King Poppy :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oblivious Earth, whose immemorial youth,
(Old Age's elder, and of burial born)
Gone with the red leaf, with the green returns!
Full many, mortals and immortals both,
Coming and going hast thou seen, O Earth,
That, gone, return not; and to thee no more
As once they came shall come, with gifts divine
Thy woods and streams and vales and hill-tops haunting,
Those vanisht guests, the gods of other stars.

There is a legend, the low-breathing wind

When men were few upon the earth, they gave a glowing faith to many gods; but presently waxing many, they began to grudge cold credit even to the few gods left. Who then, departing, bore Faith back with them to Heaven: and men, missing Faith, invented Knowledge. All that Knowledge knew how to invent was doubt of everything by men invented. So that men's inventions endure but for a season; and, as they come, they go. Not so the leaves and blossoms that, going, come again. Whereby the divine beauty of the earth renews itself, and is forever. For the gifts of the gods outlast men's faith in the heavenly givers of them. And they, before they left it, clothed Earth's naked earthliness with starry flowers that, turning filth to fragrance, are sweeter than the flowerless stars.

In Spring-time whispers to the trees and flowers,
That some good gift on every flower and tree

A guardian god or goddess once bestow'd.
Pan made the reed melodious: Artemis
With mystic influence fill'd the moonfern: Zeus
The cypress, Cybelè the pine, endow'd
With solemn grace: blithe Dionysus pour'd
The strength of his indomitable mirth
Into the sweet orbs of the cluster'd vine:
Ethereal azure from Athenè's eyes]
The dim veins of the violet imbued
With pensive beauty: Cythereia's kiss
Crimson'd the balmy bosom of the rose:
Leaf of unfading lustre Phœbus gave
To the green laurel: washt in Herè's milk,
White shone the immaculate lily: and the ripe corn
Demeter robed in Oriental gold.
God-gifted thus, the rich earth's dusky breast

Gleam'd, with innumerable hues adorn'd,
As heaven's gay bow. But of all flowers that throng'd

Here beginneth the Legend of the Poppy, which sheweth the true cause of the Rape of Proserpine.

That undeserted garden of the gods
The fairest deck'd Demeter's maiden child,
In Enna blooming for Persephonè.
Her, for the sake of her sweet dower, the lord
Of barren Orcus in forced nuptials bore,
A ravisht bride, to his abysmal home.
But frustrate was the boisterous theft of Dis,
To whose inhospitable realms transferr'd
Her floral treasures perish'd—all save one,

Of whose flowers only one remained alive in the Land of Death.

And that one the least beautiful of all.
A plain wild Poppy it was, of common kind,
With cup faint-scented, and as pale in hue
As the white bosom where it slept unseen
When he in haste from Enna's bowery meads,
And her scared maidens, snatch'd her. This shut flower
In its delicious sanctuary escaped

The suffocating pestilence that broods
For ever above the Acherontian Fen,
Fatal to mortals; and beneath her zone
The virgin found, when she disrobed herself,
Its snowy-petall'd blossom. 'Twas the last
Of all things lovely in her life on earth
The touch of Death had turn'd not into dust,
And she would fain have saved it. But she knew
That long unhurt in Death's morose domain
It might not linger, nor returning pass
The Stygian Ferry with Death's toll unpaid.
Obscure and wavering, as the windy pines

She consulteth Morpheus how she may best preserve its life.

A midnight storm's convulsive glare reveals
Thro' lurid gaps, along the halls of Hell
Plutonian Princes bow'd their vassal heads
In homage to Persephonè. With these
Was one of softer aspect than the rest,
Who, in the semblance of a sleeping child,
On bat's wing borne came wafted from afar.

Caressingly his little shoulder propp'd
His pillow'd brow, with sallow hops encircled,
And silent as the falling of the snow
His flight he wing'd. To him her vext desire
To save this living object of her love
The goddess of the loved who live no more
Confided. “Queen,” the Son of Hypnos said,
“Eternal slumber hides from life's unrest,
And death's undoing, those my wings enfold
In sable silence.” “Tush!” the goddess cried,

But dissatisfied with all his counsels;

“Eternity of slumber, is that all
Thou hast to offer one not yet awake?
Keep for the weary thine unvalued boon,
Or store it where, in mockery of them both,
Delusive sculpture mimics life and death,
Possessing neither.” Morpheus murmur'd, “Sleep
Thou wilt not, and no other gift have I.
But Lethè, the blind sister of my sire,
Could give thy favourite Forgetfulness.”

“For him,” she said, “'tis happiness preserved,
Not happiness forgotten, that I crave.
How shall I help, where hide, him? Whom invoke
For his protection?” “Me!” a merry voice

And giveth ear to the voice of Phantasos, the Founder of Romantic Art,

Responded, sweet and sudden as the note
Of an exultant skylark. Locks of light
With blossoms girt, and dripping splendid dews,
Flow'd from the radiant forehead of the boy,
If boy it were, whose penetrative eyes
Glow'd on Demeter's Daughter. Their regard
Redden'd her white cheek, that beneath it burn'd
Bright as the faded fire a breath revives
In hueless ashes, as she answer'd, “Thou!
Who art thou? Ganymede, or Love?” He smiled
Mysteriously; and, answering in his stead,
“Beware of him!” the God of Slumber sigh'd,
“It is my madcap brother, Phantasos,

Whose doings are an abomination to his brother, the Guardian of Classic Repose.

