On Viol and Flute :: :: University of Virginia Library

The saint of old who saw the witch-fire shine
High on the island-peak of Ormandine,
Nearer and nearer to the perilous shore
Drew, and forgot the heavenly call divine.

There, round the desolate rock, in that wild air,
He paced the shingle, mad with vain despair,
And heard the wizard's laughter more and more,
Resounding from the topmost granite lair.

Nor ever would have seen the sun again,
But spent an immortality in vain,
Had not the champion of the Sanguine Cross
Sailed to his rescue and the monster slain.

So has it been with these my earlier days,
Bewitched with splendour of the sun's last rays,
Caught with the cloud-wings of the albatross,
Snared with the green light and the lurid blaze.

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The strained fantastic hues of sunset light
Have filled my full horizon of delight,
I have not known the power of perfect day,
And shivered at the range of perfect night.

The clear white colour when the dawn began
Seemed poorer than the twilight blanched and wan,
The opaline green spaces far away
More sweet than waters where the sunbeams ran.

But now the gradual lapse of western light
Proclaims the calm that just precedes the night;
A little while the spaces round the sea
Will glimmer to the distance out of sight.

And then the purple clouds that turn to dun
Will gather round the grave-gates of the sun,
Blackness and silence on the waves will be,
And day have ended and the night begun.

But see the twilight star that starts and shines
Where all the soft light narrows to thin lines;
Its pure intensity of liquid flame
Can teach me more than its own soul divines.

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A fragment of the silver dawn, it lies
Bright on the bosom of the fading skies,
And through the sunless hours will still proclaim
A promise of a morrow to faint eyes.

What say you? Shall we watch the star leap higher,
And pierce the darkness with its filmy fire,
Or turn away before the blind bee's wings
Fold up for sleep, and all the gleams expire?

You do not stir? You will not rise and go?
Then listen longer, if it must be so;
Some songs of sober thought are yet to sing,
Some pulses of my heart are yet to show!

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THE APOTHEOSIS OF ST. DOROTHY.

A maiden wandering from the east,
A saint immaculately white,
I saw in holy dream last night,
Who rode upon a milk-white beast;
Across the woods her shadow fell,
And wrought a strange and silent spell,
A miracle.

With firm-set eyes, and changeless face,
She passed the cities, one by one;
Her hair was coloured like the sun,
And shed a glory round the place
Where'er she came, she was so fair
That men fell down and worshipped there
In silent prayer.

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And ever in her sacred hands
She bore a quaintly carven pyx
Of serpentine and sardonyx,
The wonder of those eastern lands;
Wherein were laid preserved in myrrh,
The gifts of vase and thurifer
She bore with her.

And after many days she came
To that high mountain, where are built
The towers of Sarras, carved and gilt
And fashioned like thin spires of flame:
Then like a traveller coming home,
She let her mild-eyed palfrey roam,
And upward clomb.

Oh! then methought the turrets rang
With shouting joyous multitudes,
And through the tumult, interludes
Of choral hosts, that played and sang;
Such welcome, since the world hath been,
To singer, prophetess or queen,
Was never seen.

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The golden gates were opened wide;
The city seemed a lake of light,
For chrysopras and chrysolite
Were wrought for walls on every side;
Without the town was meet for war,
But inwardly each bolt and bar
Shone like a star.

Then, while I wondered, all the sky
Above the city broke in light,
And opened to my startled sight
The heavens immeasurably high,
A glorious effluence of air,
And shining ether, pure and rare,
Divinely fair.

And, rising up amid the spires,
I saw the saintly maiden go,
In splendour like new-fallen snow,
That robs the sun-rise of its fires;
So pure, so beautiful she was,
And rose like vapoury clouds that pass
From dewy grass.

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Between her hands, the pyx of gold
She held up like an offering sent
To Him, who holds the firmament
And made the starry world of old;
It glimmered like the golden star
That shines on Christmas eve afar,
Where shepherds are.

And clouds of angels, choir on choir,
Bowed out of heaven to welcome her,
And poured upon her nard and myrrh,
And bathed her forehead in white fire,
And waved in air their gracious wings,
And smote their kindling viol-strings
In choral rings.

But she, like one who swoons and sees
A vision just before he dies,
With quivering lips and lustrous eyes
Gazed up the shining distances;
But soon the angels led her on
Where fiercer cloudy splendour shone,
And she was gone.

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And then a voice cried:—“This is she
Who through great tribulation trod
A thorny pathway up to God,
The blessed virgin Dorothy.
Still to the blessed Three-in-One
Be glory, honour, worship done
Beneath the sun!”

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HOLY THURSDAY.

