King Poppy By the Earl of Lytton |
 |
|
|
|
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. | VIII
THE SHEPHERD. |
| IX. |
| X. |
| XI. |
| XII. |
|
 | King Poppy |  |
205
VIII THE SHEPHERD.
The late moon, captured by the coming dawn,
Below the sea's edge linger'd. 'Twas a night
Of Summer in mid-solstice, when the dark
Is starriest, and soon dies. Dame Rhoda slept.
But Diadema, risen from restless dreams,
Was leaning o'er her golden balcony,
And listening to the solitary sound
Of waves that, hid in whisperous shadows, heaved
With a soft yearning murmur. Not for joy,
As heretofore her happy wont had been,
But for the solace of a new-born sense
Of nameless sadness, she began to sing.
And all along the lone night wandering went
The wistful music of the song she sang,
Where there was none to hear it. None to hear?
What genuine song was ever sung unheard,
Tho' sung not in the hearing of the world?
Athwart night's trembling silence, clear and sweet,
Another voice, responsive to her own,
In song came floating, as athwart dark meers
The swimming stag at midnight seeks his mate.
At first she doubted if a voice it were,
Or but of hers a mocking echo borne
Upon the light wind from the lifted shell
Of some wild sea-sprite. Wonderingly, she stopp'd
Her singing, listen'd, and then sang again,
And again stopp'd, and listen'd. But the voice
Still, from the distance, thro' the silence sang.
Maiden, it sang, a boy's heart sent me hither
To answer thine, whose voice hath spoken to it.
Come! Let us wander, he, thou, I, together
The wide world thro'! For short is Song's way thro' it
From heart to heart: and, that way, soul meets soul,
Safe tho' between them all the wide world roll!
Thus, deep in darkness and in distance hid,
A spirit sang responsive to the song
Of her own spirit, and her soul had found
A soul whose language was the same as hers.
Below the sea's edge linger'd. 'Twas a night
Of Summer in mid-solstice, when the dark
Is starriest, and soon dies. Dame Rhoda slept.
But Diadema, risen from restless dreams,
Was leaning o'er her golden balcony,
And listening to the solitary sound
Of waves that, hid in whisperous shadows, heaved
With a soft yearning murmur. Not for joy,
As heretofore her happy wont had been,
But for the solace of a new-born sense
Of nameless sadness, she began to sing.
206
The wistful music of the song she sang,
Where there was none to hear it. None to hear?
What genuine song was ever sung unheard,
Tho' sung not in the hearing of the world?
Athwart night's trembling silence, clear and sweet,
Another voice, responsive to her own,
In song came floating, as athwart dark meers
The swimming stag at midnight seeks his mate.
At first she doubted if a voice it were,
Or but of hers a mocking echo borne
Upon the light wind from the lifted shell
Of some wild sea-sprite. Wonderingly, she stopp'd
Her singing, listen'd, and then sang again,
And again stopp'd, and listen'd. But the voice
Still, from the distance, thro' the silence sang.
Maiden, it sang, a boy's heart sent me hither
To answer thine, whose voice hath spoken to it.
Come! Let us wander, he, thou, I, together
207
From heart to heart: and, that way, soul meets soul,
Safe tho' between them all the wide world roll!
Thus, deep in darkness and in distance hid,
A spirit sang responsive to the song
Of her own spirit, and her soul had found
A soul whose language was the same as hers.
She was a king's child, in a palace born,
By a god guarded. But beyond the crags
Her steps had never climb'd, and narrow sea,
Another child, whose heart to hers attain'd
Its destin'd way, among the mountains dwelt.
A shepherd boy, he roam'd his native hills,
The unguarded guardian of their wandering tribes
Of hardy goats: not kingborn, nor himself
Of kinglier circumstance, or higher state,
Than Hebron's Harper when he shepherded
His father's flocks, beyond the camps of Saul.
Born of the People and the Mountains: born
Where strength is strongest, patience patientest,
(Far from the sordid cities that entomb
That turbulent and miserable crowd
Whose meanness mocks the honest name it takes,
And, being but the Populace, presumes
To call itself the People) lofty life
He lack'd not, tho' of lowly birth. But ah!
