University of Virginia Library

previous section Firdausi in Exile and Other Poems
next section
103

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

104

105

TIMASITHEOS.

O for the gift to rise in full degree,
Not like the showy fungus of a night,
But fed with soft delays, a branching tree!
Where now Olympia struggles to the light
All ruin, a sacred city long profaned,
Pausanias found amid the shining flight
Of brilliant statues, all unspecked, unstained,
One hewed about the face, and marred with mire,
Still standing as by right, but deep disdained;
And when the curious wanderer would inquire
Whose beauteous antique shape was soiled and shamed,
None there could tell save one white-bearded sire,
106

Who answered:“This was one who, never tamed,
With his swift thews won race on flashing race,
Lightly: and Timasitheos was he named,
“The Delphian, and from Phœbus so much grace
He had, that all the Arcadian world extolled
His manhood and the glory of his face;
“And from the lips of Phrynichus out-rolled
Madness of song, praising his brazen feet,
And tight curls closing like the marigold;
“And Argive Ageladas, as was meet,
Master of Pheidias, sculptured him, and set
His statue in the ranks of strong and fleet;
“And three times at the Pythian games he met
The athletes in the sinewy lists, and won,
And through the dewy streets and meadows wet
107

“Went singing, crowned from the pancration,
To Delphi, in a long procession borne,
And met with songs, his city's dearest son!”
“Then why,” Pausanias cried, “this mien forlorn,
These injured garments, this dishonoured head,
Of all its light and carven beauty shorn?”
To whom the old indifferent grey-beard said:
“'Twas long ago, before my grandsires' days,
And he who knew our history best is dead.
“But see this dim and grey inscription says:—
“That ‘Timasitheos, traitor to the state,
Lift up with pride and fallen on godless ways,
“‘By his fond physical strength intoxicate,
Plotted with Kylon, and so meanly fell,
Unstable and the prey of envious fate.’”
108

Too soon, too much adored! Ah! much too well
He cleft the winds and left the world behind!
Too fatal all the shapely miracle
Of his great limbs in faultless form combined!
Better, ah! better far to have been less swift,
More kindred to the earth, less to the wind!
For the gods hate not excellence, but lift
The strong soul slowly on a great endeavour,
And grace their own belovèd, gift by gift,
And with their sleepless eyes have wit to sever
Man's lawful joy in power from pride of power,
And hover round the loyal soul for ever;
But the hot insolent head they hold one hour
High over the ranks of men, then dash it down,
And laugh to see it kiss the dust and cower.
109

Let others leap straight to the forest-crown!
Slow growth, cool saps and temperate airs for me,
And strength to stand when all the woods are brown.
110

THE CHARCOAL-BURNER.

He lives within the hollow wood,
From one clear dell he seldom ranges;
His daily toil in solitude
Revolves, but never changes.
A still old man, with grizzled beard,
Grey eye, bent shape, and smoke-tanned features,
His quiet footstep is not feared
By shyest woodland creatures.
I love to watch the pale blue spire
His scented labour builds above it;
I track the woodland by his fire,
And, seen afar, I love it.
It seems among the serious trees
The emblem of a living pleasure,
111

It animates the silences
As with a tuneful measure.
And dream not that such humdrum ways
Fold naught of nature's charm around him;
The mystery of soundless days
Hath sought for him and found him.
He hides within his simple brain
An instinct innocent and holy,
The music of a wood-bird's strain,—
Not blithe, nor melancholy,
But hung upon the calm content
Of wholesome leaf and bough and blossom—
An unecstatic ravishment
Born in a rustic bosom.
He knows the moods of forest things,
He holds, in his own speechless fashion,
112

For helpless forms of fur and wings
A mild paternal passion.
Within his horny hand he holds
The warm brood of the ruddy squirrel;
Their bushy mother storms and scolds,
But knows no sense of peril.
The dormouse shares his crumb of cheese,
His homeward trudge the rabbits follow;
He finds, in angles of the trees,
The cup-nest of the swallow.
And through this sympathy perchance,
The beating heart of life he reaches
Far more than we who idly dance
An hour beneath the beeches.
Our science and our empty pride,
Our busy dream of introspection,
113

To God seem vain and poor beside
This dumb, sincere reflection.
Yet he will die unsought, unknown,
A nameless head-stone stand above him,
And the vast woodland, vague and lone,
Be all that's left to love him.
114

THE DEATH OF ARNKEL.