On Holy Thursday, I, being all forlorn,
Stood with the river winding at my feet,
And, where the swirling currents foam and beat,
I marked a little float of blossoms borne,
Bruised palm-leaves, and white lilies frayed and torn,
A broken chaplet of blanched roses sweet;
Then wandering up the stream, I went to meet
These gifts along the margin of the corn;
My way led on by headlands trimly shaved,
And shelving banks of vetch and rosemary,
Till I was stayed, and where a runnel laved
A little marish-plot, I turned—to see
A vision of Christ Himself, who, priestlike, waved
His wounded hands, and rose and came to me.

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SPILLENDE GENIER.

A BAS-RELIEF OF THORWALDSEN'S.

I

See, there is silence now! The harmony,
Drawn out into a long delicious close,
Falls gently, as the petals of a rose
Drop silently at night into the sea;
The moon that climbs behind the poplar-tree,
And therein like a ghostly blossom glows,
Has waited patiently until she knows
That rest is brooding round the god-like three.
Ah! little trinity of light and song,
What earth, what heaven can claim you? O delay!
Still let your curvëd fingers wind along
The trembling strings that quiver while you play!
Let not my earthly presence do you wrong!
I move not, speak not, lest you fade away!

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II

But ah! one sweet child, turning, waves his wings,
And lifts his magian harp into the air;
Can those be tears that glimmer in his hair,
Fast fallen from his eyes' pure water-springs?
His fingers falter soft athwart the strings;
The melody is more than heart can bear,
It ravels all the threads of pain and care,
And, to dissolve the rhythmic bond, he sings.
It seems as though a bird, too sad to mourn,
When all its happier mates are fled and flown,
Should sing old spring-songs to a winter grove!
Eldest and saddest of the three, forlorn
Of dreams and fancies, he has slowly grown
The soul and image of the antique Love.

III

But, see, his brother, laughing, folds his plumes,
And strikes a chord upon his viol-wires;
No anthem this of faded hearts' desires,
Or life's wan ghost, that walks among the tombs;
And he who holds the golden pipe resumes
His mellow music, and a song aspires
From both in unison as when the choirs
Of Venus' maidens sing above their looms.

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For these are Hope, that pipes our lives away,
And Pleasure, with his plectrum, sweet desire;
Love stands apart, and sadder far than they,
For he has tasted deeper life and higher,
And seen the eyes of Pleasure lose their fire,
And Hope, delayed past hoping for, decay.

Copenhagen, June, 1872.

Three winged children playing on musical instruments.

137

ILLICET.

When first the rose-light creeps into my room,
And stirs the liquid gloom,
My heart awakes, and sighs with its old pain,
Its ringing pulses jar with their old strain,
And Love, my lord and bane,
Renews that wild desire that is my doom.

To free myself from him, I rise and go,
Down terrace-paths below,
Whence watered gardens lead by winding ways
To that green haunt and bay-environed maze,
Where, in these summer days,
She early walks whose soul attracts me so.

Fool and forgetful! Shall I cool desire
By looking at those lovely eyes of hers,
That passionate Love prefers
To his own brand for setting hearts on fire?

138

O fool! to dream that what began my pain
Could end it! Rather, noiseless, let me fly
Out of her world, and die,
Where hopeless longing knows that all is vain.

139

OLD TREES.

“Où sont les gratieux gallans
Que je suyvoye au temps jadis,
Si bien chantans, si bien parlans,
Si plainsans en faictz et en dictz?”
François Villon.

Men, long ago, whose faces, burning white,
Waxed pale about the lips with strong desire,
O women, ye whose hearts were like a fire
For love that found you not by day or night,
The saplings that first budded in your sight
Are ancient trees to-day whose tops aspire;
The wind is in their leaves as in a lyre,
And sings the same old songs at dawning light!
This trunk I cannot span with outspread hands,
Perchance, an acorn, fell that very day
That Chaucer's white-throat lady past away;
Or heard, a wand among the maze's wands,
The sobs of poisoned Rosamond where she lay
Fast dying in the heart of summer lands.

140

TO HENRIK IBSEN IN DRESDEN.

Within the bowery window-ncok,
My red azalea flowered to-day;
Its colour fell upon the book
That I was reading where I lay,—
Your own sardonic masque of Love,
Wherein, when last azaleas blew,
I read, and marked the light above
Come faintly-tinted through.

And as your gracious verse unfolds
Its fluted meanings, leaf by leaf,
And knows not half the wealth it holds,
Till, gathered in a rosy sheaf,
The full-proportioned flowers of song
Flame, finished, from the perfect tree,
And pour out perfume, sweet and strong,
For all the world and me,—

141

So, now that May is well begun,
And cuckoos in the woodland shout,
My perfect flower that loves the sun
Will spread its faultless petals out;
Each bloom will tell my heart of you,
Norse poet with the tropic heart,
From whose blind root there slowly grew
Such flowers of perfect art!

And while I wait for your new song
To waft its fragrance o'er the sea,
I hold the memories that belong
To you, to Norway and to me;
I wander where the wild swan calls,
And where the dark lake lies and shines,
And watch sonorous waterfalls
Rush, whitening, through the pines.

