The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

So, from the chains of love and toil and gold,
The love of wife and maid,—
All human ties had they cast loose,—unrolled
The fluttering sails and weighed

Swift anchor, steering tow'rd the dying day,
Hope in their hearts most high
That they should win the charm that therein lay
For men's sake, ere to die

The angel bade them. And the high heart fell
Not in them, though the wind
Blew fresh and swift for many a day, the swell
Ran pearled the keel behind,

Along the emerald, and the golden dawn
Sank ever sad and pale
Into the westering distance and was gone,
Whenas the dew did fail;

And nothing met their vision, save the streaks
Of gold and crimson, wound
About the westward, when the dead day's cheeks
Flushed with the sun, that drowned

His glory sullenly in amber foam,
And the dim mists that lay
Along the sapphire marges of the dome
Of heaven, in the gray

103

Of the pale dawning, and the narrowing wheel
Of sea-birds round the sail
And silver fish that played about the keel,
With many a golden scale

And fin of turquoise glancing through the spray:
But never the fair line
Of green and golden shores, the long array
Of palaces divine,

That held the dream of their long venturings,
Rose in the changeful West;
But still the ship sped with its silver wings
Over the fretted crest

Of the slow ripple; still the sea was green
And calm on every side
And the swift course unto their vision keen
Brought but the weary wide

Gray circle bounded by the silver foam;
And still they looked and hoped
For the fair land where the true joy had home
For which they sighed and groped

Amid the mirk of living. Ever pale
And paler grew the skies
And less refulgent in its crimson mail
The hour when the day dies:

And every day the dawn was tenderer
And sadder in its white
And rosy pudency; and still the stir
Of the sad winds of night

Crept closelier on the noontide, till the day
Was hardly much more glad
Than the pale night and morning was as gray
As when the hours are sad

104

With stormy twilight. So at last they came
When, in the dreaming West,
The scarlet last of sunset's fading flame
Lay on the billows' breast

Still climbing skyward, as it were to catch
The day's last fluttering sigh—
In sight of a fair city, that did match
The tender amethyst sky,

Pale purple with the setting. Very fair
And lucent were the walls;
And in the evening the enchanted hair
Of some pale star, that falls

From azure heights of mystery, did seem
To compass it about
And girdle it with glamours of a dream,
Webs of desire and doubt:

So that for those sweet clinging veils of mist,
Amber and vaporous,
One might but faintly note the amethyst
And jewels of the house,

That rose with many a stately battlement
Out of the pulsing sea,
And could but dimly trace the forms that went,
Most fair and sad to see,

About the silver highways and the quays
Of gold and chrysoprase,
Tender and tristful as the shapes one sees,
In some sweet autumn haze,

Flit, in the gloaming, through the enchanted air;
When there is none to know,
Save some pale poet, that may never dare
To tell the lovely woe,

105

The witching ecstasy of sad delight
He has seen pictured there
Upon the canvas of the lingering light,
Under the evening air.

But they that sailed in that enchanted ship,
No whit cast down, drew sail
And came to where the amber-polished lip
Of the gold shore grew pale

Under the kisses of the purpled sea:
And there they landed all;
And wandering inward through the blazonry
Of portico and hall,

They came to where the soul of sadness sat,
Throned in a woman's form—
Most holy and most lovely—and forgat
In her sweet sight the worm

Of yearning that had gnawed their hearts so long
And knew at last,
From her low whispers and the sad sea's song,
That thither had Life past

As to its goal-point: for the golden thing,
That they had lacked on earth,
Was not (as they had deemed) the god rose-wing
Of gladness and of mirth—

The god of vine-and-ivy-trellised brow
And sunny orient eyes—
For he doth haunt men ever, did they know
But to be linnet-wise:

But that best gift of the Immortal Ones,
That men have lost for aye;
The pure sweet sadness that we know but once,
And then wepassa way:

106

The mingled love and pain we Sorrow call,
There did it dwell alone,
The tender godlike pain once known to all,
Now but to poets known.

There sit they through the long unwearying years,
At that fair lady's knees,
Lulled by the ripple of her songs and tears
And the sweet sighful breeze

Into forgetting of the things of life
And the weird shapes that fleet
Across its stage of mingled dole and strife;
For sorrow is so sweet,

There is no gladness that may equal it
Nor any charm of bliss.
And fain would I from the pale seekers wit
Which way the steering is

That may, with helm and sail and oar pursued,
Bring me where she doth dwell,
The lovely lady of that solitude.
Is there no one can tell?