for the desert bird—
Whose fore-hooves fight—whose passage is torn with teeth:

“And dost thou not shudder off the knees of a master deaf
To the grief of the weak?” And the lad, deeply-moved, rejoins,
“Mount, then, O woman, behind me!”—and light as a leaf
Drawing her up from his foot to the smoking loins

Shook loose the ox-hide bridle. Even as the great gull dives
From Muilréa's moon-glittering peak when the sky is bare,
Scraped naked by nine days' wind, and sweepingly drives
Over night-blurred gulfs and the long glens of the air,

And feels up-tossing his breast an exhaustless breath bear on
Spouted from isleless ocean to aid his flight—
So fiercely, so steadily gallop'd the sinewy Srōn,
Braced by that double burden to more delight.

Though his mane wrapp'd a wounded bridlehand, fast, fast
As giddy foam-weltering waters dash'd by the hoof
Flee away from the weirs of Callan, even so pass'd
Dark plains away to the world's edge, behind and aloof.

And the rider stoop'd and whisper'd, amidst the thunder of weirs,
Such sweetness of praise to his horse in the swirl of the flood,

That Srōn twitch'd back for an instant his moonèd ears
Strain'd forth like a hare's, as his haunches up to the wood

Wrested them. Beaks of magic, the wreckage of time, came out,
And talon'd things of the forest would waft and sway;
But Naois raised unforgotten that battle-shout
That scatters the thrilling wreath of all fears away.

So they measured the Plain of the Dreamers, the Brake of the Black Ram,
Till the Crag of the Dances before them did shape and loom,
And the Meads of the Faery Hurlers in silver swam;
Then up to the Gap of the Winds, and the far-seen tomb

White on Slieve Fuad's side. By many a marchland old
And cairn of princes—yea, to mine own bedside—
They adventured! Think ye, sweet bards, that I could lie cold
When my chamber of rock fore-knew that impassion'd stride?

Had I, too, not pluck'd the webs of rain-sweet drops from the harp,
And torn from its wave of chords an imperishable love
To sleep on this breast? For here through the mountain sharp
My grave-chamber tunnell'd is, and one door from above

Westward surveys green territories, gentle with flowers and charm;
But forth from the eastern face of the ridge is unquell'd
Wilderness, besown with boulders and grass of harm.
Even in my trance could I feel those riders approach, and beheld

Naois assault the ridge, to the wilderness setting his face
Expectant, unconscious, as one whom his foes arouse;
His heart was a forge, his onset enkindled space,
He shook off the gusty leagues like locks from his brows.

What should he reck of Earth save that under his wounds he felt
Stolen round him, as dreamy water steals round a shore,

A girdle, the arms of Deirdre, clasp'd for a belt
That terror of main kings should unlock no more?

I was caught from the grave's high gate as that spume-flaked ecstasy drew
Upward, and wing'd like the kiss of Aengus, strove
For utterance to greet them—encircling their heads that flew—
But who lops the whirlwind's foot or outdreameth love?

He wheel'd round Srōn on the crest. Abrupt he flung back a hand
And spoke: “Dost thou know the truth? Look where night is low!
Soon the ants of that mound shall shake the ledge where we stand;
Now the tribes are summon'd, the Night prepares his blow;

“Now wrath spurts hot from the trumpet—the main beacon flares—
Now tackle the arrogant chariots-dogs in their glee
Hang on the leash-slaves, numb in the cockcrow airs.
Why, out of all that host, hast thou singled me?”

I heard her behind him breathe, “Because out of all that host
Aptest art thou in feats, held in honour more
Than any save bright Cuchullain!” He turn'd as one lost:
“Is this time a time to mock? Are there not four-score

“Better at feats than I; my masters, the noble teams,
The attemper'd knights of the Red Branch every one?
Nay, though I knead up the whole earth in my dreams,
Nought to such men am I, who have nothing done!”

I heard the blowings of Srōn, and then lasting words: “I choose
Thee—wherefore? Ah, how interpret? Today on the slope
Where first by the wall I saw thee at gloam of dews
I knew it was fated. It was not some leaf of hope

“Eddying. Thou wast the token—half of the potter's shard—
That a chief beleaguer'd cons in his desperate camp

Pass'd in by some hand unseen to the outmost guard,
And fits to the other half by his wasted lamp.

“Seeing thee, I knew myself to be shaped of the self-same clay—
Half of the symbol—but broken, mayhap to serve
As language to them of the night from powers of the day!”
By the path of the throbbing curlew no step may swerve

Where they rode through the Gap; and at last she murmur'd, “Dost grieve at me still?”
And he said: “Glorious is it to me that behind us pursuit
Shall be wide as the red of the morning; for thou art my will!
To the beach of the world of the dead, and beyond it to boot,

“Let me take and defend thee!” In silence the hearts of the twain were screen'd;
But crossing the mires and the torrents I saw strange ease
Afloat, like a spark, on the woman's eyes as she lean'd
Forth, and a shadow betwixt her lips like peace!

4: VOICE OF URMAEL

Out of the Sixth Century

The slender Hazels ask'd the Yew like night
Beside the river-green of Lisnacaun:
“Who is this woman beautiful as light
Sitting in dolour on thy branchèd lawn,
With sun-red hair, entangled as with flight,
Sheening the knees up to her bosom drawn?
What horses mud-besprent so thirstily
Bellying the hush pools with their nostrils wide?”
And the Yew, old as the long mountain-side,
Answer'd, “I saw her hither with Clan Usnach ride!”

“Come, love, and climb with me Findruim's woods
Alone!” Naois pray'd. Through broom and bent
Strewn with swift-travelling shadows like their moods,
Leaving below the camp's thin cries, they went;
And never a tress, escaping from her snoods,
Made the brown river with a kiss content,
So safe he raised up Deirdre through the ford.

Thanks, piteous Gods, that no foreboding gave
He should so bear her after to the grave,
Breasting the druid ice, breasting the phantom wave!

“O, bear me on,” she breathed, “for ever so!”
And light as notes the Achill shepherd plays
On his twin pipes, they wanton'd light and slow
Up the broad valley. Birds sail'd from the haze
Far up, where darkling copses over-grow
Scarps of the grey cliff from his river'd base.
Diaphaneity, the spirit's beauty,
Along the dimmèd combes did float and reign,
And many a mountain's scarry flank was plain
Through nets of youngling gold betrimm'd with rain.

But when an upward space of grass—so free—
So endless—beckon'd to the realms of wind
Deirdre broke from his side, and airily
Fled up the slopes, flinging disdains behind,
And paused, and round a little vivid tree
The wolf-skins from her neck began to bind.
Naois watch'd below this incantation;
Then upward on his javelin's length he swung
To catch some old crone's ditty freshly sung,
Bidding that shoot be wise, for yet 'twas young.

With gaze in gaze, thus ever up and on
Roved they, unwitting of the world outroll'd,
Their ears dinn'd by the breeze's clarion
That quicks the blood while yet the cheek is cold;
Great whitenesses rose past them, brooks ran down,
And step by step Findruim bare and bold
Uplifted. So a swimmer is uplifted,
Horsed on a streaming shoulder of the Sea,
Our hasty master, who to such as we
Tosses some glittering hour of mastery.

They heard out of the zenith swoop and sting
Feathery voices, keen and soft and light:
“Mate ye as eagles mate, that on the wing
Grapple—heaven-high—hell-deep—for yours is flight!
Souls like the granite candles of a king,
Flaming unshook amid the noise of night.
What of pursuit, that you to-day should fear it?”
Pursuit they reck'd not, save of wind that pours
Surging and urging on to other shores
Over the restless forest of a thousand doors.

“Deirdre,” he cried, “the blowings of thy hair
Uncoil the clouds that everlasting stream
Forth from the castles of those islands rare,
Black in the ragged-misted ocean's gleam,

And glimpsed by Iceland galleys as they fare
Northward!” But in her bosom's open seam
She set the powder'd yew-spring silently;
“Speak not of me nor give my beauty praise,
Whose beauty is to follow in thy ways,
So that my days be number'd with thy days!”

In the high pastures of that boundless place
Their feet wist not if they should soar or run;
They turned, at earth astonish'd, face to face,
Deeming unearthly blessedness begun.
And slow, 'mid nests of running larks, they pace
Drinking from the recesses of the sun
Tremble of those wings that beat light into music.
There the world's ends lay open; open wide
The body's windows. What shall them divide
Who have walk'd once that country side by side?