You in the city of sweet names,
Where Raffaelle and Correggio meet,—
I by the dismal-tided Thames,
In dreary square and sultry street,—
Both, by one magnet drawn, extend
Our thoughts across the northern deep,
Till both our beings mix and blend
Where jarls and vikings sleep.

142

So flies a bridge across the sea
From you to Norway, clear like glass;
A mistier framework, built for me,
Permits my vaguer hopes to pass;
One link remains unforged, one base
The wizard's weird triangle needs,
One ray to join us face to face,
And then our art succeeds.

That link between your land and mine,
My English and your Norse denies;
Your verses lie like gems that hide
In coffers sealed from English eyes;
Behind the veil we dimly know
A solemn figure stands complete,
But know not how the draperies flow,
How poise the hands and feet.

For me slow hours have drawn aside
The curtain that concealed the work;
Diaphanous thin webs still hide,
And gauzy faint concealments lurk,
But all the gracious form displayed
Delights me with its sweeping lines,
And every day some progress made
Decreases what confines.

143

But oh! to win my people's eyes
To stand with me—to gaze, admire,
To praise the statue's form and size,
That is the goal of my desire;
But, friend, you dream not of the weight
Of insular phlegmatic pride,
The sturdy self-sufficient hate
Of all the world beside.

My England, where the grass is deep,
And burns with buttercups in May,
Whose brookside violets nod in sleep,
Washed purer purple by the spray;
My England of the August corn,—
The heavy-headed waving gold,—
Sweet blossoming land from bourne to bourne,
Whose name and speech I hold,

Receives my homage; none the less
I deem some precious things may be,
With which the sovereign Muses bless
The world outside our circling sea;
Some unknown gift the gods may leave
To be enshrined in alien lands,
A boon we humbly must receive
From unfamiliar hands.

144

For you the slow revenge of time
Will bring the meed your works have won,
When common speech from clime to clime
Shall link the nations into one;
The vast Republic of the arts
Will crown your deathless fame with bays,
When our poor tongues and beating hearts
Are dust on trodden ways.

For me what is there? Just to sit
Beneath my red azalea-tree,
Half in the sun, and flecked with it,
And with flower-shadows, silently;
To read the strong sonorous verse,
And think, my poet, now and then,
How, though the times wax worse and worse,
You walk the world of men.

Till this consoles me, for I know
That though the nations, old and weak,
Tremble with change, and shivering so,
With gathered voices shake and shriek,
You tremble not, but brave and strong,
Pour forth as from a trumpet's mouth,
The great anathemas of song
Sent northward from the south.

145

Work then in patience, till you see
The confines of your Holy Land,
That Palestine of poesy,
Where Agnes waits for you, and Brand;
Pull on with strenuous arm and oar,
The sandy bar will soon be past,
And grassy odours from the shore
Proclaim you home at last!

The two most prominent figures in Ibsen's great satiric drama, Brand.

146

D. G. R.

Master, whose very names have god-like power
Of song and light divine, being his who went
Unscathed through blearing fire omnipotent,
Singing for men; and his who hour by hour
Stands in the imminent and splendid shower
Of God's effulgence; and being lastly blent
With the warm light and odour effluent
Of your own rhymes, our latest, loveliest dower,
Not in our own land could my weakness mock
Your strength with homage of my poor May-day,
The applause of circling poets scared my song,
But here where twenty thousand thunders shock
The violent air for leagues of dim sea-way,
Surely my heart may speak, nor do you wrong!

Outside Bergen Harbour, Aug., 1871.

147

FORGOTTEN.

That long blue line that ends the sky
Is my forsaken home;
At last, at last, a wayworn traveller, I
Come back to my own chilly heaven, to die
Under its cold grey dome.

There'll be no welcome on the shore,
No bright familiar face
Will laugh and rush to meet me from the door;
I have no place nor portion any more
In my own land and race.

Only the patient dead, that sleep
Beside the birches on the hill,
Will know me coming from the wasteful deep,
Will let me sit before their graves and weep
Where all is old and still.

148

SPIRITUAL DAWN.

Eastward ever I, like Rudel,
Gaze in constant hope and silence
Waiting till my heart's sun-blossom
Rise upon a dreary world;

For its leaves of light bear healing
To the wounds of my pale spirit,
And the cave of air grows ruddy
With the promise of that dawn.

As I murmured thus, the silence
Broke in such Memnonian music,
That I doubted now no longer,
Falling on my knees in prayer.

But when those sweet sounds were ended,
All the dawn-light, quivering, altered
Into crimson wings of angels,
Hovering over moor and sea.

149

And between their wings ethereal
Came, like muffled thunder, toning,
Words that whispered, Never, never,
Shall that sun arise for thee!

Stars may light thy clear cold pathway,
Gracious moons in purple twilight,
But the sun of life shall never
Rise for all thy prayers and tears!

