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VI
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PARTING
Gone, and I spoke no word to bid her stay!Gone, and I sit benumbed and scarce can rise;—
Gone with the light of new love in her eyes,
The splendid promise of the fervent day.
She loves me, Ocean, loves me! And I may
Not lisp the whisper of my great surprise,
Save to the waves and pebbles and the skies
And to the sea-gulls circling in the spray.
She loves me! Till she went I did not know
Her soul. This is a mystery which no art
Can picture and no wisdom understand.
And she is gone and I beheld her go,
With so much awe at sight of her pure heart
I dared not kiss the fingers of her hand.
KRONOS
As one of those huge monsters of the sky,Fierce with the flame of fiery floating hair,
Falls from the zenith through the upper air,
Threatening the planets from their paths on high,
Jarring creation from its harmony,
Spreading on earth destruction and despair,
Affrighting men to temples and vain prayer,
So from the summit of his majesty
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Usurping; and no matter what is left—
How smooth or tangled grows his god-life's weft—
With how swift footing or how slow the years
Speed on, for him forever there remains
A thunder and a chaos in the spheres.
1883.
TO PROF. C. F. RICHARDSON
(For the dedication of a book.)
Such as the seashore gathers from the sea—Shells whose glad opal sunlight makes more glad,
And dead men's bones by bitter seaweed clad—
Teacher and friend, these songs I send to thee.
Gay things and ghastly mingled, seem to me
Here are alike; the merry and the sad,
The trivial and tragic, good and bad,
For so I find the ways of life to be.
Evil and good are woven upon the loom
Of fate in such inextricable wise
That no man may be bold to judge and say,
“This thing is good, that evil,” till the day
When God shall blazon on regenerate skies
The justice of His pardon and His doom.
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A YOUTHFUL POET TO HIS CRITICS
Methinks I hear those dull men murmuring on:“Not half bad,—really, rather melodious,—
But then he sighs too much, is ominous,
All minor-keyed, the pathos overdrawn.
There's woe enough i' the world”—this with a yawn—
“Why must our songs be likewise dolorous?
No nightingales! The lark 's the bird for us!”
Ah, my poor fellows, it is night. When dawn
Clarions in the east and waits an answering word,
Then shall you hear the loud-resounding lark,—
Yea, Israfel, passioning like the Arabian bird
Whose heart of flame bore fruit of ancient tales,
Shall thrill the very seraphim to hark.
But now—content you with the nightingales.
May, 1888.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Gone art thou, then, O mystical musician!
Pure thoughted singer of these sinful years!
No more shall dreams and doubts and hopes and fears
Pass and re-pass before thy stricken vision;
No more from thine high sorrowing position
Shall fall thy song—irradiated tears;
Alas! no more against our listening ears
Shall new lays ring from thy lone lute Elysian.
For unto thee at last has rest been given,
Whether in sleep eternal by the shore
Pure thoughted singer of these sinful years!
No more shall dreams and doubts and hopes and fears
Pass and re-pass before thy stricken vision;
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Shall fall thy song—irradiated tears;
Alas! no more against our listening ears
Shall new lays ring from thy lone lute Elysian.
For unto thee at last has rest been given,
Whether in sleep eternal by the shore
Of Time's wide ocean, or in song without
Or break or flaw, by the gold bar of that heaven,
From which the blessed Damosel leaned out,
Sighing for thee in the sad days of yore.
Or break or flaw, by the gold bar of that heaven,
From which the blessed Damosel leaned out,
Sighing for thee in the sad days of yore.
TO SWINBURNE
I
Poet! thou art to me a faery kingDwelling in some weird place of witchery,
Some garden where unnumbered roses vie
In color with the hollyhocks that spring
On every side in scarlet wantoning
And lilies 'neath the gaudier herbage lie
And violets unclose their leaves near by
While stately sunflowers guard each opening.
And in that garden-realm magnificent
I often see thee walking—stopping now
To list to hollow murmurs, now to scent
Some flower's subtile perfume, wherein pent,
A rich, rare pleasance lies that none but thou
And thy strange fellow-bard, the wind, can know.
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II
Oft, too, I see thee on the rocky shore,Worshiping all the infinitely strong
Grand godhead that to ocean doth belong,
Or prostrate with uncovered head before
The sun, whom even Ocean doth adore,
Who giveth speech to every poet's tongue,
Who is the only king and god of song,
From whom all bards receive their secret lore.
For thou art brother of the elements;
There is a spirit of kinship that compels
Thy feet to stray in paths where nothing dwells
Save the triune power that knows nor death nor birth
But sways all nature in omnipotence—
Sea, wind and sun, the gods who rule the earth.
PER ASPERA AD ASTRA
To Amélie Rives.
There is no heart that sorrows not. The higherThe path winds for our feet o'er shards and stones
The sharper cuts the stinging wind that moans
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They that are struggling in the lower mire,
For all their sorrowing, never know the groans,
The Mutius-agony, the dread monotones
Of Golgotha, that whoso would aspire
Must shudder with throughout earth's period.
Crowned Poet! read God's message through the storm;
“Yea, there shall pierce thine own heart, too, a sword;
For Art, like Mary, handmaid of the Lord,
Tears out of her own quivering flesh the form
To clothe the unseen and living Word of God.
Washington, 1888.
A REMNANT REMAINETH
To Amélie Rives.
Amid this clamor of the silly throngWho boast that they have wrought true counterpart
Of Nature's face—ah me, they miss her heart!—
Who scoff at them that for God's music long
And for the love of beauty suffer wrong,
Who would turn Helicon into a mart
And smite with Cromwell-stroke the throat of Art
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My heart leaps up when I behold afar
A new hand stretched to take the torch of Truth,
Which seer and saint pass down from age to youth
To light the future Temple's inner shrines.
Across the dusk I see and name a star;
Pray God that Phosphor and not Hesper shines.
Washington, 1888.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
There was a poet in him. But his artGrew too faint hearted to withstand the strain
And turmoil of the age. He sought to gain
Peace only; all the passion of his heart
He slew, that, a little space apart
For quiet of his soul he might attain;
And so the poet in him fell self-slain,
Sang its own swan-song and was not. O heart!
He has found a deeper peace than he pursued
And his worn eyes at last behold the ways
That open for man's limitless up-leaping;
And God's voice softly wakes his poethood
Anew, as the Master bent of old to raise
The dust that loved him, saying: “Not dead, but sleeping.”
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