She mused: “O why doth happiness too much
Fountains of blood and spirit seem to fill?
The woods, over-flowing, cannot bear that such
An hour should be so sweet and yet be still.
Even the low-tangled bushes at a touch
Break into wars of gleemen, thrill on thrill.
O, son of Usnach, bring me not thy glories!

Bring me defeats and shames and secret woe;
That where no brother goeth I may go,
And kneel to wash thy wounds in caverns bleak and low!”

“Here, up in sight of the far shine of sea,”
(He sang) “once after hunting, by the fire
I knelt, and kindling brushwood raised up thee,
Deirdre, nor wist the star of my desire
Should ever walk Findruim's head with me,
Far from a king's loud house and soft attire.
Fain would I thatch us here a booth of hazels,
Thatch it with drift and snow of sea-gulls' wings;
And thy horn'd harp should wonder to its strings,
What spoil is it to-night Naois brings?”

“Listen,” quoth he, when scarce those words were gone
(A neck of the bare down it was, a ledge
Of wind-sleek turf, the lovers roam'd upon,
And sent young rabbits scuttling to the edge
Of underwoods beneath), “I think that you
Some beast—haply a stag—takes harbourage.”
And Deirdre at a word come back from regions
Of bliss too nigh to pain, snatch'd with no fear
Out of his hand the battle-haunted spear
And, questing swiftly down the pasture sheer,

Enter'd the yew's black vault. Therein profound
Green-litten air, and there, as seeking fresh
Enemies, one haunch crush'd against the ground
The grey boar slew'd, tusking the tender flesh
Of shoots, his ravage-whetted bulk around:
But, when his ear across the straggling mesh
Of feather'd sticks report of Deirdre found,
He quiver'd, snorted; from his jaws like wine
Foam dripped; the brawny horror of his spine
Bristled with keen spikes like a ridge of pine.

Mortals, the maiden deem'd that guise a mask—
Believed that in the beast sate to ensnare
He of the red eye—little need to ask
The druid-wrinkled hide, the sluttish hair:
This was to escape—how vain poor passion's task!—
Connachar of the illimitable lair!
He crash'd at her! she heaved the point embrown'd
In blood of dragons. Heavily the boar
Grazed by the iron, reel'd, leapt, charged once more
And thrice in passage her frail vesture tore.

As when a herd-boy lying on the scar
(Who pipes to flocks below him on the steep

Melodies like their neckbells, scattering far,
Cool as the running water, soft as sleep)
Hurls out a flint from peril to debar
And from the boulder'd chasm recall his sheep—
So with a knife Naois leapt and struck.
Strange! in the very fury of a stride
The grey beast like a phantom from his side
Plunged without scathe to thickets undescried.

Naois sheathed his iron with no stain,
And laugh'd, “This shall be praised in revels mad
Around Lug's peak, when women scatter grain
Upon the warriors! Why shouldst thou be sad
Pale victory?” But she, “Ah, thus again
Ere night do I imperil thee, and add
Burden to burden!” And he strove to lead her
From grief, and said, “What, bride! thy raiment torn?”
“Content thee, O content thee, man of scorn,
I'll brooch it with no jewel but a thorn!”

They seek down through the Wood of Awe that hems
Findruim, like the throng about his grave,
Dusk with the swarth locks of ten thousand stems
In naked poise. These make no rustle save

Some pine-cone dropt, or murmur that condemns
Murmur; bedumb'd with moss that giant nave.
But let Findruim shake out overhead
His old sea-sigh, and when it doth arrive
At once their tawny boles become alive
With gleams that come and go, and they revive

The north's Fomorian roar.—“I am enthrall'd,”
He said, “as by the blueness of a ray
That, dropping through this presence sombre-wall'd,
Burns low about the image of a spray
Of some poor beech-spray witch'd to emerald.
Wilt thou not dance, daughter of heaven, to-day
Free, at last free? For here no moody raindrop
Can reach thee, nor betrayer overpeer;
And none the self-delightful measure hear
That thy soul moves to, quit of mortal ear!”

Full loth she pleads, yet cannot him resist
And on the enmossèd lights begins to dance.
Away, away, far floating like a mist
To fade into some leafy brilliance;
Then, smiling to the inward melodist,
Over the printless turf with slow advance

Of showery footsteps, makes she infinite
That crowded glen. But quick, possess'd by strange
Rapture, wider than dreams her motions range,
Till to a span the forests shrink and change.

And in her eyes and glimmering arms she brings
Hither all promise, all the unlook'd-for boon
Of rainbow'd life, all rare and speechless things
That shine and swell under the brimming Moon.
Who shall pluck tympans? For what need of strings
To waft her blood who is herself the tune—
Herself the warm and breathing melody?
Art come from the Land of the Ever-Young? O stay!
For his heart, after thee rising away,
Falls dark and spirit-faint back to the clay.

Griefs, like the yellow leaves by winter curl'd,
Rise after her—long-buried pangs arouse—
About that bosom the grey forests whirl'd,
And tempests with her beauty might espouse;
She rose with the green waters of the world
And the winds heaved with her their depth of boughs.
Then vague again as blows the beanfield's odour

On the dark lap of air she chose to sink,
As, winnowing with plumes, to the river-brink
The pigeons from the cliff come down to drink.

Sudden distraught, shading her eyes, she ceased,
Listening, like bride whom cunning faery strain
Forth from the trumpet-bruited spousal feast
Steals. But she beckon'd soon, and quick with pain
He ran, he craved at those white feet the least
Pardon; nor, till he felt her hand again
Descend flake-soft, durst spy that she was weeping,
Or kneel with burning murmurs to atone.
For sleep she wept. Long fasting had they gone
And ridden from the breaking of the dawn.

It chanced that waters, nigh to that selve grove,
From Sleep's own lake as from a cauldron pass;
He led towards their sound his weary love
And lay before her in the fresh of grass
Resting—the white cirque of the cliffs above—
Against a sun-abandon'd stem there was.
Spray from the strings of water spilling over
The weir of rock, their fever'd cheeks bewet;
And to its sound a voiceless bread they ate,
And drank the troth that is unbroken yet.

Out in the mere, brown, unbesilver'd now
By finest skimming of the elfin breeze,
An isle was moor'd, with rushes at its prow
And fraught with haze of deeply-mirror'd trees;
And knowing Deirdre still was mindful how
The boar yet lived, that she might sleep at ease
Naois swore to harbour on that islet.
Nine strides he waded in, on footings nine
Deep, deeper yet, until his basnet's shine
Sank to the cold lips of the lake divine.

Divine; for once the sunk stones of that way
Approach'd the pool-god; and the outermost
Had been the black slab whereon druids slay
With stoop and mutter to the water's ghost,
Though since, to glut some whim malign, the fay
Had swell'd over the flags. Of all the host
Few save Naois, and at sore adventure,
Had ta'en this pass. But who would not have press'd
Through straits by the chill-finger'd fiend possess'd
To bear unto that isle Deirdre to rest?

“Seal up thy sight! My shield of iron rims
Unhook; cast in this shatter'd helm for spoil!”

'Twas done, and then with rush of cleaving limbs
He swam and bore her out with happy toil,
Secret and fierce as the flat otter swims
Out of the whistling reeds, as if through oil.
And Deirdre, whiter than the wave-swan floating,
Smiled that he suffer'd her no stroke to urge.
At length they reach the gnarl'd and ivied verge
And from the shallows to the sun emerge.

She spreads her wolf-skins on the rock that glows
And sun-tears wrings out of the heavy strands
Of corded hair. He, watching to the close,
Sees not the white silk tissue as she stands
Clinging bedull'd to the clear limbs of rose.
She turn'd and to him stretched misdoubting hands:
“Tell me, ere thou dissolve, O wordless watcher,
Am I that Deirdre that would sit and spin
Beside Keshcorran? Dost thou love me? Then
I touch thee. For I, too, have love within.”