150

FOR THE NEW YEAR.

The short noon weeps that the hours are fleet
And hide the steps of the sun's bright feet;

But the moon laughs low in the midnight sky,
For she sees the sun's face from her throne on high.

Behind the blank of the vapourous seas
Gleam still, as of old, the Hesperides.

The bloom of the rose-tree is withered and goes,
But a new flower sleeps in the root of the rose;

And spring shall come with a flute and a fire,
And wake new passion and old desire.

The scarlet poppies shall flame and pass
Out of the clusters of cool young grass;

151

The brook shall dance against warm green leaves
And the brown fields murmur with shocks and sheaves.

Out of the city that roars and cries
I send you a dream of delight of the eyes.

Out of the heart of the winter-time
I send you a leaf from the young year's prime.

Out of the toil and the trouble of night
I send you a song of the dawn's delight.

For all things die to arise again,
Save pain, and sorrow, the shadow of pain;

And beyond the reach of the rack and rod
There remaineth a rest for the people of God.

152

1870—71.

The year that Henri Regnault died,—
The sad red blossoming year of war,—
All nations cast the lyre aside,
And gazed through curvëd fingers far
At horror, waste and wide.

Not one new song from overseas
Came to us; who had ears to hear?
The kings of Europe's minstrelsies
Walked, bowed, behind the harrowing year,
Veiled, silent, ill at ease.

For us the very name of man
Grew hateful in that mist of blood;
We talked of how new life began
To exiles by the eastern flood,
Flower-girdled in Japan.

153

We dreamed of new delight begun
In palm-encircled Indian shoals,
Where men are coloured by the sun,
And wear out contemplative souls,
And vanish one by one.

We found no pleasure any more
In all the whirl of Western thought;
The dreams that soothed our souls before
Were burst like bubbles, and we sought
New hopes on a new shore.

The men who sang that pain was sweet
Shuddered to see the masque of death
Storm by with myriad thundering feet;
The sudden truth caught up our breath,
Our throats like pulses beat.

The songs of pale emaciate hours,
The fungus-growth of years of peace,
Withered before us like mown flowers;
We found no pleasure more in these,
When bullets fell in showers.

154

For men whose robes are dashed with blood,
What joy to dream of gorgeous stairs,
Stained with the torturing interludes
That soothed a Sultan's midday prayers,
In old days harsh and rude?

For men whose lips are blanched and white,
With aching wounds and torturing thirst,
What charm in canvas shot with light,
And pale with faces cleft and curst,
Past life and life's delight?

And when the war had passed, and song
Broke out amongst us once again,
As birds sing fresher notes among
The sunshot woodlands after rain,
And happier tones prolong,—

So seemed it with the lyric heart
Of human singers; fresher aims
Sprang in the wilderness of art,
Serener pathos, nobler claims
On man for his best part.

155

The times are changed; not Schumann now,
But Wagner is our music-man,
Whose flutes and trumpets throb and glow
With life, as when the world began
Its genial ebb and flow.

The great god Pan redeified
Comes, his old kingship to reclaim;
New hopes are spreading far and wide;
The lands were purged as with a flame,
The year that Regnault died.

156

THE MANDRAKES.

A STUDY IN GROTESQUE.

Prorex.
“And whither must these flies be sent?

Oberon.
To everlasting banishment.
The woods are yew trees, bent and broke
By whirlwinds; here and there an oak
Half cleft with thunder. To this grove
We banish them.

Culprits.
Some mercy, Jove!

Oberon.
You should have cried so in your youth,
When Chronos and his daughter Truth
Sojourned among you; when you spent
Whole years in riotous merriment.”

Day's “Parliament of Bees,” 1607.

Whether in meditation or in dream,
Or whether in the circle of known lands
I walked, I cannot tell; the crested stream
Of the great waters breaking on the sands,
The far brown moors, the gulls in white-winged bands,
Seem too clear-coloured on my memory
To be the ghosts of any phantasy.

157

Along the sweep of an untrodden bay,
Towards a great headland that before me rose,
Full merrily I held my sunny way;
And in that atmosphere of gold and snows,
And pure blue fire of air and sea, the woes
Of mortals and their pitiful despair
Seemed vague to my glad spirit void of care.

The long bluff rose against the sea, and thrust
Its storm-proof bosom far into the deep,
And many a breaker, many a roaring gust
Distrubed the calm of its primæval sleep,
Through the grey winter twilight; there did creep
In swarthy trefoil, or salt-blighted grass,
A token where the uncurbed sea-wind did pass.

So even in the bright and pure June air
The place seemed vestured in unholy guise.
The loneliness was like a pain to bear,
I sought about with strangely troubled eyes
For bird or flower to glad me in some-wise,
In vain; then at the utmost verge I stayed
When far beneath the refluent thunders swayed.