The fairest of our kindred, and most false.

Too calm for his quick essence, and too cold,
Our classic clime; nor even to Hermes known
That wild exuberant region of Romance
His footstep, follow'd by the future, roams.”
The Apparition, lightly turning, laugh'd,
“Disloyal brother! Is it thus forsooth
Of me thou speakest when awake? Go, sleep,
Ungrateful one, and with a glad remorse
Acknowledge my beneficence! The lean
And hungry nights that in thy void abode
Devour each other, for thy sake, I feed
On fairer hours than all that dancing strew
Roses and lilies round Aurora's car.”
“Ay,” mutter'd Morpheus, “for thou paintest time

Hence between the Classic and the Romantic, endless controversy.

With truthless promise, and thy lies persuade
Even darkness to mistake itself for light.
Rashly I gave thee ill-requited leave
To haunt my quiet kingdom. Fool'd by thee,
Slumber is now the slave of thy deceits,

And waking but a memory of lost joy.”
Then to Persephonè once more, “Beware,
'Tis Phantasos!” he murmur'd sighingly.
“Sole author he of those dumb dramas play'd
In the fantastic theatres of Thought
By puppet actors. For this God of Whims
Within him hath what, otherwise employ'd,
Might make him dangerous. His absurd designs
Surpass the bound and order of the world,
And ever doth he vaunt his power to build
A world all boundless in a box of bone,
Itself no bigger than a human skull.”
Her drowsy monitor the goddess heard
Unheedful, and to Phantasos appeal'd,

Proserpine confides in Phantasos.

“Fair stranger, if to thee such power belongs,
O save this menaced remnant of the life
That once was mine among the flowers of earth!
For dear its little blossom is to me,
As the lone babe that on her bosom smiles

To a forsaken mother.” O'er her stoop'd
The sleepless brother of the God of Sleep,
With vans that heaved impatient to depart.
“Child of Demeter, to my care confide
This sleeping mortal!” he exclaim'd. “And thou,
Mekon, the darling of Persephonè,
Thine, for her sake, shall be a throne sublime,
With endless rule above a boundless realm.”
“Boundless!” she cried. “If such a realm there be,
What is the unknown name of it?” He snatch'd

By whom the Poppy is borne away

The Poppy from her hesitating hand,
Waved it in sportive scorn above the brows
Of Morpheus, who was sleep-bound on the wing,
And fled away, aërial kisses wafting
From lips that, as he left her, whisper'd “Dream!”

Deep in a wondrous world where heaven and earth

Into Dreamland,

Are mingled—where the living and the dead,

United, from their mystic union bear
Transcendent beings far as stars removed
From all that lives and dies—a wondrous world
Where yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day
Are one day and the same—the Poppy breathed
Enchanted air. And thro' its timeless noon,
Continually o'er the fields of sleep
Coming and going, as he came and went,
Weird Phantasos, one finger at his lip,
Husht commune with the white-robed dreamer held.
But all he said was in a language lost,

And taught the language of that land:

Or learn'd not, by the wakeful and the wise.
It was the language to midsummer woods
In whispers utter'd by the evening wind;
The language warbled in their roundelays
By jubilant rivulets; and the nodding wheat
And sighing barley in low undertones
Its wordless tongue to one another lisp,
Stirr'd by the gossip bee's incredible tidings

Of deeds the Poppy in his dreams hath done.
And still the Poppy dreams; and, dreaming still,

A land of many wonders

An empire wider than the world beholds,
Where nothing fails or fades. To longing eyes
The absent there return, nor even know
That they have been away. There, all alert
As the task'd Genius of Arabian tales,
Desire achieves impossibilities,
Laughing, “That, only? See how soon 'tis done!”
There, wishes whisper, “We have waited long
To run thine errands. Whither shall we hie?
What shall we fetch thee?” There, the crookèd path
Lies straight; and, self-untwined, the tangled skein
Falls smooth and even. The tired traveller fares
Fleet over that immeasurable land
All in a moment, stirring not a foot;
While the chain'd culprit on the donjon stone
In fancied innocence and freedom smiles,
Deaf to the headsman's footfall at the door.

For there the Realm of Consolation teems
With miracles of mercy, by whose aid
Misery to a dream the truth converts,
The dream to a reality. And there

Wherein the Poppy beholdeth his future kingdom.

A whisper'd message hath the Poppy heard,
“Behold a kingdom that awaits a king!
But who is he that can possess it? Men
Not long can live in it. The gods above,
That live for ever, know it not. To them
No need of consolation ever comes.
And thou, who should'st the monarch of it be,
Dost lack the regal robe, the kingly crown.”
“Ay, but the kingly heart I lack not,” laughs
The ambitious dreamer, “nor the regal will!”
And all the while along the fields of sleep
Phantasos comes and goes; and all the while
The Poppy hears a husht voice, murmuring
Words to the wakeful and the wise unknown.

