Feda with Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

He who should sail at earliest dawn of day,
Thence steering ever eastward and away,
Would make at sunset in the even-rose
A land that lies under the Alpine snows,
Of pine-woods leaning to a townless shore,
With mountain ridges rising o'er and o'er
Deep creek and islet, where the tideless sea
Breaks white about the shores of Italy—
And dropping anchor at their feet, behold
The sweeps of hill-slope burning into gold,
Afar the forests mystically blue,
Rocks flaming upwards with the sunset hue,
Dark cleft and gully deepening into caves,
And the day dying in the wine-red waves.

In such a little arm of rock encurled,
A still untravelled corner of the world,
Set round with many a trellised vine and flower,
Stands the half-ruin of a fortress tower
Of long-forgotten days. Some old corsair
Perchance had made his little kingdom there—

There like a sea-bird nested on the steep
Had watched his windy empire of the deep,
While down beneath him in the sheltered bay
The crimson dragon of his war-ship lay.

So there were two came once at dawn of day,
From over the dark waters,—watched the mist
Roll upwards, and the mountain peaks cloud-kissed
Break with their forests from the twilight shroud,
And the young sky grow faultless of one cloud;
And they had climbed the rocky rise, and found
The broken castle in its garden ground,
Rich with a wild inheritance of flowers
Forgotten hands had planted round the towers.

And by the door a fisher's net was hung
Where the vine wandered round the porch, and clung
To a worn sword and crescent rudely graven;
And they had called the place the “Quiet Haven.”

They hardly knew what years had rolled away,
Nor what they had begotten since the day
When the old lonely dwellers of that place
Came forth and gladdened at a stranger's face;

Since they had stood together hand in hand
That sundown gazing from the extreme land,
Watching the stars grow bright along the shore,
And Adrien said, “We will not wander more.”

He was the elder, Adrien—tall and fair,
And strong of limb, with sunny English hair,
Fronting deliberate with such honest eyes,
Eyes soft as woman's, that could ill disguise
The thoughts they flashed with, very deep and kind,
Leaving a sense of sympathy behind
Where'er they lighted:—not in years alone,
A few years, yet far older; he had known
The great refusals, fought and overcome,
Chosen the better part, and now his home
Was all the wide world; he had dared and passed
Through storm and failure, and stood free at last.

His was the self-less spirit; while on earth
The shadow falls that curses in the birth,
While one lies pillowed in eternal ease
With heavy eyelids, so he hardly sees
The children's hunger and the brave man's need,
And mother hearts that labour on and bleed,

Perchance that he may lay a loveless head
On ever softer pillows:—while men dare to say
God wills the world so, and not we who pray
He may but keep us in the easy way;
While yet is twilight over lands that weep,—
The weak keep silence and the strong men sleep;
While man and man on earth dwell side by side,
With the great gulf between them fixed—more wide
Than sundering mountains, or the sea that parts,
That old inheritance of alien hearts:—
While something whispers in the ear, “Be true,
We shall not always be so lost, so few:”
On earth will be such restless spirits still,
Fools, dreamers, poets, heroes—what you will!

They come at times with fearless voice and high
To look the mad world in the face, and cry
Out on its mock ideals, and to part
The veil and drive one arrow to the heart,
To strip the spectre of his robe and crown;—
Then what a storm of tongues will hoot them down,
And cry blasphemer, being well content
To reason their God's ways were never meant

To take too much in earnest.—Well, what then,
If God be with them, and we be but men!

So it had fared with Adrien, for his hands
Were sacrilegious; he, the lord of lands,
Had set the dangerous precedent, resigned
His birthright; he was one who undermined
Old institutions, smiled at social needs;
Godless no doubt,—none such have any creeds!—
A poet if you will, but then how sad
To write so sanely and to be so mad!

Mad! Well, then welcome madness, for God's sake
Let's rave together! If he strove to take
The whole world's burthen in his arms to bear,
The whole world's sorrow in his heart to wear,
It was a splendid madness,—a high dream.

But he had drunk of that eternal stream,
That whoso tasteth thirsts through all his years,
Because its waters are so salt with tears;

The stream whose course is through the whole wide earth,
And mirrored therein are the death and birth
Of Beauty and Joy and Sorrow, and things to be
Lie where its waters mingle with the sea.
He saw one truth in all the world, above
Codes and philosophies, that Law of Love,
To whose control God slowly moves the world.
No life on earth that has it not impearled—
It may be under ocean weeds, and deep,
Lost in the hollow where the tide-drifts sleep,
Or stifled in the turbid whirl of storm,
Yet living surely, gathering to inform
The souls it dwells in. And he knew the price
Of Love on earth is weighed in sacrifice.

