The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley :: :: University of Virginia Library

Parent of Change and Death,
We know thee and are sad,—
The scent of thy pale wreath,
Thy lip-touch and the glad
Sweep of thy glistening hair:
We know thee, bitter-fair.

Empress of earth, and queen
Of cloud: Time's early born
Daughter, enthroned between
Grey Sleep and emerald Morn;
Ruler of us who fade:
God, of the gods obeyed!

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Divine, whose eye-glance sweet
Is earth and heaven's desire:
Beneath whose pearly feet
The skies irradiate fire,
And the cold cloud-way glows
As some rain-burnished rose.

Heaven, dumb before thy face
With fear and deep amaze,
Tingles thro' all its space:
The abyss, with shuddering rays,
Breaks, as in golden tears,
Into a thousand spheres.

Dim earth disdain not, sweet,
Altho' thine equal throne
Be near Jove's council-seat,
And Heaven is all thine own.
What vale with violet crown
Will draw thee, true-love, down?

What earthly highland poised
In cloudy mantle cold,
Where eagles have rejoiced
Among the cliffs of gold,
And rise with icy wings
In the mountain glistenings—

What foreland fledged with myrrh,
Vocal with myriad bees,
What pine-sequestered spur,
What lone declivities,
Will draw thee to descend,
Creation's cradle-friend?

The sun feeds at thy smiles,
The wan moon glows thereby.
The dædal ocean isles
Terraced in rosemary,
The brushwood in the bed
Of the dry torrent head,

262

The rolling river brink
With plumy sedges grey,
The ford where foxes drink,
The creek where otters play—
Yearn upwards—all of them—
To grasp thy raiment's hem.

They know thee, when the gloom
Breaks and the mild winds blow:
And orchards dare to bloom
Amid the unmelted snow.
When philomel begins
Among the moorland whins.

Thine is that dubious day
Of rathe and poignant spring:
And thine the crimson sway
Of summer crowned a king.
And in the time of wheat
We know thee, paraclete!

Mother of comfort, come!
The harvest axles shine,
The grain is gathered home:
The hills are full of wine.
The vats are red with lees,
And red the vine-girls' knees.

We feel thee dim and great,
We partly seem to know
A forehead calm as fate,
O'er eyelids wet with woe.
Limbs like the gleam of day,
Breasts as the buds of May.

Ascend—the road is long,
The cloud-line burns between;
As to the moon our song
Climbs to thee, silver queen,
In thy dove-guided car
Urania! crescent star!

263

Let the dry field and bower
As sweet rain drink thee up.
Let every flagging flower
Extend its shining cup.
Let every shaggy bee
Draw hydromel of thee.

As in the March day wan,
By seas that greyly swell,
The nightingale comes on
Singing from rock to dell,
And all the wood-way thrills
In new-born daffodils—

Those citadels of air
Thy holy coming moves:
As when the dove's despair
Sighs in ambrosial groves.
And we, who hear, rejoice
As at our first love's voice.

Fain would we see thy face,
Mother of many dreams:
Fain would our hands embrace
Thy raiment as it streams.
Thou floatest like a prayer
With incense in thy hair.

Ah, could a mortal gaze
In thy mysterious eyes;
And, thro' their mirrored maze
And treasured secrecies,
See rising like a star
The soul he wants afar!

We change as frost or foam:
We go away to graves.
Due to a dusty home,
We are born as buds or leaves.
The canker some, the fall
Will gather groundward all.

264

Mother of mysteries,
Beside thine altar stone
Watching for auguries
After the victim's moan:
While at thy feet are laid
Garland and lamb and blade.

I have seen thy silver fane
And trod thy slippery stair,
Red with a crimson rain
And foot-worn with despair.
Pale as dead men, ah, sweet,
We kneel to kiss thy feet.

We have leave one little hour
In thy white house to doze:
Broad passion-flowers embower
The portals amber-rose,
And lotus lilies keep
Guard at thy shrine of sleep.

As drowsy flies which bide
In some grey spider's snare;
Sleep-locked yet open-eyed,
Glad yet in half despair,
Lovers and maidens sit
In the yellow gates of it.

Hand interpressed with hand,
And kiss on kiss repaid,
And vows in accents bland
By lips delicious made—
Tho' these as gods embrace,
Shall they of Death have grace?

Soon must endearment cease:
And ye, who sucked, sublime,
Grapes of Arcadian peace,
Secure of change and time—
Who made each purple hill
A throne to love your fill:

265

Who made each vale-head sweet
Where crumpled oxlip grows:
Who set down silken feet
In hyacinth and rose—
All these one scytheman's edge
Shall shear as meadow sedge!