'Twas night, deep night. The sevenfold heavens were thick

The Visible Universe is a system and order of government, whereof the Sun is lord and ruler. But in system and order Absolute Liberty hath no place. This Universe existeth only by obedience to the laws that maintain its existence. Yet neither is any law absolutely true. Therefore is it in the negation of all things that Absolute Liberty seeketh Absolute Truth. To the light that rebel saith “Thou liest!” and to every fact “Thou art a fraud!” And because, for this reason, Absolute Liberty is everywhere repressed, its fierce destructive spirit would fain find in the delirium of intoxication a momentary escape from the tormenting consciousness of an eternal and universal restraint. But there it findeth only Madness; and, allied with Madness, it haunteth the Realm of Reality. There man's place is fixed. But his faith in its foundations is troubled by the influence of that turbulent Spirit; and a fear hath fallen on him from the ever-recurrent echoes of a voice wailing through the Visible Universe, “All is illusion!” Man, therefore, doth also aspire to the attainment of a world wherein Truth and Liberty are absolute. Every path to such a world the gods, its jealous guardians, have beset with snares; and in the grape man findeth only a false guide, gained over to their cause. When the foot of the climbing mortal is on the last step of their divine sanctuary, this false guide throweth off the flattering mask, and leaveth the dupe of its flatteries grovelling on the ground.

With throbbing stars; and thro' them, seeking rest,
Wander'd a restless and extravagant Spirit.
Horsed on a comet's hurricane of fire,
He pass'd the trembling Pleiads, and aflame
His meteoric locks behind him stream'd
Between the Lyre and Crown. “Dull Earth,” he moan'd,
“Of thee I craved but freedom and repose;
Yet ever hast thou mock'd me with the choice,
Expulsion or imprisonment! And thou,
Bright foe whose hate where'er I fly pursues,

Tormenting and intolerable Sun,
Is there from thee no refuge? Once I dwelt
Safe, as I deem'd, within the grape's dim orb;
But happiness on earth is never safe,
And I was only happy. Who betray'd
The asylum of my mystery? Men strove
To wring that mystery from the garrulous grape,
But the Sun fears me; and, lest all I know
To all be known, the grape with fire he fill'd,
Kindling confusion in his brain who blabs
The secret whisper'd to the grape by me.
Me, whom the world proscribes because it dreads
My mockery of its miserable dupes!”
Thus raved, in his rebellious wretchedness,

Then doth the fierce Spirit whose whisper is madness, and whose motion is revolt, fly, a baffled proscript, from the Actual World that fears and rejects it. Passing beyond the bounds of Space and Time, which circumscribe the sphere of that world's influence, it enters the illimitable region of dreams, and wins from the charitable power of Phantasos admittance to an Ideal World where unrestricted truth is found in unrestricted fancy. There, Passion passes into Poësy: and, because the Absolute Law of that world is Absolute Liberty, there at last doth the rebel become the ruler,

And, blind with passion, beat the eternal walls
Of the unshaken Universe in vain,

That rack'd fiend, Phrenoleptos. No escape
Did his immense and sombre prison-house
Vouchsafe the frenzied Spirit, and everywhere
He sought what nowhere could he find; till, far
Beyond the confines of Locality,
Roaming the realms of Phantasos, he spied
The snowy-vested flutter-headed flower
That deem'd itself their monarch. “Ha!” quoth he,
“Not big with gossip as the grape art thou,
Pale visionary! and secure methinks
In thy white bosom will my secret sleep.”
Then stole the world's tired exile, unrebuked,
Within the sweet heart of the Poppy's dreams.
But there the power of Phantasos transform'd
His turbulent passion's unappeasable cry
Into that sacerdotal oracle
Of Consolation's Realm, its listeners call
The “Voice of Poësy. ”To them that voice
Is murmuring still the secret of the world.

And “Me,” it sighs, “the world doth still proscribe,
Knowing that I am Freedom, which it fears;
And men mistrust me still, for I reveal
What they deny, refute what they affirm;
And still my law is not as theirs, and still
They deem me lawless, who have here regain'd
My lost legitimate liberty. Beware,
Poor slaves of Reason, who run after Truth!
Wake her not. She is dreaming. Once awaked,
Truth will be folly. Trouble not her dreams!”

By all her flowery island lawns, and all

Here doth a little legend that is new grow out of a great one that is old, as the fernfrond from the hollow oak.

The nymph-loved hollows of Sicilian hills,
Demeter sought Persephonè. She found
'Twixt lilied Cyane's low banks afloat
The maiden's veil, but of the maiden's fate
No further trace; and from her cry forlorn
The river-nymph fled sighing to the sea.
Seaward the goddess follow'd, swift of foot,

And o'er the dark wind-furrow'd waters, clear
As shines the white wing of a glancing gull,
The flash of her unwetted sandal flew
From shore to shore. Yet, round the orbèd earth

The Quest of Ceres.

