 | Marah |  |
131
IV
132
[I have search'd the universe, beneath, above]
1
I have search'd the universe, beneath, above,And everywhere with this importunate lyre
Have wander'd desperately seeking Love,
But everywhere have only found Desire.
2
I have prob'd the spheres above, the spheres beneath.Their dim abysms have echo'd to my shout
Invoking Truth. But time, space, life, and death,
And joy, and sorrow, only answer'd “Doubt!”
133
SEAWARD
1
The green grows ever greyer as we pass;The lean soil sandier; the spacious air
More breezy; raggeder the bristly grass;
And the few crookèd leafless trees more rare.
2
And now nor grass, nor trees! But only stonesTufted with patches of wild rosemary
And spurge. Behind them hidden, something moans;
And large white birds come with a questioning cry.
134
3
What's there, beyond? A thing unsearch'd and strange;Not happier, but different. Something vast
And new. Some unimaginable change
From what has been. Perchance the end at last?
135
NOCTURN
1
Roll, waves! To rest refused I too aspire.Weep, clouds! I too shed tears that fall in vain.
Lightnings, illuminate ye my drear desire!
Thunder, be thou the echo of my pain!
2
Black-shrouded midnight, shuddering with cold sighs,And fearful with faint creepings, gather all
Thy ghosts and spectres! Bid them each devise
New horrors to adorn thy sable hall!
136
3
For the drear drama the drear stage prepare,Deck it with deluge, garland it with storm,
Assemble all the Powers of Darkness there,
And what I suffer let them then perform!
4
Not long will they their fleeting parts sustainIn the fixt misery I endure alone.
To-morrow's sun will scatter to-night's rain;
When comes the dawn the darkness will be gone;
5
To-morrow will the storm its force have spent;But mine will be to-morrow and to-morrow
The same unutterable discontent,
Stung by the same intolerable sorrow!
137
OCEANUS
1
Like a strong, beautiful, ill-used wild beast,The Ocean, caged between its craggy shores,
Stretches its long limbs out, with panting breast,
And rolls, and roars.
2
Its large lair is for its large life too small.For here are the world's waters all in one,
And all the sounds of all the nations, all
In a single tone!
138
3
Hark! With the monstrous murmurs of the PnyxHere do a hundred thousand litanies
From Christendom's cathedral organs mix;
And here the sighs
4
Breathed by a million breaking hearts are heard;Here the long roar of the fierce Roman crowd
Comes rolling Capitolian echoes, stirr'd
To response loud
5
When Cæsar graced the gladiatorial show,And from the reeking circus rose to him
The death-shriek of the doom'd who died below,
Torn limb from limb.
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6
Harken again! A whisper from afar,Faint, but how fearful! Like the sighing breath
Of some plague-smitten city, a red star
Scorches to death.
7
But from the silence the sound preys uponIt gathers strength, and breaks into low thunder
As of a huge host heavily marching on,
Laden with plunder.
8
Italy, when the midnight moons went downLong ages since upon her dark blue plains,
Heard it, and shudder'd. Heard the tongues unknown,
The rumbling wains,
140
9
The riot of barbarian vanquishers,The mountains moving to the Ostian shore
Over those beautiful bruised limbs of hers,
With an ominous roar.
10
Ay! All earth's sounds, on all earth's waters borne,Meet here in dreadful interchange. And over
Ocean's drear bosom, beating wings forlorn,
Lost echoes hover.
11
The echoes of all sorrows and all crimesSuffer'd or perpetrated long ago
In miserable old remorseless times
Of sin and woe.
141
12
Therefore does terror haunt thy solitude,Dread Sea! And all its melancholy waves
And mountainous billows, by wild ghosts pursued,
Are wandering graves.
13
Yet 'mid thy moanings multitudinousA silenced song's pathetic echo floats,
Slight but still sweet. What is it moves me thus
In those low notes?
14
It is that in a holier happier timeThe harp of Orpheus lull'd thy lyric shores,
And thou hast listen'd to the rhythmic chime
Of Argo's oars:
142
15
It is that Aphrodite's natal mornBeheld her borne upon thine azure breast,
And once thy furrow'd desert, now forlorn,
Was Alcyon's nest.
143
A LOST CHANCE
1
The glimpses of the moon with fitful lights,That flash'd and fled between swift cloud-drifts sweeping,
Strew'd all the dark sea. And the Water Sprites
Merrily in those moony gleams were leaping.
2
I saw them, and amongst them saw againThe little Mermaid that, long years ago,
Taught me sea-magic, many a mystic strain
Of Siren song, and all the spells I know.