158

Then as I stood upon the precipice
Drinking the sunlight and sharp air like wine,
I heard, or thought I heard, a murmur twice,—
First, like a far-off shrieking, clear and fine,
Then like an anxious shouting for a sign
To careless boatman steering o'er the rim
Of rocks,—but both behind me, and both dim.

But even while, not turning, in my mind
I thought how very lonely the place was,—
The rushing of the steadfast wings of wind
Being empty of all common sounds that pass,—
The song of birds, or sighing in the grass,—
Then suddenly a howl to rend the skies
From the bare land behind me seemed to rise.

And while my skin was wrinkled with affright,
I noticed far and far away, an isle,
With faintest waves of jagged pale blue light
Skirt the horizon, land not seen erewhile;—
This in a flash of thought; such sights beguile
Our hearts in wildest moments, and we know
Not clearly after how it could be so.

159

But in a second, ere the long shriek died,
I turned to see whence came this note of woe,
And marked on the down's topmost hollow wide
One lonely scrawling gnarled tree that did grow,
Coiling its leafless branches stunt and low,
Midmost the promontory; thither I
Drawn by some hate-spell felt my way did lie.

It was a shameful tree, the twisted pain
Of its sad boughs and sterile hollow stem,
Took fearful forms of things that are man's bane,
And circling drops of oozings did begem
Its twigs with a dull poisonous anadem;
It had no bright young leaves to tell of Spring,
Nor clustering moss that hallowed eld doth bring.

And at its foot were forms that had no shape,
Unmoving creatures twisted like the tree,
With horrid wooden faces set agape
And bodies buried in the earth; to see
Such human features moulded terribly
Sent all the life-blood surging to my heart,
And mine own breath was ready to depart.

160

When one most awful visage bent the roots
That were its jaws, and moaning, slowly spake;
“O mortal, what assemblage of soft lutes
Rings now across the silvery waves that break
Along the city, where the shadows make
In tremulous calm lines of sunset fire
A magic image of each dome and spire?”

He questioned thus in strained voluptuous tones;
His hideous feet deep in the ground were set;
His body fashioned without skin or bones
Was like the mystic figure of smooth jet
Egyptian priests wore in an amulet,
What time they mourned Osiris; like a shriek
His pained voice ended sharply, forced and weak.

Then when I answered nothing, once again
He spoke,—“In what elysium of the blest,
Lapped in sweet airs, forgetful of all pain,
Fulfilling an eternity of rest,
Lies Titian, of all painters loved the best?
Oh! say, in any land where you have been,
Heard you of him and not of Aretin?”

161

“O matchless painter of the noble heart!
Dear friend I loved long centuries ago!
Lean from that golden chamber where thou art,
Above the sun and moon, and lighten so
The utter, endless agony of woe
That fills my wretched being, doomed for aye
Rooted in this foul living grave to stay.

“Ah, mortal, listen! I was once a child
Into whose brain God poured the mystic wine,
Full of pure odours, fragrance undefiled,—
Keen drink to make a poet all divine.
I took the gift; men called me Aretine:
All that was pure and poet-like I spurned,
And to hell-fire for inspiration turned.

“God suffered long with me, and let the fire
Of passionate youth burn to the ash of age,
Saying to the angels, ‘Surely when desire
Is dead within him, his true heritage
Will seem more precious to him, and the page
Of the great book shall in the end record
Some prayer, some love, some tender-spoken word.

162

“Yet I, still impious, burned before my God
The rancid oil of hypocritic prayer,
And with unsanctified, rash footsteps trod
Those shadowy precincts, where the misty air
Is heavy with the sound of hymns, and rare
High spirit-breathings fill the solemn place
Where God meets man, in silence, face to face.”

I stood beneath the tree now, all the ground
Was full of these grim shadows of mankind,
And all in some way shamefully were bound
Into the earth, but no two could I find
In which the same quaint shapes were intertwined;
But each was human, yet each had the feature
Of some mis-shapen thing or hideous creature.

Oh, how the calm around us, and the light
Of pure cerulean æther, full of sun,
Made awful contrast with the shameful blight
Of these foul natures! Him I looked upon
Was like an old man, utterly undone,
With white thin locks, that blew about his eyes
Like grasses round a stump when summer dies.

163

Fear held my tongue; I trembled like the leaves
That quiver when the gradual autumn falls
On shadowy Vallombrosa, and bereaves
The forest, full of flowery funerals,—
And all the windy places have their palls
Of yellow leafage, till the noiseless snow
Muffles the rustling of this gusty woe.

At last I murmured, “Cannot rest or death
Forever visit this pale place of tombs?”
And ceased; for, like the sound of a sharp breath
That from the drawn throat of one dying comes,
Whose heart the Master of all breath benumbs,
An answering voice arose, whose calm, intense,
Sad music won my ear with sharp suspense:

“Not vervain, gathered when the dog-star rose,
Not agrimony, euphrasy, or rue,
Not any herb can bring our pain repose,
Nor any poison make our summers few;
For ever our own agoines renew
Our wasted bodies still to suffer pain,
To suffer, pine, renew, and pine again.

