 | Poems |  |
vii
To my Mother
If faultless love demand a faultless lay,
To faultless love what tribute can I pay?
And yet, to whom, the while my voice may reach
Thine ear, that gladdened at my earliest speech,
Should I present my Song, but thee alone,
That love for all its errors may atone?
To faultless love what tribute can I pay?
And yet, to whom, the while my voice may reach
Thine ear, that gladdened at my earliest speech,
Should I present my Song, but thee alone,
That love for all its errors may atone?
'Twas kneeling at thy feet, for good or ill
I suffered poetry's mysterious thrill;
There, from thy soft melodious voice, I caught
The music of the Hebrew minstrel's thought:
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need;
“In pastures green his flocks securely feed,
“By quiet pools my footsteps he shall lead.”
I suffered poetry's mysterious thrill;
There, from thy soft melodious voice, I caught
The music of the Hebrew minstrel's thought:
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need;
“In pastures green his flocks securely feed,
“By quiet pools my footsteps he shall lead.”
And well I know, if prayer may aught avail,
No word of that fond prophecy can fail;
Or if solicitude may access gain
To Happy Island or Elysian Plain,
When all my wanderings on the hills are past,
To safe enclosure I shall win at last!
No word of that fond prophecy can fail;
Or if solicitude may access gain
To Happy Island or Elysian Plain,
When all my wanderings on the hills are past,
To safe enclosure I shall win at last!
What marvel if that Psalm, for thy dear sake,
Attends me, dove-like, as my way I take?
What marvel if to thee my heart assign
The first low breathings of the Breath divine?
Not by the inward ear is only heard
The splendid mode, the grand majestic word:
Thy voice, the very echo of thy heart,
Blends and transcends the eloquence of Art!
Attends me, dove-like, as my way I take?
What marvel if to thee my heart assign
The first low breathings of the Breath divine?
viii
The splendid mode, the grand majestic word:
Thy voice, the very echo of thy heart,
Blends and transcends the eloquence of Art!
So, if the impulse, which thy teaching gave,
Has chafed, impatient, like the river wave
Against the boulders that divide its course,
Yet hold it blameless, sprung from blameless source!
Rejoicing, if the stream, in vain denied
Impetuous passage, flow with fuller tide,
And sweep away the piled, impeding stones,
Where to this hour the mangled current moans!
Has chafed, impatient, like the river wave
Against the boulders that divide its course,
Yet hold it blameless, sprung from blameless source!
Rejoicing, if the stream, in vain denied
Impetuous passage, flow with fuller tide,
And sweep away the piled, impeding stones,
Where to this hour the mangled current moans!
Imagination, counted but a weed,
Obscurely struggles from its buried seed,
And pushing patiently through narrow rifts
Its little life toward the sunshine lifts;
How happy, if expectant Art perceives
The first pale promise of its tender leaves,
And straight transplants it, as a root most rare,
To more congenial soil and tempered air,
Before the World has crushed with lumbering wheel
Its signal to the sky, its lone appeal.
Obscurely struggles from its buried seed,
And pushing patiently through narrow rifts
Its little life toward the sunshine lifts;
How happy, if expectant Art perceives
The first pale promise of its tender leaves,
And straight transplants it, as a root most rare,
To more congenial soil and tempered air,
Before the World has crushed with lumbering wheel
Its signal to the sky, its lone appeal.
To common minds Imagination seems
The mock creator of a world of dreams,
And only bartered value, sold or bought,
The satisfying food for human thought;
They know her not the sole celestial dower
That raises Man above the temporal power
Of popularity and lust of place
And earns him glimpses of celestial grace!
The mock creator of a world of dreams,
And only bartered value, sold or bought,
The satisfying food for human thought;
They know her not the sole celestial dower
That raises Man above the temporal power
Of popularity and lust of place
And earns him glimpses of celestial grace!
ix
This, if the heart be pure and strong the hands,
The crypt-like hut of human life expands;
The walls recede, the roof becomes a dome,
And earth is seen a temple, not a home!
For this was Spenser's magic; this the might
That turned our Milton's darkness into light;
This ministered to Goldsmith's loneliest hour,
And sunned the heart of Shelley into flower:
Sweet influences! Pilgrims, to and fro
Ranging the world, and singing as they go;
Till men, like cattle, captive to the grass,
Raise their slow heads to hear them, when they pass.
If these had not been truant from the school
Of law and physic, or the merchant's stool,
If these, and comrades of their craft, were mute,
Man would be less and nearer to the brute.
The crypt-like hut of human life expands;
The walls recede, the roof becomes a dome,
And earth is seen a temple, not a home!
For this was Spenser's magic; this the might
That turned our Milton's darkness into light;
This ministered to Goldsmith's loneliest hour,
And sunned the heart of Shelley into flower:
Sweet influences! Pilgrims, to and fro
Ranging the world, and singing as they go;
Till men, like cattle, captive to the grass,
Raise their slow heads to hear them, when they pass.
If these had not been truant from the school
Of law and physic, or the merchant's stool,
If these, and comrades of their craft, were mute,
Man would be less and nearer to the brute.
Take, then, my offering, mother, reconciled
To this innate presumption of thy child!
Though need to sing imperatively led
His feet o'er duty's lowland far to tread,
He climbs with souls that do not fear to slip,
He craves their love and claims their fellowship,—
Not ill-contented, as he onward wends,
Though many are his judges, few his friends,
If from the pastures by the river fount
One voice belovèd to the wanderer mount,
That taught him when a child the simple creed,
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need.”
To this innate presumption of thy child!
Though need to sing imperatively led
His feet o'er duty's lowland far to tread,
He climbs with souls that do not fear to slip,
He craves their love and claims their fellowship,—
Not ill-contented, as he onward wends,
Though many are his judges, few his friends,
If from the pastures by the river fount
One voice belovèd to the wanderer mount,
That taught him when a child the simple creed,
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need.”
1895.
2
An Essay in a Brief Model
ARGUMENT
Humanity, having discarded his assumed grandeur, laments life and invokes death. Religion hastens to comfort him and declares that he is suffering the punishment of sin. Humanity objects that his affliction far outweighs his wickedness. His friend maintains that even the most blameless life is full of sin in the sight of God. To this Humanity answers that, in that case, sin is unavoidable and continued pardon impossible. Religion still asserts that pain is an invitation to seek peace in repentance. The sufferer, however, feels that nothing can bring him peace but an explanation of the justice and design of introducing sin and pain into the world. Religion deprecates his pride and urges him, instead of vexing his soul with inscrutable mysteries, to profit by the truths that have been revealed. But Humanity exclaims that he has always been the proper object of Revelation, and that as at the beginning he was enlightened by the Fall, he now yearns for a second illumination, even at the cost of another curse. Religion rejoins that happiness can only be attained by submission to the will of God, and not by knowledge of his design, which has been purposely placed beyond Man's reach. But Humanity, by virtue of his divine ancestry and participation with the divine nature, knows of a surety that all disingenuousness, however excellent its motive, is hateful to God. He therefore boldly confesses his belief that pain cannot be divided into separate kinds; but that it is a homogeneous evil, for which God (that is to say, the God of Religion) must be responsible. He taxes Religion with a secret inclination to think as he does, and taunts him with not daring to say so openly. For himself he boasts a far greater and nobler faith. He regards the Cosmos as a true reflection of the divine nature, but so disintegrated in its passage through the mind of Man, as to present phenomena, to whose corresponding qualities in the Godhead there is no remaining clue. Nevertheless, nothing will induce him to pretend that even this view destroys God's apparent responsibility for the relative construction of Mind and World that has resulted in the phenomena of sin and pain; and he again bitterly deplores his ignorance. Whereupon Religion, seeing that his friend persists in impious and unrepentant curiosity, after a final adjuration to rebel no more against the august disposals of Providence, reluctantly leaves him to his impenitence; but promises to return, whenever Humanity may require his ghostly comfort.
3
“Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem
too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind
at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing. hath
liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and
hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the
two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and
Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model!
or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be
kept, or nature to be followed, which in them that know
art and use judgment is no transgression but an enriching
of art.”
The Reason of Church Government.—Milton.
Ελαφρον οστις πηματων εξω ποδα
εχει παραινειν νουθετειν τε τον κακως
πρασσοντ': εγω δε ταυθ' απαντ' ηπισταμην.
Aeschylus.—Prometheus Vinctus (263—265)
εχει παραινειν νουθετειν τε τον κακως
πρασσοντ': εγω δε ταυθ' απαντ' ηπισταμην.
Aeschylus.—Prometheus Vinctus (263—265)
Without the gate, where ruinous Ages heap
Their ashes, and the World casts forth her waste,
Humanity lay prone; from sole to crown
Smitten with leprous blains; defiled with tears,
And racked with throes of lamentable thought.
Long had he striven with Nature; much achieved;
First wresting from her clenched, reluctant hand
The flock, the vineyard, and the harvest field;
Then cities, with their barter and exchange,
4
Their ordinance and law 'twixt man and man;
And last, fierce forces, tortured to betray
Such secrets as a wizard hardly spies
In crystal dream, or dreaming, when he wakes
Derides exulting, saner than his dream,—
Purveyors, these, of luxury, the pomp
Of purple and fine linen, and the forms
Of sensuous harmony in sight or sound;
Artificers of all the mingled means
Of large dominion, whether virtue, vice,
Or law or license; affluent Afreets,
Slaves of the lamp of intellectual lust.
But now prosperity and pride were past;
Not like a joy renounced, that still we love,
But like a joy discarded, that we loathe.
His vines brought forth the drunkard, and the babe
Whose veins with venomous infection run
Of villainous impulse from its birth; his corn
Became as manna, surfeiting the rich,
Beyond the favoured precincts rarely strewn;
Around his isles of civic opulence foamed
Amarous fringes of neglected lives;
And more and more the shambles fed the feast.
Nor utmost skill, that rode upon the sun,
Or reined the sinuous lightning, could avail
To bear Love's message to the central cell
Of mammon's brain; but ministered the more
By subtler instruments to subtler need
Of reckless arrogance and ruthless greed.
Therefore Humanity had shed his robes,
The gaudy veils and trappings of disease,
5
As if a butterfly should cast her wings
And turn, reversely, to a shrouded worm.
“Here let me lie,” he said within himself,
“Unto the Doom; a figure set aside,
Till God compute the fluxion of the World.”
To him repaired (for rumour ran abroad)
Religion, most loquacious of his friends
And close companion of his youth; o'erfraught
With consolation, like a leathern bottle
Swollen with the ripening vintage of the South;
Yet watched that ruined greatness, overawed,
In silence, all day long; nor dared affront
The dignity of woe with puppet words;
For grief's great stature dwarfs the loftiest theme.
Now sink the winds; the gorgeous track of eve
Is flooded o'er with darkness' flowing tide;
Now wearily turns tired Earth from taskful Day
And nestling in the lap of Night, who croons
Low lullabies of unrecorded song,
Babbles to the dangling stars. Love's opal, first,
Clasped on the Virgin's brow; conjunction strange!
Arcturus next, pre-eminently bright;
And pale Capella, Northern ocean's pearl,
Opposing red Antares; then Altair,
Vega, uncertain Spica, Regulus;
Each in his constellation high embossed;
And many a kin-born gem. The sufferer feels
Sweet influence fall, forceful to loose the voice
Even of ungarrulous grief; and half reclined
On his vile pallet, vehemently complains:—
“Where is the consummation of my birth?
Or what interpretation of design
Did my conception carry? All my years
Accommodate distress; for wisdom blights
The flower of gladness, not the seed of grief,
And larger knowledge breeds not fewer lusts,
But more, and more importunate.
Is flooded o'er with darkness' flowing tide;
Now wearily turns tired Earth from taskful Day
And nestling in the lap of Night, who croons
Low lullabies of unrecorded song,
Babbles to the dangling stars. Love's opal, first,
Clasped on the Virgin's brow; conjunction strange!
Arcturus next, pre-eminently bright;
And pale Capella, Northern ocean's pearl,
Opposing red Antares; then Altair,
Vega, uncertain Spica, Regulus;
Each in his constellation high embossed;
And many a kin-born gem. The sufferer feels
Sweet influence fall, forceful to loose the voice
Even of ungarrulous grief; and half reclined
On his vile pallet, vehemently complains:—
6
Or what interpretation of design
Did my conception carry? All my years
Accommodate distress; for wisdom blights
The flower of gladness, not the seed of grief,
And larger knowledge breeds not fewer lusts,
But more, and more importunate.
O Light!
O warmly radiating, humid Air!
I curse ye! Hateful ministers of Life!
Why did ye penetrate the sealed abyss,
Where, folded in its wintry sleep, reposed
This hideous worm of Being, predoomed to crawl
For ever o'er waste places, seeking rest
And finding none; imperilled and distressed;
For ruthless foes inadequately armed?
O foolish Earth! 'tis time to wean thy child!
O warmly radiating, humid Air!
I curse ye! Hateful ministers of Life!
Why did ye penetrate the sealed abyss,
Where, folded in its wintry sleep, reposed
This hideous worm of Being, predoomed to crawl
For ever o'er waste places, seeking rest
And finding none; imperilled and distressed;
For ruthless foes inadequately armed?
When have thy soft pretences brought him peace?
When have thy tinselled playthings staunched his tears?
Why nourish the corruption of his blood,—
The death that creeps from artery back to vein,
From vein to artery back, in irritant round?
Or why not nourish it to more mature
And lustier virulence, until it fang
This immortality, that daily dies,
Beyond pursuit of every poison-bane!”
Religion, freed from silence, now approached,
With jewelled fingers touched the sorrower's arm,
And ventured thus:—
With jewelled fingers touched the sorrower's arm,
And ventured thus:—
“My once familiar friend,
Too long a stranger! Deem it not unkind
That balm of comfort has been long delayed;
The abundance proffered now shall make amends.
Afflictions fall not from malignant clouds
And troubles rise not from malarious meads,
Like blight or murrain, prevalent to strew
Our pastures with fond yearlings of the flock,
Our pleasure-plots and orchards of content
With blossoms of sweet promises denied.
Pain is the child of foul-fermenting sin,
As pestilence of filth; a chastisement
Inherent in transgression; the divine,
Inevitable sanction of a law
Whose execution is not left infirm,
Since breach and penalty are seed and fruit.
Recall the long commission of thy crimes!
Too long a stranger! Deem it not unkind
7
The abundance proffered now shall make amends.
Afflictions fall not from malignant clouds
And troubles rise not from malarious meads,
Like blight or murrain, prevalent to strew
Our pastures with fond yearlings of the flock,
Our pleasure-plots and orchards of content
With blossoms of sweet promises denied.
