The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

Poet, beware! The sonnet's primrose path
Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread.
Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,
Because the sated reader roars in wrath:
‘Little indeed to say the singer hath,
And little sense in all that he hath said;
Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read,
And naught but stubble is his aftermath.’

Then shall he cast that bonny book of thine
Where the extreme waste-paper basket gapes;
There shall thy futile fancies peak and pine,
With other minor poets—pallid shapes,
Who come a long way short of the divine,
Tormented souls of imitative apes.

In Ithaca

‘And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.’— Letter of Odysseus to Calypso. Luciani Vera Historia.

'Tis thought Odysseus, when the strife was o'er
With all the waves and wars, a weary while,
Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,
And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,
Go down the ways of gold; and evermore
His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,
Back to the goddess of the magic wile,
Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet
To look across the sad and stormy space,
Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,
Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet;
Because, within a fair forsaken place
The life that might have been is lost to thee.

Homer

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea
With all the notes of music in its tone,
With tides that wash the dim dominion
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me
Thy verse seems as the river of source unknown
That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore
To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;
Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,
As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast,
His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore
Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

Homeric Unity

The sacred keep of Ilion is rent
By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow
Through plains where Simois and Scamander went
To war with gods and heroes long ago.
Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low
In rich Mycenae, do the fates relent:
The bones of Agamemnon are a show
And ruined is his royal monument.

The dust and awful treasures of the dead
Hath learning scattered wide; but vainly thee,
Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,
And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see
The crown that burns on thine immortal head
Of indivisible supremacy!

The Odyssey

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine,
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Æaean isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine;
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again—

So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers;
And, through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

A Sonnet to Heavenly Beauty

Du Bellay

If this our little life is but a day
In the Eternal—if the years in vain
Toil after hours that never come again—
If everything that hath been must decay,
Why dreamest thou of joys that pass away
My soul, that my sad body doth restrain?
Why of the moment's pleasure art thou fain?
Nay, thou hast wings—nay, seek another stay.

There is the joy whereto each soul aspires,
And there the rest that all the world desires;
And there is love, and peace, and gracious mirth;
And there in the most highest heavens shalt thou
Behold the Very Beauty, whereof now
Thou worshippest the shadow upon earth.

Two Homes

To a young English lady in the Hospital of the Wounded at Carlsruhe, Sept. 1870.

What does the dim gaze of the dying find
To waken dream or memory, seeing you?
In your sweet eyes what other eyes are blue,
And in your hair what gold hair on the wind
Floats of the days gone almost out of mind?
In deep green valleys of the Fatherland
He may remember girls with locks like thine—
May dream how, where the waiting angels stand,

Some lost love's eyes are dim before they shine
With welcome:—so past homes, or homes to be,
He sees a moment, ere, a moment blind,
He crosses death's inhospitable sea,
And with brief passage of those barren lands
Comes to the home that is not made with hands.

San Terenzo

[_]

(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the wreck of the Don Juan

Mid April seemed like some November day,
When through the glassy waters dull as lead
Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,
Slipped down the curved shores of the Spezian bay,
Rounded a point—and San Terenzo lay
Before us, that gay village, yellow and red,
The roof that covered Shelley's homeless head—
His house, a place deserted, bleak and gray.

The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen
Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again.
Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free,
When suddenly the forest glades were stirred
With waving pinions, and a great sea-bird
Flew forth, like Shelley's spirit, to the sea!

1880.

Love's Easter

Love died here
Long ago;
O'er his bier
Lying low,
Poppies throw;
Shed no tear;
Year by year,
Roses blow!

Year by year,
Adon—dear
To Love's queen—
Does not die!
Wakes when green
May is nigh!

Twilight

(After Richepin)

Light has flown!
Through the gray
The wind's way,
The sea's moan
Sound alone!
For the day
These repay
And atone!

Scarce I know,
Listening so
To the streams
Of the sea,
If old dreams
Sing to me!