144
3
All that she taught me, in the unmagicalMonotonously wakeful world wherein,
Toiling and moiling, I have wasted all
My after-years in sadness that was sin,
4
I had forgotten, and her too. But sheWas looking just as when I saw her last,
Not here, but by that other happier sea
Where we were playmates in the painless past.
5
And when I saw and recognised her there,The old song, all at once, and the old spell
Came back to me. Along the moonlit air
She sigh'd and beckon'd. I remember'd well
145
6
The word I was to utter when we met,And half gave voice to it. But suddenly
A cloud closed up the moon, and black as jet
Became the solid darkness of the sky.
7
The vision vanish'd. I no longer feltSure of the word. The night was full of doubt
And fear. And I was conscious that there dwelt
In its black bosom secrets not made out
8
By any magic I had learn'd of old.So, passive, in suspense I stood, nor stirr'd,
While o'er my soul the darkness closed its hold
As a hand closes on a frighten'd bird.
146
SATURNALIA
1
Hid in the heaviest dark, a mysteryWithin a mystery, the sea augments
Night's witchcraft with its shadowy sound; the sigh
Of an uneasy silence, that half vents
In sobs and gasps the dreadful secrecy
Of its contents!
2
And yet another mystery haunts the night:The uncouth, phantasmal, bodiless return
Of Chaos. That which was before the light
147
Of darkness voids confusions infinite
That seethe and yearn.
3
All spectres now resume their dim domain.A shrouded dream is passing o'er the deep.
The scatter'd clusters of effaced stars wane
Behind a livid film. The shuddering heap
Of waters hoarser breathes. Athwart my brain
Vast shadows sweep.
4
My waking self sinks from me. In its placeThere comes a sense of preternatural force
Freed from thought's timid tyranny. The chase
Begins. The phantom bugles blow. To horse!
I mount the Nightmare. Fleet thro' time and space
Speeds our wild course!
148
5
Where are we hurrying, they and I? And they,Who are they? We shall find each other out
As we go on, perhaps, and by the way
Discover also what we are about.
Heavens! Is it you? How came you here astray
In such a rout?
6
They told me you were settled down in life,Well married, living far away from here
In your own country, a good happy wife
And mother, virtue's model, a sincere
Church-goer, all whose decent days were rife
With heavenly cheer.
149
7
Yet here you are to-night, without a blush,Stark naked, riding furious at my side
The Devil's own charger! Foremost in the push
Of this fierce crowd, and no attempt to hide
Your unashamed enjoyment of the rush
Of our wild ride!
8
Who is it you were laughing with just nowBefore you join'd me? The tall woman there,
With the gold fillet glittering on her brow,
And those large long-lash'd eyes, and bosoms bare?
What is it hanging from her saddle bow
By a tress of hair?
150
9
Stay! Now she has it in her hands. It isA dead man's head. And how her burning eyes
Gloat on its horror! How her red lips kiss
Those white ones! Yes, 'tis she. I recognize
Herodias. But you never told me this.
Who could surmise
10
That you were old associates? And you,Whom have you loved to death, that you should be
Here in such company? Yon couple, too?
She with the man asleep upon her knee?
Asleep, or dead? A nail is driven thro'
His forehead. See!
151
11
With what still rapture her white fingers roveAmong his matted curls, as low she bends
Her glowing gaze his upturn'd face above,
Husht as a watchful mother when she tends
Her sick child, lull'd to sleep with songs of love!
So you are friends?
12
I noticed that the woman, as we pass'd,Nodded to you encouragingly. Drums
And cymbals! Hark! Behind us prancing fast,
Here, with the head of Holofernes, comes
Dame Judith, bravely dress'd! And now, the vast
Black midnight hums
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13
With a mysterious far-off music. SongsUnholy, soft lascivious Lydian lyres,
Shrill Phrygian pipes, and throbbing Scythian gongs,
In wizard concert where, round monstrous fires,
The redden'd gloom reveals dim dancing throngs,
And loose-robed choirs.
14
O hasten! Hasten! If we get not thereBefore the dawn breaks, we shall be undone!
Our steeds flag, and we still have far to fare.
Flog the jade fast! The revel has begun.
Faster! Our names are call'd. Death and despair!
Too late .... the Sun!
153
PERTURBATION
1
Greyer and dimmer grow the dim grey boundsOf the leaden twilight, salter the sea's breath,
And harsher, angrier, the low moan that sounds
Yon crags beneath.
2
The unquiet sea-birds seem unquieter,And more importunate their plaintive quest.
About the sullen beach begins to stir
A vague unrest.
154
3
Sightless has set the ineffectual sun.There is no moon, no star, no visible cloud.