Across the roaring board in Helgafell,
Above the clash of ringing horns of ale,
The guests of Snorri, reddened with the frost,
Weighed all their comrades through a winter night,
Disputing which was first in thew and brain
And courteous acts of manhood; some averred
Their host, the shifty Snorri, first of men,
While some were bent to Arnkel, some to Styrr.
Then Thorleif Kimbi shouted down the hall,
“Folly and windy talk! the stalwart limbs
Of Styrr, and that sharp goodly face of thine,
All-cunning Snorri, make one man, not twain,—
One man in friendship and in rede, not twain,—
Nor that man worthy to be named for skill,
Or strength, or beauty, or for popular arts,
With Arnkel, son of Thorolf the grim ghost.
115

Wit has he, though not lacking therewithal
In sinew; see to it, comrades, lest he crush
The savage leaders of our oligarchy,
Vast, indolent, mere iron masks of men,
Unfit for civic uses; his the hand
To gather all our forces like the reins
Of patient steeds, and drive us at his will,
Unless we stir betimes, and are his bane.”
So from his turbulent mouth the shaft struck home,
Venomed with envy and the jealous pride
Of birth; and ere they roared themselves to rest,
The chieftains vowed that Arnkel must be slain,
Nor waited many days; for one clear night
Freystein, the spy, as near his sheep he watched,
Saw Arnkel fetching hay from Orlygstad,
With three young thralls of his own household folk,
And left the fold, and crept across the fell,
And wakened from their first sweet midnight sleep
The sons of Thorbrand, and went on, and roused
116

Snorri, who dreamed of blood and dear revenge.
Then through the frosty moonlit night they sped,
Warmed to the heart with hopes of murderous play,
Nine men from Snorri's house; and by the sea
At Alptafjord they met the six men armed
With Thorlief; scarcely greeted they, but skimmed
Along the black shore of the flashing fjord,
Lit by the large moon in a cloudless sky;
Over the swelling, waving ice they flew,
Grinding the tufts of grass beneath their sleighs,
So silent, that the twigs of juniper
Snapped under them, sharp, like a cracking whip,
Echoing, and so to Orlygstad they came.
But Arnkel saw them through the cold bright air,
And turned, and bade the three young thralls haste home,
To bring back others of their kith to fight;
So, maddened by base fear, they rushed, and one
Or ever he neared the homestead, as he fled,
Slipped on the forehead of a mountain-force,
And volleying down from icy plane to plane,
117

Woke all the echoes of that waterfall,
And died, while numb with fright the others ran.
But Arnkel bowed, and loosened from his sleigh
The iron runner with its shining point,
And leaped upon the fence, and set his back
Against the hay-stack; through the frosty night
Its warm deep odour passed into his brain.
But Snorri and his fellows with no word
Sprang from their sleighs, and met below the fence,
And reaching upwards with their brawny arms,
Smote hard at Arnkel. With the runner he,
Cleaving with both hands, parried blow on blow,
Till, shaft by shaft, their spears splintered and snapt;
Nor would they yet have reached him, but that he,
Gathering a mighty stroke at Thorleif's head,
Dashed down his runner on the icy fence
And shivered it, while backwards Thorleif fell,
Bending the slimness of his supple loins,
Unwounded. Then a moment's space they stood
118

Silent. Then from the haystack at his back
His glittering sword and buckler Arnkel seized,
And like a wild-cat clomb the stack, and stood
Thigh-deep astride upon the quivering hay,
Raining down thrusts and blinding all his foes
With moony lightnings from the flashing steel.
But Thorleif clambered up behind his back;
And Snorri, with his shield before his face,
Harried him through the wavering veil of hay;
And Styrr, like some great monster of the falls,
Swayed his huge broadsword in his knotted fists,
And swept it, singing, through the helm and brain,
And deep sank Arnkel on the bloody stack.
They wrapped his corse in hay, and left him there;
To whom within the silence of the night
Came that dark ghost, his father, whose black face
Affrights the maidens in the milking-stead;
And till afar along the frozen road
The tinkling of the sleighs he heard, and knew
119

That, all too late, the thralls of Arnkel came,
He hung above the body of his son,
Casting no shadow in the dazzling moon,
Cursing the gods with inarticulate voice,
And cursing that too-envious mood of men
That brooks no towering excellence, nor heeds
Virtue, nor welfare of th' unsceptered state.
120

THE MONASTERY GARDEN.