164

“Ah, turn away! behold me not! those eyes
Burn me like lightning with a searing shame;
Gaze not upon these ghastly infamies,
That must deform me worse than maimed or lame,
The ribald children scoff at for their game;
Ah! in what jocund wise I danced and sung
Through the warm Tuscan nights, when life was young;

“These grey and shrunken fingers once were lithe
And meet for all most dainty handiwork;
Whether a painted coffer for a blithe
Fair bride, or for the Caliph or Grand Turk
A golden chalice, where red wine might lurk
Coiled unforbidden; or for monks' dim eyes,—
Worked in distemper,—hell and paradise.

“Ay me! what lovely fancies I have wrought
In cloisters, or along a church's wall,
Where in a high-fenced garden angels taught
Our Lady at her baby's feet to fall;
There, with his keys, went peter; there stood Paul,
With long brown beard, and leant upon his sword;
And all the virgins, singing, praised the Lord.

165

“But, best of all, I loved to stand and paint
His face who doubted when the Lord arose,—
Andrew, my ever-blessed patron saint,
Bearing his mighty cross, and worn with woes,
And pining sore from self-inflicted blows,—
His passionate, jealous, loving, hating heart,
Seemed every-way my very counterpart.

“He is in glory now, and walks and sings
With saints who take his rough brown hand in theirs,
And sees the angels' silver-spotted wings!
But I convulse the noon-day with my prayers,
And in the night-time blast the icy airs
With my shrill pains; hearken for what offence
My soul was doomed to anguish so intense!

“If one man's art can be another's bane,—
If half the swiftest runners miss the goal,—
If thinkers weave out holy thoughts in vain,
Which bless the world and ruin their own soul,—
If bitterness and langour be our dole,—
Why do we seek, so greedily, at all
Laurel, to poison our own brows withal?

166

“All this is only vanity; but, lo!
For weary years I slowly fought my way
High up the hill of fame, and should I go
Right sadly down again at fall of day,
Because this Domenic, this popinjay,
Could trick a wall out with a newer brush,
And after him all men began to rush?

“When I grew poor, and no man came to me,
One night I lay awake, and by my bed
Heard a low, subtle voice, and seemed to see
A little demon, with a fiery head,
That whispered, ‘If now Domenic were dead,
And his new way dead with him, ha! ha! ha!
Luck would come back again to Andrea!’

“So one bright night when singing he went by
I watched him; round his neck a chain of gold
Glittered and lured me like a serpent's eye;
It was the price of some new picture sold:
My nerves grew steel, my veins of fire throbbed cold,
My dagger smote him through the neck, charm-bound,
And like a snake, the chain slid to the ground.

167

“Ay me! ay me! what cruel cruel pang
Draws forth this tale of mine own infamy;
Oh! youth, by all the angel choirs that sang,
Round holy Christ at his nativity,
I pray thee mock me not, in charity,
Who for one hour of passion and fell spite
Must suffer endless torture infinite.”

Then at my side a voice cried, “Look on me!
Stamp on me, crush me, grind me with your heel!
I, even I, this shapeless thing am he
That slandered Sappho! Set on me the seal
Of your undying hatred, let me feel,
Even though I burn with anguish, that men know
Her holy life was ever pure as snow.”

Then flattened out, I saw upon the ground
What seemed the hide of some mis-shapen beast,
With a pinned cord to bind it twisted round;
But lo! its heart in beating never ceased,
And now the flutter of its breath increased,
Barring its body of unhealthy hue
With lurid waves of mingling green and blue.

168

“Of old,” a stifled voice proclaimed, “I dwelt
Deep in the cedar-shades of that high hill,
Whose brow looks down on Lesbos, and the belt
Of sun-lit sea, where rippling laughters fill
The spaces down to Chios; thither still
As gold above the Lydian mountains shone
Sappho would climb to dream and muse alone.

“How oft her wind-swept hair and kindling eyes
I watched, unseen, within my own rose-bowers,
Her cheek that glowed at her heart's phantasies,
Bright as the refluent flush of fields of flowers
Stirred by the light feet of the flying hours,
When, about sunrise, on a morn of May,
Westward they troop, and herald the young day!

“So fair was she in my conceit; but soon
Her songs were sung from Lesbian town to town,
And other islands claimed the lyric boon,
And Andros praised, and Paros sent a crown,
And reverend men, in philosophic gown,
From Greece, from sage Ionia, came to lay
At Sappho's feet the homage of a day,

169

“Then in my heart the love I bore her grew
To foulest envy, like the bitter core
That lies in the sweet berry of the yew;
For I, too, fashioned for the lute, and bore
Such ivy-wreaths as would-be poets wore;
But never ode of mine did men repeat,
Singing for glee along the broad white street.