But land, and sky, and sea are swathed in one
Sepulchral shroud.
4
And now that shroud is troubled, tho' unrent.There comes a menacing movement from afar,
And sounds as of a distant armament
Arming for war.
5
It is as tho' the elements—earth, air,And water—each in its own camp aloof,
Were furtively beginning to prepare
And put to proof
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6
Each its own weapons, or to organizeEach its own forces, for some strife impending.
Swift silent signals for the winds to rise
The air is sending.
7
The sea is gathering from the outer deepIts heavier waves. Like some beleaguer'd giant,
The land is setting fast on cliff and steep
A front defiant.
8
And coldly, shudderingly, creepily,With these awakenings of the torpid pain
Pent in the pallid land, the pallid sky,
The pallid main,
156
9
My heart begins to move once more, and beAgain the battle-field of ghastly hosts
At war with one another, and with me.
Legions of ghosts!
10
Yet will the abortive stir beginning nowChange or determine nothing. When 'tis o'er,
Heaven, earth, and sea, and I, will all, I know,
Be as before.
11
Rest, wretched slaves of Nature, whose mad zestOf movement makes the curse that you inherit
Harder to bear! Rest, winds and waves! Rest, rest,
Perturbèd Spirit!
157
STORM
1
What is there here of aught experience knows,Or language names? This movement without form
Of hideous power in unproductive throes?
Storm! Is it storm?
2
But like no storm I have ever heard of, seenPortray'd in pictures, read about in books,
Or dream'd in sleep, the interminable scene
Of sameness looks.
158
3
There is no storm-rack visible. There areNo thunders audible. There is no play
Of forkt ethereal fires, no lurid glare,
Nothing but grey!
4
Grey everywhere, grey always! Day and nightFor what seems ages long have ceased to be;
And there is neither darkness nor yet light
On land or sea.
5
Nothing but grey! One part of it is air,Another water, and another earth.
But of all shape and colour these three share
A common dearth.
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6
Some horrible impulse moves the whole grey mass,Wrapp'd in such rain as no resemblance bears
To any other rain that ever was.
For this appears
7
A firmamental flood, that forward speeds;Forward, not downward; and in sheets, not drops;
Whose sweeping surge in a plain course proceeds,
And never stops.
8
There are no clouds, but all is cloudiness.There are no winds, but all the wide grey sky,
Borne on the wide grey rain in mad distress,
Is rushing by.
160
9
There are no waves, but all the wide grey OceanJerks up and down with the recurrent thump
Of a monotonous mechanical motion,
In a livid lump.
10
From that mechanical motion comes a groanAs of some mighty engine-beam or screw,
Renew'd each moment with no change of tone.
Mechanical too!
11
Mechanical, and yet with life at leastEnough in it to make its meaningless cry
More maddening than all noise of man, or beast,
Or enginry.
161
12
Nothing, no single sight or sound, is hereEither sublime or beautiful. But all
Has in its dull enormity a drear
Power to appal.
13
Such sameness with such terrible unrest,Such vast yet uneventful agitation,
For days and nights have heaven and earth possess'd
Without cessation!
14
For days and nights, so far as thought can tell,Had day or night survived! But time, like space,
Grown featureless and undefinable,
No periods trace.
162
15
When first I felt the storm's approach, my heartLeapt up and hail'd it, glad of any change
From the cruel calm, and eager to take part
In something strange.
16
The contemplation of repose and joyIn Nature soothes not when the soul is sore;
And to an aching heart a smiling sky
Is a pain the more.
17
And so I hail'd a hoped enfranchisementOf grandeur, when this change began. Vain thought!
Great only in duration and extent,
And grand in naught,
163
18
'Tis but a grisly chaos far and wideMonopolized by powers unbeautiful,
Whose dulness, terribly intensified,
Makes terror dull.
19
Dull as the incessant multitudinous strifeOf the social world, that only magnifies
Each meanness of the individual life
To a monstrous size!
20
The python is but an enormous worm:The reptile still a reptile, large or small:
The calm was dreary, drearier is the storm:
And that is all!
164
DIMINUENDO
1
Tired of the sun, and all it shines on; tiredOf life's bright baubles toss'd from hand to hand;
Tired of false joys that are but pains desired;
I seek a land
2
Where sunlight looks like moonlight, and the daysLike evenings, and things present like things past,
And near things like things distant, thro' the haze
Round all things cast.
165
3
There, in a life no more than half alive,Let all my waking hours be half asleep,
And sleep's self dreamless of whate'er men strive
To gain or keep!
166
MOONLAND
1
Dim, lonesome, melancholy Moonland, hail!My tired heart's home is in thy lap at last,
And I have learn'd to love thy features pale
As passions past.