Deep in the hollow of the cliffs it lay
Above, the mountain shouted to the sun,
A thousand riotous runlets streamed away,
And sped the merry mill-wheels one by one.
It slept within the silence and the shade;
Above, from cleft to cleft, in glittering light,
The sun-burned millers and their children made
A jocund noise of labour and delight.
Its pensive terrace scarcely knew the sun,
But watched the gleam along the belfry-tower,
And scarcely sighing when the day was done,
Rejoiced as little at the morning-hour.
Thither I came at twilight; all day long
My feet had tracked the river, a line of foam;
121

The plaintive angelus rose like a song,
I hailed the great white house and named it “home.”
But all was bleak and melancholy there;
Beneath the barren wall the vine-leaves lay;
The stony pathway broadened chill and bare,
The moaning torrent thundered far away.
Beneath the thread-bare branches of the vine,—
A shivering vine that yearned for summer lands,—
A marble virgin from her hollow shrine
Held out the solace of her wasted hands.
So mild she was, so cold, so woe-begone,—
The tears all frozen in her carven eyes,—
She seemed a monument of tender moan,
The statue of a grief that never dies.
122

Behind her, on a sweep of lowlier ground,
Girt by a hedge of yew, the garden lay:
And she, as though by some magician bound,
Stood vainly yearning for the golden day.
I turned the creaking latch of the frail gate,
And stood within the pale monks' garden-plot;
Harsh herbs were there, and shrubs disconsolate,
But daisies and the generous rose were not.
An autumn sadness on that garden fed;
Prim box and cypress allies quenched the light;
Gray tufts of rue to sprinkle o'er the dead,
And thrift was there, and hueless aconite.
Each monk had trimmed and fashioned one pale square,
But filled it always with the same sad herbs;
No perfume floats within that sombre air,
Those ashen leaves no boisterous bee disturbs.
123

And o'er that scentless garden all day long
The marble Virgin spreads her stainless hands;
Untinged by rosy light at evensong,
And unillumed at matins, cold she stands.
Her consolation had no balm for me;
To me she seemed like one poor faltering prayer
Breathed by a prisoned soul that sighs to see
Life pass her narrow cell and leave her there.
Our Lady of Consolation! so they name
This icy maiden with her palms outspread!
From busy haunts of happiness they came,
And knelt to her for solace, and are dead.
They ring the tuneless monastery bell;
The dark-stoled monks pass by her one by one;
They seek the garden that she guards so well,
And labour till the hour of toil be done.
124

A little while, like phantoms of their kind,
They haunt these echoing paths and terraced ways;
They know not that her shining eyes are blind,
And wonder that she heeds nor prayer nor praise.
They tend their barren plots and garden-close,
Still husbanding their faint and hectic breath;
Meanwhile below the chill white wall there flows
The whirling, roaring torrent-stream of Death.
Away! the cold air gathers like a blight;
A madness falls within the falling dew;
The Virgin glimmers in a ghostly light,
That thrills the darkening garden-allies through.
Away, away! high up the mountain-side,
By loud cascade and chattering stream I fly;
A glow of sunset floods the valley wide,
And, as I mount, I catch the gleaming sky.
125

The warm air moves: the red roofs of the mills
Burn on the velvet darkness of the pines;
The odour of the breathing cattle fills
Light meadows where the crocus shoots and shines.
The giant miller claps his rosy hands,
And roars a jest above the roaring wheel;
His daughter laughing at the doorway stands,
His wife is busy with their evening meal.
Life, life is here, but frost and death below;
Hail, genial force of homely rustic ways!
Warm my chilled pulse within thy happier glow,
And gild the wholesome remnant of my days!
No marble virgin in a mossy shrine,
No garden clad with flowerless herb and tree,
But Nature in her ecstasy be mine,
And the wide roseate world of bloom for me.
126

So shall my youth prolong itself and yield
Sweet harvest, and the clustering fruits of love,
Deep-perfumed alway like a summer field,
And fed by shower and sunshine from above.
Nor rot in shade, nor drop its hueless buds,
But ever, as the happy moments run,
Prepare its sheaves to rise in multitudes,
All richly garnered when its year is done.
Pierre-Fontaine, Sept. 1880.
127

THE SHEPHERD OF THE THAMES.

I

Thou hast gone back to Arcady once more,
False Shepherd, and hast left me here alone,
Here where the soul of London is one moan,
Here where life breaks upon a dusky shore;
Ah! was it wisely done to leave me thus,
For is it not mine the magic crook that makes
The iron cloud pearly and luminous?
For have I not the charmèd voice that wakes
The black-cap swinging in the osier-brakes,
That stirs her heart until it thrills and sings?
Ah! without me, light wanderer, canst thou find
The melting briar that breathes upon the wind,
Or where the shy white orchis waves her wings?
128

II

Ah! that dark wood above the sparkling Thames,
Where through the honeysuckle pale and sweet
We saw the silent river at our feet;
And pushing downward through the springing stems,
Descended to the twilight cumfrey-beds!
Dream not that thou canst find that wood again.
Ah! what a glory streamed above our heads!
Surely for thee no mellowing sunset sheds
Its radiance through the soft and flashing rain?
Thou shouldst have waited by the lock for me,
Or where the streaming roots of crows-foot shine,
Have shipped thine oars and laid thy boat by mine,
Nor thus have gone alone to Arcady.