This lord of the lone eagle-haunted heights
Was Diadummiania's peasant, she
Its princess; and the inexorable code
Of Diadummianian law forbade
A shepherd's son, of peasant birth, to love
The daughter of a king, or a king's daughter
And princess born, to give her princely heart
To a born peasant. Love and Circumstance
Were rivals ever since the world began:
And, neither to the other yielding, each
Scourges and racks the wretch who disobeys
Its despot rule. But Song hath softer laws,
And Dream a larger freedom. Dream, then, still
Of love, young Shepherd, and of love sing on,
Till, singing, dreaming ever, thou thyself,
And she, thy sung-and-dream'd-of love, released
From perishable circumstance, become
An everlasting dream, a deathless song!
The Mountains have their dreams, the People theirs
And both are patient dreamers. Songs have they,
Moreover, immemorial as themselves,
Taught by the mountains to the mountaineer:
Lays, never lost, whose legendary strains
Are gifts the People from its fathers got,
And, unforgetting, to its children gives:
Remember'd records of a lyric race,
In whose remote descent the People's sons
As lofty and as old a lineage claim
As those fair kings the People's childlike faith
Confirms for ever upon thrones renown'd;
For, prince and peasant, each is Song's own child,
And equal-born all Song's own children be.
What was it that, in song, drew forth the heart
Of the young Shepherd, filling the warm spheres
Of starry darkness with its wild appeals
And passionate welcomes? 'Twas a promise hail'd
With doubtful wonder, but undoubting faith,
In the bright upspring of a prophet star
To Kepler, to Copernicus, unknown,
Unguess'd by Galileo, unreveal'd
To wondering Tycho when he saw the light
In Cassiopeia that is seen no more:
But hail'd by Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar,
The Star of Promise: star whose lustre led
The prescient footsteps of the Shepherd Kings
To Bethlem, bearing for a babe divine
The mystic tribute of the Morning Land.
A star, and not a star: a light from heaven
Hail'd by the heart alone; and by the heart
That hails it haply half misunderstood,
Yet not in vain all trusted. Mary's Babe
The adoring Magians deem'd of royal birth,
Mistaking His true kingdom. But in Him
The promise of a blessing long invoked
They trusted, and in trusting it were blest.
So sang the Shepherd to the nameless star
That on his soul was rising: so his heart
Follow'd its gracious guidance, bearing gifts
From boyhood's golden orient. And a voice
That shed forth music as a star sheds light
Answer'd the singing of his heart with song.
A maiden's soul, it sang, hath sent me hither,
Shepherd, to find in thine the mate 'twas needing.
Come! Let us wander, she, thou, I, together
The wide world thro'. For safe where Song is leading,
Wide tho' the world that holds them far apart,
Soul beckons soul, and heart goes forth to heart.
Night after night the same appeal, the same
Unfailing response! Night by night in song
They communed with each other from afar,
The Shepherd and the Princess. Night by night
Their songs consorted, and their spirits touch'd.
And, daily, all day long the mingled hope
And memory of the last time, and the next,
Of those melodious midnight communings
Linger'd within them like an elfin light,
And hover'd round them like an elfin call,
And put a charm about them, circling them
With close enchantment, like the fluttering sphere
Of fire around some wizard altar traced.
And he became as those on whose changed life
A fairy's choice hath thrown its spell: to whom
Their home and kindred, their diurnal ways,
And all familiar things thenceforth appear
Distant, and strange, and foreign to the sense
Of their own nearness to an unseen power
That speaks in silence, glows in darkness, breathes
On sleeping lids, and burns upon shut lips.
For wheresoe'er they gaze, there shines a star;
And wheresoe'er they move, there sounds a song:
A star unseen, a song unheard, by all
But they, in whose thrill'd ear for ever rings
The fairy music, and in whose wild eyes
Reflected gleam the lights of fairyland.
So strong the charm is on the life it lures,
And, luring, loosens from all else on earth,
That with its spell, if broken, breaks the heart
Of him whose being it hath once possess'd.