O sacred cry! Again, again the first
Love-cry! How the steep woods thirst for thy voice,

O never-dying one! That voice, like the outburst
And gush of a young spring's delicious noise
Driven from the ancient heights whereon 'twas nursed!
Yet, as death's heart is silent, so is joy's.
His mouth spake not; for, as in dusk Glen Treithim
Smelters of bubbling gold brook not to breathe
Reek of the coloured fumes whose hissings wreathe
The brim, he choked at his own spirit's seethe.

Sternly he looked on her and strangely said:
“What touch is thine? It hath unearthly powers.
I think thou art the woman Cairbre made
Out of the dazzle and the wind of flowers.
Behold, the flame-like children of the shade,
The buds, about thee rise like servitors!
It seems I had not lipp'd the cup of living
Till thou didst stretch it out. Vaguely I felt
Irreparable waste. Why hast thou dwell'd
Near me on earth so long, yet unbeheld?”

Chanters! The Night brings nigh the deeps far off,
But Twilight shows the distance of the near;

And with a million dawns that pierce above
Mixes the soul of suns that disappear;
To make man's eyes approach the eyes of love
In simpleness, in mystery and fear.
All blooms both bright and pale are in her gardens,
All chords both shrill and deep under her hand
Who, sounding forth the richness of the land,
Estrangeth all, that we may understand.

So still it was, they heard in the evening skies
Creak as of eagles' wing-feathers afar
Coasting the grey cliffs. On him slowly rise,
As to Cuchullain came his signal star,
Out of the sheeted rivers, Deirdre's eyes.
And who look'd in them well was girt for war,
Seeing in that gaze all who for love had perish'd:
The queens calamitous unbow'd at last—
The supreme fighters that alone stood fast—
Fealties obscure, unwitness'd, and long past;

Cloud over cloud—the host that had attain'd
By love,—in very essence, force, heat, breath,
Now, now arose in Deirdre's eyes and deign'd
Summons to him—“Canst follow us?” it saith—
Till from that great contagion he hath gain'd
An outlook like to conquest over death.

Then he discerns the solemn-rafter'd world
By this frail brazier's glowings, wherein blend
Coals that no man hath kindled, without end
Born and re-born, from ashes to ascend.

And face to face to him unbared she cleaves
Woman no more—scarce breathing—infinite,
Grave as the fair-brow'd priestess Earth receives
In all her lochs and plains and invers bright
And shores wide-trembling, where one image heaves,
Him that is lord of silence and of light.
Slow the God sigh'd himself from rocks and waters,
But in his soft withdrawals from the air
No creature in the weightless world was there
Uttered its being's secret round the pair.

Ah! them had Passion's self-enshrouding arm
Taken, as a green fury of ocean takes,
Through the dense thickets smitten with alarm
To the islet's trancèd core. And Deirdre wakes,
Lifting hot lids that shut against the storm,
Lying on a hillock, amid slender brakes
Of grey trees, to the babble of enchantments
From mouths of chill-born flowers. The place was new
To rapture. Branchèd sunbursts plashing through
After, had laid the mound with fire and dew.

Naois cuts down osiers. Now he seeks
A narrow grass-plot shorn as if with scythe
And over two great boulders' wrinkled cheeks
Draws down and knots a hull of saplings lithe,
Well-staunch'd with earthy-odour'd moss and sticks
Known to the feet of birds. This darkness blithe
He frames against the stars for forest sleepers.
The living tide of stars aloft that crept
Compassion'd far below. No wavelet leapt;
And deep rest fell upon them there. They slept.

Long, long, the melancholy mountains lay
Aware; mute-rippling shades that isle enwound.
Naois fell through dreams, like the snapt spray
That drops from branch to branch—that stillest sound!—
And while from headlands scarce a league away
The din of the sea-breakers come aground
Roll'd up the valley, he in vision govern'd
His ribbèd skiff under Dun Aengus sweeping,
Triumphing with his love, and leaping, leaping,
Drew past the ocean-shelves of seals a-sleeping.

But over starr'd peat-water, where the flag
Rustles, and listens for the scud of teal;
Over coast, forest, and bethunder'd crag
Night—mother of despairs, who proves the steel
In men, to see if they be dross and slag
Or fit with trusts and enemies to deal
Uneyed, alone—diffusing her wide veils
Bow'd from the heavens to his exultant ear:
A questioner awaits thee: rouse! The mere
Slept on, save for the twilight-footed deer.

“Those antler'd shadows of the forest-roof
Nigh to the shore must be assembled thick,”
He thought, “and bringing necks round to the hoof;
Or being aslaked and crouching, seek to lick
The fawns. Some heady bucks engage aloof,
So sharp across the water comes the click
Of sparring horns!” But was it a vain terror,
Son of the sword, or one for courage staunch,
That the herd, dismay'd, at a bound, with a quivering haunch
Murmur'd away into night at the crack of a branch?

And Deirdre woke. Reverberate from on high
Amongst the sullen hills, distinct there fell
A mournful keen, like to the broken cry
From the House of Hostage in some citadel

Of hostages lifting up their agony
After the land they must remember well,
“Deirdre is gone! Gone is my young one, Deirdre!”
And she knowing not the voice as voice of man
Stood up. “Lie still, lest thee the spirit ban;
O vein of life, lie still!” But Deirdre ran

Like the moon through brakes, and saw, where nought had been,
On the vague shore a weather'd stone that stood;
Faceless, rough-hewn, it forward seem'd to lean
Like the worn pillar of Cenn Cruaich, the God.
She cried across, “If thou with things terrene
Be number'd, tell me why thy sorrowful blood
Mourneth, O Cathva, father!” But the stone
Shiver'd, and broke the staff it lean'd upon,
Shouting, “What! livst thou yet? Begone, begone!”

5: VOICE OF FINTAN

Again, out of the First Century

Let my lips finish what my lips began.—
Then to the two amidst the island's boughs
The third, across the water, cried: “Confess!
Though the earth shake beneath you like a sieve
With wheels of Connachar, answer me this:
Naois, could she understand his hate
Whose servant and whose iron flail I am—
Whose arm requiteth—far as runs the wind—
By me, that blow away the gaze and smile
From women's faces; O could Deirdre have guess'd—
Mourning all night the losing of her kingdoms
Fled like a song—what means, a banished man:
That he and I must hound thee to the death;
That thou shalt never see the deep-set eaves,
The lofty thatch familiar with the doves,
On thy sad mother Usnach's house again,
But drift out like some sea-bird, far, far, hence,
Far from the red isle of the roes and berries,
Far from sun-galleries and pleasant dúns
And swards of lovers,—branded, nationless;
That none of all thy famous friends, with thee
Wrestlers on Eman in the summer evenings,

Shall think thee noble now; and that at last
I must upheave thy heart's tough plank to crack it—
Knowing all this, would this fool follow thee?”

Then spoke Naois, keeping back his wrath:
“Strange is it one so old should threat with Death!
Are not both thou and I, are not we all,
By Death drawn from the wickets of the womb—
Seal'd with the thumb of Death when we are born?
As for friends lost (though I believe it not),
A man is nourish'd by his enemies
No less than by his friends. But as for her,
Because no man shall deem me noble still,—
Because I like a sea-gull of the isles
May be driven forth—branded and nationless,—
Because I shall no more, perhaps, behold
The deep-set eaves on that all-sacred house,—
Because the gather'd battle of the powers
Controlling fortune, breaks upon my head,—
Yea! for that very cause, lack'd other cause,
In love the closer, quenchless, absolute,
Would Deirdre choose to follow me. Such pains,
Seër, the kingdoms are of souls like hers!”
He spoke; he felt her life-blood at his side
Sprung of the West, the last of human shores
Throbbing, “Look forth on everlastingness!

Through the coil'd waters and the ebb of light
I'll be thy sail!”

Over the mist like wool
No sound; the echo-trembling tarn grew mute.
But when through matted forest with uproar
The levy of pursuers, brazen, vast,
The thick pursuing host of Connachar,
Gush'd like a river, and torch'd chariots drew
With thunder-footed horses on, and lash'd
Up to the sedge, and at the Druid's shape
Their steamy bellies rose over the brink
Pawing the mist, and when a terrible voice
Ask'd of that shape if druid ken saw now
The twain,—advanced out of the shade of leaves
Nor Deirdre nor Naois heard reply;
For Cathva waved his lean arm toward the north
And mounted with the host, and signed them, “On!”
Pity had seized him for that hidden pair;
And like a burning dream the host, dissolving,
Pass'd. On the pale bank not a torch remain'd.
They look'd on one another, left alone.