Pain is the child of foul-fermenting sin,
As pestilence of filth; a chastisement
Inherent in transgression; the divine,
Inevitable sanction of a law
Whose execution is not left infirm,
Since breach and penalty are seed and fruit.
Iniquities enormous as the sea
And multitudinous as sea-borne sand!
Remember thy rejection of the voice
Whose constant warning to thine inmost ear
Wails, as a strangled babe about the house
Where it was murdered! How that bodeful cry
Besieges the barred entrance of thy soul
Obdurate, obstinate! . . .”
But the other turned,
Protesting:—
Protesting:—
“Whether penalty and pollution
Equally poise the apparent heavenly scales,
Appeal to God! The waters of my woe
Have long o'erflown the channel of my guilt
And spread through every ‘orchard of content’
With evil inundation. If they lapse,
With ebbing time, from hills and uplands green,
Where hoar tradition holds a holier sway,
There, even there, the fields with desolate pools
They fret, or patch the meadows with morass.
Suppose the record of my crimes declared;
Equally poise the apparent heavenly scales,
Appeal to God! The waters of my woe
Have long o'erflown the channel of my guilt
And spread through every ‘orchard of content’
With evil inundation. If they lapse,
With ebbing time, from hills and uplands green,
8
There, even there, the fields with desolate pools
They fret, or patch the meadows with morass.
That malice to the medley added faults
Of ignorance, omission, and the breach
Of laws that are themselves the breach of Law
Divine; and wrath, deserved or undeserved,
Accumulated sentence passed;—oh! still
My present misery would exceed the tale
In magnitude, in mastery would exceed!”
Religion answered:—
“Conscience contradicts.
What part of Man is pure before the God
To whom the light of heaven is full of motes,
To whom archangels are not folly-free,
Nor any vestal spirit immaculate?
What part of Man, whose house is built of clay,—
A shadow, and ephemeral as the moth?”
What part of Man is pure before the God
To whom the light of heaven is full of motes,
To whom archangels are not folly-free,
Nor any vestal spirit immaculate?
What part of Man, whose house is built of clay,—
A shadow, and ephemeral as the moth?”
Then groaned Humanity:—
“I would to God
My insignificance were cloud or cope
To shelter me from his intense regard!
Sieged on the dais of the empyrean,
Aloof, He holds interminable assize
And sears me, sears me with continuous gaze,
My Judge and my Accuser! Who shall dare
Defend me? Who shall arbitrate a mean?
The righteousness of Enoch, rapt to heaven,
Fair David's favour, dear Disciples' love
Crumble to ashes before his fierce assay!
Were every murder-mark that smears my hands
Obliterate, could chrismal torrents lave
My tainted blood, or could my flesh become
A little child's, He still would hold me foul
And pierce my marrow with remedial pain!
O innocence impossible! O sin,
My insignificance were cloud or cope
To shelter me from his intense regard!
Sieged on the dais of the empyrean,
Aloof, He holds interminable assize
And sears me, sears me with continuous gaze,
My Judge and my Accuser! Who shall dare
Defend me? Who shall arbitrate a mean?
The righteousness of Enoch, rapt to heaven,
Fair David's favour, dear Disciples' love
Crumble to ashes before his fierce assay!
9
Obliterate, could chrismal torrents lave
My tainted blood, or could my flesh become
A little child's, He still would hold me foul
And pierce my marrow with remedial pain!
The flaunting efflorescence of a root
By me not planted, though I pluck the fruit!
Pursue, thou Holy One, pursue no more
The withered leaflet with relentless wind!
Why show thyself so marvellous? Why hunt me
With monstrous persecutions, host on host
Launching of unavoidable dismay?
Wilt Thou award eternal guilt, because
Thy creature is not guiltless as Thyself?
Is not the path I tread the appointed path?
How long, O God, how long refrainest Thou
From stroke of grace that cruellest men bestow
On wounded quarries? Merciful warrant give
Thine officer, Nature, to deliver me death,
Or in thine almshouse shelter me from dying!
Plague me no more; but pardon me or destroy!
Death is not ignominious nor so vile
As this mock eminence, this lone suspense
Above the nibbling brain of sheep and kine,
But yet beneath vitality divine.
Mingling, perchance, the cup of mortal fate
Appointed me to drink, thy hand o'erpoured
The potion, and thou scourgest me from sleep
Unseasonable, with scorpions and thy rod
Of sevenfold fury? . . . Ah! but let me be!
Let cerement-wreathing darkness wrap me round
10
Compose me to oblivion absolute.
Rest, rest I crave! From wisdom and from war,
From vanity, endeavour, and despair,
False riddles and false oracles. I crave
Rest from the pauseless pulses of the world!”
With aspect more severe his friend replied:—
“Wild as the wind thy words, and blustering round
The vortex of themselves, with empty sound.
Impearled in suffering's rough repellent husk
Lies Love Eternal, whose inviolate germ
No violence can vivify, but love's!
For though profaning pride the shell may shatter,
And the embryonic pith dissect, dissolve,—
Stem, leaf, and flower remain, like mighty works
In Galilee, a miracle unwrought.
But sow it fairly in the loveable soul,
Behold it sprout, bourgeon, and multiply!
Until with aromatic leaven it change
Crude and unwholesome elements to sweet
And serviceable quality.
“Wild as the wind thy words, and blustering round
The vortex of themselves, with empty sound.
Impearled in suffering's rough repellent husk
Lies Love Eternal, whose inviolate germ
No violence can vivify, but love's!
For though profaning pride the shell may shatter,
And the embryonic pith dissect, dissolve,—
Stem, leaf, and flower remain, like mighty works
In Galilee, a miracle unwrought.
But sow it fairly in the loveable soul,
Behold it sprout, bourgeon, and multiply!
Until with aromatic leaven it change
Crude and unwholesome elements to sweet
And serviceable quality.
Repent!
God longs to fill thy lips with merriment,
Thy mouth with laughter, and thine eyes with peace;
His hand is heavy with munificent weight
Of happiness witheld, till thou submit!”
Not without scorn, Humanity returned:—
God longs to fill thy lips with merriment,
Thy mouth with laughter, and thine eyes with peace;
His hand is heavy with munificent weight
Of happiness witheld, till thou submit!”
“If the least faint reflection—faint, yet true,—
Of equity omniscient overarc
The weeping of the world (for weeping eyes
Imperfect measure of the perfect light),
Who doubts the Priest, that lit this twofold flame
Of life and death unquenchable, forgives
The victim's maddened outcry?
Of equity omniscient overarc
11
Imperfect measure of the perfect light),
Who doubts the Priest, that lit this twofold flame
Of life and death unquenchable, forgives
The victim's maddened outcry?
Far more near
Another question touches. . . . Will the pang,
Which rends endurance, rend the twinèd veil
That barricades the altar from the ark?
Or any creature's clamour impel God's pity
To fold aside the curtain, as the dawn
With gulèd fingers folds aside the dark,
Alluring Earth to doubt her dawnless woe?
Another question touches. . . . Will the pang,
Which rends endurance, rend the twinèd veil
That barricades the altar from the ark?
Or any creature's clamour impel God's pity
To fold aside the curtain, as the dawn
With gulèd fingers folds aside the dark,
Alluring Earth to doubt her dawnless woe?
Come pardon or penance, what I crave, I crave;
At least to ask (but, face to face): ‘Art Thou
The lord of Sin,—lord paramount, or lord
Immediate? Is sin thy minister,—
Accredited or secret? Thine the Law?
Did'st Thou with prohibition's chisel carve
Idolatry, and by thy prophets curse
Indulgent virtue, turning it to vice?
Wherefore when righteousness on Earth defaults,
When judgment swerves aside and mercy halts;
When men to market carry poor men's blood;
When love itself is evil understood;
When food is borne abroad on famine's wings;
When kings are slaves and counterfeits are kings;
When piety itself is parasite
Of riches, and when wrong usurps the right;
When reeks the world with suffocating death
Of dungeoned spirits breathing their own breath;
Are not these things ordained of Thee? Whom else?’”
At least to ask (but, face to face): ‘Art Thou
The lord of Sin,—lord paramount, or lord
Immediate? Is sin thy minister,—
Accredited or secret? Thine the Law?
Did'st Thou with prohibition's chisel carve
Idolatry, and by thy prophets curse
Indulgent virtue, turning it to vice?
Wherefore when righteousness on Earth defaults,
When judgment swerves aside and mercy halts;
When men to market carry poor men's blood;
When love itself is evil understood;
When food is borne abroad on famine's wings;
When kings are slaves and counterfeits are kings;
When piety itself is parasite
Of riches, and when wrong usurps the right;
When reeks the world with suffocating death
Of dungeoned spirits breathing their own breath;
Are not these things ordained of Thee? Whom else?’”
12
His comrade, interrupting; “wilt thou foist
Also this wickedness on Him whose name
Is thereby desecrate? Lo! impious words,
That soar against the sun with spurious wings,
Carry their own confusion and decay.
God punishes the sin men propagate;
The Lord of Holiness (the Scripture saith)
Sins not Himself, nor yet by proxy sins,
But every man is tempted and betrayed
By his own lust; which, finished, brings forth death.
Thou in the mirror of the world beholdest
A gliding phantom; beautiful, yet masked
With horror of a beauty vilely used.
Turn, turn away thy fascinated eyes!
'Tis but an image of thyself! The Sun
That never wanes nor sets, behind thee glows;
Turn to the source of vision; that thy soul
May be encompassed with her native light,
As air encompasses a bird in flight.
Cease to regard the mystery of thyself.
As life and mind elude thee, sorrow and sin
Elude, for ever. Can the waves that ebb
Resentful from the scudding vessel, o'ertake
The prow that cleaves them? Or riven air recover
Grasp of the wings that smote it into wind?
Repine not that effectual Wisdom works
In secret; with innumerable threads
Weaving an intricate pattern, as immense
As that embroidery of the lacing moons
That circle circling planets; by their suns
Drawn around other clusters; implicate,
13
Ellipse more monstrous looping huger spheres,
More frequent swarms, to all infinitude;
All trailed in pageant, lightly as the down,
Sown on the sowing wind by provident weeds.
Repine not if Eternity provide
A corner-niche too straitened for thy pride!
When hast thou gauged its room? When ever found
Circumference or centre, node or bound?
Where are its confines? Where its utmost zone,
Or inward essence? Stars superfluous, lit
For thine amazement (vanity assumes),
Outpost their spatial fellows; cells forefront
The rudiments of life; and molecules
Vanguard pervading atoms unattained!
How lamely in this populous loneliness
Limps thy sad mind; far more thy 'wildered soul!
There, heaven; here, hell; above, below them, God!
But ah! why reckless voyage the strange profound,
When kindly Revelation rings thee round
With ancient aids and beacons of belief
Familiar as the sun, whose homely heat
More comforts thee than skies of alien stars;
With lamps of guidance nearer than the moon's
Orbed memory of the day? Let these suffice
To guide, inform, and cheer thee; let the rays
Of relative effulgence, manifest
Mandate of God himself, persuade thy soul
To quit her tomb, impenitence, and live!”
14
“Inscrutable, indeed, is God's design!
Map as we may the isles of the astral deep,
Or range the teeming dust of life and death,
From fairest structure, to the ravening mites
That swarm the distal side of vacancy,
Along the incalculable waste we know not whither
Whirled, with this speck, their own allodial glebe,—
Or mould our shallow phrases as we may,
(Poor cups to scoop the evasive, fluent Spirit,
That permeates, supports, envelops All),—
Inscrutable, indeed, is God's design!
How small a whisper do we hear of Him!
For these are but the outskirts of His ways.
A common path of thought, thus far, we tread;
Yet I detect authoritative notes,
That counter-sound the comfort in thy voice
With distant warnings of offended force;
Like thunder, that a live-long summer day
Mutters a menace among the unheeding hills.
There we diverge! I bear my lonely load
Full-weight, uneased by any friendly hand.
For what am I but Revelation? I,
The child of God, his scholar, and his clerk;
Born in the Paradise of home; despatched
To school, to learn the wisdom of the world;
Cast forth into the world, to learn my part;
Engrossing on my soul, with iron pen,
The comedies and tragedies of God!
What canst thou teach me that I taught not thee?
Thy prophets were my sons; their words, my words;
The sanctity and charity they preached
Clear emanations of my soul, like dew
Alighting on the meadow whence it rose.
Thou bringest me nothing not mine own before;
Thou did'st not plant one herb nor rear one flower,
But only tabulated, ranged, compared
Culled specimens; perchance erroneously!
As, once misread, but glibly now declared,
This rotary globe convicts thine obstinate mind
Of not infallible scorn, that day I cried
‘But yet, it moves!’
Thy prophets were my sons; their words, my words;
15
Clear emanations of my soul, like dew
Alighting on the meadow whence it rose.
Thou bringest me nothing not mine own before;
Thou did'st not plant one herb nor rear one flower,
But only tabulated, ranged, compared
Culled specimens; perchance erroneously!
As, once misread, but glibly now declared,
This rotary globe convicts thine obstinate mind
Of not infallible scorn, that day I cried
‘But yet, it moves!’
I will not be immured
In thy museum! Rather let me lie
Beneath this common archway of the sky;
Though naked to the night, yet scorched with woe;
A criminal, a beggar, and unclean! . . .
Before the delegated serpent taught me
Sub-ocular learning and the secret door
Where lust for ever knocks and love replies,
I revelled in larger amplitude of air
Than thy Ptol'maic firmament o'erdomes!
And since I pushed away the obtrusive heavens,
That fain would hood me from unvaulted space,
For ever new enfranchisement I long;
Nor will my gain forego; but, rather, invoke
New sin, to marshal back the encroaching clouds!
Crannied in Eden's pleasance, strictly calm,
In thy museum! Rather let me lie
Beneath this common archway of the sky;
Though naked to the night, yet scorched with woe;
A criminal, a beggar, and unclean! . . .
Before the delegated serpent taught me
Sub-ocular learning and the secret door
Where lust for ever knocks and love replies,
I revelled in larger amplitude of air
Than thy Ptol'maic firmament o'erdomes!
And since I pushed away the obtrusive heavens,
That fain would hood me from unvaulted space,
For ever new enfranchisement I long;
Nor will my gain forego; but, rather, invoke
New sin, to marshal back the encroaching clouds!
Too straitened seemed my destiny; I ranged
The boundaries; found the portal; with the key,
God-given Rebellion, wrenched the bolts, and stood
Clothed with the great Beyond! The murmurous conch,
That harboured me from tempest, tossed me forth;
16
The vast, untried estate! Not knowing how small
The pool appointed me, wherein to sport!
To sport, despair, corrupt, regerminate,
And sport again; recurrent, changeless change;
Before those eyes of calm intelligence,
Observing, unobserved, near, vigilant,
And all-perceptive; universal vision,
In all dimensions equally ensphered.
