Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

I know them all: and, knowing all they are,
Know all they are not. Custom's slaves! content
To crawl about in search of food, and sleep,
And crawl about again in search of food;
To squat in frowzy holes, and hatch to life
Dull reproductions of the lifelessness
Of their own dulness; sloth for rest mistaking,
And stupefaction for serenity;
Sleeplike, to mimic death, till death itself
Death's imitation stops, and there an end!
Thus lose they all the lives they never lived.

Even as the cold and muddy-coated carp
Knows nothing of the hare that on the heath
Nibbles in fear and flits, nor she of him;

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So each within his petty pinfold hugs
A huddled life. And unto these the whole
Immeasurable universe appears
A stagnant puddle where they spawn; to those
The copse that gives them covert, or the chink
Wherein they burrow. This beholds in heaven
Only a cistern for such rains as bring
The worms he wants; that other in the sun
A kiln that bakes him berries. To what end,
O Time, dost thou from bright to sable turn
The restless spheres of thy revolving hours?
Whence slide the silver twilights in between,
Dreamily shuddering? Say, what is't ye roll,
Night-wanderers mute, in mystic vapour veil'd,
That linger laden on the lone hill-tops,
And pass, like sorrows with a tale untold?
Who wrought the unimaginable wrong
Thou callest upon ruin to redress,
Thou moaning storm that roamest heaven in vain,
Triumphant never, never long subdued,
Beautiful anarch! Answer, morn and eve,
Why to your coming and departing kiss
Blush, wrapt in rosy joy, the mountains old?
What happens nighest heaven, and unbeheld,
To speed thee headlong from thy native haunts,
Wild torrent cradled in the tranquil cold?
What suicidal rapture, or what pang
Of virgin purity, by whom pursued,
Lures thee to where in liquid sanctuary
The lake receives thee, like a fallen queen

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That comes, with all the trouble of her life
Upon her, seeking peace in cloister'd glooms?
O wondrous world! for whom, by whom, are these
Thy wonders wrought? who recognises them?
And who rejoices in them? The Alone,
Is that the sum and summit of the All?

What is it? who hath discover'd
The spell of the old enchantment
That hovers over the forest,
And shudders along the leaves;
And is whisper'd wider from bough to bough,
Till, heaving the whole deep heart o' the woods,
It is heard in their inmost twilights;
Where tremble the grasses untrodden,
And the multitudinous blossoms
Burst and drop unbeheld?
Harken! the ancient voices!
A music of many songs!

“We tend to the high, and we tend to the deep,
'Twixt the two worlds o'er us and under.
With our boughs we peep at the heaven, and creep
With our roots thro' the earth, in wonder.

“Heaven comes not down, and earth lets not go:
By them both in our bound to us given.
And so we live, endlessly wavering so,
'Twixt the bliss of the earth and heaven.”

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The ancient voices! the forever young!
They come, they go. We question them, in vain,
Whence are they? wherefore? whither do they go?
And they reply not, going as they come.

All round the rolling orb, from life's first wail
On infant lips to griefs that look their last
Thro' dying eyes, the hunted question runs,
Whence? wherefore? whither? Is it not enough,
This rich metropolis of sense, this throng'd
Majestic theatre, on whose orb'd stage
Force acts forever? Is it not enough
Without a second? not enough, when full
To overflowing is the costly cup
Of infinite sensation? Up and down,
And all sides round, is this receptacle
Of feeling fill'd: and yet for evermore
The soul, uplifted on each rising wave,
Perceives a still-receding bliss beyond;
And each horizon reach'd, in turn, reveals
Another and another. O delight
Surpassing thought and utterance, to behold
The innumerable moving multitudes
Of matchless forms in whose dispersion dwells
Life's revelling unity, and draw them all,
A world, into the soul, herself a world!
And, best of all, still all, when at the best,
Seems the beginning of a better still.
Then what is wanting? What is left to wish
Till the heart aches with wishing? Woe is me,

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Who, thro' creation roaming, nowhere find
Peer, comrade, or companion! Winds and beams,
That round me weave the wide air's watchet woof,
Thou all-embracing firmament, and you
Sea waves, and winding rivers, and wild rills,
That, far beneath my uncompanion'd throne,
Visit all lands, O tell me where he dwells,
If such a being ye have found, whose soul
May share with mine this solitude of sight!

This voice from the heart of an Eagle came;
Who sat on a summit supreme and lone.
And his gaze was aglow with the reflex flame
Of the floating glories that round him shone.

Faintly there crept to his ear in reply
A thin weak voice, “I am here! I am he!
He whom thou seekest. No rest had I
Till I climb'd this height to be one with thee.