THE ROCK OF CLOUD

From Youghal, where gulls take harbour,
Youghal, the strand of yews,
We stood away, off Brandon,
Three nights out on the cruise.

And thick cloud came over the deep
The third day out from land
That none could see his shipmate's face,
Nor the helm in his own hand.

Now bitterer than the mild sea-mist
Hath ship no enemy;
But we heard a chanting through the mist
On the cold face of the sea
That night, and lay upon our oars
Amazed that this should be.

Hark! was it a hoarse demon trolled?
Or was it man? But one
We knew had such a sea-rough voice—
The Clockgate-keeper's son.

We throng'd up close into the bow,
And hail'd with might and main,
“What hell-spawn or what spirit thou?”
And the hoarse voice came again,

Rang as of one so evil-starr'd
That he hath done with grief,
A voice of dread, and harsh and hard
As the bell swung from a reef:

“I am a man—But were I none
Row hither! ye may hear
Yet shall not save, nor bring me home,
Seek ye ten thousand year!”

“Keep a stout hope!” “I keep no hope!”
“Man alive . . .” “Spare your speech—”
“We are upon thee!” “Nay, no rope
Over the gap will reach.”

“Who art thou?” “I was helmsman once
On many a ship of mark:
Through many a pitchy night I steered,
But there came a night too dark.

“In the middle watch we struck—we sank,
I reached this Rock of wings
Whereby from every boulder's flank
The brown sea-ribbon swings.

“Here, while the sole eye of the Sun
Did scorch my body bare,
A great Sea-Spirit rose, and shone
In the water thrill'd with hair.

“She lay back on the green abyss,
Beautiful; her spread arms
Soothed to a poise—a sob—of bliss
Huge thunders and alarms.

“Her breasts as pearl were dull and pure,
Her body's chastened light
Swam like a cloud; her eyes unsure
From the great depths were bright.

“There was no thing of bitterness
In aught that she could say;
She called my soul, as down a coast
The Moon calls, bay beyond bay,
And they rise—back o' the uttermost—
Away, and yet away:—

“‘Ichose thee from the sinking crews,
I bore thee up alive;
Now durst thou follow me and choose
Under the world to dive?

“‘O here the wreckful heavens do scant
Thy Godship, by some spell!
But there thy heart shall have its want,
And there shall all be well.

“‘Come! we will catch, when stars are out,
The black wave's spitting crest,
And still, when the Bull of Dawn shall spout,
Be washing on abreast!

“‘Swim with me now, and I'll waft thee,
Who hast known no happy hour,
Through coral gulfs, over the lip
Of islands like a flower,
And fresh thee in the drench of youth
Beyond an April's power.

“‘Spring we up sun-lasht waterfalls
Cauldron'd in giant vallies—
To hang high as the rainbow hangs
Or bask among sea-lilies!

“‘My headland temples keen with light,
Such as men know not here,
Shall make thy senses infinite—
Shall let thy heart be clear.

“‘Or thee a flame under the seas
Quivering with rays I'll hide,
Deathless and boundless and at ease
In any shape to glide.

“‘All waters that on Earth have well'd
At last to me repair,—
All mountains starr'd with cities melt
Into my dreamy air!

“‘Shall I all women be to thee—
As thou to me all men?
Thou shalt have all the souls in me
To gaze with. Haste thee then!

“‘Set on thy peak under the brink
I'll show thee storms above,
The sands of kingdoms;—they shall sink
While thou dost teach me love;
On beaches white as the young moons
I'll sit and fathom love!’”

And we cried, “By God, 'twas hard for thee
At that song not to go
And let thy heart take heed no more
When the Spirit called thee so!”

“Ah! 'twas not any word she sang,
But what she did not say,
Suck'd griefs out of the colour'd world,
And time out of the day.”

“What saidst thou then?” “From over sea
I felt a sighing burn
That made this wrathy rock to me
More delicate than fern;

“And when like moth-wings I could hear
Them heave, that stand in line
By the mud-banks of Blackwater,
The many-voicèd pine,

“Great laughter seized me naked here,
That I clung against the ground,
Shaking in utter folly, while
Myself was like a wound.

“And I cried out sore, sore at the heart
For her that sleeps at home,
‘Brightness, I will not know thine art,
Nor to thy country come!’

“Straightway she sank—smiling so pale:—
But from the seethe up-broke—
Never thrashed off by gust or gale—
White, everlasting smoke.

“By stealth it feels all over me
With numbness that appals;
It laps my fierce heart endlessly
In soft and rolling walls;

“A mist no life may pierce, save these
Wave-wing'd, with puling voice;
Stars I discern not, nor the seas—”
“O, dost not rue thy choice?”

“Rue it? Now tell me, what ye are?—
For I doubt if ye be men.”
And to us from the cloud-breathing deep
No answer came again.

We knew the voice! We called his name!
We pulled on, weeping loud,
All night in earshot of the rock,
But never through the cloud.

And the gulls across from Brandon,
Ere we had done the cruise,
To the wall'd town of my mother's folk,
Youghal, the strand of yews,
And the women waiting on the quay,
They carried back the news.

THE QUEEN OF GOTHLAND

to M.S.

I

Ho! Ho! the Count was not of those
That care for treasure-trove!
Ploughland and forest, quarry, fell,
Castle and pleasure-grove.
All that his house had heaped, he took
And shared among his mountain folk,
And wasted as they throve;
Then flung the rest, all that he had,
Round the white neck of love!
Ay, in pearls for his young love.

Make no mistake! the squanderer knew
Shrewdly may be as I or you
The virtue that's in gold;
But this despotic man we lost
Had faults and manifold.
He had a something in the brain
Never could bide his proper gain;
He was not of the Clan of Take,
The Clan of Get and Hold!
There, in a savage discontent,
The Count would sit receiving rent:
He took the silver that you brought
And thrust you back the gold.
“I'd hew with you down to the rock,
Down to the rock!” he cried,

“Then could you know the man that's stript
And working at your side!”
Well, he stript himself, he showed his thew,
he bared himself in pride,
He dared with you, he shared with you,
And you for him had died!
And you heard his simple gusty laugh,
And felt, and you were sure,
'Twas thirsting for the fire of life
That made and kept him poor;
And that he would keep the fire of life
As pure as fire is pure!
So impetuously, so seriously,
Then grimly, nigh deliriously,
He fought, he played, for love;
But he lost, and vanished utterly.

II

Naught that shy beauty promised him,
Merry had watched him crave:
And the day she married Gothland's King
When her father's town was brave
With flags, drums, seething battlements,
After a duel for her sake
Wounded and nigh the grave,
(Think you that could his spirit break
Or force the Count's head on his breast
Like any quivering slave?)
He arose, lean in his uniform,
Pulse not a stroke too fast,

Waited her brilliant-eyed approach,
And saw her start aghast,
And she, the drawn face and the frown.
On gallant knee downcast
He tendered her his secret gift,
The poor enthusiast!
Out of his square palm's brawny foil
She took the pearls. Faint gems entoil
Clasp-opals of their massy coil.
Then, with a jibe, he passed. . . .
She stood, she sighed, she took the gift
Because it was the last;
Took that amazing gift of pearls
(Unweeting all he gave)
Thrice-pityingly, reluctantly,
As 'twere a soul to save.

That night she wore the coil of pearls
With her bride's diadem,
And she locked away that coil of pearls
With many a holy gem
In a casket in her chambers high,
And thought no more of them.
Ah, dark towers! Fort of faerie,
Steep as Jerusalem!

III

Three years; and one night there was found
Up to the heather drawn,
The Count's boat, lying on the moor—

Like a young seal that tries to flee
Inland, instead of out to sea—
But no boat there at dawn!
Some said he had appeared that night,
Dour as a thunderstroke,
And asked her for no more than this,
That she should slip the yoke:
Make off then in the dawning dim
Came she but in her smock to him,
And for kingdom, share his cloak!
Told how she seized a riding-whip
And slashed across his bearded lip
The hardy libertine.
But who puts faith in such a tale?
What eye the Count had seen?
No! . . . Winters wore. The King grew bald.
All Gothland was serene.