Again would I devour the fruit, enjoined
By interdiction, and again commit
Knowledge! That irremediable crime,
Whose flaming-falcioned guilt reentrance bars
To the element of ignorance despised,
Lest the new lethal shores of wisdom won
Should scare men to existence less enlarged.
But how attainable, by new revolt,
Incursion to new countries of his will,—
The need Himself imparted? Sate am I
With the iterated savour of my first
Emancipation; and another such
Impregnant prohibition He denies;
No more saluting me in garden shades
At eventide, with blessing or with curse,
Containing each the other.
Face to face,
As man with man, is my desire to meet,—
No envoy or ambassador, though crowned
With consular authority, or robed
With mantle of his Master; bearing scrolls
Of eloquent proclamation, amnesties
And gracious tolerance for my turbulent blood
17
The very Presence,—attendant powers dismissed
And ceremonial lightnings laid aside,
Like sheavèd rapiers, that my tongue, unawed
Give answerable echo to my thought.
Then would I cry, ‘I ask Thee no hard thing!
Only to lift the hem of draperies dense
That sway around my solitary cell
Of birth, of love, of labour, and of death;
Oppressive pall! Where miracles and signs,
Ambiguous parables, enigmas mad
And mad solutions; clueless hieroglyphs,
Creeds and contentions, prophecies and proofs,
With mummeries of diurnal futile things,—
Phantasmagoria of the world of thought,
Phantasmagoria of the world of deed,—
In tapestried procession giddily dance.
I ask no survey of the Promised Land;
The panorama of thy providence
Needs other sight than mine; I only crave
One word, one gesture (tempered by thy skill
To my infirmity), to cleave the night
Wherein I crawl; one flash, to indicate
A landmark of thy purpose!
For I scout
Wise tales of trade-wind tendencies, whose drift
Of righteousness excludes the drift of sin;
Or main mid-current, sheathed in refluent pools,
Where broken bough, drowned flower, and rotting weed,
The flotsam and the jetsam of the weir,
18
Regurgitate, and slime the dipping wands
Of willows with their lichen of foul foam;
Until the cataclysm of lifted spars
Admit the imperative flood, and all is swept
Onward, reluctant, swirling to the sea.
I know thine operation leaves no marge;
No particles avoided rim its road;
No periodic effluence, to lave
Neglected purlieus, agitates its wave;
But immanent in its handiwork, it draws
Soul and her parasites of circumstance
With strong inevitable stress to Thee.
I know Thee World-wright or I know Thee Nought!
I know Thee World-wright; yet between that hut
Of refuge and thy jasper citadel
That overcrests the pathway of the clouds,—
Palace of promulgation of the law
And seat of government o'er all the hills,
Sinai or Calvary, or before or since,—
What void envelopment of blinding mist!
What treacheries of snow and ice and storm!
What false ascents, false guides, and ominous deaths!
Is there no aid? Is mercy comfortless?
Wilt Thou not flare one beacon above the belt
Of lumber dimness that divides etern
Effulgence from this abject, glimmering globe?
Hast Thou no thread Thou darest let descend,
Whose molten filament would make this point
Terrene a linked extremity of Light?
Or down whose tremulous nerve might undulate
An echo of the music scored by Thee
For thine orchestral universe?
Wilt Thou not flare one beacon above the belt
Of lumber dimness that divides etern
Effulgence from this abject, glimmering globe?
Hast Thou no thread Thou darest let descend,
Whose molten filament would make this point
Terrene a linked extremity of Light?
Or down whose tremulous nerve might undulate
19
For thine orchestral universe?
I dare
Accept the message, if Thou dare command.’
Thus would I wrestle with God; nor let Him go
Accept the message, if Thou dare command.’
Except He blessed me, though His blessing slew.”
To whom perturbed Religion answered:—
“Friend,
It is not meet ambassadors should hear,
Save under protest, mutinous words; nor I
Endure them, mindful Whom I serve; to Whom
Be glory and dominion, power and praise,
For ever and for ever!
It is not meet ambassadors should hear,
Save under protest, mutinous words; nor I
Endure them, mindful Whom I serve; to Whom
Be glory and dominion, power and praise,
For ever and for ever!
If I claim
Authority, 'tis in His holy Name;
Nor yet without good reason and great need.
Where plumes, in this stark winter of the world,
One bud of promise? Where is writ one clause
Encouraging, one mitigative word,
I' the social and intolerable scroll
Of lamentation, mourning, and wild woe?
Review the world in all its length and breadth!
Its varied enterprise, and various lore;
Its governments; their manners and their modes!—
What medley routs their random courses run
To random goals! What errant energies
Cross and recross; achieving, as by chance,
Some blind progression or reverse result!
Where is the prevalence of final cause?
Or any prevalence, save one, innate,—
Of mutual alienation, mutual hate?
Authority, 'tis in His holy Name;
Nor yet without good reason and great need.
Where plumes, in this stark winter of the world,
One bud of promise? Where is writ one clause
Encouraging, one mitigative word,
I' the social and intolerable scroll
Of lamentation, mourning, and wild woe?
Review the world in all its length and breadth!
Its varied enterprise, and various lore;
Its governments; their manners and their modes!—
What medley routs their random courses run
To random goals! What errant energies
Cross and recross; achieving, as by chance,
Some blind progression or reverse result!
Where is the prevalence of final cause?
Or any prevalence, save one, innate,—
Of mutual alienation, mutual hate?
20
Of wilful Man's precipitant career!
Of mutinous Reason hurling blatant war
Against divine supremacy! What mole
Of immobility can dissipate
The fierce momentum of the ruining Mind,
Corrupt, anarchical, idolatrous,
Except the word of God, or visible Power
Established on the charter of that Word,
Its only muniment? What force react
Against this riotous, proud Intellect,
Impugning unconditioned Wisdom's plan
For its conditioned happiness, save one,—
The plenary authority of God?
That adamant and ultimate under-rock,
Firm fulcrum of the spiritual lever
By which the Saints must lift the world to Light?
That subtlety the Serpent first infused
Beneath the rind of sin, by thee partaken,
Infects the wholesome ichor of thy blood;
Toxic, disintegrating, breaking forth
In sores and ulcers of impiety;
Anathemas, and all contagious rheums
Of self-appreciative discontent.
The leprosy of Naaman shall cleave
To thee and thine for ever, save thou wash
In unpretentious waters; for the meek
Inherit the Earth; the poor in spirit receive
Beatitude; the lowly, rest of soul.
None challenges that God, sustaining all,
Created all, save error; which enures,
To testify that He bestowed Free-will,
21
Thine argument confronts thee;—wherefore thou,
Thy state, thy limits, and thine attributes,
Are integrant portions of the structured scheme!
Must, then, the published edict be revoked,
The rock of dispensation be removed;
The pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day,—
Flame of his Word, cloud of his Providence,—
Be banished from the camp,—that thou (whose eyes
Mercy has blurred, or Revelation dazed),
Mayst gain incontinent liberty to peer
Into the farther midnight, unillumined,
Into the farther noonday, unabridged?
Thy state not adventitious, first believe:
Thine ignorance and knowledge weighed, exact
To the fraction of fractions; to the grain of grains;
To poise the ponderous burden of thy fate!
More knowledge (should the Measurer grant thy prayer)
Might over-bear the balance. . . .
Thine ignorance and knowledge weighed, exact
To the fraction of fractions; to the grain of grains;
To poise the ponderous burden of thy fate!
More knowledge (should the Measurer grant thy prayer)
Might over-bear the balance. . . .
Dost thou court
Destruction? . . .
Destruction? . . .
Shall the Architect be baulked
Because the trunk refuses to be hewn,
The marble chiselled or the iron malled?
Will He not split and splinter them in his wrath,
Some great and terrible day, when no day dawn,
And even that mediate orb, from whose dead face
The javelin glances of the sun deflect
Earthward, and fall, white wands of embassy,
Be turned to blood?
Because the trunk refuses to be hewn,
The marble chiselled or the iron malled?
Will He not split and splinter them in his wrath,
Some great and terrible day, when no day dawn,
And even that mediate orb, from whose dead face
The javelin glances of the sun deflect
Earthward, and fall, white wands of embassy,
Be turned to blood?
Ere then, recall thy scorn!
Unbend thine unsubmissive heart; reject
The whispered sophistries of the crafty mind!
Who sows the darnels of disdain shall reap
Disdain; who sows humility, with sheaves
Of honour from the harvest shall return,
Rejoicing . . . With devotion cure thy doubt!
Offer thy faculties, emotions, thoughts,
Thine energies and consciousness of life,
Thyself, and all thou knowest of thyself,
And all thou knowest not, to Him, from Whom
Proceeded thine identity, in one
Determinate abandonment; in one
Immutable ascription;—act of awe!
That thrills the accordant angels and vibrates
Through the vast vestibules and courts of heaven
Up to the very throne! . . . May God so grant!”
The stricken one, bitterly smiling, thus replied:—
Unbend thine unsubmissive heart; reject
22
Who sows the darnels of disdain shall reap
Disdain; who sows humility, with sheaves
Of honour from the harvest shall return,
Rejoicing . . . With devotion cure thy doubt!
Offer thy faculties, emotions, thoughts,
Thine energies and consciousness of life,
Thyself, and all thou knowest of thyself,
And all thou knowest not, to Him, from Whom
Proceeded thine identity, in one
Determinate abandonment; in one
Immutable ascription;—act of awe!
That thrills the accordant angels and vibrates
Through the vast vestibules and courts of heaven
Up to the very throne! . . . May God so grant!”
“A due gestation and deliverance due
Of courtier threats, for vagabonds that refuse
The Court-essential garment and offend
The obsequious usher! . . . Suppliant none the less,
Though but a ragged, unanointed waif,
Audience I ask and ‘Audience’ cry,—‘Give ear
To my complaint!’ Whene'er his chariot rolls
Purpureal, 'mid his panoplied angel-guard.
Of courtier threats, for vagabonds that refuse
The Court-essential garment and offend
The obsequious usher! . . . Suppliant none the less,
Though but a ragged, unanointed waif,
Audience I ask and ‘Audience’ cry,—‘Give ear
To my complaint!’ Whene'er his chariot rolls
Purpureal, 'mid his panoplied angel-guard.
Yet speak I folly! Temporal potentates,
One span superior to the goggling crowd,
Strut on their pomp-stilts; in imperial lawn
Swaddle their suckling sovereignties; in wars
Of ostentation rock their cradled crowns;
But shall the King of kings,—who was and is,
And is to come,—Ancient of Days,—shall He,—
Of realm unfrontiered and of reign untermed,
Save by Himself,—pretend, proclaim, protest,
Flourish his sceptre, wave his bannered badge,
And scatter pomegranates to the multitude?
On his own altar shall Jehovah leap
And shout and cut Himself with knives, to rouse
His disregardful servants?” . . . . .
“God is Love!”
One span superior to the goggling crowd,
Strut on their pomp-stilts; in imperial lawn
Swaddle their suckling sovereignties; in wars
Of ostentation rock their cradled crowns;
But shall the King of kings,—who was and is,
And is to come,—Ancient of Days,—shall He,—
23
Save by Himself,—pretend, proclaim, protest,
Flourish his sceptre, wave his bannered badge,
And scatter pomegranates to the multitude?
On his own altar shall Jehovah leap
And shout and cut Himself with knives, to rouse
His disregardful servants?” . . . . .
Religion interposed; “but perfect love
In flame-like majesty is manifest,—
To fervent souls, renewal; but to frozen,
Scorching and death,—concentric, doomful love!
Insufferable, except his rippling rays
Impinged the marginal mind through sacraments
Of metaphor and symbol; mercy-clouds,
Pavilioned round about his habitation
Thunder-patrolled, pennoned with lightning, wardered
By serpent whirlwinds, coiled, waiting his word.
So in God's unity are love and wrath
One; or the intensity of love is wrath,
Because it burns the lovelessness of Man.
Nor canst thou ever escape Love's anxious anger,
Besetting, compassing, searching, winnowing thee,
Watching thy thoughts afar, as shepherds watch
The South wind full his fleeces on the hills,
Long ere he lade them to the destined vale.
Therefore no farthest region of the morn
Across waste waters; no black-surpliced night;
No pinnacle of heaven nor crypt of hell
Can sunder thy spirit from his; but sin alone
Shakes from thy shoulder his persuading hand.
24
To find a passage into Paradise;
Again wilt strike upon the nether lava,
In which thou wilt anneal thy stubbornness,
Lest heat too sudden of love or shock of shame
Fissure thy hard enamel, and truth intrude,—
Truth, in all life substantiate, save in thine,—
That will-submission to God's will is heaven,
Where angels of the will aye see his face,
And will-resistance of his will is hell,
Where the worm dieth not nor the fire is quenched.”
Now light the Pleiads their sevenfold cresset; now
Antares' ruby pinion downward dips,
As if a king-fisher, flashing low along
The alder alley of a dark-rilled river, dived.
Fast up the Northern slope the Charioteer
Bears pale Capella; far to Westward swing
The Serpent, round huge Ophiuch sprawling huge,
And Hercules, blazoned 'twixt the Lyre and Crown.
The waning moon's full altitude is past;
The solemn hour broods, when the tides of life
Ebb, and the Earth grows cognisant of death,
Despairful and incredulous of dawn.
The sufferer feels calm visitings emerge
From the heavenly, solemn chambers, to compose
The passion of grief; and pensively thus resumes:—
“The soul-face of the World is shattered to words
In the Mind's mirror;—how vain, with painted shards
To tesselate God's miniature! No Art
Holds the Arch-Artist's portrait; save Myself.
I am not undivine, nor God inhuman!
25
By accidents of sorrow and of sin,
And wandering like a child shut out from home;
Pilfered of love and dowered with lonelihood;
Snatched from familiar fairydom and set
Full in the arena of the blood-stained World,
Void-vaulted, with implacable faces girt!
Yet to no saint, though alabaster-smooth,
For specious pottage of a ruddier faith,
My birthright will I barter,—God to know
By the near conscience of my intimate Self.
Shall no one question Him, but thou cry ‘Hush!’
None plead before Him, but thou claim to plead
Crown-Advocate; none scrutinise the scroll
Authentic of creation, but thou gloss it?
For ever wilt thou palisade the peak
Against explorers God himself invites? . . .
Now learn a lesson of me! . . . My God is Truth;
Supreme Sincerity,—whatever else!
Who hates the homage of a menial heart;
Who hates chameleon skins of compromise,
Assumed by souls that never sloughed the lie
That called them naked (nuder now in rags
Conceded under seal of banishment);
Whom argument of souls against themselves,
Framed for their overhearing tyrant, hurts
More than arraignment of a scurrilous tongue.