Therefore he broke his prison's gilded bars,
And into night not bright with many stars,
Like a caged bird set free, his spirit flew,—
The cage-born bird that flits the deep wood through,
From tree to tree from cottage eaves to eaves,
And fears the freedom of the forest leaves,

And flies and flies and dare not furl its wing,—
So is it alway unto those who sing.

Thus, half mistrusting freedom, he had grown
A wanderer over many lands, had known
The ways of many peoples,—he had found
Much love in lonely dwellings, by the sound
Of melancholy Northern seas, in lands
Of man forgotten, and on Southern sands
In Arab tents, and in the village homes
More favoured, he was known as one who roams,
Who comes and goes, and ever leaves behind
Some good remembered.

His was the rare mind
That grasps the general, lives its life outside
Of use and accident, and stares dream-eyed
On calmer outlines in a statue-land,
That holds blind Faith for ever by one hand,
Sees hardly, only strains towards the light,
Because man's wrong can never be God's right!

Oh, the large heart of youth! He had assailed
Too boldly, madly, and those half-means failed;

Now the wild flame of youth's desire was spent,
That willed things unattainable; content
To do the thing he knew within his reach,
Not strain for any star in heaven, to teach
The faith of truth, touch hearts to love, and souls
With soft reproof, to aim at lowlier goals,
Yet work as surely in the same high quest,
With human means, and let God heed the rest.

He, wandering once with Anton—with the friend
Who would have followed to the world's far end
For Adrien's sake—by chance had fared that way,
And found the little tower at dawn of day,
Cut off from all the world, and they had made
Their dwelling here, unknown and unbetrayed.
Our hearts are fettered by the hands we love;
There seemed no better way to pass above
Desire, than after many years of strife,
To build this little wall about their life;
Here, hand in hand through peaceful fall of days,
Here, in the far-off world-forgotten ways,
Self-centred only in their work to tell
The secret that the angel whispers well.

The younger Anton was half Southern born,
A painter's son, the child of many tears
Left in a lonely world too soon—long years
Since Adrien found him with a breaking heart,
A boy and friendless, severed from the art
That was his nature, and had seen and known
The dawning power, and made that love his own;
They had been more than brothers, friends that knew
The other's heart was wholly tried and true.

It had gone well with Anton since they met;
The road had been so smooth, and no regret
Of that past youth had ever made less loud
The ring of his gay laughter, left a cloud
Across the southern beauty of his face.

At times he wandered from their dwelling-place,
And went awhile into the world, but soon
He wearied, and came back before the moon
Had waned, whose rising called him forth;
It seemed so grey, he said, in their cold North.

Fame had not failed him, but it did not mar
His restless effort, for he felt how far

The summer skies are from the lark's desire,
What heights were still to conquer, and the fire
Burned upward ever, and men's praise or blame
Had moved him little; it was not for fame
He laboured, but for Art's sake, heeding not
How far the rest remembered or forgot.

Yet there was something wanting—he was made
Of strange, conflicting elements; men said
His art was cold, too calmly perfected
And passionless, and hard to understand.
He, too, had dwelt in Adrien's statue-land;
And it was all ideal, far removed
From daily life of men that lived and loved,
Half strength, half-weakness, only shadowing truth;
He needed some strong purpose in his youth,
To gather many wandering aims; too long
He waited upon Adrien's word, not strong
To trust his own heart's prompting; life and art
Had failed to find communion, and apart
It lacked the “natural touch”—maybe his hour
Was not yet come, only the dawning power
Was there in Anton;—then a form and face

Like some young god come down to run the race
With the lithe athletes, far away out-borne
Beyond their reach to laugh his laugh of scorn,
And pass his way, inconstant as the foam,
Except to Adrien and their haven home.

So here they dwelt outside the world and free,
Even as one who fares in the wide sea,
But steers for ever by the extreme land
So near that he may almost reach his hand,
And snatch a bud of the overhanging rose,
Or hear the children laughing, and he knows
The gladness of the earth, and heeds no more
The cares and passions of the peopled shore.