IV

But at last the lady pale, so pale,
Who never could take rest,
She stept down from the bed of kings
And rode to south and west.
From the lightly-faithful bed of kings
She rode, they say, and drest
In her white silken wedding-gown
Alone through many a drowsy town;
Hardly she drew the rein by night
For the fire within her breast.

About the peak'd and stormy towers
At the corners of her keep
Had marched a music old and proud
For the waking of her sleep,
But the rousing voice she listened for
Was the sea's against the steep.

“Take him away, your nimble hawk
That comes again to hand!
Bring me the bird that shows the pass
Into a blither land,
And the tune I never heard before
Is the tune I understand!

“O where shall I now pin my faith
Who greatly have believed?
And whither shall I fly, my heart,
That so hath been deceived?
It does no good to speak aloud,
Save to the wind, save to the cloud!

“Make room, thou southland mountain-top,
Make room for my disdain!
Make room, Ægean-breathing Dawn!
Cypress above the plain,
I will inhabit silence; then
I shall begin to reign.

“I had a cousin—a mad king—
Why mad? He had a play
Played out for him, and him alone.

I'll have, ‘The Death of Day!’
The boards are bare, the footlights lit,
The house fills, tier on tier,
The vasty arch bedazzles. . . . Now
Among the oaks and deer,
With every grass-blade lustred through,
What tragic gods I hear!

“As Muse I'll listen. My thick hair
Night-heavy, my sole crown,
Falls round me like a close despair
And veils me on the throne.
See! The Players change as quick as kings!—
The eve-mist changes. So
I'll waver with unstable things,
And go with things that go!

“I will go wander like a wave
And lash me to the mast,
And sail by many a siren cave
Till peril's charm be past.
I'll wash this gaze in gaze of flowers
In some Greek olive glen,
And listen till I find my soul
In places far from men.

“O the world's ill, if even I
Whose whimsies none resist—
Who, satiate with all-yieldingness,
Can change lands as I list,

Yet find Death sweetest of all tales
Of Life the rhapsodist!
If I too sharp-set find the yoke
Of earth's monotony,
Then for these poor and common folk
What must it be, what must it be?

“I will forget them. I am wronged.
How can I give them ease?
I will forget them—play the Muse
Of all bright ironies.
Since what I asked the gods refuse,
I will have Glory's kiss!
Failure that's great—among great things
At least deny not this!

“Now for the prey I cannot kill,
The hound that comes not back,
The horse I cannot break at will,
And a leap to end the track!
My soul it shall be hunting still
Though the night it may be black.

“I am a queen, and round a queen
Rumour hath ever rung;
But rather than such honour grant
Me, Glory, to die young,
Full of the passion thou didst plant,
Sure that I could have shaped the chant
Woman hath never sung!

“Blood of grapes stretch me not to drink,
But juices more sublime!
I'll see the world's green acre shrink
While life is at the prime!
I'll lift my horse up on the brink
As he had wings to climb,
And pledge thee, Glory, ere I sink
Into the night of time!”

V

She rode resolvèd and amain,
She rode for many a year,
A vagabond and scholar queen
Whose body knew no fear
(Her fear was of the spirit pent
For madness dogged her as she went),
She chose the foam for outrider
And the wind for cavalier.

Became she poet? She became
Empress, and in a line
Of oldest lineage she was first
Of ladies that must shine;
To her deserted spouse returned—
Returned, at what a cost!—
Mute, mute she wore her dazzling thorns,
But all dear things she lost.
For chance among her nearest kin
Strange havoc did contrive;

In blood of all whom she held dear
The gods made horror thrive;
Brothers and sons were shamed and shot,
Or sisters burned alive.
She stared into Fate's eyes accurst
And, seeing no glint divine,
Closed her wise tragic lips, this first
Of ladies that must shine.
Ah, dolour that might never speak! . . .
Yet as the herd-boy on the peak
Gathers the forest's roar and shade
Into the pipe he idly made,
So in this ditty even I
Would murmur all that mighty sigh!

VI

At last, in a grove of ilexes
Off Epirus, in the sea,
She built a Grecian pleasure-house
Altar'd to poetry
And Heine. (May the clan that own
The palace now adore his stone
As piously as she!)

“Here, an old woman, I will rest,”
She said: and from the north
Sent for a girl's toys, jewelries.
But lo! when they come forth
In that clear Adriatic morn,

On the cold imperial bed
The coil of pearls, so long unworn,
Lay lustreless and dead.

“Tell me now, Monks of the sea-crag,
Men wise in country lore,
Whose bee-hive cluster of white cells
Juts on the Corfiote shore,
Where shall I sain them back to white
And how sick pearls restore?” . . .
And one looked up from his lentil pan,
Like an olive, silvery-hoar,
This Monk they sent her for a guide
To row her out at the ebb-tide.

He rowed her in a little boat
That secret place to learn,
His wrinkled hands pulled on the loom,
His eye serene and stern,
A Charon in the boat of doom,
Unblinking, taciturn.

There was gold broom on the sun-bright hills,
The plash of oars in chime,
And came a smell from the rocky bays
Of lentisk-bush and thyme.

They rowed along the rosy crags
Sea-gnawn, with bouldered base,
“O can you see yon headland high
With the slant cave in its face?

Deep down within it runs the pool
Where your sick pearls must lie;
At its mouth is the sea-otter's hole
And a slant slit is the sky.
The walls aloft are green with slime,
And the sea-birds' dung is soft with time
Along the ledges high.”

And by that cranny darkly down
They went the sea-birds' way
Into the cavern's foul descent;
Above, the roofs of mountain leant
That plunge down to the spray.
At last they heard a black wave wash,
The subterranean channel plash,
That never sees the day.

She took the pearls from her sere breast,
Felt them all, long unworn,
And in the gloom, swift and unseen,
She kissed those pearls as they had been
The love-babe never born;
And dropt them in the salt, salt wave
With tears of the forlorn.

A voice cried: “Long, O long lie there,
Beneath the break of foam!
Far have ye wandered, suffered much;
To that ye wandered from
We give you back, thrice-noble pearls,

Until ye shall become
Perfect again and pure again
In that which is your home!”

And swift came rushings through the air
Of cold and wingèd things
Alarmed escaping from their lair,
Blasts and torch-flickerings.

“Who art thou, visionary Monk,
That speak'st this requiem?”
“One that sees peak'd and stormy towers
Steep as Jerusalem,
Battlements grey, and over all
One window like a gem,
And a young girl, weeping on the wall,
That wears a diadem!”

In the cavern darkness where they stand
She takes the high torch from his hand
To search till she discerns
That manèd visage, trace by trace,—
The solemn-sounding mountain's base
Rough'd to a humorous savage face
Wherein the granite burns. . . .

“How sharp,” he said, “that last, last hour
Of departure's sick delay
Prints on the warm, cleft, trembling soul
The thing it takes away!

Stamped how imperishably clear
Your northern night dwells in me here!
In my Greek island cell
How oft I shut my eyes and smell
Your sweetbriar by the northern shore
And hear that fountain play!
Its spouted rabble of loud drops
Hangs in the evening still!
November woods becloud the turf
By the dove-house squat and chill.
All's hush; and a ragged thunder-storm
Comes up over towers and wood;
White doves beat in a throbbing swarm
Against the thunder-cloud
As though they had thy transport been—
The yielding of my flame-foot Queen!
We pace together up the sward
As they circle over the firth;
The moonfall on thy coifless hair
Makes glamour of the earth. . . .
And then, leaning on the parapet,
‘Ah!’ thou say'st, ‘before passion's voice
All, all is overset:—
But what's a madman's passion worth?’ . . .
Well, hast thou learnt it yet?

“Why, great one, never kneel to me!
We are too wise and old;
Thou hast brought back the young man's pearls
Before his heart is cold! . . .

Calm, calm's for all such agonies
As happened long ago!
Calm is the Earth, though from its side
A moon was torn! What woe!
Yet time hath filled the wound with salt
And solitary flow.

“We were too dream-intent and hard
To mingle each with each.
Thou hadst to be thyself—to become
Thyself the last, high, tragic song
Of this our piercèd Christendom,
Too high, too sad, for speech! . . .
Saved in some vessel we see not,
Some dark urn of the Lord,
Is shed this everlasting loss,
This waste of spirit poured.