Wherefore no dog am I, with sycophant nose,
Scenting a well-stuffed wallet, to confess
That pain can gather from prospective joy
Unnative goodness; or that joy annuls
The woful ancestry that taints his blood;
While mirth, if he should tenant the broad demesne
Of tribulation (so thy minions preach,
When drunk with more authority than love),
Muft needs disburse a rack remorse for wear,
Not only for mere wantonness and waste.
Though every sorrow should beget a saint
And every pang a martyr, never a choir
Of saints or martyrs would I join to sing
‘O blessed grief! Inestimable pain!’
But still must reprobate usurious plagues,
Hypothecate to demons of the dust,
To culture asphodel in pits of death
And amaranth from corruption.
For specious pottage of a ruddier faith,
My birthright will I barter,—God to know
By the near conscience of my intimate Self.
Shall no one question Him, but thou cry ‘Hush!’
None plead before Him, but thou claim to plead
Crown-Advocate; none scrutinise the scroll
Authentic of creation, but thou gloss it?
For ever wilt thou palisade the peak
Against explorers God himself invites? . . .
Now learn a lesson of me! . . . My God is Truth;
Supreme Sincerity,—whatever else!
Who hates the homage of a menial heart;
Who hates chameleon skins of compromise,
Assumed by souls that never sloughed the lie
That called them naked (nuder now in rags
Conceded under seal of banishment);
Whom argument of souls against themselves,
Framed for their overhearing tyrant, hurts
More than arraignment of a scurrilous tongue.
Wherefore no dog am I, with sycophant nose,
Scenting a well-stuffed wallet, to confess
That pain can gather from prospective joy
Unnative goodness; or that joy annuls
The woful ancestry that taints his blood;
26
Of tribulation (so thy minions preach,
When drunk with more authority than love),
Muft needs disburse a rack remorse for wear,
Not only for mere wantonness and waste.
Though every sorrow should beget a saint
And every pang a martyr, never a choir
Of saints or martyrs would I join to sing
‘O blessed grief! Inestimable pain!’
But still must reprobate usurious plagues,
Hypothecate to demons of the dust,
To culture asphodel in pits of death
And amaranth from corruption.
Thankless theme!
For who can analyse pervasive woe,—
One coalescence, like the constant air?
Fresh from thy mundane interrogatory,
Canst thou record a gladness as engrained,
As indivisibly fibred into life,
As torture is? Men run from the ends of Earth
To specks of joy reported, but to find
The same full galleys of chained slaves, the same
Antagonistic forces' hourly ache,
The same peremptory exigence of thought!
Or, at the most, some apparition of joy
Defunct, whose ghosts are Cheerfulness, Content,
Or Immolate Delight; a godly crew,
But not that Spirit whose robes once rustled so near
And filled them with a proud and reverent fear,
Waiting their fairy bride by altared hill,
'Mid clashed carillons of consenting winds.
Shall I suggest to God that strange displays
For who can analyse pervasive woe,—
One coalescence, like the constant air?
Fresh from thy mundane interrogatory,
Canst thou record a gladness as engrained,
As indivisibly fibred into life,
As torture is? Men run from the ends of Earth
To specks of joy reported, but to find
The same full galleys of chained slaves, the same
Antagonistic forces' hourly ache,
The same peremptory exigence of thought!
Or, at the most, some apparition of joy
Defunct, whose ghosts are Cheerfulness, Content,
Or Immolate Delight; a godly crew,
But not that Spirit whose robes once rustled so near
And filled them with a proud and reverent fear,
Waiting their fairy bride by altared hill,
'Mid clashed carillons of consenting winds.
Of occult torture and opprobrious wrong
27
Authority; but give anarchic Ill
Advertisement in weak, anaemic minds;—
'Twere better, therefore, to repudiate
Responsibility; claim beauty, and impute
Phenomena of ugliness to Satan;
Hinting of swampy patches of the plain,
Unoccupied,—‘They are not what they seem’?
They say God never laughs; I deem it not;
But, if 'twere true, what bubbling merriment
Must well upon the lips, at least of those
Angels and principalities and powers
That need not envy devils the grace to smile,
At libel so audacious!
‘Heresy’?
There is no heresy. All things are true,
Except a lie; and lies are of the soul,
Not of the brain;—excuses that we put
Into the mouth of God, to vindicate
His ways to men; ignoring that the proof
Must vindicate the ways of men to God;—
Prevarications that we recommend
For buoying callow souls on wings of wax,
Lest they should dash their foot against a stone,
Or stumble over blocks of the moraine,
Strewn by the glacier-thought that grinds the world;—
Manipulations, piously to change
The premiss to accommodate the proof;—
All the fallacious euphonies we use
To mortgage truth for momentary gain!
Like casuist reasons, given by careful dames
28
Learning to fly, than flying learn to fall,
Profoundly plunging from Ideal to Doubt.
But irritable faith too plain betrays,
By contradiction ill-endured, how much
The black that bands the escutcheon of God's light,
Flashed from accrete creation, makes aghast
Thine heart of hearts. But thou refusest to see
Or suffer it to be seen; dissembling well;
Conscious of Who shall be the judge of thoughts,
Of speech and silence; stoutly taking oath
That not to God these crevices belong,
Though he shall fill them full of after-joy
Or after-woe.
But let God fill his own
Omissions, not another's! . . . If the Whole
By Him was fashioned and is now maintained,—
In just proportion, just relation, fixed,
Must every part cohere, and all consist
Like radiant raiment, seamless-woven throughout,—
The Seventh Day vesture that He loves to wear,—
Which only Mind's cross lenses rend and ravel,
Impervious to completeness; as the prism
Combs into separate locks a tawny tress
Of slender-rifted sunshine.
Grieves Man less,
That God beholds Hereafter as Herenow?
Black lust a lily and pale pain a rose?
Though all to Him be absolute, to me
He made all relative. If thus He wrought,
And while his apparatus of my sense
29
Pursue the indebted fugitive To Be,
How is my permanent torture less, or how
Lies chiding in his mouth because I weep?
Far, far ahead of thine o'erfreighted Hope,
With figure-head of Faith so falsely prowed,
Whose cargo of tradition drags it down
Low in the labouring surge, my confidence
Profane forges; alert to learn new lands
Of richer revelation, promise new,
And clearer climate than the retrospect;
Where I may make discovery of what ore
Of precious quality those shafts portend,
Alloyed by grosser atmosphere to shades.
Meanwhile I learn not, and my misery grows;
Tossed out of reckoning, broached and rudderless,
Yet with all remnant canvas pressing on
Desperate, to reach the haven; to disembark;
Haste to my Father's door; and 'mid the crowd
Of lackeying suitors, for my Sonship claim
Free entry and free hearing; not with base
Outrageous reverence bowed, but holding fast
Integrity of spirit, not to cringe
Before his presence; as He would not cringe,
Cited before one greater than Himself!”
With strong suppressed impatience, once again
His comrade spoke:—
“I hear a voice that cries,
‘Humanity, Humanity! how oft
I would have gathered thee beneath my wings,
As gathers a hen her brood; but thou wouldst not.
If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day,
The things belonging to thy peace! But now
They are hidden from thine eyes. Wherefore thy house
Is left unto thee desolate.’
The trump
‘Humanity, Humanity! how oft
I would have gathered thee beneath my wings,
30
If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day,
The things belonging to thy peace! But now
They are hidden from thine eyes. Wherefore thy house
Is left unto thee desolate.’
That bade the everlasting gates lift up their heads,
Redeeming forfeit entrance into Eden,
And bruising the adder of sin, until he poured
His loathly python length to darker den
And malice more remote, announced, to worlds
Amazed, the mortal birth and sacrifice
Of Love immortal; and this moment sounds,
Suspended o'er the loud discordant deep
Of Earth and Hell in masterful embrace
Conflicting. Powers of darkness and of light,
Princes infernal and celestial, lean
To listen; but thou art deaf! Until, resolved
Into the full chord tonic, octave Love
Obliterate thy tegument of pride
And smite thee to the core.
What justice, then,
In thy complaint of God's desertion? None
Deserts thee, save thyself; thine other self
Contemptible, that shuns thy nobler self,
Which is the God within thee, as thou sayest,
Whose triple-stranded nature is to warn,
To counsel, and to comfort. Such my charge;
But most to warn; because, for callous pride
Emollients are a charlatan's false cure.
Still am I loth to quit thee without help.
31
Yet inexhaustible, I fain would leave
To feed thy famishing soul:—that tale forgot,
Of Samuel; how he served before the Lord,—
A Nazarite child with linen ephod girt,—
And learnt the secret, how to speak with God,
Denied to Saul by prophets or by dreams,
By Urim or by Samuel's hooded shade,
Evoked at Endor.
God vouchsafe that soon
The deep break up, that deep may call to deep!
Then, as a rivulet rises in a wood,
After long rain; and no one sees it rise
Nor the world heeds it; and, perchance, the sun,
Reaching a poniard through the clustered trees,
The frail fount pierces, or perchance, it grows
To rule wide vales: so in thy heart shall spring
A royal fount, which, nurtured, shall become
A well of Samarite water, springing up
To Everlasting Life.
But now, farewell!
Whene'er thou summon me,—when troublous moods,
Not Israel's wisest harper could have charmed,
Passing, have left thee spent,—in love to come,
In love to fill that empty, swept, and garnished
Guest-chamber of thine heart, shall be my joy!
And be the glory, as all glory, God's!”
Thus to and fro they tossed the cumbrous word,
The clumsy counterfeit of bird-like thought;
Or hither and thither hauled, with adverse force,
32
Spun by the mind; or pushed converging terms,
Resultant in conclusion unobserved;
Until Humanity no more engaged;
Like wrestler scornful of a loosened grip.
But the other twitched his broadly-bordered frock
Higher, and picked fastidious descent;
As delicately trips a school-bound child,
Heedful of ferule or maternal tongue,
O'er stepping-stones of Wharfe, by Bolton woods,
When o'er the midmost stone the freshet peeps.
Yet, homeward hieing, thrice he stayed and sought
With yearning eyes, and half imagined, half
Discerned the motionless figure of his friend;
As travellers, guided by the dalesman, turn
To view a crag, by Oreads roughly graven,
And dubiously affirm the crouching shape.
Now creeps the Dawn forth of the folded sky,
Touching with timorous finger first the mane
Of slumberous Ocean; then with both her hands
The monster stroking; who his shaggy sides
Shakes, with enormous smiles; and mariners hail
From lonely ships another golden link
Wound on the winch of Time, to warp them home.
Meanwhile the mountains light their signal fires
Of roseate snow; but jealous Dawn, in haste
To bear her own sweet tidings of herself,
O'er valleyed town and hamlet of the plain
Advances; till the Sun his amorous arms
Stretches to stay her; but she merrily sprays
Her dewy locks full in his face; and flees,
Following austere Night with instant feet.
1895.
33
Love's Eleusis
Love has a sacred nameWithout more touch of blame
Than glow-worm's lamp or trill
Of April black-bird's bill;
Yet not in tents of death
Love draws his native breath,
But roaming unconfined
The mountains of the mind;
For there with mystic mirth
High heaven and humble earth
Proclaim his sovereign birth!
But few may understand
The king-craft of his land,
Held far aloof from fate,
In governance and state;
For thither none may win
By saintliness nor sin;
In vain his votaries crowd
The valleys; wreathed in cloud,
Rise o'er the random throng
The hills he dwells among.
To that green mountain-side
Can poets only guide,
Where far on sun-lit steep
34
Nor folly's praise nor blame
Attaints his sacred name,
But youths and maidens bring
Fresh chaplets to their king
And sing as sky-larks sing!
1896.
35
To Nellie
I ask thee for a kiss no more,
As once I asked (and not in vain);
For now thy spirit I adore,
To wed thy spirit I am fain.
As once I asked (and not in vain);
For now thy spirit I adore,
To wed thy spirit I am fain.
Thy face is fair, thine eyes are fond,
Thy form was cast in beauty's mould;
But far beneath, or far beyond,
Dwells she, whom I would fain enfold!
Thy form was cast in beauty's mould;
But far beneath, or far beyond,
Dwells she, whom I would fain enfold!
She tends a shrine of vestal fire,
A fount of virgin fancy sips;
Immured from intimate desire,
She hides her heart and locks her lips.
A fount of virgin fancy sips;
Immured from intimate desire,
She hides her heart and locks her lips.
Mock me no more, but let us wed!
Come forth, come forth, secluded bride!
No other way, when we are dead,
Shall we rejoice that we have died.
Come forth, come forth, secluded bride!
No other way, when we are dead,
Shall we rejoice that we have died.
36
Hastings
We give thee many names, unheedful Sea,And some I deem not thou dost well deserve.
For when thy tides majestically swerve
Across the bay, is that inconstancy?
Or when a vessel, driving to the lee,
Where the dark deluge breaks with emerald curve,
Drops her last anchor in the seething surf,
Why blame we not the thwarting blast, but thee?
Thou laughest and thou ravest in thy sleep;
Or, blind as Samson, grindest at thy mill,
Howe'er tormenting winds may make thee leap!
Earthquakes may toss the landscape; yonder hill,
Pushed by imprisoned waters, downward sweep
Into the valley; thou abidest still!
37
Sweet Seventeen
I would not bring the menace
Of mourning autumn near
The tender buds of promise
Of this thy blossoming year!
O fresh in mind and feature!
I would not overcast
The sunshine of thy future
With the shadow of my past.
Of mourning autumn near
The tender buds of promise
Of this thy blossoming year!
O fresh in mind and feature!
I would not overcast
The sunshine of thy future
With the shadow of my past.
I would not breathe my sorrows,
To blur with ageing blight
Thy green ungathered morrows,
Unfolding to the light;
God keep thee, fairy creature!
God separate, to the last,
The sunshine of thy future
From the shadow of my past!
To blur with ageing blight
Thy green ungathered morrows,
Unfolding to the light;
God keep thee, fairy creature!
God separate, to the last,
The sunshine of thy future
From the shadow of my past!
38
Near a Windmill
Slow wheel the latticed swifts, without a sound!The Winds, that have the harvest in their care,
The furrow fan, in folded clouds prepare
The scented rain, then push these sails around;
They have more mastery of the mutinous ground
Than has the Sun himself; whom, if he dare
Challenge their will, they seize with vaporous air,
And cast into their dripping dungeon, bound.
Invisible, but resolute and fleet,
They flaw the river and the grassy plain
With pressure of imperishable feet,
Hasting impetuously to grind the grain,
To fill the poor man's basket and ordain
The cradle and the birth of next year's wheat.
39
To the Moon
Θεστυλι, ται κυνες αμμιν ανα πτολιν ωρυονται.
α θεος εν τριοδοισι.
Theocritus (Idyll II. 35, 36).
α θεος εν τριοδοισι.