“It happed that through the islands I must go
To gather tribute, and where'er I came
The youths and girls would gather round to know
What news of Sappho, till my heart became
Shrivelled and parched with spite as with a flame,
And evermore I set my subtle tongue
To hint and whisper nameless tales of wrong.

“And soon all lands rang out with that ill-fame,
For little souls delight to think the worst
Of sovereign spirits who have won great name
For virtue or for wit, so all men nursed
And spread the rumour of these tales accursed,
Which smouldered, far from Lesbos, till she died,
Then burst in lurid flames unsanctified.

170

“So to this limbo my unholy spirit
Was dragged by demons when my pulses sank,
And here forever shall my flesh inherit
More pain than ever human body drank.
See this bruised head, this haggard arm and shank,
The slow contracting pain of centuries
Has drawn the bones into this hideous guise.”

Then silence came, save far away the sound
Of waves that rang like timbrels in the air,
Dashing and dying on the shore, steel-bound;
I stood above those lurid shapes in prayer,
Desiring that, if any hope there were,
Quickly their souls and bodies might decay,
And to the sovereign waters fade away.

For to my thought the moaning, sighing sea
Seemed yearning to receive them to its breast,
And fain would let its huge embraces be
Their haven of forgetfulness and rest;—
“O let them die!” I murmured; “It is best!
Have they not fed on anguish all their years?
And drenched the morsel in the wine of tears?

171

“Their pains are greater than the Titan's were,
Hung, a god-man, a sign to man and God,
For his immortal spirit was aware
Of its own immortality, and trod
With head erect beneath the oppressor's rod,
But these are bitten through with their own shame,
And scorcht with infamy as with a flame.

Wherefore, if Heaven forbid not, let them die!”
The echo of my accents broke in moans
From all the grim and stark fraternity
That lay in heaps about my feet like stones;
Down to the caverns of my heart their groans
Sank, as a meteor, breeding death and woe,
Slants down the skies on weeping lands below.

Then all the silence grew a mighty sound,
Gathering in voice along the nether sea,
As when in some Norwegian gulf profound
Sailors, becalmed along the monstrous lee
Of desolate Torghatten, hear the glee
Of many a riotous and rebel wind,
Deep in the mountain's riven heart confined.

172

With murmuring of immortal wings it came
Blown by no wind, and moaned along the deep,
Then hung at last above that place of shame
On plumes of sound, like some great bird asleep,—
Though o'er the blue no cloud nor stain did creep,—
And slowly gave in words articulate
All the vast utterance of the unseen fate.

O thou grave mystic, who, by inner light,
Didst watch the ruddy, throbbing life in flowers,
And shaken by no pitiful affright,
Held'st converse with the eternal starry powers;
By all the bliss in full ecstatic hours,
From spirit-tongues, to thee, a spirit, given,
Bow down and aid me from thy lucent heaven!

Blake, loveliest of the sons of shadowy light,
Throned, with dawn-mist for purple, sun for gold,—
Regent above us in all true men's sight,
Among thy kindred angel-ranks enrolled,—
Think not thy latest lover overbold,
If in sore need he for a while prolong
Prayer for thy aid in his most arduous song!

173

For he must murmur what a spirit sang,
Lisp the weird words no mortal can pronounce;
For all about my head the air now rang
With the dread clarion Voice, that did denounce
The writhing things, and bid my heart renounce
Pity and grief, and drown in obloquy
All hope for these, still dying and to die.

“No temple, and no tripod, and no shrine
Is half so sacred as the soul of man,
Lit with a flame more subtle, more divine,
Than that which round the glimmering altar ran,
With mutterings and with thunders, when the clan
Of Baal-prophets howled, and sank down dead
On the cold parapet their life-blood fed.

“Man is himself the lamp for hallowed use,
The oil that feeds it and the hand that lights,
Each to his brother is the plenteous cruse,
And in the universal gift unites;
So all combine, with sacrificial rites,
Throughout the gleaming world, from bound to bound,
To spread the wealth that old Prometheus found.

174

“And so should all things slowly climb up higher
Into the perfectness of utter rest,
And no least breath of passion stir the fire
That fell from God and burneth in man's breast;
By his own purity should man be blest,
The soul being priest, and worshipper, and shrine,
Bearing God's presence for an outward sign.

“But ah! what punishment would not be meet
To scourge that ribald priest, that should defile
The lintel of his own God's mercy-seat;
Or who, with nimble fingers and smooth wile,
Should from the prostrate worshippers beguile
The sacred gifts of balsam or of myrrh,
To burn in sport where harlot-loves confer?

“Would the vexed God be pitiful and meek,
Nor smite the impious with a thunder-bolt,
Clothing the lingering life and hollow cheek
With pain as with a garment? Let the dolt
Go whine and whimper over heath and holt,—
Shall any lovers of the God be found
Whose hearts shall melt with pity at the sound?