III

Yet if thou must, push on, and let me know
What foxgloves with imperial foreheads nod
Down the steep coppice, row by stately row;
And where the mullein lifts her amber rod.
129

What willow-herb now fringes the high bank,
Whence many a time we plunged above the weir,—
Cleaving the limpid pool with sinewy flank,
Till the wrecked water-lily's chalice sank
Swamped by the eddying flood in deluge drear?
Ah me, push on, and bathe there in the sun,
And listen to the clacking of the mill,
And dream that we are lithe young shepherds still,
Nor all our pastoral hour of pleasure done.

IV

And surely in that cool and fresh arcade
By willows framed above the shelving bank,
Between the river and the hemlocks rank,
Thou'lt find the hard prints that our feet once made,
Our racing feet, along the dewy grass,
What time shy Oreads of the woodlands fled,
Yet paused to watch the white-limbed youngsters pass
Who never more shall skim the turf, alas!
With pliant feet, and breathless faces red,
130

Nor wrestle in the dappling light of leaves,
Nor lie, deep slumbering, through the noontide heat,
Nor in a nightly ecstasy repeat
Their faltering songs beneath the moonlit eaves.

V

We shall not taste our showery spring again,
Yet cheerful memory makes it doubly dear;
The leaves that had no scent when plucked, are sere,
But smell like roses freshened with the rain.
Perchance if we went back once more, and sought
That secret hill, that visionary stream,
Which gleam so brightly in the glass of thought,
They might not bring us all the charm they brought,
They might undo the magic of the dream.
We have grown wise and cold with worldly lore,
Our weary eyes have learned to dread the sun,
Ah, tell me, tell me, was it sagely done
Thus to go back to Arcady once more?
131

AN EPISTLE TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES,

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY, August 29, 1884.

Sir,
As Age by Age, thro' fell Enchantment bound,
The Heroe of some antient Myth is found,
Wild Rocks about him, at the fierce Sea's Brim,
And all his World an Old-Wives' Tale but him,
His Garments, cast upon th' inclement Shoar,
Such as long since our Grandsires' Grandsires wore,
While all his Gestures and his Speech proclaim
Him great Revealer of forgotten Fame,—
Such, Oh! Musician, dost thou seem to be
To us who con th' Augustan Age by thee,
Who hearken to thy Verse, to learn thro' it
How Dryden to illustrious Ormond writ,
132

Or in thy fil'd and polisht Numbers hope
To catch the Secret of the Art of Pope;
Ah! subtil Skill! Ah! Bard of dying Fires,
Let us but lose thee, and a Race expires;
So long as thou dost keep this Treasure thine
Great Anna's Galaxy has Leave to shine.
Thou who do'st link us with that elder Day
When either Queensberry made Court to Gay,
Thro' all the Thunders of romantick Times,
Thro' Reefs of monstrous Quips and Shoals of Rhimes,
We've steer'd at last, and, like Ships long at Sea,
Our Latest-Born sail home to Grace and thee;
Home-ward they sail, and find the World they left
Of all but thee, yet not of thee bereft;
Still in thy pointed Wit their Souls explore
Familiar Fields where Congreve rul'd before;
Still in thy human Tenderness they feel
The honest Voice and beating Heart of Steele.
Long be it so; may Sheaf be laid on Sheaf
Ere thy live Garland puts forth its Last Leaf;
133

As in old Prints, long may we see, in Air,
Thy Guardian Angel hover o'er thy Hair;
Still may the Table, where our Fathers sat
To eat of Manna, hold its Autocrat;
Since surely none of all the Blest can be
Home-sick in Heav'n, as we on Earth, for thee.
And Oh! whil'st o'er th' embattl'd Crags afar
Thy practis'd Eyes gaze down the Gorge of War,
Where thro' the blinding Dust and Heat we fight
Against the Brazen-Helm'd Amalekite,
At Height of Noon, Oh! lift up both those Hands
To urge new Virtue thro' our fainting Bands,
And when we feel our Sinews nerv'd to strike
Envy and Errour, Shame and Sloth, a-like,
We'll say 'tis well that, while we battle thus,
Our Moses stands on high 'twixt Heav'n and us.
Sir, Your Most Humble, Most Obedient Servant, Edmund Gosse.
134

APRIL ONCE MORE.

The sorrel lifts her snow-white bloom
From green leaves soft and sour,
The wry-neck bids the cuckoo come,
The wych-elm's all in flower;
That tweet! tweet! tweet! that dusty dew,
That white star at my feet,
They speak of Aprils past—and you,
My sweet!
Our wood still curves against the sky,
And still, all stark and dim,
Our hornbeam's fluted branches lie,
Along the shining rim;
But ah! within its base of moss
The rabbits leap and peer,
No footsteps fright them as they cross—
This year.
135

When winter shared my hapless plight,
I bound my heart in frost;
There was no wealth to vex my sight
With treasure it had lost;
But oh! the buds, the scent, the song,
The agonising blue—
They teach my hopeless heart to long
For you!
136

THE CHURCH BY THE SEA.