2
To me thy colourless cold sea and shoreHave grown congenial, and thy sullen air,
And ghostly winds that sighingly explore
Boughs all but bare.
167
3
Flowers in thy hueless herbage flourish not.But here dwell, hid in hollows of grey sand,
Dwarf pansies; and marsh-mallow blossoms spot
The inner land;
4
Where, at the setting of thine unseen sun,Small fenny pools gleam out of the dark plain,
Staring at night, and after day is done
Its glare retain.
5
Land of long silences, low whisperings,And sorrowful lights! Familiar things, that seem
Themselves elsewhere, look here like other things,
As in a dream.
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6
What are they, crouching yonder, crook'd so low?Mere clumps of rock their misty forms may be,
But wither'd hags, whose wicked trades I know,
They seem to me.
7
That sallow sand-drift, where the shingles halt,A wasted remnant of myself appears.
This stagnant tarn has in its ooze the salt
Of human tears.
8
And all the land is loaded with a weightOf resignation to some torpid woe.
The heavens are smileless, the fields desolate,
The waters slow.
169
9
Time makes not any effort to divertAught here from its monotonous attitude
Of dull distress. Each feature is inert,
Each sound subdued.
10
What now it looks, the landscape seems to sayThat from the world's beginning it has been,
And that its league-long lamentable grey
Was never green.
11
Yet this, too, is illusion, like the rest!The soil's fixt features Nature's fitful will
Has changed and changed: and the immutablest
Is changing still,
170
12
Thro' transmutations every moment wroughtBy heat and cold, or damp and drowth; and those
That in commixture with my own sick thought
It undergoes.
13
For 'tis not only by the tide-wave's toilThat yonder coast has been so scoop'd and hack'd,
Not only rains and rays that this lean soil
Have scarr'd and crack'd.
14
My life's spent passions, sorrows, tears, and sighsIn the land's hurt have had their dismal part;
And the chief cause of its dejection lies
In my own heart.
171
15
I know not how it was, nor why it is,But well I know that, whatsoe'er it be,
The region round me has become like this
Because of me.
16
Thou know'st it, too, sad Moonland! That is whyThou dost remind me of it everywhere.
Thy cold sun has the gaze of a grey eye,
Thy sullen air
17
The breath of a lost presence, miss'd how much!Thy faint winds whisper words I understand
Too well! Thy stillness stirs me with the touch
Of a dead hand.
172
SELENITES
1
Something sets trembling all the stars. A sighStirs the dark land. The moon is rising pale.
Slowly a strange procession passes by
Along the vale.
2
All women, and all beautiful, all white,All woebegone! For many a thousand years
The day has ne'er beheld them, and the night
Their presence fears.
173
3
A Seraph leads them. But of fallen state.His wings are clipp'd, yet still their size exceeds
The limbs they lift not, and their heavy weight
His pace impedes.
4
The moon alone knows what these women are.The sun was never in their secrets. They
Know not each other. But one woe they share,
One fate obey.
5
Whence come they? Whither are their footsteps bound?The Past forgets. The Future cannot tell.
They have lost their place on earth, and none have found
In Heaven or Hell.
174
6
For Heaven not good enough, for Hell too good,For life too loving, and for death too dear,
Pale ghosts of passion-wasted womanhood,
They wander here,
7
Visible only to the tear-wash'd eyesWhose vision mirrors supernatural sights.
But I, the initiated, recognize
The Selenites!
175
SOMNIUM BELLUINUM
1
I have dream'd a bad dream, and it harrows me stillWith a horror of worse impending.
I was plodding, persistently plodding up hill,
And the hill was a hill never ending:
2
On, I toilfully went in tenacious pursuitOf a something before me going:
But if human it was, or divine, or brute,
I had never a means of knowing:
176
3
For I neither could touch it, nor hear it, nor see:Yet I steadily strove to attain it,
Since I knew it was there, by a feeling in me
That sufficed, tho' I cannot explain it.
4
There was tree upon tree by the way that I went:And each tree was a female Briareus,
With its feminine arms about me bent
In embraces vicious and various.
5
As a path of his own does the pioneer cut,Thro' the prairie his wild way clearing,
So did I cut mine thro' those arms, and shut,
As I struck at them, both eyes—fearing!
177
6
But a shriek I heard as at each fresh strokeThro' a shatter'd embrace I hasten'd,
And was wet with the drip of the blood that broke
From the clasp that a wound unfasten'd.
7
And before I again look'd up I knewThat the thing I pursued had escaped me.
It was gone. And a different scene, quite new,
The bad dream I was dreaming shaped me.