Theocritus (Idyll II. 35, 36).
Now maddens the slumbering shepherd in thy sheen;
The death-foreboding watch-dog distant bays
Thy look malign; where cross the lonely ways,
The gliding spectres pace their scant demesne!
As men emerge, this summer night serene,
From revel, sedulous to cheat the days,
They shudder at thy cold accusing gaze,
And wish they were not, and had never been!
Warping their faint reluctant waves, thou glarest
On fascinated seas; no fruitful heat,
No happier race in thy bleached bosom thou bearest;
But rangest in sad bondage to the beat
Of Earth's sad heart, and in amazement farest,
Treading thy weary round with frozen feet.
40
To a Beautiful Jewess
The faithful Eliezer, at the well,Saluted thee; smooth Jacob, in the field;
For thee unhappy Abner's fate was sealed,
And stern Ahasuerus owned thy spell;
Before thy Child the Median sages fell,
And shining hosts of heaven his birth revealed
To shepherds; daily art thou now appealed,
As Mother of the Lord of heaven and hell!
For thus the great traditions of thy type
Abide. We children of corrupter breed
Snatch short successes in a time unripe;
And if our greedy race charge thine with greed,
Thine learnt it writhing in the Egyptian's gripe,
Ere yet our youngling nation was in seed.
41
Psychology
A hell for which no heaven can make amends,—The hell of our unalterable past;
The clay once formed that cannot be re-cast,
The destiny once bent that ne'er unbends,
The inexorable fate that hews our ends,
Smooth-shape them how we will; the flowers so fast
To fade away, the weeds so long to last,
Though pious forethought all the garden tends.
Behold! we choose our colours with what care,
To paint the pattern of our life withal!
What prudent laws observe to make it fair!
But all in vain! Our hues and shapes appal!
We have been painting on a prison-wall,
And madden, staring,—ever doomed to stare.
42
The Danger of the Individual Ideal
Let not the peaks allure thee! Not becauseThe strain and struggle of the upward way
May prove too hard for spirits cloyed with clay;
That common curse gives every climber pause;
But lest, enamoured of thy self-applause,
Or praise of God or man, thou go astray,
Until thou meet thy real self at bay,
The avenging seraph of resisted laws!
The legend “By sincerity excel”
Burns on his brow; from which thou must retire
Along the backward path, now fringed with fire
And set with serpents and strange snares of hell,
To seek the valley of thy true desire,
Roofed with white stars and paved with asphodel.
43
Asleep
A slumber came thy troubled heart to steep;Thy sunny head upon the pillow lay,
Like the first marigold of opening May
Upon a snow-patch in a dingle deep;
Thy gentle eyes that are so loth to weep,
Were folded from the urgency of day,
Like flowers in silken petals lapped away;
Over thy brow swept summer clouds of sleep.
I stood beside thee, like the spirit of care
That watches children, laid in drowsy cot;
“Alas,” methought, “what fate has linked thy lot
With one who breathes the desolate dry air
Of lone ambition?” So, awoke thee not;
But let thee slumber; slumber, unaware.
44
The Swallow Fall
“Sir John Wynn of Gwydir . . . was a celebrity
in his day. Being ‘shrewd and successful in his dealings,’
the people were led to suppose he oppressed them, and,
says Yorke, ‘it is the superstition of the place (Llanrwst)
to this day, that the spirit of the old gentleman lies under
the great waterfall Rhaiadr-y-Wen-nol, better known as
the Swallow Fall.”
Gossiping Guide to Wales.
In Swallow Fall (so runs the tale) is pent
A sinful soul; until, with sand and silt,
His evil passions in the sea are spent.
Yet who can dream that Llugwy harbours guilt?
Along the vale he sings a laughing lilt,
Fair flowers assemble to his freshening scent,
The woods are merry where his waves are spilt,
And all his kine-loved meadows breathe content.
Thou art no jailor to a tortured ghost,
Thou happy stream! Not yet from thee are driven
The pagan spirits of the fairy host;
No covetous Church shall justify her boast,
To foist on thee the shriek of souls unshriven;
If souls do haunt thee, they are souls forgiven.
45
Maxima Reverentia
Quench not the children's joy!
Too soon these cavernous damps
Will dim their fairy lamps,
Too soon the haloes fall from girl and boy,
That crown their brow so innocently bright;
Too soon the garlands white
Of all their inconsiderate employ
Take sad infection from surrounding night.
Too soon these cavernous damps
Will dim their fairy lamps,
Too soon the haloes fall from girl and boy,
That crown their brow so innocently bright;
Too soon the garlands white
Of all their inconsiderate employ
Take sad infection from surrounding night.
Too soon will life's amazement
Encounter their advance,
And dubious circumstance
Make proof of their appraisement
Of charity and judgment, truth and gain!
Too soon anxiety's abhorrent shapes
Will spread like vapour o'er the splendid plain,
And all its promise of unblemished grapes;
The beckoning harvest-fields will suffer blight;
And even the sun-lit mountain's high domain
The mist will stain
Blurring its aspect of celestial light.
Encounter their advance,
And dubious circumstance
Make proof of their appraisement
Of charity and judgment, truth and gain!
Too soon anxiety's abhorrent shapes
Will spread like vapour o'er the splendid plain,
And all its promise of unblemished grapes;
The beckoning harvest-fields will suffer blight;
And even the sun-lit mountain's high domain
The mist will stain
Blurring its aspect of celestial light.
Dim not the eyes of youth
With shadowed sorrow and the ghosts of ruth;
Soon when the tracks are tangled,
And all emotion jangled,
Will fade their blessed vision of the truth;
Till then let sin and suffering keep aloof;
But come, unfeigned delight,
With music heralded, with blossom spangled!
Cordial the heart with courage for the proof!
Feed the fresh mind with mirth, the nurse of might!
Far be the horrid sight
Of lacerated souls and spirits mangled!
With shadowed sorrow and the ghosts of ruth;
Soon when the tracks are tangled,
And all emotion jangled,
46
Till then let sin and suffering keep aloof;
But come, unfeigned delight,
With music heralded, with blossom spangled!
Cordial the heart with courage for the proof!
Feed the fresh mind with mirth, the nurse of might!
Far be the horrid sight
Of lacerated souls and spirits mangled!
Young souls should laugh before they laugh in vain;
First let them learn of earth
The mysteries of mirth,
Before they learn the mysteries of pain;
First let them be enriched with dance and song,
That make men strong
To face dull labour and endure the strain
Of disappointed faith and fortune's wrong.
First let them learn of earth
The mysteries of mirth,
Before they learn the mysteries of pain;
First let them be enriched with dance and song,
That make men strong
To face dull labour and endure the strain
Of disappointed faith and fortune's wrong.
Not hermit hearts, that love alone to dwell
In secret cell,
But happy hearts, that like a hive of bees
Hum, thick with busy hopes,
Nerve the weak arms and knit the feeble knees,
Winning from sunny slopes
Of mountains, from the summer woods and leas,
What sadness spends, gazing on wintry seas.
In secret cell,
But happy hearts, that like a hive of bees
Hum, thick with busy hopes,
Nerve the weak arms and knit the feeble knees,
Winning from sunny slopes
Of mountains, from the summer woods and leas,
What sadness spends, gazing on wintry seas.
Quench not the children's joy!
Let no lugubrious fantasy or tale
Their heart assail!
No morbid mirror flout their guileless faces
With hint of lurking furrows and grimaces!
Though greed and shame hereafter may destroy
The sensitive play
Let no lugubrious fantasy or tale
Their heart assail!
No morbid mirror flout their guileless faces
With hint of lurking furrows and grimaces!
Though greed and shame hereafter may destroy
The sensitive play
47
Of mobile muscle, and the unconscious graces
That soon with introspection pass away,—
Though they are destined to a sure decay,
As are the lilies,—yet their lucent clay
Is offspring of the sunshine and the skies,
And their immaculate eyes
Fade at the sight of lethal miseries.
That soon with introspection pass away,—
Though they are destined to a sure decay,
As are the lilies,—yet their lucent clay
Is offspring of the sunshine and the skies,
And their immaculate eyes
Fade at the sight of lethal miseries.
With pulsing feet let children trip along
In rhythmic tumult of the dance and song,
With waving arms and cymbals held aloft,
To strains repeated oft!
Into the movement of the Doric mode
Guide passionate impulse, guide
Life's eagerness and pride!
Lead the desire that none by lash or goad
Can drive along the road!
Give them fair meads for pastime, undistraught
By ill-foreboding thought,
With balls of flowers tossed up and hardly caught,
And dells with rippling laughter overflowed!
In rhythmic tumult of the dance and song,
With waving arms and cymbals held aloft,
To strains repeated oft!
Into the movement of the Doric mode
Guide passionate impulse, guide
Life's eagerness and pride!
Lead the desire that none by lash or goad
Can drive along the road!
Give them fair meads for pastime, undistraught
By ill-foreboding thought,
With balls of flowers tossed up and hardly caught,
And dells with rippling laughter overflowed!
So let the muse indignant
Drive doleful thrummers from her sacred mount!
Her melodies benignant
Let shepherds to the dancing children count!
Who with their hands and feet
Shall to the cadence beat,
Beat to the jocund pipe and gentle lyre,
Until the anguished earth
Listen, as sick men listen to the choir
Of warbling birds at eager morning's birth.
Drive doleful thrummers from her sacred mount!
Her melodies benignant
Let shepherds to the dancing children count!
Who with their hands and feet
Shall to the cadence beat,
Beat to the jocund pipe and gentle lyre,
Until the anguished earth
Listen, as sick men listen to the choir
Of warbling birds at eager morning's birth.
For where shall perfect happiness be found
If not in careless children? Like the birds,
They pour through sullen woods a jocund sound,
A language not of words,
More native to the air than to the ground!
Who can life's unreplenished channels fill,
If children may not treasure
The untaxed waters of a bounteous pleasure?
If children may not guard the precious store
Of natural mirth, and from their vantage hill
Launch many a laughing rill
Along the valley, where men labour sore
To delve the golden ore,
The barren sands of vanity to till?
If not in careless children? Like the birds,
48
A language not of words,
More native to the air than to the ground!
Who can life's unreplenished channels fill,
If children may not treasure
The untaxed waters of a bounteous pleasure?
If children may not guard the precious store
Of natural mirth, and from their vantage hill
Launch many a laughing rill
Along the valley, where men labour sore
To delve the golden ore,
The barren sands of vanity to till?
For of all creatures that on earth should be
Devote to gaiety,
Upon whose lips should oftenest be heard
Laughter's melodious bubble,
Within whose eyes should rareliest be stirred
The bitter pools of trouble,
Children to gladness are entitled most!
For they alone amid the weary host
Of warring men, that beat the phantomed air,
Frenzied, and wound each other unaware,
They only dare
Feast and make merriment. Ah! let them be!
Smirch not their white-winged hours!
They are the vestal guardians of the flame
Of happiness! Ah! sprinkle not your spice,—
Self-scorn and sacrifice,—
Nor pluck away their garlands of sweet flowers,
With desecrating fingers, hinting blame!
But watch with me and listen,
By those enchanted bowers
Where children dance with children, hand in hand;
Their eyes with gladness glisten,
Their laughter makes a marvel in the land;
They imitate no code,
They use no courtier mode
Of pleasing God; they neither toil nor haste
For righteousness; but dwell in Eden still;
And who would tempt their taintless lips to taste
The cheating fruit of conscious good and ill?
Devote to gaiety,
Upon whose lips should oftenest be heard
Laughter's melodious bubble,
Within whose eyes should rareliest be stirred
The bitter pools of trouble,
Children to gladness are entitled most!
For they alone amid the weary host
Of warring men, that beat the phantomed air,
Frenzied, and wound each other unaware,
They only dare
Feast and make merriment. Ah! let them be!
Smirch not their white-winged hours!
They are the vestal guardians of the flame
Of happiness! Ah! sprinkle not your spice,—
Self-scorn and sacrifice,—
Nor pluck away their garlands of sweet flowers,
With desecrating fingers, hinting blame!
But watch with me and listen,
By those enchanted bowers
49
Their eyes with gladness glisten,
Their laughter makes a marvel in the land;
They imitate no code,
They use no courtier mode
Of pleasing God; they neither toil nor haste
For righteousness; but dwell in Eden still;
And who would tempt their taintless lips to taste
The cheating fruit of conscious good and ill?
Hail, fairy child,
Not by dissimulation yet defiled!
Hail, frolic elf,
Not yet instructed to dissect thyself!
Too soon to be beguiled
Into the gilded cage,—saint, devotee,
I know not what thou'lt be,—
But nevermore the simple, fresh, and free!
Not by dissimulation yet defiled!
Hail, frolic elf,
Not yet instructed to dissect thyself!
Too soon to be beguiled
Into the gilded cage,—saint, devotee,
I know not what thou'lt be,—
But nevermore the simple, fresh, and free!
50
Counsel
Wear not the rubies that I gave!
Like wine, aglow with lurid heats;
But diamonds; whiter than the wave
That down the northern channel beats.
Like wine, aglow with lurid heats;
But diamonds; whiter than the wave
That down the northern channel beats.
Press pallid jewels to thy breast;
For they are free from dangerous fires;
They are not reddened with unrest,
Nor fierce unsatisfied desires.
For they are free from dangerous fires;
They are not reddened with unrest,
Nor fierce unsatisfied desires.
Keep thine affection free from blame;
Austere, yet ardent, purely shine;
To set thy crystal heart aflame
Shall never be a sin of mine.
Austere, yet ardent, purely shine;
To set thy crystal heart aflame
Shall never be a sin of mine.
51
Renunciation
Ah! delicate maiden,
Whose glance is so kind,
And bosom love-laden
And pure as thy mind,
“Come woo me and win me,”
Thine eyes seem to say,—
But voices within me
Still call me away.
Whose glance is so kind,
And bosom love-laden
And pure as thy mind,
“Come woo me and win me,”
Thine eyes seem to say,—
But voices within me
Still call me away.
Thine hair is like tansies
In sunshine arrayed;
Thine eyes like the pansies
That shine in the shade;
“Come woo me and win me
And nevermore stray,”—
But voices within me
Still call me away.
In sunshine arrayed;
Thine eyes like the pansies
That shine in the shade;
“Come woo me and win me
And nevermore stray,”—
But voices within me
Still call me away.
52
Elaine
Art thou gone for ever, Elaine,
Thou with the starry eyes
In a twilight of tangled hair?
In the lonely night I complain,
Till the memoried moon arise,
With her lesson of dumb despair.
Thou with the starry eyes
In a twilight of tangled hair?
In the lonely night I complain,
Till the memoried moon arise,
With her lesson of dumb despair.
Oh! for thy voice to calm
My heart that so beats astray,—
Set it to rhythm aright!
