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

Mighty in glory, king of patient brain,
Reef thy brown sails and gather up thy oars:
The rest is here and limit of thy way.
The gods have here decreed thee thy repose.
The slant and driving valleys of green brine
Shall never rock thee more in gusty foam.
The gathered clouds against an angry moon,
The fleecy wave-rush on the shoaling crags,
Shall be remembered as abolished things,
The laboured preludes to thy larger joy.

Here is an island that the violet waves
Ripple against, uncrested, musical:
There is no turmoil on its lustrous seas,
Nor any day in which the singing birds
Pause thro' the measure of the fadeless year.

Thou who hast oared the long world's humid floor,
My lithe arms soon shall wind thee, and my mouth
Smoothe out the stain of travel from thy brow:
Soft and serene the bosom of my rest.
Silvering groves in twilight shall be ours,
Where the moon dare not come for secrecy,
But sends the corner of a peering beam.
While the leaves rustle, lest our kisses wake
The nested thrushes, philomels of dawn.
And I will sing thee songs of sacred lore
As low as breathing: and my lucid arms
Shall move the heavy fragrance of the night,
To soothe aside the glosses of my hair
From thy deep earnest eyes, and front of care,
Large, level, wise. My lips shall seem on thine,
As cowslip petals sweet and faint within,
Divinest in the hours of the prime dews.

An hour of this, my love, shall bring thee more
Of wisdom, than a century of toil
In seeing traffic places, marts of men,
Grey citadels on headlands, arsenals,
Quays, temples, harbours, races, customs, minds;
Then intervals of buffet with the surge,
Hearing the crags beaten with reeling sprays.

139

Wisdom is thine, but I can give thee more:
For thou art subtle as a man alone:
But I, that am immortal, can reveal
The things which gods have shrouded from of old,
Fearing that man should know them and be wise;
And, scaling on from height to height, attain
Their drowsy empire in his thirsty zeal
To grasp the utter knowledge of the earth.
For man is restless, but the God at rest:
And that enormous energy of man
Implies his imperfection; perfect they,
Exempt and firm, in no disquietude,
A consummation scorning thought beyond.

Wisdom is mine; but I can give thee love;
Which, twinned with wisdom, is most perfect life,
Love being crown of wisdom, unenjoyed
Save of the wise in its essential core,
An ecstasy beyond the fleeting sense;
Which wisdom nearest godhead can attain
In glimpses only: but the herd of men
Love as the herds: the scale of higher love
Ascends with higher wisdom and the joy.

Thine oars are wrapt, thy sails are worn awry:
Thy knees are cumbered with the boring shell:
Thy sailors loathe the long perpetual path
Where sweeps the waste vibration, vale on vale.
Thou only, King, art haughty in thy soul
To overbear the adverse elements
With human purpose sterner than the wave.
Thy face is set upon thy barren rock
To reach it in despite of gods or men.
But either death shall reach thee on the road
Of the moist waters; or this island gained
Shall seem a bitter cheat for all thy toil.
For man must ever hold some wish before,
And drape it up in cloudy attribute
Beyond perfection, lest his laggard feet
Loiter beside the highway of the world.
But when the wish is scaled he casts it by,
And feigns another landmark far away,
Till his brain darkens and his feet are still.

140

Therefore he wisely lives, who wisely reaps
The dew upon the grass before the noon
Has quenched it; taking wisely what the days
Lay at his feet, nor asking much beyond.
Love may be his and wisdom in degree;
There is no further scope for mortal days:
The aims of highest natures all resolve
Themselves in these; and these are in my hand
To bring thee: more than others' they are thine.
The seas are yonder crested in grey bloom,
But here is stormless ether evermore:
And love without one ripple on his rest,
And toiling done away with and no tear.