In vain ye crown Life's brim
With perfumed leaves of vine,
Whose tinted tendrils swim
Among its foam divine—
Drink softly, lest ye wake
In the red lees a snake.

There comes a night, wherein
All cups will empty stand,
Whence asps of pleasant sin
Shall coil up at thy hand.
When moth and mice, as moles,
Shall drill thy robe in holes.

When thy gay feasting gear
Shall rot its every thread,
Thy diamonds seem a tear
On garlands of the dead,
Thy glory stained with rust,
Thy red gold black with dust.

Dumb in thy ruin then,
Wilt thou have heart to weep
For her, who pleasured men,
And bound thee as a sheep,
Whose sides the brambles tear,
Whose back the thorns rake bare?

And we, the great and gay,
When we are gone to ground,
Outplayed our little play,
Outsung our little round—
Earth-lords who thought ourselves,
On Lethe's dusty shelves,—

266

Must we, who raught at stars
And swathed our limbs in gold,
Laurelled in glorious wars,
Become mere grave-yard mould?
Who slew our beeves to thee,
Queen of the Cyprus sea.

Queen of the roses' wood
Where blighted lovers weep:
Queen of the cypress rood
Where bygone lovers sleep.
The quick thy slaves abide:
The dead thy servants died.

They laid their palms to sleep
Warmed in thy fostering,
They heard the giant sweep
Of thy wings winnowing:
Canst thou pay Time again
The blood of half thy slain?

Ah, girl-mouth, burning dew
That made the violet faint,
What shall become of you,
My silver-breasted saint?
What morning shall arise
Upon those darkened eyes?

Thy kiss, thy grace must pass
As unremembered things,
As faded autumn grass
Forgets its fairy rings.
After the dance delight,
Rest comes and sable night.

I hear a rusty bell
Clash from a ruined tower
To those in asphodel,
Gay girls of pleasure's hour,
Who rest their golden heads,
Laughing on iris beds:

267

Thou hast no joy in these,
Lord Death—it seems to say—
Thy spirit hath no ease
With such poor dolls of clay.
Peal out, O bell, and sweep
These triflers to the deep!

Peal on! the sun is low,
The heaven is blear and dumb.
Life and the noon-day go:
Curse and the mid-night come.
By this last leaden ray
Fall to your beads and pray!

Crown you with thorny fear:
Have ashes in each palm:
Let each chill chapel hear
Your penitential psalm.
The saints in wax sit round,
They make no sign or sound.

By slimy chancel floors
With adder's tongue bescaled:
By broken mill-dam doors
With stoat and raven nailed:
By moats where leaves rot deep:
By herds of limping sheep.

In places desperate,
And wintry as despair,
In thy forlorn estate
Crawl thither, speak this prayer—
As honey changed to gall,
My lust and dalliance pall.

I find no strength or stay,
Mine hour is almost done.
Queen Venus turns away
And rises towards the sun.
Her upward glory burns,
She leaves us—dust and urns!

268

O Love, more fell than Hate,
Who settest down thy torch
At grey Death's iron grate,
And Time's dismantled porch:
Once o'er the embers grey
Thou sighest; then, away,

Impel thine orient wings
Where ether's stars are born:
Soar, as the sky-lark sings,
Scaling the crystal morn.
The groan, the grave, the cry
Affright thee—float on high!

Let Heaven receive thee now
Veiled round with rainbow glows.
Rose clusters on thy brow,
Thy breast another rose,
Whereat babe Cupid lies
Asleep with lullabies.

Rise, pressing Love to rest
Against thy shoulder pearled:
Each dewdrop of thy breast
Becomes a starry world,
And the vast breathless skies
Are strown with galaxies.

Nurse of eternity,
Thy bosom feeds the sun.
From thy maternity
All breasts in nature run,
Astarte, to thy ray,
Sick of all gods, we pray.

We shamed with priestly shames,
And scourged with princely rods,
Have heard a many names
Of ineffectual gods,
Whose rumour and whose curse
Is sound and nothing worse.

269

We have writhen in the mesh
Of lords and tyrants dumb,
We in whose shoulder-flesh
The brand of kings has come
To stamp us theirs by proof,
As oxen on the hoof.

We have wailed in impious rites
Their moody love to win.
We have done our body spites
And gashed our bloodless skin.
Baal and Cybele
Have worn our frequent knee.

Locked in blind heaven aloof,
The gods are grey and dead.
Worn is the old world's woof,
Weary the sun's bright head.
The sea is out of tune,
And sick the silver moon.

The May-fly lives an hour
The star a million years;
But as a summer flower,
Or as a maiden's fears;
They pass, and heaven is bare
As tho' they never were.

God withers in his place,
His patient angels fade:
Love, on thy sacred face,
Of tear and sunbeam made,
In our perplexity
We turn, and gazing die.