For never can the disenchanted wretch
Resume his former life's forsaken aims,
And, aimless left, he pines away, and dies.
Nor less, the lonely maiden of the isle
That night's enrapturing revelation fill'd
With incommunicable consciousness
Of a new sense, for ever set apart.
Secluded, consecrated, and reserved
For service to a strange felicity.
And she became as some young priestess, vow'd
From childhood to cold Vesta's fane, whose deep
And dreaming eyes have drawn from heaven a god
To kiss them, when by night ambrosial arms
Have clasp'd her sleeping, and she wakes aware
Of a divine inexplicable bliss,
That came i' the dark, and went, to morn bequeathing
Mysterious promise of its blest return:
For all around her, from that moment, wears
A meaning aspect, mindful of the joy
Her seal'd lips whisper not to her husht heart:
Within the shrine a warmer glory broods,
Fine transports tremble thro' the sacred grove,
The lustral water flames like fire, the air
Heaves with intenser breathings. Day by day,
And night by night, since that first night's surprise
Dissolved the distance fate between them set,
So fared it with these two, whose days were dreams,
As all their nights were songs. And more than this,
No knowledge of love's need in others taught
Their innocence to crave. What fate denied
They miss'd not. Song and dream to them were all.
Two souls in song, two songs in one song blent,
Far from each other, far from all the haunts
Of human intercourse, the Herdsman's Son
And the King's Daughter dwelt. On either side
A kingdom, Boyhood's here, there Maidenhood's:
And on each kingdom's solitary throne
A child: and all between them the deep sea,
And the strong hills: and yet those kingdoms touch'd.
Themselves they knew not, and they knew still less
Each other, save in song: nor ever met,
Save in the mystic world song made for them.
But Pastoral Innocence, a shepherd boy,
And Maiden Majesty, a monarch's child,
Born of an age no chronicle records,
Across a land no traveller hath mapp'd,
Met in a song undated and unnamed:
And there, its bridal melodies begot
Songs upon songs that live from land to land,
From age to age, retaining in their tone,
Tho' far away from their forgotten source,
The sweetness, the simplicity, the strength
Of the True People's love for its True Kings,
And theirs for their True People. For of old
True Kings there were, and a True People too,
Ere twixt the People and its Kings arose
A Third Authority, displacing both
By forces stolen from the strength of each.
Those songs belong to all men, and to none.
They are the wanderers of the air we breathe;
Whose birdlike notes, untaught, unteachable,
Woo us, we know not whither; come to us,
We know not whence; move us, we know not why.
In vain we wonder who the singers were
That sung them first. The world's first singers found
Such songs already hovering here and there
Above them. Long before old Homer's birth,
And older far than he, the Iliad lived.
By a god guarded. But beyond the crags
Her steps had never climb'd, and narrow sea,
Another child, whose heart to hers attain'd
Its destin'd way, among the mountains dwelt.
A shepherd boy, he roam'd his native hills,
The unguarded guardian of their wandering tribes
Of hardy goats: not kingborn, nor himself
Of kinglier circumstance, or higher state,
Than Hebron's Harper when he shepherded
208
Born of the People and the Mountains: born
Where strength is strongest, patience patientest,
(Far from the sordid cities that entomb
That turbulent and miserable crowd
Whose meanness mocks the honest name it takes,
And, being but the Populace, presumes
To call itself the People) lofty life
He lack'd not, tho' of lowly birth. But ah!
This lord of the lone eagle-haunted heights
Was Diadummiania's peasant, she
Its princess; and the inexorable code
Of Diadummianian law forbade
A shepherd's son, of peasant birth, to love
The daughter of a king, or a king's daughter
And princess born, to give her princely heart
To a born peasant. Love and Circumstance
Were rivals ever since the world began:
And, neither to the other yielding, each
209
Its despot rule. But Song hath softer laws,
And Dream a larger freedom. Dream, then, still
Of love, young Shepherd, and of love sing on,
Till, singing, dreaming ever, thou thyself,
And she, thy sung-and-dream'd-of love, released
From perishable circumstance, become
An everlasting dream, a deathless song!
