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

Lo, at my feet this ocean, and the moon
Is shaking out her splendours on its fields.
The spring is sighing up beneath the earth,
And settles in the winter of my soul
With tumult and with impulse, but no joy.
The mountain streams are reeling to the sea,
They make a voice on night beyond the wind.
I question with the wilderness of stars
For comfort. These eternal pinnacles
That toss the striding Neptune from their walls
Have heard the protest of my lonely tears.
There is a cliff that wrestles like a god
Alone in waters, for the waves have rent
His brothers down behind him, and alone
Cinctured with mutinous discord evermore
He feels the teeth of everlasting surge
Eat out by inch his earth-roots till he fall.
Even such a weary purpose is my life,
Opposing isolation, tho' it knows
An hourly gaining sentence at its core.

Is there no rest? surely in craggy bowers
Apart from moonlight rest the dissonant waves:
The sea-mew builds in rifted silence there,
And makes her brood a safety: whom her mate
Will not relinquish though the open seas
Invite the sinew of his reaching wing.

Patience is half ignoble in much wrong.
These gods, that vex our wretchedness, exact
This further torment, that the victim's lip
Tell not its pain but bless them for their curse.
These, while the surfeit of prosperity
Crowds all their altar-steps with hecatombs,
Forbid the wretched franchise to complain.

This man—this hero—for he wore the name
Gilded with deeds in Crete, and lack'd the heart
Heroic, masking guilt in smoothest show—
This eminent concealment of dishonour,
Theseus, the name will burn my uttering lips,
I brand thee rich in worship as a slave
Whose hands are full of lies and infamy.
Be demigod in shallow Hellas still:
'Tis the world's process to make great men small
And worship draff, and kneel to ready knaves
Who steal an empty throne, and seated cry,
“I am a god, come, worship!” and men come.

So rule in Athens, Theseus, and the herd
Shall burn their abject incense to thy state.
Be lawgiver of nations: blazon out
Thy virtue: state has seasons of repose
And breathing for the actor, intervals
Secure of note, to revel out the wrong
Most native to thy nature and resume
The Theseus I have known thee, brave alone
In cheating foolish maidens from their homes,
And leaving death most ready to their hands
When thou art weary, hero, and away.

So let me live though weary of myself,
To thee at least dishonour. Silent years
May dim my features on thy memory:
But not that long eternity of time
Can sweeten thought and record of my wrong,
Enduring in the pauses of thy brain
When idler themes are absent. I have said:
And through the shout of thy triumphant hour
A whisper of my name shall tear thee down,
And teach thee what thou art, though men acclaim
Thy glories to the citadel of God.

Enough of thee: be faithful to thyself:
Poison more lives and banish all thy rest.
But I perforce live on, perforce consume
The barren gift of breath, and watch the years
To winter; whom the folding of a flower,
The burning dew-drop, sudden daffodil,
The golden weather dropt among the woods,
Affect with no delight: all pleasant things
Are equal apathies.

O rest and peace,
Fabled beyond the sunset, equal gods,
Dare I entreat you thus with sleepless eyes
And such a seething heart? Ye will not come:
The perfume of immortal asphodel
Pervades your meadows, and ye will not come.
To me the moaning seas and barren strand
Must minister their comfort, and the sounds
Of nature recompense the absent voice
Of human consolation. I have seen
The slow wave wear the rugged cliff to smooth,
The weak rain batter out eternal stone:
Where nought endures shall oly sorrow build
An ageless throne above the fallen years?