175

“Wherefore, if all things sacred, all things pure,
All that makes life worth living for to men,
While chastity, and faith, and honour sure,
Have in your heart their answering echoes, then
Cease to be wise above a mortal ken,
And judge that we, whose robes are virtues, know
Where justice rules, and mercy may not go.”

As from the heart's-core of a trumpet-blast
May rise the melody of whispering flutes,
A softer music on my ear was cast,
Even as I lay among those living roots,
And heard their direful sentence, and the fruits
Of their insane rebellion; sweet and far
As orchard-singing under a pale star,

That tender fluting rose, but, gathering strength,
Thrilled like a hundred instruments in tune,
Here soft citoles, and here in liquid length
The sobbing of tense harp-strings, and all soon
Rounded with murmurs of the full bassoon,
And all words faded, and I rose, and lo!
A lady standing on the hill of woe.

176

Adown her shoulders, over the broad breast,
A saffron robe fell lightly to her feet,
Edged quaintly with meander; for the rest,
Her changeful eyes were wonderfully sweet,
Sea-coloured, and her braided hair made meet
Under a fillet of starred myrtle-flowers,
More large and pure than any bloom of ours.

Her face was even as apple-blossom is,
When first the winds awaken it; her mouth
Seemed like the incarnation of a kiss;
A philtre for all sorrows; in heart-drouth
A fountain breathing of the fragrant south;
A cage for songs;—a violin—who knows?
Perchance the rose-tree of the world's great rose!

Kalliope, the eternal Muse, she hight,
Whose lips woke music in Mæonides,
Through all the alternatives of day and night,
Silence and song, that this poor wan world sees,
She walks unchanged, while old divinities
Wither and die, and new creeds spring and fall,
And new flowers hear the new-born cuckoos call.

177

There in her loveliness she stood and spread
Her arms out to me in most smiling wise,
Saying, “Oh, my servant, in such drerihed,
Why floats thy spirit in a wind of sighs?
What ruth and passion gather to thine eyes?
What part hast thou with these? Ah! wayward child,
Should I be clement to them?” And she smiled.

O! what a smile! But when she ceased, once more
I cast my eyes upon the twisted features;
And all the pity that my heart once bore
To watch the writhing of the loathsome creatures
Fled from me, for their foul degenerate natures
Scowled under those pure eyes of hers, as hell
Must blacken, seen from heaven's white pinnacle.

She vanished. Then they howled and howled until
The cave of air, devoid of other sound,
Was full of moaning echoes round the hill;
Then with my hands my aching ears I bound,
And rushing from that cruel cursed ground,
From cleft to cleft leapt downwards to the sea,
Where faint wave-music was as balm to me.

178

AD AUDITOREM.

Night's canker feeds upon the day's white rose,
This book of verse must have a sorry close;
So leaf by leaf the flowers of joy decay,
And song by song the poet wins repose.

Yea! rest at last from life and life's delight,
Where dreamless faces throng the courts of night,
When softly down his tired limbs he may lay
Where pallid marbles and dark slabs invite.

There you and I at last will have to go,
And if this book prevene us there or no,
'Tis but the difference of a year or twain
If we or it find earlier sleep below.

179

Rise up and come; the iron-coloured breast
Of sombre sea resumes its old unrest;
The air is full of thunderous sounds of rain,
The pale flowers tremble, bowing toward the west.

I sing of love and sunshine, but my breath
Is all too weak to sing of night and death;
The sweet dark hours have found us unawares,
The solemn air around us sorroweth.

Before we go, I pluck the leaves that lie
Most near to where we nestled, you and I;
Behold this knot of flowering grass! It bears
An arcane sense of what it is to die.

Here, under shining stars and dropping dews,
The failing life of grasses Death renews,
Mows them and heaps them to be born again,
And gives them back the green delight they lose.

These pale brown roots and feathery tips may know
More truth of what time brings us here below,
More wisdom far of life and change and pain,
Than all the schoolmen arguing to and fro.

180

One thing is sure, like flower of grass we fade,
Of crumbling clay and dust our lives are made;
O would it were as sure that we return
As that new leafage springs from leaves decayed!

Howe'er it be, find somewhere in your breast
A place to lay these tender roots to rest,
And, if you have a kindly heart to learn,
Their presence may not leave you all unblest.

Death comes, uncalled or wished for, late or soon,
To all men wandering underneath the moon,
But some few years are left for love and song,—
Take heed we do not waste the thrifty boon!

With strength to hold one lover and one friend
Through life, and on till fleeting life shall end,
I care not whether time be short or long,
Nor heed what grief the envious Fates may send.

And if the words my page has sung to-day
Have touched your heart or charmed one care away,
They were not rhymed in vain; and for the rest,
What matters what the passing world may say?

181

But if you find my verses harsh and slow,
Yet bow your head and hear my heart below
Beat warm and true within my tuneless breast,
Then rise and touch my hand and let us go.