I

That spirit of wit, whose quenchless ray
To wakening England Holland lent,
In whose frail wasted body lay
The orient and the occident,

II

Still wandering in the night of time,
Nor yet conceiving dawn should be,
A pilgrim with a gift of rhyme,
Sought out Our Lady by the Sea.

III

Along the desolate downs he rode,
And pondered on God's mystic name,
Till with his beads and votive ode,
To Walsingham Erasmus came.
137

IV

He found the famous chapel there,
Unswept, unlatticed, undivine,
And the bleak gusts of autumn air
Blew sand across the holy shrine.

V

Two tapers in a spicy mist
Scarce lit the jewelled heaps of gold,
As pilgrim after pilgrim kissed
The relics that were bought and sold.

VI

A greedy Canon still beguiled
The wealthy at his wicket-gate,
And o'er his shining tonsure smiled
A Virgin doubly desecrate.

VII

The pattered prayers, the incense swung,
The embroidered throne, the golden stall,
138

The precious gifts at random flung,—
And North Sea sand across it all!

VIII

He mocked, that spirit of matchless wit;
He mourned the rite that warps and seres:
And seeing no hope of health in it,
He laughed lest he should break in tears.

IX

And we, if still our reverend fanes
Lie open to the salt-sea deep,
If flying sand our choir profanes,
Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep?

X

We toll the bell, we throng the aisle,
We pay a wealth in tithe and fee,
We wreathe the shrine, and all the while
Our Church lies open to the sea.
139

XI

The brackish wind that stirs the flame,
And fans the painted saints asleep,
From heaven above it never came,
But from the starless Eastern deep.

XII

The storm is rising o'er the sea,
The long bleak windward line is grey,
And when it rises, how shall we
And our weak tapers fare that day?

XIII

Perchance amid the roar and crack
Of starting beams we yet shall stand;
Perchance our idols shall not lack
Deep burial in the shifting sand.
140

GILEAD.

“And I will bring them into the land of Gilead.”

Oh, who will take my hand and let mine eyes have rest,
And lead me like a child into the quiet west,
Until beneath my feet I press the short wild grass,
And feel the wind come shorewards down the granite pass;
So, fashioned darkly round the mirror of the mind,
The solemn forms I loved in infancy to find
Bent down to shut me in, in billowy solitude,—
Harsh tor and quaking sedge and devil-haunted wood,—
Behind the thin pink lids I should not dare to raise,
Would gather and console the turmoil of my days?
A grain of balm has lain within my scentless breast
Through all these roaring years of tempest,—and shall rest,
141

A single grain, how sweet! but, ah! what perfumes rise,
Where, bathed by sacred dews, the soul's full Gilead lies!
There, with the sands around, and many a mirage faint
To tempt the faded sight of fakir and of saint,
Cool, with their clump of palms, by wells like crystal pure,
The myrrh-trees of the Lord, the dripping boughs endure.
Oh, lead me by the hand, and I with eyelids close
Will hear the wind that sighs, the bubbling stream that flows,
The shrill Arabian sounds of blessed aged men,
And the low cries of weary souls at home again;
Yet never raise my lids, lest all these Eastern things,
These forms of alien garb, these palm-surrounded springs,
Surprise my brain that grew in colder zones of light,
Betray with homeless home my impulse of delight.
But when I think I feel the west wind, not the east,
From drought and chilly blue by soft gray airs released,
142

I'll bend my hand and touch the country at my feet,
And find the sun-dew there, and moor-ferns coarse and sweet,
And the rough bilberry-leaves, and feel the mountain-moss
Stretch warm along the rock, and cross it, and re-cross.
What we loved first and lost in Nature, yet retain
In memory, prized the most, worn to a single grain,
That scene, though wild and far, and acrid with the sea,
Pilgrim of life, is still Gilead to thee and me;
And there where never yet to break the shadows come
Battalions of the world, with bedlam fife and drum,
There, in the ancient hush, the elfin spirit of sleep
Preserves for child-like hearts a pillow broad and deep,
And in a tender twilight, mystic and divine,
The homely scenes we loved take hues of Palestine.
143

TO AN ACTOR.

Et jam purpureo suras include cothurno—
...Sero sapiunt Phryges.—
Livius Andronicus.