All regions searching, news of her lost child
Nowhere to guide her did Demeter get
From gods or mortals. For the Son of Ops
Had husht with gifts his kindred deities,
And clamorous ignorance here, dumb terror there,
Guarded his secret on the lips of men.
Back to her Syracusan bowers she came,
A wandering desolation in whose path
Cornfield, and olive grove, and vineyard shed
Their blighted fruits, and perish'd. Habit's ghost,
Whose ways are backward to a goal that's gone,
Hope's place assumed, and round the loved resorts
Of a departed presence still renew'd
The search by Hope abandon'd. Roaming thus
That dale to Alpheus dear, she reach'd the fount

Within whose chilly depths a home secure
Chaste Artemis to Arethusa gave.
There all day long beside the spring she stood,
Grey, gaunt, and silent as its grotto'd rock,
In a dumb trance. But when the sun was sunk
Her anguish overflow'd. The mighty frame,
Ravaged and wasted by a grief divine,
Quick-rushing storms of sudden pangs convulsed;
And, wide outstretching from her childless breast
Arms like the lean boughs of a blasted oak,
She cried aloud. The eagle, whose lone sleep
No thunder rouses, from his sky-girt crag
Responsive scream'd; the hooting sprites that haunt
Deep mountain glens, a distant host, replied;
And night's innumerable solitudes
Shouted to one another in the dark.
“Persephonè!” she call'd. “Persephonè,”
The woods re-echo'd, and the long ravine.
That many-voiced lament the sobbing fount

Carried down earth's cold veins to it sea-source;
Where round their urns, tired travellers from afar,
Grey river-gods repose, and Tritons stall
Their fin-tail'd steeds in azure caverns. There

Arethusa makes known to Ceres the Rape of Proserpine.

'Twas heard by Arethusa. Naiad she,
And Nereid both; to whom the hoary king
Of all the waters of the world confides
His brother's secrets and his own. For they
Between them rule the deeps, Poseidon those
Of Ocean, Pluto all that Orcus hides.
Moved by Demeter's woe, the pitying nymph
On her pure spring's oracular ripple arose,
And all the wrong by Pluto done reveal'd,
The infernal nuptials, and the ravisht bride.
Then swift, with footsteps fierce as driving storms,

The Daughter of Saturn, to whom her father gave the abundance of the earth, and her mother Vestæ its procreative fire, follows her vanished offspring underground; and the abodes of Death are invaded by the presence of a life-giving Power.

To her dread goal the indignant goddess strode
The mountain tops night-laden. From her frown
The frighten'd dawn shrank, and beneath her foot

The fixt earth shudder'd, as in wrath she reach'd
That cavernous peak whose formidable crest,
Flashing and thundering, reverberates
The roar and glare of her Cyclopian Hearth.
For 'mid the smoking snows of Etna burn
For ever, fuell'd by a Titan's pain,
Unquenchable fires; and the deep-throated gates
Of vaults that plunge to the infernal gods
There on their groaning hinges gape and rock,
Shaken by sulphurous tempests. Her broad brows
With blades of shaggy gold and blossoms blue
The glowing goddess crown'd. A giant branch
Torn from the sinews of a resinous pine
She kindled, and in clanking harness yoked
Fast to her brazen car its dragon team.
Thus fiercely charioted, her strong right hand
Above her waving that huge torch, the while
Loud in her left she shook the rattling reins,
Along the lampless chasms of nether night,

(Wild homes of hurricanes subterranean)
Crown'd with red corn she went, and robed in gems
Of Autumn, gleaming thro' a dayless world.

Between the silent realms of Sleep and Death,

In the depths of Dreamland

Demeter's dragon car for guidance paused
At Dreamland's cloudy portals, whose husht valves
At her approach roll'd open from within;
And thro' those yawning gates, all ears and eyes,
The blades and blossoms, garlanding the brows
Of the great sunburnt goddess, peep'd alert.
Deep in an evening-lighted land, that sloped
By many an undulous declivity
Of purple fold and emerald dimple, down
From summits girt with golden clouds asleep
In still abysms of azure air, to shores
Of citied promontories crown'd with towers
And gleaming ramparts acropolitan
Mirror'd in luminous waters, all alone

Upon a radiant eminence reclined
The kingly Poppy. Of larger growth he look'd

The Poppy reposes,

Than his Sicilian kindred; sweeter light
Than streams from earthly suns illumined all
His snowy vesture; and above him stoop'd
Weird Phantasos, whose procreant sorceries
Fill'd, and then emptied, and then fill'd again
With visionary images of life
That fervid stillness. Of the god's breath born,

Where Creative Fancy revels

Up the high downs with spear and pennon sprang
Resplendent armies; thick the bays beneath
With masts in thousands bristled; and o'er the plank'd
Wet wharfage merchants, mariners, and slaves
Came swarming fast. Yet silent as the march

In silence

Of sculpture round some monumental frieze,
The busy visions teem'd. Thro' column'd streets
Went festal crowds that, to the temples trooping,
Clash'd cymbals from whose kiss there came no sound;

And, thridding sacred groves, the choral dance
With rhythmic footstep heaved to flutes unheard.
Anon, life's mimic pageant disappear'd,

And solitude: all its creations being in itself and for itself alone.