The Mountains have their dreams, the People theirs
And both are patient dreamers. Songs have they,
Moreover, immemorial as themselves,
Taught by the mountains to the mountaineer:
Lays, never lost, whose legendary strains
Are gifts the People from its fathers got,
And, unforgetting, to its children gives:
Remember'd records of a lyric race,
In whose remote descent the People's sons
As lofty and as old a lineage claim
As those fair kings the People's childlike faith
210
For, prince and peasant, each is Song's own child,
And equal-born all Song's own children be.
What was it that, in song, drew forth the heart
Of the young Shepherd, filling the warm spheres
Of starry darkness with its wild appeals
And passionate welcomes? 'Twas a promise hail'd
With doubtful wonder, but undoubting faith,
In the bright upspring of a prophet star
To Kepler, to Copernicus, unknown,
Unguess'd by Galileo, unreveal'd
To wondering Tycho when he saw the light
In Cassiopeia that is seen no more:
But hail'd by Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar,
The Star of Promise: star whose lustre led
The prescient footsteps of the Shepherd Kings
To Bethlem, bearing for a babe divine
The mystic tribute of the Morning Land.
A star, and not a star: a light from heaven
211
That hails it haply half misunderstood,
Yet not in vain all trusted. Mary's Babe
The adoring Magians deem'd of royal birth,
Mistaking His true kingdom. But in Him
The promise of a blessing long invoked
They trusted, and in trusting it were blest.
So sang the Shepherd to the nameless star
That on his soul was rising: so his heart
Follow'd its gracious guidance, bearing gifts
From boyhood's golden orient. And a voice
That shed forth music as a star sheds light
Answer'd the singing of his heart with song.
A maiden's soul, it sang, hath sent me hither,
Shepherd, to find in thine the mate 'twas needing.
Come! Let us wander, she, thou, I, together
The wide world thro'. For safe where Song is leading,
Wide tho' the world that holds them far apart,
Soul beckons soul, and heart goes forth to heart.
212
Unfailing response! Night by night in song
They communed with each other from afar,
The Shepherd and the Princess. Night by night
Their songs consorted, and their spirits touch'd.
And, daily, all day long the mingled hope
And memory of the last time, and the next,
Of those melodious midnight communings
Linger'd within them like an elfin light,
And hover'd round them like an elfin call,
And put a charm about them, circling them
With close enchantment, like the fluttering sphere
Of fire around some wizard altar traced.
And he became as those on whose changed life
A fairy's choice hath thrown its spell: to whom
Their home and kindred, their diurnal ways,
And all familiar things thenceforth appear
Distant, and strange, and foreign to the sense
Of their own nearness to an unseen power
213
On sleeping lids, and burns upon shut lips.
For wheresoe'er they gaze, there shines a star;
And wheresoe'er they move, there sounds a song:
A star unseen, a song unheard, by all
But they, in whose thrill'd ear for ever rings
The fairy music, and in whose wild eyes
Reflected gleam the lights of fairyland.
So strong the charm is on the life it lures,
And, luring, loosens from all else on earth,
That with its spell, if broken, breaks the heart
Of him whose being it hath once possess'd.
For never can the disenchanted wretch
Resume his former life's forsaken aims,
And, aimless left, he pines away, and dies.
Nor less, the lonely maiden of the isle
That night's enrapturing revelation fill'd
With incommunicable consciousness
Of a new sense, for ever set apart.
214
For service to a strange felicity.
And she became as some young priestess, vow'd
From childhood to cold Vesta's fane, whose deep
And dreaming eyes have drawn from heaven a god
To kiss them, when by night ambrosial arms
Have clasp'd her sleeping, and she wakes aware
Of a divine inexplicable bliss,
That came i' the dark, and went, to morn bequeathing
Mysterious promise of its blest return:
For all around her, from that moment, wears
A meaning aspect, mindful of the joy
Her seal'd lips whisper not to her husht heart:
Within the shrine a warmer glory broods,
Fine transports tremble thro' the sacred grove,
The lustral water flames like fire, the air
Heaves with intenser breathings. Day by day,
And night by night, since that first night's surprise
Dissolved the distance fate between them set,
215
As all their nights were songs. And more than this,
No knowledge of love's need in others taught
Their innocence to crave. What fate denied
They miss'd not. Song and dream to them were all.
