Lyrical Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lyrical Poems

By Francis Turner Palgrave

Palgrave, Francis Turner (1824-1897)

LYRICAL POEMS

TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF FREE ATHENS

A STORY OF NAPLES:

A SONG OF SPRING AND AUTUMN

THE LINNET IN NOVEMBER

THE GOLDEN LAND

IN THE VALLEY OF THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE

THE ANCIENT AND MODERN MUSES

ELEGY IN MEMORY OF PERCY, EIGHTH VISCOUNT STRANGFORD:

MEMORIAL VERSES ON CHARLES DICKENS

TO A SPRING-HEAD IN SOUTH WALES

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD

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A STORY OF NAPLES:

ANCIEN RÉGIME

1

Against the long quays of Naples
The long waves heave and sink,
And blaze in emerald showers,
And melt in pearls on the brink.

2

But as towards Pausilippo
By Margellina we go,
The crimson breath of the mountain
Makes blood in the ripples below.

3

A stone lies there in the pavement,
With a square cut into the stone;
And our feet will carelessly cross it
Like a thousand more, and pass on.

4

But one clothed in widow's clothing
Like a veil'd Vestal stands,
And from that slab in the pavement
Warns with imperious hands.

5

Smiling the sentinels watch us;
A smile and a sneer in one;
And that lordly woman bends her,
And wipes the dust from the stone.

6

‘What secret is in that service
Which she does like a thing divine?
Why guards she the stone from footsteps,
Like a priestess guarding a shrine?’

7

As a wild thing stabb'd by the hunters
She turn'd on us quickly and rose;
`O ye who pass and behold me,
Why ask ye my grief of foes?

8

‘It is enough to have borne them:
It is enough to have lost:
My sons! My fair fair children!
Silence beseemeth most.

9

‘Nor any woe like my woe
Since the Just One was crucified,
And his Mother stood and beheld him,
And could not die when he died.’

10

With that again she bow'd her,
And levell'd her head with the stone.
And in the high noon silence
We heard the mountain groan.

11

As whom a magic circle
Traced round holds prisoner,
We stood and watch'd her kneeling,
And could not speak nor stir.

12

Then from her feet unbended
She slowly rose to her height,
Through the worn robe appearing
Like a queen in her own despite.

13

She knotted her hands behind her
In a knot of bloodless gray,
As if so her lips unaided
Alone her story should say.

14

Like the keen thrilling music
Blown from a tongue of flame,
Through her lips that whisper'd story
With a thin clear calmness came.

15

‘In this square of dust-choked socket
A beam was set last year;
And the scaffold shot forth above it
The gliding axe to rear.

16

‘With gaunt grim poles in order,
As when men a palace build:—
'Tis the house of King Death, this palace!
With headsmen for courtiers fill'd.

17

‘I come at day-break often,
And call it up in my brain:
I see the steel uplifted;
I see it fall again.

18

‘Sirs, 'twas a morn like this morn,
So white and lucid and still;
Only the scowl of thunder
Sat on the face of the hill.

19

‘The steel like the star of morning
Hung silver-glittering on high:—
It fell like the star of morning
By God's hand struck from the sky.

20

‘It rose with a gleam of crimson,
And sank again as it rose:—
And I stood here as one standing
To watch the death of his foes.

21

‘And your eyes may well look wonder
That mine look'd on that thing of hell!
And unask'd ye know already
Who died when lead-like it fell.

22

‘Yes! They were fair as the morning,
Those two young sons of my youth;
Stamp'd with the stamp of Nature
From boyhood soldiers of truth.

23

‘Soldiers of truth and of Italy;
Her blood was quick in their veins,
As they writhed 'neath the lies that bound them,
The canker-poisonous chains.

24

‘The coarse-lipp'd Austrian tyrant
Our serf-kings holding in pay,
Keeps Italy weak and sunder'd,
For the greater ease of his sway.

25

‘In the farce they name our country
A boot towards Africa thrust:
'Tis a boot with an iron heel, then,
To tread her own self in the dust.

26

‘The priest-king haunts in the centre
The eternal ruin of Rome;
The German tramples the Lombard;
And here,—is the Bourbon home.

27

‘They saw these things, my fair ones!
The beauty, the curse, and the woe:
The beauty that seems of heaven;
The curse, pit-black from below.

28

‘O Italy, mother of nations
Like her own fair sea-nymph's brood,
Who turn and rend their mother,—
Children by name, not blood!

29

‘A dubious intricate quarrel
Broke from the court of the North;
And on some mission of order
From Trent the columns push'd forth.

30

‘They came down by Garigliano;
At Teano their halt they call'd,
When the pomegranates were as carbuncles,
And the stream-pools as emerald.