“Now I am safe at the top at last,
Thy peer, thy comrade! ready to share
And to feel with thee whatsoever thou hast
In thy stately spirit, thou Prince o' the Air!”

The Eagle, around him rolling his eyes,
Incredulous noticed the poor little soul
Whose voice had his own soul fill'd with surprise.
'Twas a tired, half torpid, and tiny black Mole.

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“Thou?” said the lord of the lone hills, “thou!
Truly, 'twas neither of thee nor thine
That my spirit was dreaming. But tell me how
From the cells obscure of thy tortuous mine

“Hast thou found and clamber'd the sharp steep road
Up these desolate heights, poor serf of the soil,
Foregoing the shelter and comfort owed
To thy modest life of domestic toil?

“And me, of all others, to mate with? me!
What lured thee, alas, little pilgrim, here?
Can there aught in common between us be?
Hath a mole been ever an eagle's peer?”

“Pardon, my great, my honour'd friend!
To raise myself, tho' life I spend
In rising, this,” replied the Mole,
“Was the ambition of my soul.

“As thro' the patcht and flinty field
My way I work'd with patient toil,
I listen'd, modestly conceal'd,
But with a soul above the soil,

“To birds who near my native earth
Their nests have built. Thy lofty birth
They praised, and praised thy lofty spirit.
Then to myself I said, ‘By merit

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“‘And painful perseverance I,
Tho' lowly born may haply raise
My humble self (who knows?) as high
As him the world so high doth praise

“‘For being born above the world.’
The pomp of plumes in air unfurl'd,
The oarage swift of pinions wide,
To me were all such aids denied.

“But what of that? the goal's attain'd.
And I, the sturdy child of toil,
What birth denied, by toil have gain'd,
Tho' born a bondsman to the soil.

“For, to be great, the great condition
Is, I opine, a great position.
And great as thine is now mine own,
To those on whom we both look down.

“So be it mine (thine equal now)
With thee to see what eagles see,
With thee to know what eagles know,
What eagles feel to feel with thee!”

Long while the Eagle answer'd not. Long while
His grave regard in mute perusal stray'd
O'er those small weary limbs; whose palpitation
The lingering trouble of their recent toil

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And all their natural weakness still betray'd
With gasp and pant. A melancholy smile
Grew as he gazed, and in his deep eyes stay'd.
Was it compassion? Was it admiration?
Or aught between the two? At last, he said
“So be it. I recognise thine aspiration.
Enjoy the life for which thou wast not made.
Thou art not of my kind. But, being here,
Receive ungrudged the guerdon of thy thrift.
I give thee welcome with no stinted cheer.
What nature hath denied thee as a gift
Seize, if thou canst, as toil's due recompense.
Look forth! The world is round thee. Boldly lift
Thy gaze o'er yonder summits whose intense
Keen frozen facets cut the crystal air.
The glacier glitters from afar, behold!
Deep down, the forest welters. Deeper still
Long many-coloured lowlands, field and fold,
Glimmer. And hark, the rushing of the rill!
When to his rest the sun thro' heaven is roll'd
He finds not where his kingly head to lay
Save on the orbèd sea's dark bosom cold,
Or 'twixt these solitary peaks that stay
The struggling clouds. There, propt on billowy gold,
He ponders, smiling, till he sinks away,
Creative projects, and on each and all
Some parting gift, or promise sweet, bestows.
Love decks the lowly: grace redeems the small
In glorious colour clothed, the naked glows:
Mantled and crown'd upon the mountains tall

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Sits contemplative Grandeur: grave Repose
Finds in green glens fit haunts of shadowy air:
Blithe Plenty builds her dwelling on the plain:
The vales are for Enjoyment. Everywhere
The gracious Sun hath some divine domain
Created for his countless children fair.
Young Morn, his minstrel, makes him music. Noon,
His ardent minister, with sultry brow
Hums hot and zealous. Like a mid-day moon
Pale from the mountains fades the sky-born snow,
Lost in the life of leaping rivulets.
Eve loves him best. She blushes, and is still.
And when he leaves her with soft tears she wets
The flowers he kiss'd. Night peers from hill to hill
And darkens with despair, not finding him;
Then lights her watchful stars, and waits—in vain,
For die she must before he comes again.