And o'er the re-establisht solitude
Down-gazing, in the shadow of himself,
Upon a peak in heaven a dusky god
Sat sombre. One big star above him burn'd,
And in the land below to worship him
Was neither man nor beast. Creating thus
And thus dissolving worlds at every breath,
To charm the darling of Persephonè,
Phantasos hover'd o'er the halcyon couch
Of the deep-dreaming Poppy. And there, enwrapt
By wonders, with a god to wait on him,
But lost to earth and earth's realities,
Lost to his native fields and natural life,
Again the cornflowers and the corn beheld

By the children of the Actual World the pupil of Phantasos is regarded as the slave of pernicious illusions; and the Corn would fain reclaim the Poppy.

Their changed companion of the days of old.

Sadly they hail'd him from afar. “Return,
Stray'd child of Nature! To thy natural world
Return, ere yet irrevocably lost
In those vainglorious visions that beget
The passion of the impossible!” they cried.
And while the dragon chariot roll'd away
Darkling, and Dreamland's gates behind it closed,
Still linger'd the importunate appeal.
“Hark, 'tis thy mother's children call thee! Home
With us, thy kindred, hers and ours again!”
No echo answer'd it. But as where'er,
Incongruously with the dawn's rebuke,
Thro' some shut house of revel a wakeful ray

Whose faith in the sufficiency of the ideal life is shaken by sudden contact with realities, and the unexpected disapproval of those to whom reality is the only known measure of truth.

Of daylight wanders, all the flaring lamps
Burn sallow, and the panting dance appears
Defaced and haggard, so thro' Dreamland went
The horror of a disconcerting change;
A troubled consciousness of something miss'd,

A doubt of what remain'd. And from that hour
The kingdom of the Poppy was confused.

The Batwing'd God came flitting thro' the halls

Morpheus explains to Proserpine how mortals are impelled, by the necessity of their nature, towards the realization of ideas; and how, if thwarted in that impulse, they pine for enjoyments unpossessed, in the midst of possessions unenjoyed.

Of Hades. He approach'd Persephonè,
And said, “Fair Queen, I warn'd thee!” “But what fails
His measureless felicity?” she ask'd.
“Hath he not all I wish'd him, the repose
The glory, and the gladness of a god?”
“Ay,” said the Son of Hypnos, “these he hath,
But in dreams only; and a mortal, he.
Hence this disorder. Heavy as despair
Reality on mortal nature weighs.
Amid the beauties and beatitudes
Of his unreal kingdom, he recalls
His waking life, his little rural home,
The narrow field where he was born, the air
He breathed on earth in common with his kind;

And thus remembrance ruins his content,
Marring its grace with incongruities.”
Again she question'd him. “Since when the change?”
And Morpheus answer'd, “When to these dark realms
Thy mother came, her brows were garlanded
With corn and cornflowers from the furrow'd glebe
Whose harvests her Trinacrian barns enrich.
By the dim borders where with thine and mine
My brother's kingdom marches, halt she made,
Uncertain, craving guidance at the gates
Of Dreamland's citadel. For Phantasos

To the unseen world the dead go by many ways, but they return by none; and from them there is no report of it. For the living all ways to it lie through the realm of Phantasos, whose ways are never the same. Among the guides he appoints for the conduct of travellers entering his dominion in search of it, are Faith, Hope, Fear, and Curiosity. Each guide conducts the seeker by a different road; each road takes him in a different direction; and which is the right one, who can say? For the geography of that world is written only by those who have never reached it.

At those husht gates hath minions on the watch
To proffer lone wayfarers phatom charts
Of whatsoever lands unseen they seek;
And wingèd visions that flit on before,
Illumining the vast and shadowy void

With beacon lights, he lends them. Dreamland oped
At her approach, disclosing Mekon's realm,
And all its wonders. There, when him once more
Amazed they met, the corn and cornflowers hail'd
Their old companion. O'er the fair deceits
Of Phantasos a breath their presence breathed
Of natural life, that from those golden lies
The glory for a moment chased away.
They gone, the old illusion reassumed
The power to charm, but from its charm was pass'd
The power to satisfy; and, unappeased,
The dreamer pines to realize his dream;
For now the pure impersonal delight
First felt in dreaming it, he feels no more.”
“Alas,” the Queen of Hades cried, “undone
Is Mekon's realm! From torment what can save
The self-tormented?” “Let the ingrate go,
Nor Fate,” said Morpheus, “thwart! If wise she be,
I know not, but I know that she is strong,

And weak thy favourite. What, if his return
To Earth she wills? When thine her will forbade,
Did not the tasting of a single seed
Of that Elysian fruit, she snared thee with,
Suffice her froward purpose to defeat
The fiat wrung from Zeus?” “To earth, alas,”
The goddess answer'd, “who of mortal source
From Death's dominion can return alive?”
“From Death's dominion,” Morpheus murmur'd, “none.
But Death o'er Dreamland hath no empery. There,
Where Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, in one confused
Mad welter of wild incongruities
Are intermutual, and nothing true,
All things are possible.” Persephonè
Was troubled. “Summon Phantasos!” she sigh'd.
But he, whose succourable power responds
To sighs and wishes swifter than swift speech
With thought keeps pace, ere Morpheus could reply,

Was bending o'er her, radiant as a star.
“Mourn not!” he said. “If for his Mother Earth

Phantasos hath found his messenger.