The red cothurnus slowly bind around those shapely thighs,
Nor fear the giggling Phrygian race that hastes not to be wise!”
Thus darkly in a fragment sang, oracularly sage,
Old Andronicus, eldest bard that trod the Latin stage.
We know not rightly what he meant, but yet may soothly guess
His Muse was no vain babbler, but a learned prophetess.
We think across the centuries she dreamed, great mime, of thee,
And warned thee of the playwrights small, and mobs of low degree.
144

A London audience moved her scorn, a London farce awoke
The anger that so dimly and in such dark music broke.
Then take it to thyself and bind the stately buskin on,
Walk in the large and purple light of ages dead and gone.
A holier presence guard thy steps, an antique air impart
The force of classic beauty to the movements of thine art.
Contrive no tricks to charm the pit, nor bend thy face to win
The raptures of a groundling and the suffrage of his grin.
Behind the scenes, as on the stage, forswear all trivial things,
And move as one whose heart believes the noble lines he sings.
Let gorgeous shapes of tragedy pass on at thy command,
And leave the Phrygian flutes to thrill the uplands of the Strand.
145

DE ROSIS HIBERNIS.

Ambitious Nile, thy banks deplore
Their Flavian patron's deep decay;
Thy Memphian pilot laughs no more
To see the flower-boat float away;
Thy winter-roses once were twined
Across the gala-streets of Rome,
And thou, like Omphale, could'st bind
The vanquished victor in his home.
But if the barge that brought thy store
Had foundered in the Lybian deep,
It had not slain thy glory more,
Nor plunged thy rose in salter sleep;
Nor gods nor Cæsars wait thee now,
No jealous Pæstum dreads thy spring,
Thy flower enfolds no augur's brow,
Nor gives thy poet strength to sing.
146

Yet, surely, when the winds are low,
And heaven is all alive with stars,
Thy conscious roses still must glow
Above thy dreaming nenuphars;
They recollect their high estate,
The Roman honours they have known,
And while they ponder Cæsar's fate
They cease to marvel at their own.
147

A WOMAN'S KEEPSAKE.

I

This I show you, dearest, this is
More than just a yellow flower,
This was hallowed by your kisses,
Severed in a sacred hour,
Laid by your warm hand in mine,
And I hold it thus divine.

II

Where the longest rushes shiver
With their flower-heads full in June,
Bending o'er the eddying river
As it modulates its tune,
In among the reeds alone
This fair iris-bloom was blown.
148

III

Could it be to-day, I wonder?
For it seems so sweet and far,—
Scarce a man's arm-length asunder,
Where the reeds and lilies are,
You and I were floating thus,
While the blackcap sang to us.

IV

Suddenly you downward darted,
Drew the three-winged wonder up,
And I caught it—though I started—
In my lap as in a cup:
See! its scentless leaves express
Our unspoken happiness.

V

Blessed flower, whom Death pursuing
Cannot rob of life for me,—
Thou, whose fluttering papery ruin
I shall watch with ecstacy,—
149

Fade, thy memory still will keep
Fresh for me as dew or sleep!

VI

Thou art buried safe for ever
In the cassia of his kiss!
Sister-blossoms in the river
None have such a tomb as this;
In their void and hurrying stream
None can dream as thou shalt dream.

VII

Over thee a girl shall hover
Raining tears of deep delight,
Till the image of her lover
Flash across her inward sight,
And thy faded leaves unfold
Their old visionary gold.
150

THEOCRITUS.

For A. Lang's Translation.

The poplars and the ancient elms
Make murmurous noises high in air;
The noon-day sunlight overwhelms
The brown cicalas basking there;
But here the shade is deep, and sweet
With new-mown grass and lentisk-shoots,
And far away the shepherds meet
With noisy fifes and flutes.
Their clamour dies upon the ear;
So now bring forth the rolls of song,
Mouth the rich cadences, nor fear
Your voice may do the poet wrong;
Lift up the chalice to our lips,—
Yet see, before we venture thus,
151

A stream of red libation drips
To great Theocritus.
We are in Sicily to-day;
And, as the honied metre flows,
Battos and Corydon, at play,
Will lose the syrinx, gain the rose;
Soft Amaryllis, too, will bind
Dark violets round her shining hair,
And in the fountain laugh to find
Her sun-browned face so fair.
We are in Sicily to day;
Ah! foolish world, too sadly wise,
Why did'st thou e'er let fade away
Those ancient, innocent ecstasies?
Along the glens, in chequered flight,
Hither to-day the nymphs shall flee,
And Pan forsake for our delight
The tomb of Helice.
152

SUNSHINE IN MARCH.

Where are you, Sylvia, where?
For our own bird, the woodpecker, is here,
Calling on you with cheerful tappings loud!
The breathing heavens are full of liquid light;
The dew is on the meadow like a cloud;
The earth is moving in her green delight—
Her spiritual crocuses shoot through,
And rathe hepaticas in rose and blue;
But snow-drops that awaited you so long
Died at the thrush's song.
“Adieu, adieu!” they said.
“We saw the skirts of glory, and we fade;
We were the hopeless lovers of the Spring,
Too young, as yet, for any love of ours;
She is harsh, not having heard the white-throat sing;
153

She is cold, not knowing the tender April showers;
Yet have we felt her, as the buried grain
May feel the rustle of the unfallen rain;
We have known her, as the star that sets too soon
Bows to the unseen moon.”
154

THE SONS OF CYDIPPE.