“From this grey crag in æther islanded
I once at dawn, before the dark was done,
Full east my solitary pinions spread,
Seeking the sunken sources of the sun.
Chill o'er me hung the icy heavens, all black
Behind their fretted webs of fluttering gold.
Beneath me growl'd the grey unbottom'd sea,
Inwardly shuddering. O'er her monstrous back
With restless weary shrugs in rapid fold
Her many-wrinkled mantle shifted she;
And scraped her craggy bays, and fiercely flung
Their stones about, and scraped them back again;

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Gnawing and licking with mad tooth and tongue
The granite guardians of her drear domain.
Faint in transparent twilight where I gazed
Hover'd a far-off flakelet of firm land.
Barely chin-high above the waters raised,
Peer'd the pale forehead of that spectral strand.
Thither I wing'd my penetrative flight.
The phantom coast, uncoiling many a twist
Of ghostly cable, as a diver might,
Swam slowly out to meet me, moist with spray.
But, ere I reach'd it, like a witch, the night
Had melted, first into a mist
Of melancholy amethyst,
Then utterly away.
And all around me was the large clear light
And crystal calm of the capacious day.

“But oh, what was it, land or sea,
Or both, or neither, under me,
That floating in the sunrise lay?
A solid sea of sliding sand,
A waving waste of liquid land,
Light blown by winds that leafless be
Up yellow bays where blooms no tree
And grows no grass, it seem'd.
And there, in vast and vivid light
By burning ardours bathed, the bright
Unbroken Desert dream'd.
How softly, how stealthily still,
Did the pure sun over it peer!

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Not a rustle of leaf or of rill
Not an echo of pastoral cheer!
But the earth and the sky, with a burning sigh
Embracing, became as one.
For bare was the heaven, as the desert, and even
The desert shone like the sun.

“Never barren that desert shall be, tho' it bear
To the burning embrace of his beams
Not a blade, or a leaf, or a blossom, for there
Is the birthplace of visions and dreams.
Now look forth o'er the numberless host of the hills,
And behold, in its glory and grace
What the sun hath accomplish'd. His influence fills
All the throbbing abysses of space.
He his force hath embodied in forms without end,
And his will in his work is set forth.
Earth and water and air with each other contend
To interpret and publish his worth.
In the great, in the small, from the depth to the height,
Thrills the pulse of his procreant powers.
He beheld the world dark, and hath bathed it in light,
Found Earth naked, and clothed her with flowers.”

The Eagle ceased. He had forgotten wholly
To whom his words were utter'd. But this pause
Aroused that other; who, recovering slowly
From mute amaze, broke silence with applause.

“Bravo! 'Tis plaguily cold up here,
But I listen'd with admiration.

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At home, o'er a pipe and a pot of beer,
What a subject for conversation!

“It would never have enter'd my mind, I vow,
To find such a deal in nothing.
Poetic license, of course, I allow
For what's put in poetic clothing.

“But your views, so far as I make them out,
As to scientific farming,
Drainage, and that sort of thing, no doubt
Are highly suggestive and charming.

“The water supply from the hills is good.
In the desert there's no vegetation
For the want (thus much have I understood)
Of a system of irrigation.

“I have studied the nature of subsoils too.
But your style's more poetic than Plato's.
The sun, no doubt, has a deal to do
With the flavour of peas and potatoes.

“With the rest of your speech, in the main, I agree,
And was pleased by its peroration;
Tho' folks might find in it (pardon me!)
Just a touch of exaggeration.

“My sight is, unluckily, somewhat weak.
And of all that excites your wonder
I can see but little—nay, truth to speak,
I see nothing at all—out yonder.

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“But, tho' loth to intrude on your precious time,
May I ask have you any objection
To teach me the trick of the art sublime
You have brought to so great a perfection?

“I was never of those who despise that art.
I am honestly anxious to know it.
And there's many a page I have learnt by heart
From the works of each popular poet.

“I've a notion of metre, a notion of rhyme,
And it always has been my intention
One of these days, if I get but time,
To study the art of invention.”

“Time,” said the Eagle, “will be idly spent
In thankless labour for invention seeking
Where there is naught to seek or to invent:
Naught but emotion into utterance breaking
From the full heart wherein its power was pent.
This comes and goes: but never comes it sought.
And when it comes, it brings its own expression:
Now check'd and struggling with tumultuous thought,
Now pour'd melodious forth in full procession,
And now again to burning rapture wrought,
But always true. For this no rule holds good,
And no receipt for this avails thee aught.
But as when, smooth along the lucid flood,
Reflected flocks of snowy swans come swimming,

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So swim the mystic forms without endeavour
Into the soul; and round about them, rimming
Each radiant image, restless circles quiver.
Swift close the flashing furrows unawares
Along their liquid paths. For flowing ever
Is that unfathom'd element which bears
The floating bark by Fancy built. And never,
O never, may'st thou bind the labour'd bond
Of finite speech on forms by Fancy seen!
For, soon as seen, they fade. Far, far beyond
Thine eager grasp the sweet shapes glide serene,
Ere yet from off each fleeting forehead fair
Hath Passion pluckt the visionary veil
That, robing, best reveals, their beauty rare.
Divine Desire, that pants upon their trail,
Himself is follow'd by divine Despair.
So, mingled in the verse, doth melt away
The vagrant vision which the verse in vain
Throbs to record; and in the poet's lay
Naught but his own emotion doth remain.
Safe in the circle of the senses five,
For those that seek no more, contentment lies.
Rest in the real. Reality will give
To all thy questions confident replies.
Follow the knowable. Hold fast the known.
Nor seek thy missing sense of unknown things
Which to the senses render response none,
Being too far beyond their questionings.
But ply not thou the poet's untaught art.
To feel it—this, this only, is to know it.

