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

Silence on silence treads at each low morn.
Pain and new pain, some glimpse of painless sleep,
And waking to old anguish and new day:
Blasted of glory, sundered from my kind:
My hearth, my realm, the lips that love me, lost:
So runs it. 'Tis some courage to keep life
Where life is worthless, and on feeble stay
To dwell in hope of better till we die.

I hate this island steep, this seam of beach.
This ample desolation of gray rock
Man tills not: and man reaps not, woe is me!
No voices, save stress-landed mariners
Leaning in ring with eyebrow-level wrists
To watch the scummy rack and buzzing waves,
Toss me a word in pity: stare and pass
Grinding a clumsy jest or surly sneer.
Yet in their talk I gather waifs and strays
Of that great Trojan battle how it goes;
Of beardless youths who gain down heaven with deeds,
And all the noise and turmoil of the thing,
Deed quenching deed, and echo's swollen boast,
While I am rotting here and touch no praise.

Ye have done well to leave me. 'Tis most wise,
And friendly too, expedient, generous:
Why this is bounty's crown; I have deserved
No less than a sick hound: full thanks for all.
My kings and comrades, ye are wise and brave,
As wise as brave, and brave your chiefest voice
Of foxy Ithaca: 'twas nobly said,
“Pack out the carrion on this leeward Isle.
We need no wounded leaders, no, nor fear.
His men and ships are needed; they sail on:
They cannot heal him, and our need is great.”
Why, man, this is true valour and no theft:
I could not quit thee, and kings cannot steal.
But if I meet thy foxship afterdays,
With half an arm to raise and half a spear,
I'll mar that serpent face and false gray smile,
And leave thy surgy rock without a king.

Alas, alas, how mean a thing am I
To rail and threat and bluster like a God.
The old pain trembles thro' me marrow-deep,
A quivering mass of earth, than earth no more,
Earth gifted with a cunning power of pain,
Full knowledge of its fall and loathsomeness,
Craving for enterprize in impotence,
Some little sleep and all the rest a pain—
Shall such a thing have pride or hoard revenge?

I loathe the glancing sameness of this brine,
Its hissing suck of waves, its equal face.
I loathe the toss of sails, the pass of clouds,
The white wings curving on the tawny rocks,
The evening and the dawning and the day.
We thrive by action, I am chained from all,
And I forget the pleasure of this earth,
Of all but pain and slow time dispossess'd.

Yet is there hope; slow hope yet comfort sure,
I had forgot it in my wrath and pain.
Is there no oracle? Troy cannot fall.
I guard thine arrows, Heracles divine,
And Troy falls not without them year on year.
I hoard them as the marrow of my bones,
Sweet nurses to revenge. Oh, fate is just.
Ye reap, my kings, wound-harvest and much dead,
Thinn'd troops, and kingdoms waned to wrack at home,
And gloomy faces by a gloomy sea,
And firm-braced Troy before, the sponge of toil,
And all your warring as an idle dream.

I can abide my hour it is so sure,
I lean on this unstumbling oracle,
And nourish hope, till worn with many woes
The haught Kings fall in thinking on the wreck
They left by Lemnos and the archer hand
Once fellowless in Hellas. They shall come,
By Zeus I swear it, they shall come in shame,
And stand in shame before the man they wrong'd
And weeded out as refuse. See, they bend,
Pestilent faces crusted in meek smiles,
And supple eyes and all the fawn of need:
And one mouths out on justice, gratitude,
The cause of Hellas. Then another smooths
My name with praise, and all the worthy ring
Lisp sympathy with dew on glassy cheeks.

Sweet oracle, thou climax of revenge,
I will wear out my painful coil in joy,
Voiceless of all complaining, firm and sure
The Gods are just, and compensation comes.