By sacred Argos Polycleitus carved,
In Indian ivory and Persian gold,
To Hera, mother of all, dreadful, benign,
A glorious statue in his darkened house.
Straight from her throat ran the pure folds, and fell
In seemly curves about her unseen feet:
The fillets of her lifted head were bound
With broidered stories of the Fates and Hours;
Sceptre and ripe pomegranate, as was meet,
Her queenly hands sustained, and by her side
The rustling peacock spread his gorgeous train.
For ancient Chrysis, from her wrinkled hands
Letting the torch down fall in obscure sleep,
Careless, not breathed on by the serious gods,
155

Had touched the old Heræum with white flame,
And like a dream the fabric, full of prayers,
Vows of forgotten athletes, maidens' gifts,
Robes of dead priests, echoes of hymns and odes,
Had glared against the noonday, and was not.
So, nigher to Canathus, on lower ground,
Nearer the bright sea, myriad-islanded,
Argos had built her outraged deity
A nobler fane among those holy trees—
Platans and elms—that drank her virgin spring;
And all was done, and on this certain day,
From the dark house, shrouded and swathed in cloths,
The dread majestic goddess passed in state
To be unveiled within her own abode.
Then while the people, clustered in the sun,
Shouted and pressed, and babes were held aloft,
At one shrill summons of the sacred flute,
In all her gold-and-white magnificence,
156

The austere god smiled on her worshippers,
Who suddenly fell silent in their awe.
Then came a shout, and from the woodland road,
Craving a passage through the whispering throng,
Two youths appeared, under a shameful yoke,
Flushed with the sun, and soiled with dust, and bowed,
Who dragged a chariot with laborious arms,
Bleeding and chafed; and on the chariot sat—
With a thin bay-leaf in her aged hair—
A matron with uplifted eyes elate.
Then while all wondered, and the young men sank,
Breathless and glad, before the glorious god,
The high-priest lifted up his voice, and said:
“Blessed art thou, Cydippe, blessed be
Thy sons who shamed themselves to bring thee here!
Oh, not in vain for Biton, not in vain
For Cleobis, the unfruitful toil, the sweat,
The groaning axles, and the grinding yoke!
Unoiled their limbs, unfilleted their hair,
157

Unbathed their feet, hateful to maids and harsh;
But to the gods, sweeter than amber drops
That gush from fattest olives of the press,
Fairer than leaves of their own bay, more fresh
Than rosy coldness of young skin, their stains,
Since like a sacrifice of nard and myrrh
Their filial virtue sanctifies the winds.”
Then slowly old Cydippe rose and cried:
“Hera, whose priestess I have been and am,
Virgin and matron, at whose angry eyes
Zeus trembles, and the windless plain of heaven
With hyperborean echoes rings and roars,
Remembering thy dread nuptials, a wise god,
Golden and white in thy new-carven shape,
Hear me! and grant for these my pious sons,
Who saw my tears, and wound their tender arms
Around me, and kissed me calm, and since no steer
Stayed in the byre, dragged out the chariot old,
And wore themselves the galling yoke, and brought
158

Their mother to the feast of her desire,
Grant them, O Hera, thy best gift of gifts!”
Whereat the statue from its jewelled eyes
Lightened, and thunder ran from cloud to cloud
In heaven, and the vast company was hushed.
But when they sought for Cleobis, behold
He lay there still, and by his brother's side
Lay Biton, smiling through ambrosial curls,
And when the people touched them they were dead.
159

H. P.

This virgin soul looked shyly forth, and knew
The fiery face of Love, and then withdrew,
Just when the spices through its garden blew.
With this one glimpse so full a rapture came,
It shrank from earthly joy as pain and shame,
And passed to God on that first mystic flame.
Dissolved, assumed in ardours so intense,
It rose to heights untouched by mortal sense,
Like some pure cloud of molten frankincense.
And that pale lamp of verse, which God had given
To guide this soul, while o'er life's ocean driven,
Was quenched within the blazing glow of heaven.
160

INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN.

Deep in the heart of this dim wood
Our Naiad pours her slender urn,
Nor dreams that round its gathering flood
The fortunes of a world will turn.
161

WITH A COPY OF HERRICK.