Oh! for thy love to balm
The wounds of the warring day,
And the fever of friendless night!
My heart that so beats astray,—
Set it to rhythm aright!
Oh! for thy love to balm
The wounds of the warring day,
And the fever of friendless night!
Would I had taken Elaine,
Kissed the two starry eyes,
Tangled the tangled hair;
Laughed for a day at pain;
Ceased for a day to be wise;
And let the silly world stare.
Kissed the two starry eyes,
Tangled the tangled hair;
Laughed for a day at pain;
Ceased for a day to be wise;
And let the silly world stare.
53
Home
Home is not home when thou art gone!
My heart in blindness seems to grope;
Where love's accustomed light has shone,
'Tis dark as disappointed hope,
When thou art gone.
My heart in blindness seems to grope;
Where love's accustomed light has shone,
'Tis dark as disappointed hope,
When thou art gone.
The oft appeal, the quick reply,—
Still more, may-be, the silent sense
Of sympathy, when thou art by,—
These, these are Home! And they are hence,
When thou art gone.
Still more, may-be, the silent sense
Of sympathy, when thou art by,—
These, these are Home! And they are hence,
When thou art gone.
54
Separated
“In the weather for this tour I have been very fortunate.
. . . . I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of
nature, &c. . . . But in all this the recollection of
bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home
desolation, which must accompany me through life, have
preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the
shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, the torrent, the
mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for
one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor
enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the
majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above,
and beneath me.”
Nichol's Life of Byron. (English Men of Letters
Series, p. 109.)
Alas! when thou wert near, I wished thee far;
But now thy distance is a jangling pain,
That all the harmony of life must mar;
All day I murmur, “Wilt thou come again?”
But now thy distance is a jangling pain,
That all the harmony of life must mar;
All day I murmur, “Wilt thou come again?”
Unless thou wilt return, I sing no more;
A hawk o'ertowers the song-bird of my heart;
Leagues have I drifted on toward the shore
Of mute remorse, since we were driven apart!
A hawk o'ertowers the song-bird of my heart;
Leagues have I drifted on toward the shore
Of mute remorse, since we were driven apart!
55
For though to sing is more to me than breath,—
If I might only sing one worthy song,—
Who sings beneath the basilisk eyes of death?
Or, worse than death, the hovering wings of wrong?
If I might only sing one worthy song,—
Who sings beneath the basilisk eyes of death?
Or, worse than death, the hovering wings of wrong?
They hover o'er me, like a brooding mist,
That blurs the mountains and the morning light,
And blemishes the clustered amethyst
Of pleasure's grapes, with grey mysterious blight.
That blurs the mountains and the morning light,
And blemishes the clustered amethyst
Of pleasure's grapes, with grey mysterious blight.
56
United
“Nothing that I ever read in tale or history,” writes
Peacock, “could present a more striking image of a
sudden, violent, irresistible passion than that under which
I found him labouring.”
Dowden's Life of Shelley, Vol. I., Ch. 9.
Thou dull and foolish day,
Swiftly decline!
My love is far away,
No sun doth shine;
Hasten to thy decay
Thou dull and foolish day!
To-morrow's joy be mine!
Swiftly decline!
My love is far away,
No sun doth shine;
Hasten to thy decay
Thou dull and foolish day!
To-morrow's joy be mine!
To-night my love and I
Lie far apart;
To-morrow she shall lie
Close to my heart;
“Hither, dear morrow, fly!”
Beseech my love and I;
“Fly swift and slow depart!”
Lie far apart;
To-morrow she shall lie
Close to my heart;
“Hither, dear morrow, fly!”
Beseech my love and I;
“Fly swift and slow depart!”
To-day, when day is done,
Wearisome day,
Our blurred and surly sun
Scatters his ray
Over the lands where run
All day, when night is done,
Warm things at happy play.
Wearisome day,
57
Scatters his ray
Over the lands where run
All day, when night is done,
Warm things at happy play.
This frigid land of ours
Scarce can be gay;
Too soon our summer bowers
Droop and decay;
Fair are the southern flowers,
Beyond this land of ours;
Fair is the southern day!
Scarce can be gay;
Too soon our summer bowers
Droop and decay;
Fair are the southern flowers,
Beyond this land of ours;
Fair is the southern day!
Then hasten on, thou moon,
Haggard and grey!
Roll up and onward soon,
'Mid mists astray!
Like thee in pallid swoon
We faint, thou haggard moon,—
Faint with love's long delay!
Haggard and grey!
Roll up and onward soon,
'Mid mists astray!
Like thee in pallid swoon
We faint, thou haggard moon,—
Faint with love's long delay!
58
A Song
Laugh at loving if you will,
But no laughing Love can kill!
Still he reigns in maidens' eyes,
Conquers with a sweet surprise,
And still, though all the world is dark and sleeps,
Love like a sunbeam through the shadow creeps,
And gentle hearts in warmest passion steeps.
But no laughing Love can kill!
Still he reigns in maidens' eyes,
Conquers with a sweet surprise,
And still, though all the world is dark and sleeps,
Love like a sunbeam through the shadow creeps,
And gentle hearts in warmest passion steeps.
Cities he will overskip,
For he loves a country lip,
That no shame nor lying sears,
And an eye undimmed with tears:
So oft you'll find him at the country fairs,
Where kirtled Prudence sells her homely wares,
Fresh crocks of butter or ripe Katherine pears.
For he loves a country lip,
That no shame nor lying sears,
And an eye undimmed with tears:
So oft you'll find him at the country fairs,
Where kirtled Prudence sells her homely wares,
Fresh crocks of butter or ripe Katherine pears.
Laugh at loving as you may,
Love will laugh another day!
If he laugh not, you shall weep
For his favour, ere you sleep!
Bring to his altar, then,—in time be wise,—
Bring Venus' apples, that poor lover's prize,
And pansies, softer than their mistress' eyes!
Love will laugh another day!
If he laugh not, you shall weep
For his favour, ere you sleep!
Bring to his altar, then,—in time be wise,—
Bring Venus' apples, that poor lover's prize,
And pansies, softer than their mistress' eyes!
59
The Sacrament of Love
Love brimmed the golden bowl of life
With generous measure;
The importunacy of strife
Subdued to pleasure;
Made sensitive to lightest play
The heart's vibration;
And taught upon his shrine to lay
The due oblation.
With generous measure;
The importunacy of strife
Subdued to pleasure;
Made sensitive to lightest play
The heart's vibration;
And taught upon his shrine to lay
The due oblation.
A priest came by and cast a doubt
Into that nectar;
'Twas wrong, he said, to be without
Pain, the corrector;
The idolater in hell, he vowed,
Lies next the scoffer;
Only to God are men allowed
Homage to offer.
Into that nectar;
'Twas wrong, he said, to be without
Pain, the corrector;
The idolater in hell, he vowed,
Lies next the scoffer;
Only to God are men allowed
Homage to offer.
Such wormwood in the bowl he threw,
With holy malice;
Some drops, splashed up like rosy dew,
Fell in his chalice;
He sipped, and happier than a child
He grew, and meeker;
Pleasure and pain were reconciled
Within that beaker.
With holy malice;
Some drops, splashed up like rosy dew,
Fell in his chalice;
He sipped, and happier than a child
He grew, and meeker;
Pleasure and pain were reconciled
Within that beaker.
60
A Song of Solace
Again, dear heart, we snatch an hour
From Time, who grudges bliss;
Thy lips unfold, like morning flower,
To pout the promised kiss!
Deep hues arise within thine eyes;
Love's soft suffusion, stealing,
Fills all thy face with tender grace
And all thy form with feeling.
From Time, who grudges bliss;
Thy lips unfold, like morning flower,
To pout the promised kiss!
Deep hues arise within thine eyes;
Love's soft suffusion, stealing,
Fills all thy face with tender grace
And all thy form with feeling.
Beside thee I can still forget
Life's purposes, how vain;
The force that dissipates in fret;
The disproportioned pain:
Whoso may preach, can never reach
(Too careful comfort doling),
The soothing power of one dear hour
Of thy complete consoling.
Life's purposes, how vain;
The force that dissipates in fret;
The disproportioned pain:
Whoso may preach, can never reach
(Too careful comfort doling),
The soothing power of one dear hour
Of thy complete consoling.
61
Midnight Invocation to the Wind
Come forth from thine Aeolian cave!
Make plain the approaches of the day!
Then Earthward let thy pinions wave,
To winnow human dross away!
Make plain the approaches of the day!
Then Earthward let thy pinions wave,
To winnow human dross away!
Come forth, O Wind! O'er dale and down,
Across the broad, untainted seas,
With gathered freshness fan the town,
That faints with manifold disease!
Across the broad, untainted seas,
With gathered freshness fan the town,
That faints with manifold disease!
Come forth! To make the hazes flee
From leagured souls; to sound thy horn
In laggard hearts; to set us free
From petty love and petty scorn!
From leagured souls; to sound thy horn
In laggard hearts; to set us free
From petty love and petty scorn!
62
The Gifts of the Gods
Once with life and love enamoured,
We besought the gods above;
“Send us love and life!” we clamoured,
And they sent us life and love.
We besought the gods above;
“Send us love and life!” we clamoured,
And they sent us life and love.
Soon they over-filled the measure;
Soon we prayed them, “Grant us calm!”
But they answered, “Pain is pleasure!
“Crush from bitter herbs the balm!
Soon we prayed them, “Grant us calm!”
But they answered, “Pain is pleasure!
“Crush from bitter herbs the balm!
“Forms of beauty ye may fashion
“From the anguish of the heart;
“Only by the cross of passion
“Can ye win the crown of Art.”
“From the anguish of the heart;
“Only by the cross of passion
“Can ye win the crown of Art.”
63
The New Apollo
Oh! credit not, though Academes have taught,That poesy is manacled to speak
Through those old masks wherein the buskined Greek
Poured his sea-sounding dithyrambics, fraught
With rage melodious and majestic thought,
Or that no other chrism a bard may seek
Than lustral dews on Helicon's high peak
Or rare Castalian sprinklings, hardly caught.
Soon shall the holier song, that Olivet
Chants to her sister hill of Calvary,
Place echo's fingers on a finer fret;
Whose many-pinioned utterance, ranging free,
Sion shall welcome first, with holy glee,
When poet and the day are duly met.
64
Aldeburg
Once more I watch the pale and writhing lipsOf this old sea that gnaws around the land.
How lonely are the surges and the strand!
The fishermen are gone, and fled the ships;
The billows, that the cruel tempest whips,
Shake their grey manes and plunge along the sand;
Round dying day no stars attendant stand;
Far o'er the foam the floating beacon dips.
When last I wandered here, in childhood's hour,
The sky was blue, the waves were all aglow;
Ah! then my heart unfolded, like a flower
Enisled in innocence; no stormy stower
Of worldly waters, no unfathomed flow
Of passion compassed me with empty woe.
66
Eastbourne
I love thee, queenly mother of the streams,That seek thy breast again, their labour done;
Source of all kindly waters, as the sun
Is minister of warmth and fruitful beams;
Like harvest-waggons, drawn by chiming teams
Of horses grey, the merchant-vessels run
Upon thy plain; and oft from thee has won
The city toiler health and happy dreams.
A promise in thy voice I understand,
Fairer than length of days or teeming marts;
For thou shalt bear us in thy pallid hand,
My love and me, until thy barrier parts
Us ever from the narrow northern land,
And ever from the narrow northern hearts.
67
Weybridge
Queen village of the Bridge upon the Wey,Dim grow thy beauties as we number them;—
Saint George's Hill, thy plumèd diadem;
Thy meadow girdle; all thy green array;
The spire, thy sceptre, seen so far away
Along the river that with pearly hem
Borders thy robe, from barges as they stem
The current, and from boats that idly stray.
As from that reeking city in the East
Black hazes on the landscape oft alight,
Like hint of poisoned goblets at a feast,
So doth a foul suburban parasite
Thy field and forest, with fermenting yeast
Of spawning speculation, blear and blight.
68
Matthew Arnold
Arnold, whose lot was cast in days of ill,That seized thy mind, the fountain of thy song,
And turned its stream with callous hands and strong,
To push the paddles of the groaning mill,
The arteries of the city's heart to fill,—
Wert thou content, if so were borne, along
The hissing culverts, to the herded throng
Hints of the freshness of thy native hill?
I could have wished thine undiverted flood
Had rolled harmoniously from source to sea,
Untortured, save by restless lyric mood;
Now a cascade, now lingering o'er the lea.
For beauty is not drawn into our blood
From cisterns; but from waters wandering free.
69
My Sister's Room
She that dwells here her spirit doth transmitInto the very air; a calmness steals
Upon me, sitting where she's wont to sit,
Or standing at the table where she kneels.
Ah! could I only fancy what she feels
When the near presence of her heavenly guide,
The Man divine, her reverie reveals.
Here, are her books; and here, her pen is plied
In tasks of love; there, through the window wide,
From wood and meadow floats a summer sound;
The thrushes pipe, the whispering waters glide;
Crowned is the vale with peace, as she is crowned.
O virgin spirit of this quiet place,
Inform me with thy restfulness and grace!
70
Vocation
This day with careful courage have I swornMy feet no more shall stagger after praise,
Climbing the long denial's precipitous ways;
These poor foolhardy feet, bare, bruised, and torn,
Henceforward shall be shod for paths of scorn;
Then, though I clamber upward all my days
And never reach the summit, where the bays
And myrtles beckon, waiting to be worn,
Yet shall I never faint, until I die.
From God the impulse sprang, from God it springs,
To mount into the distance, far and high
Beyond the dusty coop of common things;
But now I know that feet can never fly,
And only from our sandals grow our wings.
71
Astronomy
Our spirits loose their prison bars
And search for truth beyond the bound
Of wisdom, when our heads are crowned
With haloes of the streaming stars.
And search for truth beyond the bound
Of wisdom, when our heads are crowned
With haloes of the streaming stars.
Then to the farthest orb we run
And stand upon its utmost edge;
And lo! there is a farther ledge,
And, still beyond, a farther sun!
And stand upon its utmost edge;
And lo! there is a farther ledge,
And, still beyond, a farther sun!
72
Swiss Mountains by Night
Ye lonely peaks, with brows of ice!
Ye lonely peaks, with breasts of snow!
Like nuns remote from worlds below,
Pale with the pain of sacrifice!
Ye lonely peaks, with breasts of snow!
Like nuns remote from worlds below,
Pale with the pain of sacrifice!
Like novice clinging in a swoon
Repentant of renouncèd love,
Lies at your feet the lake; above
Leans forth the white disdainful moon!
Repentant of renouncèd love,
Lies at your feet the lake; above
Leans forth the white disdainful moon!