The Earth-born pines, from her maternal breast
It skills not to withhold him. But this change,
By me foreseen, my purpose favours. Long
On earth an earthly messenger I sought,
None finding worthy of my vast design.
Now, all that fail'd me in this flower is found;
A mortal fitted to receive, preserve,
And with a boundless prodigality
Impart to mortals, an immortal gift.
On Mekon is my mystic mandate laid,
And his henceforth the mission to reveal
The Realm of Consolation to a race
Else irremediably miserable.
For him lament not! To his parent soil
My wing shall waft him, there to roam or rest
Till, from a world of subjugated woes
And pacified repinings, he hath won

The goodly kingdom he aspires to rule.”
No answer biding, sudden as he came
The fitful god departed. And anon
The Poppy reappear'd upon the earth.

The Poppy rejoins his earthly kindred. But in the crowd around him he is alone; his vast ambition unappeased, his goodly gifts unrecognized Dwelling unnoticed amongst those who, though closest to him, are furthest from the knowledge of what he is, he doth yet know himself to be a king. But only by the aid of that potent discontent which is the special attribute of Humanity, can he hope to gain possession of his kingdom.

One morn he woke, and wondering found himself
Back in his native field, a common flower.
“O is it I,” he mused, “whose flimsy coat
The wind thus flutters? mine, this heavy head,
And cringing neck, that hang beneath the weight
Of worlds unrealized? Within me pent,
Is glowing unemploy'd a power divine
To gladden others. But the blissful gods,
Not having aught to wish for, scorn my gift,
Wish-granting dreams. The flowers (my kin no more!)
Are self-sufficing as the gods themselves;
Beauty they lack not, and 'tis all they need.

The birds from heaven, the beasts from earth, demand
No gift but what from heaven and earth they get.
But man? Insatiable mortal, made
Conscious of immortality, in thee
Methinks I see my promised kingdom! Men,
My future subjects! I have watch'd you pass,
Despondent, confident, by hope impell'd,
By fear pursued, the sport of all desires,
All wants, all whims, all passions; and, reveal'd
In every look of your importunate eyes,
I recognized a pilgrim to my realm.
Yet all unheeded still you pass me by,

And meanwhile, being without the insignia of sovereignty, his kinghood is unrecognized by his destined subjects.

For 'tis appearances, and these alone,
That men confide in. O for robe and crown!
Mankind would in my kingdom then believe,
Seeing in me the semblance of a king.”
Poor crownless monarch of a realm denied,
Lowly he lived among the crowded corn
An inconspicuous life, or drooping roam'd

By many a dusty roadside unremark'd.
But when the wishful hour of sunset came,
Along the solitary fields he sigh'd,
“O thou who wast before the worlds began,

He appealeth for aid to that invisible but present source of power, whence have issued all the visible manifestations of it. For this all-pervading potency feedeth the fountains of the sun with fire, and the veins of the earth with life, and thereby even the souls of men with thought. There cometh, in answer to the prayer of the Poppy, a whisper out of the West upon the wings of the Evening Wind.

Thou, whose primordial potency uprear'd
The vast pavilions of the universe,
And call'd the stars from firmamental deeps
Sun-breeding glory-bearing source of all,
Infinite Æther, hear me, and give help!”
Obedient to the Power he had invoked,
Fine tremours search'd the lull'd air's breathless orb,
And loosed from sleep the lightest wind of those
That, moth-like, o'er rose-petall'd paths pursue
With frolic wing their desultory flight.
Over the smooth translucent pools impell'd,
A roughening darkness tremulously ran;
The wheatfields waved; and a sweet voice enquired,
“Of me what wilt thou?” “Regal robe and crown!”

The Poppy answer'd, “for a king am I.”
“Fool,” sigh'd Favonius, “fond ambitious fool!
The crown, a golden prison, incarcerates care
In brows beneath it pent, and heavily hangs
The blood-stain'd purple robe of royal power
About the loaded shoulders it adorns.
Such burdens, little one, thou couldst not bear.”
“Ill thou divinest,” the proud suppliant said,

The Poppy urgeth his claim to the crown.

“What force immeasurable in me resides.
Fear not to aid me!” “Be it as thou wilt!”
Reproachfully that sighing voice replied.
“The stern Fates punish the presumptuous

He is warned by Favonius of the perilous character of the gifts he craves. But in vain.

By granting their desires. Not mine the gifts
Thou cravest. All my gifts are gifts of peace.
The foresight of the gods hath fixt the crown
Upon the inaccessible pinnacles
Of mighty mountains, and the purple plunged
Deep underneath unfathomable seas.
He that can bring thee what thy pride hath craved

Is the dread Storm-Wind that disturbs the deeps,
And smites the summits. Him I will invoke.

And Favonius invoketh the Storm Kings.

Prepare thee to receive him when he comes!
His voice is terrible, and his embrace
Crushes what it caresses. Thou art warn'd.”
Then, on his light wing soaring, the sweet Son
Of starry Night and starless Erebus
Glided along the Ocean's azure floor,
And roused the Petrel sleeping on the wave.
“Bird of the Storm, awake!” he cried, “thine hour
Approaches. Where is Khamsin?” “Far away,

The dry wind of the great desert. Him the Arabs call Khamsin; that is to say, the Fifty fold. For he cometh before, and he followeth after the Spring Equinox; and the period of his power waxeth till the Sun hath entered into Ares, and waneth when the Sun hath left the Ram; and two score and ten are the days thereof. And by the sand that he driveth eastward Sahara is enlarged, and Ægypt menaced.