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The vision that is hidden in his heart
The poet can reveal but to the poet.”

Then light as, when over the lakes and shores
Pure morn in a pearly mist hangs chill,
Comes a rhythmic echo of unseen oars
That is hail'd by some watcher at watch on the hill,
And faint as the breath of a forest asleep
When, dreaming, it dreams that the dawn is nigh,
All around the repose of that airie steep
On the live air trembled a fine sweet sigh.
And it hover'd and heaved, and rose and sank,
The light sound, fitfully sailing,
Like the droopt wing adrip in the bulrush bank
That a silver heron is trailing.
What was it? The lightest of lovely things,
Which, soon as in vain we have seen them,
Flit from us. Scarce aught but a pair of wings,
Two thrills with a kiss between them.

And “At last! at last! at last!”
(As the vision upfloated fast,
The soul of that Eagle thought)
“The gods my desire have granted.
For he cometh, the Spirit long sought,
Sigh'd for, and waited, and wanted.
O hither! O hither to me!
Whence art thou? What canst thou be,
Exquisite creature, fashion'd so finely

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Of tremulous petals whose pure veins glow
With gold and vermilion and azure, divinely
Thrill'd by thine own vivid beauty? as tho'
Thou wert out fresh blossoms and beams created
The brilliant beautiful body to be
Of each loveliest dream that hath in me waited,
Waiting wildly for thee, for thee!”

All in a flutter of flatter'd delight,
And vain of his chance, but not trusting it quite,
The Butterfly dandled his dainty flight.
Half bashful, half bold, with a saucy swing
And a tremour shy of each delicate wing,
As, inwardly chuckling, he thought (poor thing!)

“What an adventure! a little alarming
Some might think it. I find it charming.
I the adored of an eagle? I
The chosen darling of Poesy?
Ah, if the others could only have heard
All that he said to me, wondrous bird!
Wherefore tremble? or doubt my bliss?
Surely 'tis all as it should be, this!
Hath an eagle chosen his mate in me
Beauty's the equal of Genius. Thee,
I, too, have dream'd of, singular spirit!
Worthy of thine is the trust I inherit
From many a bright presentiment
In the days gone by of this day's event.

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For never, in truth were they serious yet
Those light caprices I now regret
And recall with a blush. If in careless hours
I dallied a while with the frivolous flowers
That, down in the valley, as I went by,
Did their best to attract mine eye,
'Twas fancy merely and not true love.
O fortunate breeze that hath borne me above,
With thee to fly! and I care not where,
But with thee to fly O the rapture rare!
Welcome! 'Tis I: and I know thee: thou
Who hast taught me, also, myself to know!
To thy call I come, by mine own heart led.
It is I, it is thou, and so all is said!”

Then, to mimic the might of an eagle's flight,
(Poor fool, with his rose-leaf wings!)
Already astray, on the gust his gay
Bright atom of life he flings.
But the wild winds leap from their mountain keep
And, howling, hunt their prey.
Struck, torn, stript, tost, forlorn and lost,
He is wounded and whirl'd away.
With crumpled wings for awhile he clings
To the sharp rock's brambly brow,
Then is chased by the strain of the storm again,
Till he sinks in the valleys below.

And from bough to bough, and from tree to tree,
As bruised and broken he falls, and falls,

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That Eagle above him he still can see
Circling high o'er the mountain walls.
The flowers, the little ones, tender and kind
To their balmy bosoms receive him,
And, in slumber lull'd, from the howling wind
Warm shelter the lilacs weave him.

Sadly the downfall of that small aspirant
The Eagle saw. Long while his softening eye
Watch'd the frail image with its sightless tyrant
Struggling in vain. “Thy spirit,” he sigh'd, “was high.
Ah wherefore, little one, so weak thy strength?
Yon Mole” (and, while he spake, the unconscious Mole
Was snoring, comfortably stretch'd at length
In sleep—his only guerdon at the goal)
“Yon Mole was stronger. Feeble wings, blind eyes,
Pedant and sentimentalist, have done
Their best to share the Poet's ecstasies,
And, at their best, they both have fail'd. The one
Snores on the height. O'erwhelm'd the other lies.
What may he trust?”

MORAL.

His strength to be alone.