73
Hercules and Hylas
Then came the Argo to an unknown isle,
Where thought the mariners to rest awhile,
To fill the empty water-skins anew,
And gather store of juicy fruit that grew
Upon the laden trees along the strand.
Where thought the mariners to rest awhile,
To fill the empty water-skins anew,
And gather store of juicy fruit that grew
Upon the laden trees along the strand.
Hylas,—an earthen pitcher in his hand,—
First wades to shore, to seek a woodland spring
And water for the mid-day meal to bring.
Beautiful Hylas, loved of Hercules!
Who often set him on his mighty knees,
And told him how a hero's fame was earned,
Till the boy's heart with thoughts of glory burned.
First wades to shore, to seek a woodland spring
And water for the mid-day meal to bring.
Beautiful Hylas, loved of Hercules!
Who often set him on his mighty knees,
And told him how a hero's fame was earned,
Till the boy's heart with thoughts of glory burned.
So, while he hies him to the bosky vales,
The mariners haul down the flapping sails,
The anchor cast, and leap upon the sand;
Some draw the net and from the shallows land
The silver tunny-fish, or baskets fill
With parsley pale and crisp luxuriant dill,
The mariners haul down the flapping sails,
The anchor cast, and leap upon the sand;
Some draw the net and from the shallows land
The silver tunny-fish, or baskets fill
With parsley pale and crisp luxuriant dill,
74
That at the fringes of the forest shine;
Others for fuel gather boughs of pine;
And while the frugal banquet they prepare,
Their shouts and laughter float upon the air.
Others for fuel gather boughs of pine;
And while the frugal banquet they prepare,
Their shouts and laughter float upon the air.
Soon as the feast is done, beneath the trees,
With listening comrades stretched around at ease,
The minstrel Orpheus on his cithern plays
And sings the famous deeds of former days.
With listening comrades stretched around at ease,
The minstrel Orpheus on his cithern plays
And sings the famous deeds of former days.
But when the noon-day heat is overpast,
Along the level sand the games they range;
Huge boulders, here, in ordered turn they cast,
The wrestlers writhe with many an antic strange,
And youths of Elis or Aetolia leap
The pools that lie along the ebbing deep;
There, like an antelope, the runner flies,
And great Alcides stands to judge the prize.
But yet the while his thoughts seem otherwise,
Nor in the triumph nor defeat to share;
His heart is with his comrade, far away
In forests wandering since the break of day;
And now the mellow sunset lulls the breeze;
The billows leap no more; across the bay
The calm, uncrested ripple of the seas
Lisps murmurous secrets of the coming night;
No more the sea-bird soars with wheeling flight;
Touched by the torch of Evening, each in turn,
The cressets of the sky begin to burn;
The tide creeps up the sands where late they set
The racing goal: but Hylas comes not yet.
Along the level sand the games they range;
Huge boulders, here, in ordered turn they cast,
The wrestlers writhe with many an antic strange,
And youths of Elis or Aetolia leap
The pools that lie along the ebbing deep;
There, like an antelope, the runner flies,
And great Alcides stands to judge the prize.
But yet the while his thoughts seem otherwise,
Nor in the triumph nor defeat to share;
His heart is with his comrade, far away
In forests wandering since the break of day;
And now the mellow sunset lulls the breeze;
The billows leap no more; across the bay
The calm, uncrested ripple of the seas
Lisps murmurous secrets of the coming night;
No more the sea-bird soars with wheeling flight;
Touched by the torch of Evening, each in turn,
The cressets of the sky begin to burn;
The tide creeps up the sands where late they set
The racing goal: but Hylas comes not yet.
Then, through the woods, the hero strides away,
To shout for Hylas. 'Wildered or astray,
Wounded or faint, some evil chance befalls
The winsome boy! And ever as he calls
He stands awhile, with ear intent, to hark
If there be answer through the dreary dark!
For in his mind a vision will not cease
Of locks as golden as the Golden Fleece,
That oft were wont upon his breast to spread
When there the happy child would lay his head;
And often, too, a voice he seems to hear,
That loved to tell youth's day-dreams in his ear!
But till the Eastern clouds are all aflame,
Only mad echo answers Hylas' name.
To shout for Hylas. 'Wildered or astray,
75
The winsome boy! And ever as he calls
He stands awhile, with ear intent, to hark
If there be answer through the dreary dark!
For in his mind a vision will not cease
Of locks as golden as the Golden Fleece,
That oft were wont upon his breast to spread
When there the happy child would lay his head;
And often, too, a voice he seems to hear,
That loved to tell youth's day-dreams in his ear!
But till the Eastern clouds are all aflame,
Only mad echo answers Hylas' name.
At sun-rise he perceives a narrow vale,
Where sky-blue swallow-wort and galingale
With mallow cool and trembling maiden-hair
The sheltered margin of a river share;
Here, as he kneels along a strip of sand,
To splash his fevered brow with hollow hand,
With sudden pang he sees the shape impressed
Of youthful footsteps by the river brink!
He starts erect! He must renew the quest!
He pants, he runs; and scarcely dares to think
If he should hope or be the more distressed!
Where sky-blue swallow-wort and galingale
With mallow cool and trembling maiden-hair
The sheltered margin of a river share;
Here, as he kneels along a strip of sand,
To splash his fevered brow with hollow hand,
With sudden pang he sees the shape impressed
Of youthful footsteps by the river brink!
He starts erect! He must renew the quest!
He pants, he runs; and scarcely dares to think
If he should hope or be the more distressed!
So comes he to the head of the ravine,
And there beholds a bubbling pool, between
Unnumbered flowers, enamelling the ground,
And golden-fruited trees. He looks around
And calls for Hylas. Then with sudden start
A chilling tremour seizes on his heart,—
Beside the fount an earthen pitcher lies!
Again the forest echoes with his cries;
Again along the hateful shore he seeks:
But all is silence; nought of Hylas speaks
Save that deserted pitcher. But its tale
Of desolation darkens all the vale.
And there beholds a bubbling pool, between
Unnumbered flowers, enamelling the ground,
And golden-fruited trees. He looks around
And calls for Hylas. Then with sudden start
A chilling tremour seizes on his heart,—
Beside the fount an earthen pitcher lies!
Again the forest echoes with his cries;
76
But all is silence; nought of Hylas speaks
Save that deserted pitcher. But its tale
Of desolation darkens all the vale.
And yet fair Hylas was not truly dead,
For when he rambled to the river's head,
And stood upon a boulder, shelving sheer
Into the well of water crystal-clear,
Up through the cloven wave, with sudden swirl
Of silvery spray, arose a Naiad girl!
Glad, glad was Hylas; for not yet had men
Scared gentle fairies from the lake and glen
But who was pure in spirit and right free
Might meet them oft beneath the forest tree.
Around her soon a troop of Naiads rise,
Naked, with clinging hair and dusky eyes;
They stretch alluring arms, and laughing toy
With the fair curls that crown the lovely boy;
Then, at the touch of those immortal hands,
His nature changes; fearless, to the sands
Beneath the wave, he lets them draw him down,
And with large lilies plait for him a crown,
Among their grottoes, pale with shelly floor.
Here would he stay with them for evermore,
And feel not summer heat, nor wintry cold;
Never grow weary, sorrowful, nor old;
But chase the speckled fish with emerald eyes,
Pluck down the clustered apples, golden-ripe,
By the lake-side, and when the moon should rise,
Dance with the maidens to the Satyrs' pipe!
For when he rambled to the river's head,
And stood upon a boulder, shelving sheer
Into the well of water crystal-clear,
Up through the cloven wave, with sudden swirl
Of silvery spray, arose a Naiad girl!
Glad, glad was Hylas; for not yet had men
Scared gentle fairies from the lake and glen
But who was pure in spirit and right free
Might meet them oft beneath the forest tree.
Around her soon a troop of Naiads rise,
Naked, with clinging hair and dusky eyes;
They stretch alluring arms, and laughing toy
With the fair curls that crown the lovely boy;
Then, at the touch of those immortal hands,
His nature changes; fearless, to the sands
Beneath the wave, he lets them draw him down,
And with large lilies plait for him a crown,
Among their grottoes, pale with shelly floor.
Here would he stay with them for evermore,
And feel not summer heat, nor wintry cold;
Never grow weary, sorrowful, nor old;
But chase the speckled fish with emerald eyes,
Pluck down the clustered apples, golden-ripe,
By the lake-side, and when the moon should rise,
Dance with the maidens to the Satyrs' pipe!
Now whether Hercules, beside the well,
Had visions of this witchery that befell,
By very anguish wearied into sleep,
Or whether from the water's crystal deep
Rose up with Hylas those Limnaean maids,
I know not; for the isle before me fades;
The Argonauts have put to sea once more,
And dimly glimmers that enchanted shore.
Had visions of this witchery that befell,
77
Or whether from the water's crystal deep
Rose up with Hylas those Limnaean maids,
I know not; for the isle before me fades;
The Argonauts have put to sea once more,
And dimly glimmers that enchanted shore.
But this I know,—the minstrel Orpheus oft,
When round the prow the ripples murmured soft,
A ballad for the mariners would make
Of Hylas and the Maidens of the Lake.
When round the prow the ripples murmured soft,
A ballad for the mariners would make
Of Hylas and the Maidens of the Lake.
78
Tithonus
[_]
(Aurora, the Goddess of Morning, fell in love with Tithonus, a beautiful youth, and craved for him from the gods the gift of eternal life; which gift they bestowed; but not that of eternal youth.)
How slowly wane the weary hours away!
The tree is dry, the sap has ceased to flow;
And yet it stands unshattered by the storm,
Unwounded by the sharpest axe of Fate!
Nor can it die, although it would not live.
They say that death and life are mingled wine,
The bitter and the sweet; but who hath seen
Such intertwined confusion as in me?
I might be death himself, who ever lives.
My blood is curdled and my bones are dust;
My eyes are dim, but not with tears; the power
To weep has left me, with my youth and hope;
For youthful tears are sweet and hopeful pain.
I live in self-embodied death, and die
In mock similitude of life; but death
Would be a better life to me than all.
The tree is dry, the sap has ceased to flow;
And yet it stands unshattered by the storm,
Unwounded by the sharpest axe of Fate!
Nor can it die, although it would not live.
They say that death and life are mingled wine,
The bitter and the sweet; but who hath seen
Such intertwined confusion as in me?
I might be death himself, who ever lives.
My blood is curdled and my bones are dust;
My eyes are dim, but not with tears; the power
To weep has left me, with my youth and hope;
For youthful tears are sweet and hopeful pain.
I live in self-embodied death, and die
In mock similitude of life; but death
Would be a better life to me than all.
How slowly wane the weary hours away!
Ah! how in those old days, when first the love
Of my bright goddess flooded through my soul,
I felt the warm blood beat about my heart,
At tender tone or blush of hers, for me,
When sitting on the hill in vine-leaf shade
We watched the mid-day heat steal o'er the hills,
The lazy lizard sleep along the wall,
The bird drop silent to his inmost bower;
Till the black bat athwart the sunset wheeled,
And cooler night bedewed the frog's harsh throat.
Then had I life before me, and to die
A death as peaceful as the balmy air
That floated round us in that quiet hour;
Then, like a happy bee,—from flower to flower
Flashing his banded colours in the sun,
Sipping his store from thyme and asphodel
In earliest morning, ere the pastures drowse,
Lulled by the poppy-scented heat to calm,—
I sucked from day to day the present sweet.
Of my bright goddess flooded through my soul,
79
At tender tone or blush of hers, for me,
When sitting on the hill in vine-leaf shade
We watched the mid-day heat steal o'er the hills,
The lazy lizard sleep along the wall,
The bird drop silent to his inmost bower;
Till the black bat athwart the sunset wheeled,
And cooler night bedewed the frog's harsh throat.
Then had I life before me, and to die
A death as peaceful as the balmy air
That floated round us in that quiet hour;
Then, like a happy bee,—from flower to flower
Flashing his banded colours in the sun,
Sipping his store from thyme and asphodel
In earliest morning, ere the pastures drowse,
Lulled by the poppy-scented heat to calm,—
I sucked from day to day the present sweet.
Ah Morning!—Ah dear Night! that used to bring
In Hesperus' car mine own imperial bride,
Who loved me first with more than mortal love,
With golden locks and breath like incense-wind
From iris arches of the Southern rain,
How often in the noiseless halls of heaven,
Sating our souls with silent songs of love,
We watched at eve thy bright inquisitive stars,
Watching in turn, with many shimmering eyes;
Till in their prairies and untraversed bowers
Blossomed the moon, and every fleecy cloud
Unfolded petals, pearled with silvery sheen!
Then to our inmost chamber passed, to sleep
A charmèd sleep, as innocent as babes,
Of all this misery and life so lost.
O loitering, long, intolerable hours!
In Hesperus' car mine own imperial bride,
Who loved me first with more than mortal love,
With golden locks and breath like incense-wind
From iris arches of the Southern rain,
How often in the noiseless halls of heaven,
Sating our souls with silent songs of love,
We watched at eve thy bright inquisitive stars,
Watching in turn, with many shimmering eyes;
Till in their prairies and untraversed bowers
Blossomed the moon, and every fleecy cloud
Unfolded petals, pearled with silvery sheen!
Then to our inmost chamber passed, to sleep
A charmèd sleep, as innocent as babes,
Of all this misery and life so lost.
80
Ungiving gift! unbenefiting good!
Never to know that imperceptibly
My youth was vanishing, like sliding sand;
That, grain by grain, records the sliding hour!
Never to feel the palsy touch of age
Steal on my limbs and stagnate in my veins!
But to live on, the very sport of fate,
The puppet of an empty-handed hope;
Till a cloud gathered on my loved one's face
And men said “Lo, a stormy cloud-girt morn!”
For year by year I failed; with locks more grey,
More feeble fingers, and more hollow cheeks;
And so at last an agony of thought
Swept o'er her mind, and passing, left the truth!
Never to know that imperceptibly
My youth was vanishing, like sliding sand;
That, grain by grain, records the sliding hour!
Never to feel the palsy touch of age
Steal on my limbs and stagnate in my veins!
But to live on, the very sport of fate,
The puppet of an empty-handed hope;
Till a cloud gathered on my loved one's face
And men said “Lo, a stormy cloud-girt morn!”
For year by year I failed; with locks more grey,
More feeble fingers, and more hollow cheeks;
And so at last an agony of thought
Swept o'er her mind, and passing, left the truth!
Our lives diverge; no yoke of love can bridge
The gulf between them; mortal recompense,—
The consolation of a wedded fate,
The journey step by step, and hand in hand,
The tasting of the bitterness of death
Together,—is denied us; and I fail.
The gulf between them; mortal recompense,—
The consolation of a wedded fate,
The journey step by step, and hand in hand,
The tasting of the bitterness of death
Together,—is denied us; and I fail.