Hid,” said the Storm-Bird, “in the Nubian waste.”
“Go seek him, bird, and bid him hither bring
The emblems of imperial power!” “For whom?”
“A mortal.” “Khamsin to a mortal's call
No response deigns. His march hath overwhelm'd
Memphis and Thebes, and to the Pyramids

Close have his tawny cohorts laid their siege:
For all the Orient he hath sworn to give
To his beloved Sahara. Not to serve
The ambition of a mortal, Khamsin roams
Ægypt, and Æthiopia, and the lone
Arabian desert, and the Libyan wilds.”
“Call, then, Sirocco!” “He is sleeping still,”

Sirocco sleepeth in the soft chambers of the South; and when he waketh the deathbell tolls

The Petrel answer'd, “where he loves to rest
In a white sea-girt city of the South
Under a purple promontory. There,
Above his sallow couch a reeky cloud
Its poison-dropping canopy suspends;
And in his husht embrace, by slaughterous feast
To leaden slumber lull'd, about him clings
His pale bride, Pestilence. Awake them not!”
“Canst thou not bear a message to Simoom?”

Simoom hath! reared his palaces above the tombs of Persian kings. At his approach the lion hideth in his lair, and the camel croucheth, and the camel-driver commendeth his soul unto Allah.

“Simoom at sunset in Persepolis
High revel holds, and round his blood-red throne

The lions tremble. But beyond the realms
Of Persia and of Araby his power
Prevails not, nor beyond the waves my wing;
Therefore to him no messenger am I.”
“How fares Harmattan?” “On the scorch'd sea-shores

Harmattan haunteth the shores of Guinea. He is dry and cold; and wherever he passeth, the grass of the field and the leaf of the forest are whitened, as by a leprosy, beneath the dust of his chariot wheels, But east and west, and north and south, in calm or storm, as his humour changeth, Monsoon roameth the vast waters of the Indian Ocean. Beneath the palms of Malabar a dusky Peri rocked his giant cradle, and on the rosy shores of Coromandel shining clouds have spread the couch of his repose. Ever, when the Sun is in the southern heaven, Monsoon marcheth north and east; and when the Sun is in the northern heaven, he hasteneth south and west. For of him to the feet of Himalay, laden with Ocean-plunder from the rifled treasuries of Ormuz and the isles that are rich in spice.

He builds in Guinea travelling towers of dust
To assail the Sun, his ancient enemy.
Shrouded and sudden as a glaring ghost,
Harmattan pass'd me, and I saw no more.”
“Monsoon is in this season idle. Say,
Hast thou not met him on the road to Ind?”
The Petrel panted, shiver'd, and replied,
“The sun had bared the brows of Himalay,
And from Thibet's parch'd plain the tepid air
Rose higher than hath ever soar'd the roc.
Then, by the Void allured, Monsoon arose.

In deluge from the rainy deep he rush'd
Exultant, and beneath his dripping wing
All Hindustan was darken'd, till he reach'd
The Realm of the Five Rivers. Thence, sublime
Along the lonely Asian glaciers, borne
On sable clouds, whose swollen darkness flew,
Scourged white by whips of fire, he pass'd away
To his Uranian halls. And there he waits
To speed the downfall of the avalanche.”
“What of Typhoon?” The Petrel rose and scream'd,
“Look yonder at Orion, and beware!
Typhoon is coming. Way for King Typhoon!”
Then, lashing with her sharp wing the white crests
Of the roused waves, the Prophetess of Storm

The coming of King Typhoon. Who cometh with robe and crown from the sultry seas of Cathay;

Fled fast before the coming of her lord.
Over the rocking seas and ravaged lands,
In fulgent state, with trump sonorous, march'd
Typhoon's insulting majesty. The tops
Of tallest forests underneath him crouch'd,

And crack'd, and trembled like the grass o' the field.
Aloft he brandish'd in his livid grasp
The streaming rags of the rent thunder-clouds,
And shrill he sang, “Both robe and crown I bring!

And, having the symbols of power,

The crown of terror, and the robe of wrath,
A spoil'd world's gold and purple! But for whom?
Where is the giant destin'd to support
This weight of glory?” A faint infant voice
Lisp'd eager, “He is here, and I am he!”
Low stoop'd Typhoon, and search'd long while the ground.
“Thou! Who art thou, pert pygmy?” “One that claims
For what is strongest upon earth—Desire,
The robe and crown,” that lisping voice replied,
And loud and long the savage Storm-King laugh'd.

Despiseth the power of him that hath them not.

“Wretched enough is Royalty,” he growl'd,
“But 'tis not yet ridiculous. Empty pate,
Take that for thine ambition!” And he flung

The Poppy upon the flint. But its small root,
Fast as an anchor fixt, the shock withstood
Of him who shatters in his boisterous sport
Great Carthaginian triremes, and the tall
Phœnician galleys, as a wassailer strews
With broken cups and wine-flasks the drench'd floor
Of his disorder'd palace. “Saucy weed!”
Mutter'd Typhoon, “who granted thee the strength
Thy miserable aspect so belies?”
“'Tis Phantasos,” the Poppy said. “Behold!