Two Sonnets of the Sirens

[_]

‘Les Sirènes estoient tant intimes amies et fidelles compagnes de Proserpine, qu'elles estoient toujours ensemble. Esmues du juste deuil de la perte de leur chère compagne, et ennuyees jusques au desespoir, elles s'arrestèrent à la mer Sicilienne, où par leurs chants elles attiroient les navigans, mais l'unique fin de la volupté de leur musique est la Mort.' — Pontus de Tyard, 1570.

I

The Sirens once were maidens innocent
That through the water-meads with Proserpine
Plucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were content
Cool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine,
With lilies woven and with wet woodbine;
Till once they sought the bright Etnæan flowers,
And their bright mistress fled from summer hours
With Hades, down the irremeable decline.

And they have sought her all the wide world through,
Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong
Have filled and changed their song, and o'er the blue
Rings deadly sweet the magic of the song;
And whoso hears must listen till he die
Far on the flowery shores of Sicily.

II

So is it with this singing art of ours,
That once with maids went maidenlike, and played
With woven dances in the poplar-shade;
And all her song was but of lady's bowers
And the returning swallows, and spring-flowers,
Till forth to seek a shadow-queen she strayed,
A shadowy land; and now hath overweighed
Her singing chaplet with the snow and showers.

Yea, fair well-water for the bitter brine
She left, and by the margin of life's sea
Sings, and her song is full of the sea's moan,
And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine;
And whoso once has listened to her, he
His whole life long is slave to her alone.

Herodotus in Egypt

He left the land of youth, he left the young,
The smiling gods of Greece; he passed the isle
Where Jason loitered, and where Sappho sung;
He sought the secret-founted wave of Nile,
And of their old world, dead a weary while,
Heard the priests murmur in their mystic tongue,
And through the fanes went voyaging, among
Dark tribes that worshipped cat and crocodile.

He learned the tales of death divine and birth,
Strange loves of hawk and serpent, sky and earth,
The marriage, and the slaying of the sun.
The shrines of gods and beasts he wandered through,
And mocked not at their godhead, for he knew
Behind all creeds the Spirit that is One.

From. Euterpe.

Metempsychosis

I shall not see thee, nay, but I shall know
Perchance, thy gray eyes in another's eyes—
Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow
On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise
Shall follow and track, and find thee in disguise
Of all sad things and fair, where sunsets glow,
When through the scent of heather, faint and low,
The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.

From all sweet art, and out of all old rhyme,
Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;
The shadows of the beauty of all time,
In song or story are but shapes of thee;
Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear,
Shall life or death bring all thy being near?

An Old Garden

The autumn sun is warm, the soft winds moan,
The golden fruits make sweet September air
In gardens where the apple blossoms were
Through these old Aprils that we twain have known.
I pass along the pathways overgrown;
Of all the flowers a single poppy there
Droops her tired head, a faded flower and fair,
One poppy that the wandering breeze hath sown.

Here be no roses, and thou lack'st the rose;
No lilies fragrant in the lily bed;
One poppy in the bare untended close,
Droops, and the sun is shrouded overhead;
The gray sea-mist upon the sea-wind blows
Chill; and methinks the summer-time is dead.

A Star in the Night

The perfect piteous beauty of thy face
Is like a star the dawning drives away;
Mine eyes may never see in the bright day
Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace;
But in the night from forth the silent place
Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray
Star of the starry flock that in the gray
Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment's space.

And as the earth at night turns to a star,
Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun,
So in the spiritual place afar
At night our souls are mingled and made one,
And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise,
That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.

Love's Miracle

With other helpless folk about the gate,
The gate called Beautiful, with weary eyes
That take no pleasure in the summer skies,
Nor all things that are fairest, does she wait;
So bleak a time, so sad a changeless fate
Makes her with dull experience early wise,
And in the dawning and the sunset, sighs
That all hath been, and shall be, desolate.

Ah, if love come not soon, and bid her live,
And know herself the fairest of fair things;
Ah, if he have no healing gift to give,
Warm from his breast, and holy from his wings;
Or if at least love's shadow in passing by
Touch not and heal her, surely she must die.