“For me, more than I need is mine;
Labour of the hands is mine;
Content, among my lentils here,
And the obscurity divine.”

VII

Well, she went back, she faced her fate,
Her tasks, without demur;
Amid the shining cares of state
Were lentils grown for her.
But not long had the pair to wait,
O not long to endure!

A year thence, at the hour she fell,
Stabbed by some crazy boor,
The old Monk in his convent died
The death of the obscure.

And the pearls? Ah, blithe rejoicing pearls,
Snapt is your rusty chain!
Sucked out to the sea-darkness fresh,
Released and born again,
Somewhere beneath that ruddy crag,
That blue Ionian main,
Freely (for who shall seek the fort,
Angelokastron?) there
Unknown of all men ye may now
Beauty and sheen repair!

APOLLO AND THE SEAMAN

I: APOLLO'S COMING

Apollo through the woods came down
Furred like a merchant fine,
And sate with a Sailor at an Inn
Sharing a jug of wine.

Had sun-rays, spilled out of a storm,
Thither the God conveyed?
Or green and floating cloudlet caught
On the fringes of a glade?

For none had known him by his gait
Descending from the hills,
Though far and wide before him blew
The friendly daffodils;
No shepherd had discovered him
On upland pastures bare
By dew-pond or green Roman camp:
No voice aloft in air

Along lone barrows of great downs
With kine in rolling combes,
Where bells blow up from all the plain
To headlands spring perfumes,

Proclaimed him to those combes and folds
Of little lambs unyeaned,
Or sung him to the billowy woods
With spray of buds begreened,

Where spreads in haze the snowy maze
Of orchards deep-ravined—

Telling the dingles of the thrush
To overflow with sound,
Warning the grassy commons all
In vales for miles around:

“Wake, shady forest coverts wide!
Wake, skylit river-sward!
Chases and meres and misty shires
Be ready for your lord!”

But he would not stay nor tarry there
On the blithe edge of the down,
To the sea-coast his errand was
And the smoke-hanging town.

Far off he saw its harbours shine,
And black sea-bastions thronged
With masts of the sea-traffickers
For whom his spirit longed.

Far off he heard the windlass heaved
And creaking of the cranes,
Gay barges hailed and poled along,
And rattling fall of chains,

Till by the windows of that Inn
He sate and took his ease
Where bowsprits of the swarthy ships
Came thrusting to the quays.

2: THE RUMOUR

Apollo

“And why are you cast down, sailor?
And why are you cast down?
With lapfuls of the guineas light
Come you not back to town?

Your feet that must have run in air
Aloft the slippy mast
Are they not glad to land, my lad,
On steady ground at last?”

Up from his brown rope-harden'd hands
A heavy chin he raised,
And sidelong through the harbour bluffs
Looked out like man amazed.

Seaman

If you had cruised as I have cruised
Abroad for many a year,
Your blood like mine it would have struck
At the strange news I hear.

The Moon went riding high last night
And the dance along the quays,
But I could not find it in my heart
To care for shows like these;

While still I felt the rollers' lift
Bear on through the dark land,
And little houses here still rock
And sway—they would not stand—

I heard them calling in the streets
That the ship I serve upon—
The great ship Immortality—
Was gone down, like the sun. . . .

3: THE SHIP

Apollo
And whence did that craft hail, sailor,
Of which you seem so fond?

Seaman
It was some harbour of the East,
Back o' beyond, back o' beyond!

Apollo
What shipwrights' hammers rang on her,
The stout ship and the leal?
In what green forest inlet lay
Her cradle and her keel?

Seaman

I think some arm of the sea-gods
Framed us her stormy frame,
And ribbed and beamed and stanchioned her,
And gave her strength a name.

Never, Sir Traveller, have you seen
A sight the half as fine
As when she hove up from the East
On our horizon-line!

Apollo

I have seen a dead god on the Nile
Paddled by tribes of bronze,
Under mud-built villages of palms
Glide, statelier than swans,
And Isis' frail moon-golden skiff
Restore him to that barque of life
Whose years are millions.

I have seen Jason and his men
Into bows of Argo piece
Oak of Dodona, ere she slid
To find the golden fleece:
Ay, and triremes of the marble isles
Pursue from Salamis.

I have seen master-galleys rise
Dipping in mass the oar,
And centaur-carven caravels,
And galleons big with ore,
Dromonds, and mountain'd argosies
That sack the globe no more:

Great sails, like yellow weeping clouds,
Heap'd thunder, roaring squall—
And their fadings, like the fleet of stars
That floateth over all.

Seaman

Well—ask all navies such as these—
Was she not more divine
Who, challenged by Death's muffled drums,
Gave Death the countersign?

Ah, to serve on her in time of war!
It set aflame your blood
To feel her in the slack of peace
Come booming up the flood,

Thousands of wings about her bows
As she cast away the deep,
The morning star swung from a spar
And every sail asleep.

Her masts! Land-locked and shut away
From the sea-winds' scud and psalm,
Her masts, they trembled in a leash—
You laid on them your palm—
They quivered over with great life
That never could be calm.

No frothings in your purple wake
On the lone path to the pole,
White as the spread of sail on her
That lent wings to your soul—

Apollo
What was her build, that boat of yours
So proud upon the sea?
What was her make of hull and deck,
What suit of sails had she?

Seaman
Her stretch of sail so white, so white,
By no man's hand unfurled,
Was Heaven!

Apollo
And the decks you kept so bright?

Seaman
For us, this bustling World.

Apollo
And the hold and cockpit out of sight,
Pitch dark and ill to smell,
Full of the friends of your delight?

Seaman
That was the pit of Hell!

4: THE TIDINGS

Seaman

How think of her, gone down, gone down!
How think of her decayed!
Or that the maker of that ship
Could let his creature fade!
More unbridled—unforgettable—was never creature made.

Gone by the board, those swinging spars
That seemed through storm to climb!
Sent down, like any cockle-shell
To tangle and to slime!

Did he that takes the narrow sounds
His monstrous hands between
Whirl her among his crazy locks
Into an eddy green?

Was it fog-bound, on a foul coast,
With not enough sea-room,
Or clear of land that she was lost,
Where hard gales can blow home?

Was it ice-floe in the sheeted foam
Ambushed her? or some ledge
Of false lights—or uncharted reef—
Broke her back upon its edge?

Perhaps even she was seized at last
Off an island precipice
With weariness, like man's weariness,
Of everything that is,

And stranded so, till the fresh flood
That through the channel swings
Crumbled that side like a sea-cliff,
As one crumbles little things.

Apollo
Her end was none, my lad, of these!
But first, if you must know,
Mutiny of those friends of yours
In irons down below.

Seaman
And how got you, Sir Merchantman,
This news—or bitter jest?

Apollo

“Sir, my trade is bringing light to all
From the East unto the West.

Nay, he that built your famous boat
From the old coasts to fly
And bear you ever out and on
Was I, and none but I!”

With that the sailor clutch'd the board;
Wine spilt out of his glass
Dripp'd to the floor; but not a sound
From his parch'd mouth would pass.

5: THE TALE OF APOLLO

Apollo
(musing)

There was no whisper out of space,
Scarcely a ripple ran
From thine incommensurable side
O dim leviathan,

When from afar I came in flight,
Rumours 'gainst thee to probe,
Leaving afar, engraved in shade,
Many a dreaming silver globe,
And approached thee on the middle sea
Wrapt in my darkling robe.

That Ship becalm'd, that triple-tier'd
Of Heaven and Earth and Hell,
Spread strange commotion as I near'd
Over the starred sea-swell.

Arcturus, I remember, shone—
That rebel! mirror'd bright,
And Saturn in his moat of moons
Glass'd in unsounded night:
The million-litten vault below
Breathed, in a slumber light.

As in a mountain forest-glade
When frosts ere dawn are brisk
And early spring boughs knitted close
Across the red moon's disk,

The rimy turf rings hard to hoof
Of light branch-feeding deer,
One sees upflushing some glen's brow
Camp-fire of mountaineer

Bivouack'd below; shag-bearded pines
All gnarled, loom down estranged
At wanton fire about their knees
With moon-fire interchanged—

So strange her gaunt dishevelled spars
Loomed down out of the sky;
Sails that had drunk Earth's soul immense
Hung pierced and slung awry,

My inwoven eternal blazonries
An idle tattered shame.
Was this the keen fire-spirited prow
Ark of the heaving flame,

That sun-stampt and illumined ship,
That keel of mystery,
Loosed, after toilings beyond count,
To plunge from the Daedalian mount
To stem futurity?