8
For the hill to a plain had dissolved away,And the plain had no mark, no limit,
But as far as my vision could reach it lay
(Not a shrub or a shadow to dim it!)
178
9
In the sultry embrace of a Syrian noon:And, along it confusedly streaming,
A profusion of emigrant prodigies soon
Rearranged the bad dream I was dreaming.
10
'Twas a monstrous procession. In front of it cameThe sleek Basilisks, hissing and sighing:
In the forehead of each did a diamond flame,
And the Wyverns were after them flying.
11
But below were the Dragons with three-prong'd feet,And each Dragon was forty-footed,
And they furrow'd the plain with the flap and beat
Of their tails, and its sods uprooted.
179
12
In a merrily gambolling company pass'dThe lithe Leopards, and Ounces, and Lynxes:
Then the Jaguars, Panthers, and Pumas: and last
Came the beautiful leonine Sphinxes.
13
In their somnolent motion they seem'd to repose:Was it walking, or flying, or floating?
Not a sound from their paws as they pass'd me arose
The approach of their presence denoting;
14
Not a fold of their filleted tiars was stirr'd;Not a pulse in their peak'd breasts flutter'd;
But as murmuring seas by a slumberer heard
Were the mystic enigmas they mutter'd.
180
15
And their eyes were incessantly changing hue;And each hue of them fitfully thrill'd me
With a different pang. When those eyes were blue,
'Twas a passionate longing that fill'd me;
16
When they alter'd to violet, from them cameIndescribable desolation;
But when red, 'twas a frenzy of burning flame;
And when black, it was life's cessation.
17
The blithe Centaurs cantering came with a bound,And a rattle of arrowy quivers:
Then a troop of green Gryphons, golden-crown'd,
From the Arimaspian rivers.
181
18
There were two-leggèd Dogs with the airs of gods;And, escorting Cat-countenanced Creatures,
Supernatural Apes with divining rods
And fatidical sinister features:
19
And a ponderous phalanx, serried and square,Of the man-faced Bulls of Chaldea,
Whose bewildering bulks dread embodiments are
Of the strength of a dread Idea.
20
From the back of each Bull rose four vast wingsIn a feather'd pavilion arching;
And they all had the faces of bearded kings;
And their steps were as mountains marching.
182
21
But above the grim multitudes trooping in herdsThro' the Syrian sultriness glitter'd
A tumultuous pageant of strange-colour'd birds,
And they hooted, and whistled, and twitter'd.
22
Clad in crimson, and orange, and azure, and green,There were Peacocks, and Parrots, and Loories,
And Flamingoes, and Hoopoes, and Fowls obscene
With the eyeballs and talons of Furies.
23
And the Hawk and the Ibis were carrying, both,Babylonian rolls of papyrus;
And the scripture thereon was the sentence of Thoth
On the souls of Belshazzar and Cyrus.
183
24
In the rear of the Birds with a wavering flightCame a flock of Chimæras meagre,
And a squadron of blue-wing'd Serpents bright,
With their forkt tongues flickering eager.
25
But the Phœnix it was that commanded the whole,As its high priest, herald, and warder.
In his beak he was bearing a fiery coal,
And it burn'd with unquenchable ardour:
26
As a fiery coal had he made it to be,But I knew 'twas my own heart burning:
For I felt the hot flame of it withering me
With the heat of an agonised yearning.
184
27
And I cried to them, “What are you going to doWith my heart, all you prodigies bestial;
For what sacrifice fierce have you kindled it so
With infernal fire? Or celestial?”
28
In exorbitant wrath, when I cried to them this,They responded aloud and together,
With an uproar as tho' from the riven Abyss
'Twere Leviathan rending his tether.
29
In fuliginous films the disquieted sandFlew about, and above, and beclouded
The insatiable sun; and the shuddering land
In a blood-red pall was enshrouded.
185
30
For the Bulls of Chaldea resentfully stamp'dIn a bellowing band: and up bounded
The roused Panthers and Pumas: the Jaguars ramp'd:
And the bows of the Centaurs resounded,
31
As their darts flew about in the blood-colour'd gloom:Into rings where the Dragons contorted:
In the eyes of the leonine Sphinxes was doom:
The Chimæras all whinnied and snorted:
32
And the green Gryphons yelp'd: and, like murderous priests,In pursuit of me fast, as I fled them,
Came the two-leggèd Dogs and Cat-countenanced Beasts,
With the Ape-headed Horrors that led them:
186
33
And the Birds and the Basilisks madden'd the airWith a horrible screeching and hissing:
Till at last I awoke with a clutch of despair
At my heart. But too late! It was missing.
| Marah | |