Two souls in song, two songs in one song blent,
Far from each other, far from all the haunts
Of human intercourse, the Herdsman's Son
And the King's Daughter dwelt. On either side
A kingdom, Boyhood's here, there Maidenhood's:
And on each kingdom's solitary throne
A child: and all between them the deep sea,
And the strong hills: and yet those kingdoms touch'd.
Themselves they knew not, and they knew still less
Each other, save in song: nor ever met,
Save in the mystic world song made for them.
But Pastoral Innocence, a shepherd boy,
And Maiden Majesty, a monarch's child,
Born of an age no chronicle records,
216
Met in a song undated and unnamed:
And there, its bridal melodies begot
Songs upon songs that live from land to land,
From age to age, retaining in their tone,
Tho' far away from their forgotten source,
The sweetness, the simplicity, the strength
Of the True People's love for its True Kings,
And theirs for their True People. For of old
True Kings there were, and a True People too,
Ere twixt the People and its Kings arose
A Third Authority, displacing both
By forces stolen from the strength of each.
Those songs belong to all men, and to none.
They are the wanderers of the air we breathe;
Whose birdlike notes, untaught, unteachable,
Woo us, we know not whither; come to us,
We know not whence; move us, we know not why.
In vain we wonder who the singers were
217
Such songs already hovering here and there
Above them. Long before old Homer's birth,
And older far than he, the Iliad lived.
For ever, when the hoary-headed King
Heard his child singing her wild song, to him
That song was like an epicedion
Pour'd from the burst heart of a dying swan,
That down the interminable stream of time,
Buried in its melodious bosom, bore
Him dead, and all the days he loved, to days
He knew not. Like a dream his life appear'd.
And as men, dreaming, sometimes know they dream,
And fear to wake because their dream is fair,
So he. His thoughts, his feelings, his beliefs,
All the conditions that to consciousness
Give character, seem'd creatures of that song,
Which, floating, bore them with it far away
To other ages and a world not his.
A barren world! bitterly destitute
Of those delights that o'er the happy isle
Where he, Dame Rhoda, Pilgram, and the child
Together dwelt, spontaneously diffused
An effortless felicity creating
What after ages call the Age of Gold.
O Age of Gold! Age that hath never been,
Nor ever shall be, yet for ever art!
O Golden age to every age once given,
For all the ages have their Golden Age,
Dear age of lost delights, sad memory seeks
Vainly in ages past, thou smilest still,
Safe in the happy heart that seeks thee not,
Because it knows not yet that thou art gone.
There, and there only, is the Age of Gold!
Heard his child singing her wild song, to him
That song was like an epicedion
Pour'd from the burst heart of a dying swan,
That down the interminable stream of time,
Buried in its melodious bosom, bore
Him dead, and all the days he loved, to days
He knew not. Like a dream his life appear'd.
And as men, dreaming, sometimes know they dream,
And fear to wake because their dream is fair,
So he. His thoughts, his feelings, his beliefs,
All the conditions that to consciousness
Give character, seem'd creatures of that song,
Which, floating, bore them with it far away
218
A barren world! bitterly destitute
Of those delights that o'er the happy isle
Where he, Dame Rhoda, Pilgram, and the child
Together dwelt, spontaneously diffused
An effortless felicity creating
What after ages call the Age of Gold.
O Age of Gold! Age that hath never been,
Nor ever shall be, yet for ever art!
O Golden age to every age once given,
For all the ages have their Golden Age,
Dear age of lost delights, sad memory seeks
Vainly in ages past, thou smilest still,
Safe in the happy heart that seeks thee not,
Because it knows not yet that thou art gone.
There, and there only, is the Age of Gold!
| King Poppy | |