31

‘A cry went up from our people,
Volunteering by fifties to go;
And the king must come forth and lead them
Against his ally the foe.

32

‘E'en in the palace recesses
The gold-laced conscience was stirr'd;—
But the calmer confessor-wisdom
In season whisper'd a word.

33

‘Sirs, from your land of freedom
Ye cannot fathom our land!
—They march out by Pausilippo
That flame-faced patriot band.

34

‘The second son of a second
Cousin of the blood at their head;
—Our gay volunteers to conquest
O! they were right royally led!

35

‘But what, think you, was the conquest
To which they were march'd along,
And the deep rich oily Te Deum
By the barytone canon sung?

36

‘—Where the road turns under Teano,
Half behind the pomegranate close,
Red faced and stalwart-fashion'd,
Point-blank they came on their foes.

37

‘Who should hold back the lions
When the prey to their hands is given?
Each poised his musket and shouted
As if at the sight of Heaven.

38

‘And when that royal field-marshal
With a Halt! fell back to the rear,
Who could rein-in their onset,
Or sever prudence from fear?

39

‘Or care how the royal columns
Ebb'd slowly behind away,
While the best young blood of the city
Unaided rush'd to the fray?

40

‘Ah! thrice-bless'd who fell forward
Before the Tyrolean gun,
And gasp'd out their life in crimson,
Beneath the crimson sun!

41

‘O that I must live to say it,
And live to say it in vain—
My sons! My own two fair ones!
Better had ye been slain.

42

‘I saw them go forth at morning;
I saw them not at night:
And yet they return'd to the city
As captives captured in flight.

43

‘Sirs, the gold-laced thing in the palace
With a bestial instinct dim
Knew that the soldiers of freedom
Must be foes in heart to him.

44

‘I said, the ways of the Bourbon
Ye could not understand!
—They were carted hither as rebels
For a broken word of command.

45

‘They had gone onward as lions
When Royalty mutter'd Withdraw:
And their lives at once lay forfeit
At the lawless feet of the law.

46

‘In the black Castel del Uovo
They lodged them side by side;
And between them,—a Tyrolese soldier
For order and peace to provide.

47

‘That square above is the window,
Notch'd on the white wall stone;’—
We look'd; and again in the silence
We heard the mountain groan.

48

‘Sirs, for this king my husband
In youth laid his own life down!
And I prayed their lives might be spared me,
Their palace pass to the crown.

49

‘How should I do but ask it?
—Yet better not to have ask'd,
Had I seen 'neath a face of mercy
Hell's particular malice mask'd.

50

‘Ye have heard how between two mothers
King Solomon judged of old:—
But how between her two children
Could a mother such judgment hold?

51

‘One life, they said, was given me;
And I was to choose the one:
—The message came at even,
And I sat till the night was done:—

52

‘And I know not how they went by me,
The long long day and the night;
Only within my forehead
Was a burning spot of light:—

53

‘And a cry My brother! my brother!
Why art thou taken from me?
O choice unjust and cruel!
Would that I had died for thee!

54

‘I could not answer the message;
I could not think nor pray:
Only I saw within me
That burning spot alway.

55

‘Poison and glare together,
Like the wormwood star of Saint John,
It sat within my temples,
Throbbing and smouldering on.

56

‘Then once with odour and freshness
As of fields in summer rain,
The vision of their sweet childhood
Was borne on my aching brain.

57

‘Bent over one book together
I saw the fair heads of the twain;
And they read how in Roman battle
Brother by brother was slain.

58

‘And their heads are closer together,
Their hands clasp o'er and o'er,
As they swear that death the divider
Shall only unite them more.

59

‘—Toll! toll! and again!
A bell broke forth in the air:
And I look'd out on the morning;
And the morning was still and fair.

60

‘A black flag hung from the castle,
Where the thin bare flagstaff stands.
And I thought to go up to the castle,
With that bitter choice in my hands.

61

‘A timid crowd was pressing
And bore me along the street;
And I saw the tall scaffold standing
Upon these flags at our feet.

62

‘I saw the steel descending
As a star runs down from the sky:—
—Why should I tell the story?
Ye know it as well as I!

63

‘—The axe took both as I waver'd
Upon that choice accursed!
Now am I wholly childless—
I know not which is worst.

64

‘My sons! My fair fair children!
I know not where they lie:—
Only I know that together
They died,—and I could not die.’

65

—A fork of flame from Vesuvius
Through his black cone went on high;
And a cloud branch'd out like a pine-tree
With thunders throned in the sky.

66

The crimson breath of the mountain
Made blood in the ripples below:—
But she stood gray as marble,
In Niobean woe:—

67

And like a Roman matron
O'er her face she folded the veil,
With a more fix'd composure
Than we who heard her tale.