Nevertheless the Poppy, reasserting his claim to the crown, doth justify the same, undaunted by the wrath of Typhoon;

Not empty, as thou deemest, is my head.
Seest thou these lucid beads—in each, a world
Of beauty, sweetness, and sublimity?
These are my treasures. And as they in me
Are living now, so ages hence in them
Shall I be living. Thou dost boast of realms
Made deserts by the desolating breath
Of thy dread nostril; but not all thy power

He being,

Can overthrow the kingdom I command.

Down from the rockt mast's windy rigging hurl

by right divine, Lord Paramount of the Kingdom of Consolation.

The sleeping seaman to his ocean grave,
And in the fearful moment of his fall
He will have deem'd that him some wing divine
Is bearing to the bosom of the gods.
I call back smiles to the sad lips of her
Whom thou hast widow'd in the midnight storm.
Mine is in all the world the sole domain
Death cannot enter. Kings my subjects be,
And in my lap they cast their cares away.
I gather up the fallen leaves of life,
And in a moment make them green again.
I breathe upon the worn-out hours of time,
And round the paths of unarisen suns
My breath sustains their renovated flight.”

But Material, jealous of Ideal Force, would banish to Heaven the dreams of Earth;

Resentfully the sullen answer hiss'd:
“If such thy power, if such indeed thy gifts,
Rashly hast thou reveal'd them. Canst thou deem
That I, the wandering soul of him who slew

Osiris, I whose dauntless pride hath toss'd,
Untamed by anguish, unsubdued by fire,
On Etna's burning bed, will leave to men
The meek enjoyment of what far transcends
The bliss I grudge the gods? Thy vanity
Hath doom'd thee to destruction!” At the word,

And the Poppy is wounded and taken captive.

The Titan Storm-King, terrible Typhoon,
Sprang with a shout on that pale King of Dreams,
And strangled him, and twisted off his head,
And with the trophy thro' the starr'd abyss
Soar'd up into the solitudes of space,
Beyond the watch-fires of the Universe.
There, thro' the lone translucent void, Typhoon
Scatter'd the silver seeds of golden dreams.
Where'er they fell, from flowers to stars they turn'd,
And in that pure ethereal field put forth
A multitude of pallid radiances,
By wondering mortals call'd “The Milky Way.”
But one of them, one seedling of a dream,

That in its little germ perchance contain'd

Aided by Favonius, and carried like Anchises by his offspring, he escapeth from his captor, bearing with him the saved secret of his power.

Undream'd-of dreamlands, on the way was lost
Twixt earth and heaven. Favonius all this while,
Rockt as a cradled infant in the robe
Of the rough Storm-King, watch'd the whirling seeds.
But he, the patron of the hopes of earth,
Pitied their floral prophet's desperate plight,
And from the turgid mantle of Typhoon
Caught in his fragrant bosom, as it fell,
This wandering grain. There was a rocky isle

Which, with good counsel to the discomfited aspirant, Favonius conceals among the rocks of an uninhabited island;

Where no man dwelt, and whither nothing came
But winds, and birds, and the storm-billow'd waves
Of a wild sea. Favonius, hovering here,
Whisper'd, “Last germ of an ideal world
Rejected by the mighty, wait in hope
Thy promised hour! The gifts thou didst demand
I could not give thee. But I give thee now
A gift the punctual Destinies deny
To sceptred kings—illimitable time!

From wistful slumber, oft as spring returns,
My breath shall wake thee to a life renew'd;
And thou, survivor of a thousand storms,
Shalt greet a thousand summers with the smile
Of an invincibly re-orient bloom.
Never, child, never will the hands that grasp
The globe and sceptre yield thee crown or robe!
The gold is for the great, for the supreme
The purple. Neither Pomp nor Glory grant
To thee their emblems. But the little hand
Of Childhood opens lightly, and its gifts
Are tendernesses that are given ungrudged.
Seek, then, poor child, from other children seek
What Childhood gives—its rosy-mantled mirth,
Its diadem of innocent delight,
Such robe and crown as never king yet wore!”
And lightly, softly, as her sleeping babe
Safe to its shelter'd cot a mother bears,
Earthward that orphan seed Favonius wafted,

And laid it in the crevice of a crag.
Tenaciously the grateful crag's stout heart

And there, sown by a fleeting hope in a barren soil, the rescued germ of worlds unborn puts forth a dubious blossom.

Conceal'd the rescued treasure; and anon
To the thin root that from it crept and craved,
Feeling about for nurture and support,
Three gifts vouchsafed—(the crag's own attributes)
Loftiness, loneliness, and steadfastness.
So still the Poppy dream'd; and still his dreams
Were of an empire wider than the world,
A royal mantle, and a kingly crown.
And still the ages came, the ages went;
But him they brought no grander gifts than those
The guardian rock had given him. All alone,
With neither robe nor crown nor kingdom, he,

Of that I shall have also cause to speak.—Horatio.

Dreaming of kingdom crown and robe to come,
Awaited the fulfilment of his dream.