Now since mine own insignia badged
Each white celestial vail,
Rage seized me, like your emperor
Trajan—how goes the tale?—
Who on Tigris, twice defeated, tore
His gold wolves from the sail. . . .

And as from forge doors in her decks
Escaped, lulled, rose again,
Confused blasts—insolent uproar
From torch'd and naked men,
As 'twere some wind from Africa's
Tropic and demon'd fen.

Beast-like shadows ran and flashed;
Knotted at grips they swayed
And writhed. Unkennelled Hell was loose
And swarmed in escalade.

Hard-pressed my righteous stood at bay,
But when Hell's desperate brood
Saw me, they shouted, “Lord of Light,
Release!” Ruinous strew'd,
Fell on their faces on the decks
That breathless multitude.

Their leader, with inverted torch,
Stepp'd through them. Stern he comes,
Stirring their night-bound forest hearts
Like distant savage drums,

He cries aloud, “In this, in this—
Shaking his torch—is peace!
Not thou, tardy deliverer,
But I, confer release!

“Mighty shall be the golden flame!
Superb the funeral pyre
Of Heaven and Earth! . . . Kindle it Hell,
To glut this God's desire!”

He paused, with arms distorted, black,
Rear'd, long before the crash—
Like hollow oak that long outliveth
Coil of the lightning's lash;

Then fell. Majestic enemy,
Time with thy falling rang!
He, first of all the ship, was free
And fled without a pang.

Out of the throng'd expanse, skull-bare
Heads rose, and dropped again.
They quailed, they flinched before my gaze,
My light to them was pain!
Shadows of wreckage on the masts
Went streaming down the main.

Stooping above one cowering shape,
I raised it by the chin,
Upturned the pallid chronicle

And read the tale therein;
Read the thing purposed, by the bone,
The thing done, by the skin.

The lecher, wan, with eyelid lined,
Heavy-soul'd, torn with vice,
The murderous, with the flitting smile,
The drunkard, blue as ice;
Incomplete and colourable things,
Whose breathings must be lies.

All the sweet neighbours that men take
Within their breasts to thrive
Had blown like glass the body's case
Or stamped its clay alive.
I mused—(All hung upon a hair!)
Why need the dead survive?

In one face, stony, white and bleak,
Had passions scooped their bed;
Old lavas down the rigid cheek,
Meseemed, were still unshed;
I read the eyes of him athirst
Only for things beyond;
Whose strata, tossed in molten dreams,
Would never correspond
With things about him, for he willed
To die unparagoned.

Unseen above them so bowed down
Like beaten, sodden corn,
How cast them with derision back,
That throng of the forlorn,

Herding them with derision cold
As with a hand of steel,
Condemn them to endurance back
And still to think and feel,
While tears that might not fall for them
Did on my cheek congeal?

And in that pause their mournful hope,
Swelling like undertone
That dins within the wildest gale,
Utter'd aloud mine own.

Blindly they stretched their scarry hands,
Their piteous hands, to me:
“Since bonds we cannot bear, nor sight,
Be thou our sanctuary!
Open again the narrow gate—
Let us no longer be!”

Then lo! my righteous, whose wounds still
With bitter conflict bled,
Veer'd in their wrath, hoarsely unjust,
Arraigned me for these dead—
Spat on their own high bliss, and craved
To stand in Hades' stead!

Had all white-priested Egypt, then,
Not taught thee to perdure,
My Boat of Years? Lo, in man's dust
So mixed—so long impure—
Came light! I summoned up each soul
And round its neck secure
Fastened this token: “Fudge thyself!”
That justice might be sure.

Aloft, long since, I saw, had fled
That viewless sanhedrim
Of presences starry-cresseted
Who erst through waters dim
Had breathed the towering sails along,
My faithful seraphim.

I turned about in mournfulness
Steadfastly to behold
Bulwarks charred, ay, drunken masts
And slow deep-labouring hold,

And heeling of age-crumbled beams
And helmless spars divine—
Beheld the horror of those decks
Bloodied with mystic wine;
Even the little fluttering Genius reft
From the wrecked and flameless shrine,

And I cried to the white shape on the prow
Ascendant by my skill,

“O wingèd Ardour, headless now,
To sound what wild sea-victory
Swing'st there, triumphant still?
Why spared they wholly to shatter thee?
Thy rippling veils from feet to breasts
Winds from the future fill,

“But I know my handiwork outworn,
This bolted fabric vast
That disciplined through many wars
Man's courage in the past,—
And well, well, hath she served her Lord—
Unseaworthy at last!”

Then from ocean's frothy hazardous
Dream-element I caught
Her crew—every half-foundered soul
Wherewith her hold was fraught;

I sang them back to steady Earth
After their wanderings long,
Both quick and dead. Hangs on thy breast
The token of my song?

(He fumbled in his hairy breast,
Yes—the “Judge thyself” hung there)
Remembering then their mad outburst
Of quaint hope and despair,

Who deemed each puny life should last,
When nothing else escapes,

And the nations and the planets melt
Like breakers on the capes,

From laughter, from tears unquenchable,
Scarce able to forbear,
I smote the great hull to a ghost,—
The mighty masts to air. . . .

Seaman
What! is there not even left enough
Of that so noble craft,
A gang-board or a plank or two,
To lash into a raft?

Apollo

No, lad: you shall not ride in her;
But then you shall not weep;
Nor hear aloft her pipes of cheer
Nor the wail under the deep.

Yet sometimes, like the Northern Lights,
Hull-down—a radiance dim—
Loftier than air of Earth, up-sprung
To planes beyond its rim,

At hours when you are fever-struck
A phantom you may see,
Derelict—drifting out of hail—
Lost Immortality!

6: THE REBUKE

When the man knew the ship he loved
Had melted to a lie
He fronted him upon his feet
As who should Gods defy—
Syllables choked not in his throat,
He met him eye to eye.

Refreshed was he through long forborne
Anger. His spirit swelled
Manful—the stronger in his grief
By all that he had quelled.

Seaman

“This is your world-discovery!
This is the great landfall!
This coil of warehouses and quays
And taverns—this is all!
Well was it that we trusted thee!
Else—how had we achieved
Good luck? But then we had a friend
Wholly to be believed.

“This is the country we have gained,
This land of milk and balm!
For this our innocent took wounds

100

And died without a qualm,
Drawn on as by a ghost, that ends
Like a catspaw in a calm!

“Stay! I have heard, how in action's heat
A captain in his tent
Sealed a despatch; the rider died
That with the letter went;
The letter—saved—was found a blank!
Thine was the message sent,
Say, how wilt thou now make amends
For what was vainly spent?”

Fell off, fell off the enshrouding furs—
The beamwork of the room
To its last crevices was lit;
So terribly illume
The God's eyes—all his presence seemed
Outwardly to consume;

As though all burning sovranties
And throbbings of the mind,
Condensed into a single flame,
Across that board confined
Shot the human shade, a skeleton,
Clean on the wall behind
The man.

101

Apollo

Ah, fragment of my soul,
When I invented thee
To utter Mind, as guest and mate
Of a voiceless family,

And gave thee selfhood, barred with sleeps,
On yon ship's heaving shelves,
Selfhood that never can contrive—
However lightning-like it strive—
To escape, in its inmost, deepest dive
My Self beneath your selves,

I built through demiurgic powers
Myriad human hopes and fears,
And laboured at this shipwright's task
A hundred thousand years.

Think'st thou I framed a vessel vain
As earthly ships of wood?
Or that thy voyage never was
And wasted all your blood?
What! Hast not felt the invisible
Nor faintly understood?

Thou hast seen armies serve a name,
A rag, a tomb forlorn;
The tides of men obey a ghost,
The ghost of the unborn.

102

Thou hast felt passions' blindest roots
Quake up man's silly crust,
And rock thy reason from its state
And crack its towers to dust.

Thou hast seen Gods figure forth races,
Surging out of the vast
On crest of wave after wave, for aye
To sweep till time be past:—
Feel'st thou no wind behind those waves
All washing on one way?
Organs of the invisible
Yes, thou hast felt their sway!

