Anyta and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sovereign he is of throned domains, more wide
Than Rome's blanched eagles with their boldest wing
O'ershadowed; or than in her sea-nursed pride
England, whose ampler arms such realms enring,
That round the globe her morning gun
Reverberates, chasing the Sun.

II.

The Lydian King was not so rich as mine,—
Whom Solon's wisdom snatched from fiery death,—

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Nor did luxurious, learned Lucullus dine
With guests so finely choice. Napoleon's breath,
When Monarchs trembled at its sound,
Was less imperially becrowned.

III.

Not wreckful spendthrift who,—like faithless cask,
Letting rare wine as plenteous water leak,—
Wastes handfuls daily, nor doth ever ask
Whether they be copper or gold, and eke
Would rather they were gold, for so
He furthers fate at every blow;

IV.

Nor he whose ointed palm, like the sky's sluices,
Opes only for a wise beneficence,
Of whose compassionings the flooded juices
To gush watch ever for a sweet pretence:—
These lavish two spend not so fast
As he whose horoscope I cast.

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V.

Not scented darling of gem'd women's eyes,
With his happy teeth and smooth bemirror'd curls,
Who at the glass, his shrine, doth sacrifice
With incense that around himself aye purls,
More dainty tended is than he,
The pet of my poor minstrelsy.

VI.

Father, of long illustrious lines the last
But for one tremulous remnant twig,—round whom
Convolve the chaplet of a princely past,
And love, the warmer for the threatened tomb,—
She like a tarn, secluded, far,
That lonely clasps each stooping star:—

VII.

Rich lover, and more rich in love than gold,
In bounteousness still richer than in both,

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Who with his bounteousness makes wealth unfold
The plaits of love and his intreasured troth,
Whose tributes so his mistress cover,
She dreams, a fairy is her lover:—

VIII.

Not these, nor any of the thousands living,
Gifted with spirit's or with body's goods,
And with the still more blessed gift of giving,
Can give like him, who gives as do the woods,
That give a world of leaves in spring
That oaks may grow and birds may sing.—

IX.

The subtlest visitors to the large brain
Who spirit-like from th' Infinite descend,
And ever travel with a glittering train
Of halos new, that with the old inblend
To wield the top of privilege,
Whetting of thought the restless edge;

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X.

Of the great heart the dearest intimates,
Who come because 't is warm and warmer make it,
Showered with love that from creation dates,
The Word's winged soul and life of Him who spake it;—
These lordly vassals proudly bring
Of crowns the proudest to our King.

XI.

But King he is not yet, nor to his head
Will fit the crown, till 'tween those circled bands
A third, afire with gems, outvaults, to wed
The two, in glow as of celestial hands.
Like Morning's holy rim of light,
That welds forever day to night,

XII.

And thus sublimely wedged, moves on the earth
Creative, Beauty's visionary might

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Enfrees, where'er it falls, imprisoned worth,—
The mind's best pioneer, with its lustral light
Giving to thought a fleckless eye
And chasteness unto sympathy.

XIII.

Who is encompassed by this tripled crown
Has solar warmth which he no more can keep
Within one bosom, than the Sun can frown
His summer beams to icicles, or sleep
While towards him in maternal May
Turns the young earth with prayer for day.

XIV.

Of the best gifts that knows immortal life
To yearning man he is the elected giver,
Gifts of warm truths, that feed the soul till, rife
For better mansions here, they make it shiver
Of strongest Kings the strongest will,
Obedient to a stronger still.

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XV.

The primal hallowing power is his, to feel
Throb through his heart the pulse of all that throbs.
Dim planets that in space their splendors wheel,
Warriors triumphant, bondsmen through their sobs,
All trust, as all things do that stir,
In him, God's meet interpreter.

XVI.

He sits enthroned in Nature, whence to his brain
From life's perennial springs run rills of force,
Which, filtered there, flow limpid back again,
For centuries the fonts of new resource.
To one whom God with crown enrings
What are a thousand man-made Kings?

XVII.

His is the right divine, the puissant lord
Of men through all the births of history,

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Puissant that with a breath he makes the chord
Vibrate that 's deepest, truest. Who is he?
The Poet-Thinker, he it is,—
King through his fiery sympathies.

XVIII.

Seek that exhaustless land, whose seedful dower
Of men the peopled silence of the past
Enfolds with stately joy; whose giant power,
Rewaked by Garibaldi's patriot blast,
Flushes the classic land with sheen
Bright as the grandeurs that have been.

XIX.

Adown five hundred years of wakeful time,
Bequeathed from million sires to million sons,
Undimmed, unsoiled by centuries of crime,
Like Heaven's unwasted fire, translucent runs,
Through tyranny's dull desert blight,
One quenchless shaft of thoughtful light.

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XX.

Dead are her dastard Kings and putrid Popes,
Dead to men's love and wants and memory;
But in Ausonia's inmost thoughts and hopes,—
A strength and promise yet of victory,—
Live primal Dante's quivering words,
To patriots, inly-flaming swords.

XXI.

Hark to the organ-swell of thoughts that teach,
From Luther's home, men foremost in life's race.
What gave the pitch to that full concert's reach,
What still is strongest those vast chords to brace,
Binding a severed land in one,
Is the deep rhythm of Gœthe's tone.

XXII.

Wipe from proud England's scroll her highest name,
And the sweet manly tongue that clasps the earth

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With freedom's clamorous voice, were not the same.
From him, the Seer, dates its fulgent worth:
'T is he swells England's brain so wide
With his great soul's creative tide.

XXIII.

And we, a mighty mother's soaring child,
Who on self-balanced centre stand apart,
Irreverent of her Kings, our sovereign mild
Thee we enthrone within our thankful heart,
Great Englishman, greatest, most dear,
Beloved, revered, becrowned Shakespeare.

1859.