Fresh with all airs of woodland brooks
And scents of showers,
Take to your haunt of holy books
This saint of flowers.
When meadows burn with budding May,
And heaven is blue,
Before his shrine our prayers we say,—
Saint Robin true.
Love crowned with thorns is on his staff,—
Thorns of sweet briar;
His benediction is a laugh,
Birds are his choir.
162

His sacred robe of white and red
Unction distils;
He hath a nimbus round his head
Of daffodils.
163

A WASTED AFTERNOON IN SUTHERLAND.

Ah! what an azure day!
Beneath the granite gray
The sulky ferox lay
And waved a fin;
Above his surly head
The amber river sped,
Shrunk in its summer bed,
Limpid and thin.
We heard the eddies lisp;
Deep in the heather crisp
We lay to watch Canisp
And Suilven blue;
Between their crags, behold,
A sheet of polished gold,
Where Fewn drew fold by fold
Her waters through.
164

“Hopeless the gray fly's wiles!
Our dusky ferox smiles;
We have trudged for miles and miles
In vain, in vain;
Better the storm that fills
The thunder-coloured rills,
Better the shrouded hills
And drifts of rain!”
But “No! ah! no!” I cried;
“This lovely mountain-side,
In faintest purple dyed
And golden gray,
Will live in vision still
When nerves forget to thrill,
When hands have lost the skill
To play and slay!”
But still he watched the sky
With discontented eye,
165

For never a cloud was nigh,
Nor stormy flag;
Noon fell to afternoon,
Till, like a change of tune,
The delicate virgin moon
Stepped from the crag.
So, through that sleepy weather,
Our rods and we together
Lay on the springing heather,
Assuaged at last,
And now, through memory's haze,
Best of our fishing days
Seems just that cloudless blaze,
With never a cast.
166

OBERMANN YET AGAIN.

Mr. Matthew Arnold does not need my apology for this mild expression of protest, suggested rather perhaps by temperament than by conviction, against a certain aspect of Sénancour's famous book on which Mr. Arnold has not cared to lay stress, and which his blind admirers refuse to perceive. Mr. Arnold's healthy imagination enables him to draw comfort from a melancholy which, as we are apt to forget, has proved a direct incentive to suicide in the case of certain morbid minds, such in particular as Sautelet and Rabbe.

The light falls pink on yonder granite horn;
The pine-tree shadows, lengthening, downward run;
I lie in grass as yellow-stalked as corn,
And by my side there glitters, scarce begun,
A flask of bright Yvorne,
Brisk amber in the sun.
With fall of day the vexing flies have fled;
The grasshopper now whets his merry scythe;
The magpie flirts and chuckles round my head;
The lizards flash their shining backs, and writhe;
The west is waxing red,
And I am calm and blithe.
Love, like a purple crocus in the grass,
Lifts its pale sheath, and flashes by my side;
167

And friendship, like the sturdy sassafras,
Laughs, golden, round the field where I abide;
And flowers, like duties, pass,
Gray, white, and blue, and pied.
All tender sounds proclaim the shut of day;
My pulse is cool and scarcely seems to beat;
Why should such blissful moments e'er decay?
Why should the moon approach, the sun retreat,
When thought is clear and gay,
And life profoundly sweet?
Most sad of mystics, see, I shut thy book,
And let mine eyes upon thy mountain rest;
Upon those liquid-seeming crags I look
Where thou didst raise thy solitary breast,
And, chafing, scarce didst brook
The unconquerable crest.
Thy nearest solace, Obermann, was found
Where that white peak soars towards a virgin sky,—
168

Unconscious ever of man's timid round
Of tiresome duties that about him lie,
And the only living sound,
The eagle's Alpine cry.
I cannot breathe that starry atmosphere,
Nor feign contempt for man's ephemeral days;
The eagle's note brings music to my ear,
Only when lost high up in noon-tide blaze,
And human hope and fear
Guide all my human ways.
Yet, O sick soul, that eighty years ago
Trod these high paths in lonesome wretchedness,
Too dull for tears, and felt around thee grow
The spider-toils of thought, and less and less
Could'st e'er redeem the glow
Of youth's unconsciousness,—
Deem not that all thy sorrows move not me,
Nor yet that veins which run with coarser blood
169

Forbid my dole of tribute sympathy;
Only permit a mind, perchance more rude,
Too blithely strung to be
For such high lassitude.
Only permit that not for me thy moan
Remain the language of these hills and streams;
That o'er the clouds which float above thy Rhone,
That round the peak made classic by thy dreams,
A happier homelier tone
Should live in memory's gleams.
I need small circuit for this heart of mine;
And, God be thanked, all this enchanted land
Is not a glacier-desert crystalline;
What waves of odour beat this little strand
Of crocus and of pine!
Thy hand, dear friend, thy hand!
Villard-sur-Ollon. Aug. 1883.
previous section Firdausi in Exile and Other Poems
next section