O loitering, long, intolerable hours!
O soft-robed spouse, pray that I too may die;
For all the seasons tread with weighted heels,
And all thy beauty makes my misery more!
Pray that I too may die, like other men,
And leave my burden in a clod of clay!
The peace of death is peace inviolate,
His realm a placid place from age to age.
So when again, from these thine ivory gates,
Thy chariot bears thee to the wistful earth,—
Where sedges rustle to thine herald wind,
And rivers creep through many a length of land,
Where shepherds pipe upon the pasture hills
Of rich Arcadia, or the purple peaks
Of fair Aegina and the Cyclades,—
Mark! when the bee has sealed her amber cells,
The swallow laced the air with weaving wings,
The lark achieved the summit of his song,
And every creature lived his life, they drop
Like thunder-bolt from heaven upon the deep,
In one short moment into endless rest!
But when the swarthy Evening clasps the beads
Of topaz on her brow, return! And there,
On thy dear bosom, will I lay my head,
To hear thy whispered tidings; that my soul
May shed itself, in memory of these things,
In one great burst of tears, and I may die!
For all the seasons tread with weighted heels,
And all thy beauty makes my misery more!
Pray that I too may die, like other men,
And leave my burden in a clod of clay!
The peace of death is peace inviolate,
His realm a placid place from age to age.
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Thy chariot bears thee to the wistful earth,—
Where sedges rustle to thine herald wind,
And rivers creep through many a length of land,
Where shepherds pipe upon the pasture hills
Of rich Arcadia, or the purple peaks
Of fair Aegina and the Cyclades,—
Mark! when the bee has sealed her amber cells,
The swallow laced the air with weaving wings,
The lark achieved the summit of his song,
And every creature lived his life, they drop
Like thunder-bolt from heaven upon the deep,
In one short moment into endless rest!
But when the swarthy Evening clasps the beads
Of topaz on her brow, return! And there,
On thy dear bosom, will I lay my head,
To hear thy whispered tidings; that my soul
May shed itself, in memory of these things,
In one great burst of tears, and I may die!
82
The Commonest Lot
The beam that drifts about the sea,
Nosed by the dog-fish, slimed by sea-snails, draws
Into itself through seams and flaws
The ocean imperceptibly.
Nosed by the dog-fish, slimed by sea-snails, draws
Into itself through seams and flaws
The ocean imperceptibly.
Quick currents sift it through and through;
With jelly creatures feeding on its sides;
The sea-flower round it glooms and slides
With languid motion, to and fro.
With jelly creatures feeding on its sides;
The sea-flower round it glooms and slides
With languid motion, to and fro.
The wave within weighs more and more
Down, till the burden over-balance it;
Down, till the flat-fish o'er it flit,
The sand-worm burrow to its core.
Down, till the burden over-balance it;
Down, till the flat-fish o'er it flit,
The sand-worm burrow to its core.
83
The Poet
He draws from the heart of the Human tears that he makes his own,
He draws from the spirit of Nature sounds of a mystic tone,
His mirth (though it draw quick smiles) has the theme of some deeper moan.
He draws from the spirit of Nature sounds of a mystic tone,
His mirth (though it draw quick smiles) has the theme of some deeper moan.
E'en when his mouth is mutest, within there is sound on sound,
For shafts of light come slanting from the hoary mountains round
To his heart's embowered vale, by a stream of tears enwound.
For shafts of light come slanting from the hoary mountains round
To his heart's embowered vale, by a stream of tears enwound.
Ah! could you see him greet it, with eyes undazed and proud!
Light from the hoary mountains, where winds are ever loud!
Light that would scathe another,—one of the darkling crowd!
Light from the hoary mountains, where winds are ever loud!
Light that would scathe another,—one of the darkling crowd!
84
Though, when he breaks the silence, vainly his voice may float,
His is the blackbird's warble, his is the throstle's throat,
Spring after spring repeating an exquisite, idle note.
His is the blackbird's warble, his is the throstle's throat,
Spring after spring repeating an exquisite, idle note.
Idle song of the poet! Message from seas and skies!
Stronger than wind it pierces, swifter than light it flies!
Gladdens the world, unheeded, as sunshine gladdens the eyes!
Stronger than wind it pierces, swifter than light it flies!
Gladdens the world, unheeded, as sunshine gladdens the eyes!
85
Sympathy
I often think, wert thou to die,
A thrill of secret sympathy
Would knit thy soul with mine,
And through the air would come to me
A pang of sadness suddenly,
If thou became divine.
A thrill of secret sympathy
Would knit thy soul with mine,
And through the air would come to me
A pang of sadness suddenly,
If thou became divine.
Through prayer and longing for thy heart
In all thy fate I have a part
To feel, to think, or say;
So shouldst thou fade, a sudden sigh
Would startle me,—in death more nigh,—
In life so far away!
In all thy fate I have a part
To feel, to think, or say;
So shouldst thou fade, a sudden sigh
Would startle me,—in death more nigh,—
In life so far away!
As when on some high pasture-hill
A shepherd feels the sudden chill
Of evening come to him,
When through the golden gates of sky
The tender tints of sunset fly,
And all the land grows dim.
A shepherd feels the sudden chill
Of evening come to him,
When through the golden gates of sky
The tender tints of sunset fly,
And all the land grows dim.
So if thine hours of life were done,
A shudder through my soul would run,
An icy wind would blow
Upon me, standing on the height
Whereto Love bore me by his might,
And set me, long ago.
A shudder through my soul would run,
An icy wind would blow
86
Whereto Love bore me by his might,
And set me, long ago.
Know you not, dearest, if thou sing
And touch upon thine harp a string,
Another chord vibrates?
So if death snap thy life-time's thread,
Shall I too know that thou art dead,
And free from loves and hates!
And touch upon thine harp a string,
Another chord vibrates?
So if death snap thy life-time's thread,
Shall I too know that thou art dead,
And free from loves and hates!
87
Spring
O day desired, to plump the hawthorn bud,
To make the lambkin skip, to push the juice
Up through the chestnut bough like lusty blood,
To urge the fields their herbage to produce,
To give the lark or even the twittering linnet
Ambition for the crown of song and mastery to win it!
To make the lambkin skip, to push the juice
Up through the chestnut bough like lusty blood,
To urge the fields their herbage to produce,
To give the lark or even the twittering linnet
Ambition for the crown of song and mastery to win it!
See how the sunbeams leave their blue expanse,
To visit every opening daffodil,
And roguishly among its leaves to dance!
See how the stream, reluctant, to the mill
Coils with slow current! Ere to labour leaping,
In green and grassy arms the water-sprite is sleeping!
To visit every opening daffodil,
And roguishly among its leaves to dance!
See how the stream, reluctant, to the mill
Coils with slow current! Ere to labour leaping,
In green and grassy arms the water-sprite is sleeping!
Now, day by day, the teeming hours unfold
A film of verdure over glebe and glade,
A tardier twilight, and a dawn more bold,
Delicious sun and more delicious shade!
Till lavish Spring, redeeming all her pledges,
Inherit once again her meadows and her hedges.
A film of verdure over glebe and glade,
A tardier twilight, and a dawn more bold,
Delicious sun and more delicious shade!
Till lavish Spring, redeeming all her pledges,
Inherit once again her meadows and her hedges.
88
To Her
Till thee I loved, my radiant Spring,
My heart was like a silent plot,
Where goodly flowers flourish not,
And brambles tear and nettles sting!
My heart was like a silent plot,
Where goodly flowers flourish not,
And brambles tear and nettles sting!
Now thorn and nettle in a ring
My garden guard from filching foes,
But in the midst the lily blows
And all thine herald thrushes sing.
My garden guard from filching foes,
But in the midst the lily blows
And all thine herald thrushes sing.
89
An Invitation
Oh! come to yonder pasture-hill,
To drink the distance with our eyes;
There, through the summer noonday still,
Shall tinkling of the sheep bells rise;
And near at hand, in cadence low,
A bubble-tossing spring shall flow.
To drink the distance with our eyes;
There, through the summer noonday still,
Shall tinkling of the sheep bells rise;
And near at hand, in cadence low,
A bubble-tossing spring shall flow.
Or, if the shade we more esteem,
Through yon secluded woodland ways,
We'll trace the winding of the stream,
That round the boulder peeps and plays;
There water-ousels sweetly cry,
And with their cousin thrushes vie.
Through yon secluded woodland ways,
We'll trace the winding of the stream,
That round the boulder peeps and plays;
There water-ousels sweetly cry,
And with their cousin thrushes vie.
Till, guided by the laughing linn,
That runs before, with becks and nods,
We come to where the meads begin,
Fringed by a bank of golden-rods;
And there we'll lie 'neath leaning boughs
To watch the quiet cattle browse.
That runs before, with becks and nods,
We come to where the meads begin,
Fringed by a bank of golden-rods;
And there we'll lie 'neath leaning boughs
To watch the quiet cattle browse.
But not of love must be our theme,
Nor of the world's delirious ways;
In silence will we lie and dream,
Watched by a thousand forest fays;
Until our souls aloft shall fly,
To carol in that leafy sky.
Nor of the world's delirious ways;
In silence will we lie and dream,
Watched by a thousand forest fays;
Until our souls aloft shall fly,
To carol in that leafy sky.
90
A Song
“That not impossible She.”
Crashaw.
Crashaw.
Love comes to all!
When will he come to me?
Love be kind!
Let her be fair, and let her be tall,
Let her laugh merrily!
Love, be kind!
When will he come to me?
Love be kind!
Let her be fair, and let her be tall,
Let her laugh merrily!
Love, be kind!
Love comes to all!
So she is fair to me,
Never mind!
Let her seem fair, and fair must befall?
We shall live merrily!
Love is blind!
So she is fair to me,
Never mind!
Let her seem fair, and fair must befall?
We shall live merrily!
Love is blind!
Love comes to all!
Love, when you come to me,
Be not blind!
Let her be fair, and let her be tall,
Let her laugh merrily!
Love, be kind!
Love, when you come to me,
Be not blind!
Let her be fair, and let her be tall,
Let her laugh merrily!
Love, be kind!
91
May-Day Song
Rainbow showers of sunlight falling
Tint the dew on every spray!
Loud across the valley calling,
Hark the jolly cuckoo's lay!
Children, bringing
Wreaths, are singing
“Come away!”
Tint the dew on every spray!
Loud across the valley calling,
Hark the jolly cuckoo's lay!
Children, bringing
Wreaths, are singing
“Come away!”
Celandine the lane has spangled;
Holly laughs no more at may;
Rills, that icy fingers tangled,
Now like loosened ringlets stray!
Woods are crying,
Meads replying,
“Come away!”
Holly laughs no more at may;
Rills, that icy fingers tangled,
Now like loosened ringlets stray!
Woods are crying,
Meads replying,
“Come away!”
Holt and hurst, to spring awaking,
Birds in rapturous roundelay,
Sing you shame for money-making,
Losing for the World To-day!
Leave your labours,
Careful neighbours!
Come away!
Birds in rapturous roundelay,
Sing you shame for money-making,
Losing for the World To-day!
Leave your labours,
Careful neighbours!
Come away!
92
Empty Kisses
Εστι και εν κενεοισι φιλαμασιν αδεα τερψις.
Theocritus (Idyll III. 20).
Theocritus (Idyll III. 20).
Not barren are empty kisses,
But bearers of delight;
They fill our dreams with blisses,
With dreams they fill the night.
But bearers of delight;
They fill our dreams with blisses,
With dreams they fill the night.
Andromeda is sighing,
And Danäe forlorn;
And o'er the Eastern mountain
Aurora leads the morn!
And Danäe forlorn;
And o'er the Eastern mountain
Aurora leads the morn!
Lo! Atalanta races!
The magic apples roll!
Her steps the maid retraces;
Her lover gains the goal!
The magic apples roll!
Her steps the maid retraces;
Her lover gains the goal!
'Neath friendly billows flying,
Runs laughing Arethuse;
And faster than the fountain
The river-god pursues!
Runs laughing Arethuse;
And faster than the fountain
The river-god pursues!
Endymion, lapped in slumber,
Oblivious of the years,
No more the sheep shall number,
The pleasures nor the tears,—
Oblivious of the years,
No more the sheep shall number,
The pleasures nor the tears,—
93
In haloed moonlight lying,
Asleep for evermore;
With the wind upon the mountain,
And the sea upon the shore.
Asleep for evermore;
With the wind upon the mountain,
And the sea upon the shore.
Not barren are empty kisses,
But bearers of delight;
They fill our dreams with blisses,
With dreams they fill the night.
But bearers of delight;
They fill our dreams with blisses,
With dreams they fill the night.
94
Butes
[_]
(Butes was one of the crew of the Argo. When the vessel neared the Isle of the Sirens, the youth leaped overboard to reach them. But Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, rescued him.)
Aphrodite, goddess fair,
Sprang from her Idalian height,
Cleft the startled evening air,
Left a glittering trail of light;
Like a star with sudden glare
Sliding down the sky at night;
Sprang from her Idalian height,
Cleft the startled evening air,
Left a glittering trail of light;
Like a star with sudden glare
Sliding down the sky at night;
In her arms, divinely strong,
Bore to Lilybæum's steep
Butes, from all Siren wrong
Lapped in magic slumber deep!
There, the poets say in song,
She for love the youth doth keep;
Bore to Lilybæum's steep
Butes, from all Siren wrong
Lapped in magic slumber deep!
There, the poets say in song,
She for love the youth doth keep;
With her lips, divinely fair,
Pressing oft his mortal cheek!
Ah! how little doth he care!
Ne'er to rouse him will she seek;
Still he slumbers, unaware,
High on Lilybæum's peak.
Pressing oft his mortal cheek!
Ah! how little doth he care!
Ne'er to rouse him will she seek;
Still he slumbers, unaware,
High on Lilybæum's peak.
95
L'Envoi
Now homes my Song from meadow, mount, and sea,Sure of her refuge, circling back to thee,
To seek, with folded wings, the world apart,
Silent, at rest, the shelter of thine heart.
But, could my voice in true accord repeat
The measure of thy love's melodious beat,
“The world would listen, then;” and kneel, as I
Have knelt and listened in my infancy,—
As now I kneel! Oh, stretch thine hands to bless
My toil, to pardon my unworthiness!
Could life revert to those serener rays
Where slides no more the shadow of my days,
More patient should I prove; in deed and song
More humbly set to do thy love no wrong;
More mindful of thy patience and the springs
Of sympathy that lurk in common things.
Yet must I cease from vain accusing tears,
That win no respite from relentless years;
For well I know my grief is grief to thee!
In silent homage let me bend the knee;
Immeasurably blest that present will
And living voice are thine, to bless me still!
1896.
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