Dreams

He spake not truth, however wise, who said
That happy and that hapless men in sleep
Have equal fortune, fallen from care as deep
As countless, careless races of the dead.
Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread,
And one beholds the faces that he sighs
In vain to bring before his daylit eyes,
And waking, he remembers on his bed.

And one with fainting heart and feeble hand
Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land,
Where strength and courage were of no avail;
And one is borne on fairy breezes far
To the bright harbours of a golden star,
Down fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale.

Lost in Hades

I dreamed that, somewhere in the shadowy place,
Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot
In welcome, and regret remembered not;
And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise
On lips that had been songless many days;
Hope had no more to hope for, and desire
And dread were overpast; in white attire
New born we walked among the new world's ways!

Then from the press of shades a spirit threw
Towards me such apples as these gardens bear,
And turning, I was 'ware of her, and knew
And followed her fleet voice and flying hair—
Followed, and found her not, and seeking you
I found you never, dearest, anywhere.

Natural Theology

επει χαι τουτον οιομαι αθανατοισιν ευχεσθαι παντες δε θεων χατεουσ' ανθρωποι. Od. iii. 47.

‘Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good,
But he was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
And breaks the thunder-bird's tremendous wings;
But still we cry to him—We are thy brood—
O Cagn, be merciful! and us he brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
And in the desert opens water-springs.’

So Qing, King Nqsha's Bushman hunter, spoke,
Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,
When all were weary, and clouds of smoke
Were fading, fragrant in the twilit air;
And suddenly in each man's heart there woke
A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.

To Izaak Walton

Old Izaak, in this angry age of ours—
This hungry, angry age—how oft of thee
We dream, and thy divine tranquillity;
And all thy pleasure in the dewy flowers,
The meads enamelled, and the singing showers,
And shelter of the silvery willow-tree,
By quiet waters of the river Lea!
Ah, happy hours! we cry—ah, halcyon hours!

Yet thou, like us, hadst trouble for this realm
Of England: for thy dear Church mocked and rent,
Thy friends in beggary, thy monarch slain,
But naught could thy mild spirit overwhelm.
Ah, Father Izaak, teach us thy content
When time brings many a sorrow back again!

Lines after Wordsworth

[_]

Written under the influence of Wordsworth, with a siate-pencil on a window of the dining-room at the Lowood Hotel, Windermere, while waiting for tea after being present at the Grasmere Sports on a very wet day, and in consequence of a recent perusal of Belinda, a novel by Miss Broughton, whose absence is regretted.

How solemn is the front of this hotel,
When now the hills are swathed in modest mist,
And none can speak of scenery, nor tell
Of ‘tints of amber’, or of ‘amethyst’.
Here once thy daughters, young romance, did dwell;
Here Sara flirted with whoever list,
Belinda loved not wisely but too well,
And Mr. Ford played the philologist!

Haunted the house is, and the balcony
Where that fond matron knew her lover near;
And here we sit, and wait for tea, and sigh,
While the sad rain sobs in the sullen mere;
And all our hearts go forth into the cry—
Would that the teller of the tale were here!

The Spinet

My heart's an old spinet with strings
To laughter chiefly tuned, but some
That fate has practised hard on, dumb;
They answer not whoever sings.
The ghosts of half-forgotten things
Will touch the keys with fingers numb,
The little mocking spirits come
And thrill it with their fairy wings.

A jingling harmony it makes
My heart—my lyre—my old spinet;
And now a memory it wakes,
And now the music means ‘forget’;
And little heed the player takes
Howe'er the thoughtful critic fret.

[_]

Spinet. The accent is on the last foot, even when the word is written spinnet. Compare the remarkable liberty which Pamela took with the 137th Psalm:

My Joys and Hopes all overthrown,
My Heartstrings almost broke,
Unfit my Mind for Melody,
Much less to bear a Joke.
But yet, if from my Innocence
I, even in Thought, should slide,
Then, let my fingers quite forget
The sweet Spinnet to guide!

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, vol. i, p. 184, 1785. A. L.