Deem'st those old faceless images,
“Truth,” “Justice,” “Liberty,”
Heralding symbols thou employ'st?
They are employing thee!

Organs of the invisible
Yes, thou hast felt their sway,
The buried city of thy heart
Knows thou art less than they.

But now get back upon high seas
Unknown and drear indeed,
Thou, the adventure of my cloud,
The sailing of my seed!

103

Seaman

“Lord, I confess the things unseen
Closer the fountain-head
Than this wood table in my grasp
Or yonder loaf of bread;
But must we, ever-living one,
Go out when we are dead?
When the arms that held us close and dear,
When the love that we are used
To mingle with, are wrenched away
And the body's kiss is loosed?”

The God smiled, and with 'haviour soft
Leaning across the wine
Heavily took those shoulders young
Into his grasp divine.

Apollo

Hearken! I put you to the touch—
My son, my prodigal—
Since every brave song hath its close
Your own life, end it shall;
Yes, utterly shall meet an end.
Be it heroical!

And, born aboard, my rover stark,
Dread you to die aboard?
To lay you down beside your love
With the sunset on your sword? . . .

104

7: THE NEW SHIP

Apollo
(continuing)

Voyage after voyage, how else, how else
Should I Man's soul prepare
For the new venture, bolder yet,
On which he now must dare?

See! from the voyage whence you come now
You come not back the same!
Behind the door of your dull brow
Have sprung up doubt and blame—

Defiance of me. That I praise.
This once low-cabined pate
Hollows deep-chambered—is become
Tribunal—hall of state
For the assembled thrones of angels—roof
For an assize of fate!

Thou hast forgotten, whom I took
From lap of things inform
And flung to embraces of the sea
Caresses of the storm!
Now electrified, subtler-energied,
Starker-willed, battle-warm,
Thou comest, thou comest again to me! . . .
Son of tumult, gloom enorm,
I have new jeopardy for thee
And new eyes yet to form!

105

O wrestler into consciousness
Stand upon Earth! Away!
Long hath the journey been by night,
But roseate breaks the day;
Like a scroll I unfold the mountain-tops
And the windings of the bay.

Awake! Already on the cruise
Thou shalt not see its end.
Earth is the ship. Thou shalt have time
To find the Earth thy friend!

Seaman
Is there a hand upon her helm?

Apollo

Weigh thou thine own heart-fires,
Her wash of overwhelming dawns,
Her tide that never tires—
Her tranquil heave of seasons—flowers—
All that in thee aspires!

How like an eagle on the abyss
With outspread wing serene
She circles!—thought rolls under her,
The flash from the unseen.
Here's to her mission, wingèd rock,
Bluff-bowed and heavy keel'd
Through the night-watches swinging on
Still under orders sealed!

106

No crystal gives a peep, my son,
Of her errand far and surgy;
No witch's magic brew of sleep,
Nor smoke of thaumaturgy;

But, if thy former priestly ship
Failed of the port assigned,
The overwhelming globe takes on
Her altar-flame of mind.
See that the oils that feed the lamp
Fail not!

Seaman
What are those oils?

Apollo

Heroic, warm, abounding souls!
These are the sacred oils
On fragrant thin-flamed thymele
Lost on the deep like melody—
They who, as I My Self disperse
In them through the tragic universe,
Scatter themselves in toils.

And I shall stream into their life
Waking—sense after sense—
New understandings—endless, no,
But more and more intense.

107

Till joy in the Will that wafts the world
Buoyant as swimmers be
Makes thee divine, perhaps at last
Wholly delivers thee.

Seaman
The man exclaimed, “Delivers me!
How, if this death descends?
I am a man and not a race.
What matters, if self ends?
Speak! quick, my brain is worn and cold,
Little it comprehends.”

Apollo

“I shall tell thee, but as music tells. . . .
I too, like thee, have striven.
I too am launched from the profound
And past; I too am driven
In turn upon the stream of storms
From fountains beyond heaven;
To me, too, light is mystery,
The greater light half-given.
Ah, how make plain the goal obscure
Of thy journey but begun?”
Again the God smiled on the man
And asked, “Hast thou a son?”
He nodded. “And never yet hast guessed
That thou and he are one!

108

“Leaf shall of leaf become aware
On the self-same bough and stem,
Whose branches are murmuring everywhere
And the heaven floods all of them! . . .
Between you—between all that live—
Runs no gulf wide nor deep—
But a sheen'd veil, thinner than any veil,
Thin as the veil of sleep.

“Through the death-veil—looming silverly—
The self-veil's subtle strand,
Dawns it not? For that dawn thy heart
Hath eye—shall understand;
Before its seeing rock-walls melt
And cracks the mortal band.

“When once the whole consummate strength
Of thy slow-kindling mind
Can see in the heart's light at length
All strange sons of mankind,
Then Earth—that else were but a strait
Rock-sepulchre—is new:
Of what account to it is death?
Its glowing, through and through,
Moveth, alive with a God's breath,
Translucent as the dew!”

109

8: THE EMBARCATION

The last words in the rafters rang,
The bright haze sounded on;
Walls, air and shadows vibrant still,
The God himself was gone.
Was the thing dreamed? The Tavern wall
Solid? Still it rang.
Feverish he threw the lattice back;
Outside fluttered and sang
Trees of a tract of narrow yards
Behind dark tenements,
The nearest garden vacant—rope
Eked out its broken fence.
Naked it lay—brown mould bestrewn
With refuse crockery—yet
A pear-tree in its darkest nook
Bowered it in delicate
Whiteness. Beyond its further pale
Above a wall-flower bed
Women were hanging linen out—
One stoop'd a kerchief'd head.
In lime-trees idle rooks were cawing;
Even to his upper room
Came wafted from some distant plot
Fragrance like thyme's perfume;
Adrift from zigzag chimney-stacks
And ancient courtyards, soft
Blue smoke was breathed amongst the trees;

110

Dazzling clouds moved aloft;
Here, in the window where he stood
A cherry stretched its limb,
Half the diaphanous clusters clear
Enlumined, and half dim.
Green swift immortal Spring was here—
Spring in her lovely trim—
And whether it were ship or no,
The Earth seemed good to him.
Had he been Greek, or nurtured well
In lore of sages gone,
He would have felt her like that ship
Ascribed to Hieron,
Which, beside its deck-house luxuries
Of baths and bronzes fine,
Carried a pergola's green walk,
Shade-galleries of vine,
For awnings, fruit-espaliers
From buried urns in line.

Quitting the Inn, he made for home;
By many a cobbled wynd
Behung with mariner's wares, uphill
He strode with seething mind.
Above in the shady market-place
Unwonted silence reigned.
Under their patched umbrella stalls
Few flower-sellers remained;
But one, with old face like a map
Wrinkled by good and evil hap,
Stretched forth her palm. It rained.

111

Ah, yes, it rained—sudden acold
The sky loured overcast.
Soon pavements leapt with plashing drops;
And as he hasty passed
He heard a burst of chanted sound,
And glanced up at the vast
Shadow that over huddled roofs
Loomed, pinnacled and grey. . . .
The spired cathedral thunderously
And widely seemed to sway;
Like Earth upon her pilgrimage
Buffeting on from age to age,
It still was under way.

And on he trudged with peace at heart,
Rain pelting on his cheek,
But the shower half-ceased before he found
The bourn he seemed to seek,

A small house in a by-way dark
Beneath that April cloud,
And nigh the doorway he looked up
Keen-eyed. He could have vowed,
Yes, 'twas his wife stood shining there,
Yonder, where lintels dripped!
With soft, profound, familiar look
Low-laughing forth she slipped.

Her mute nod warned him (while her hair
Released bright drops that fell)
And bade him watch, but not disturb

112

A happy spectacle.
Now vapour'd were the cobble-stones;
The runnel where they stood
Fleeted adown the middle street,
Rays gleaming on its mud,
When lo! he saw a child, their son,
Squatted beside the flood,

The city's sole inhabitant
And lost to aught beside.
Wholly absorbed, aloof, intent;
Upon that ruffling tide

The boy embarked a faery ship
Of paper, white and gay;
And watched, with grave ecstatic smile,
Its glories whirled away.