Sonnets of the Wingless Hours :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fourteen small broidered berries on the hem
Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that roll'd
Into the sea, for pearls to come of them;

Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold;
Fourteen small drops, which Faustus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water Life's dry stem.

It is the pure white diamond Dante brought
To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore
When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;

The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core;
The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought
For his own soul, to wear for evermore.

WINTER.

Now is the time when Nature may display
Her frosty jewelry in all men's eyes,
And every breeze that through the brushwood sighs
Brings down her brilliants in a glittering spray.

Like drops of blood upon the snow-strewn way,
The crimson berries lie, the robins' prize;
While, in the leafless woods, the poor man tries
To find some faggots for the bitter day.

On every sleeping pool the winter fits
With unseen hand a strong and glassy lid;
The frightened fish beneath the skater flits,

And quaking, in the lowest depths lies hid;
And old King Christmas at his revel sits,
Where all whom hunger pinches not are bid.

SONNET GOLD.
I.

We get it from Etruscan tombs, hid deep
Beneath the passing ploughshare; or from caves
Known but to Prospero, where pale-green waves
Have rolled the wreck-gold, which the mermaids keep

And from the caverns, where the gnomes up-heap
The secret treasures, which the Earth's dwarf slaves
Coin in her bosom, till the red gold paves
Her whole great heart, where only poets peep;

Or from old missals, where the gold defies
Time's hand, in saints' bright aureoles, and keeps,
In angels' long straight trumpets, all its flash;

But chiefly from the crucible, where lies
The alchymist's pure dream-gold.—While he sleeps
The poet steals it, leaving him the ash.

SONNET GOLD.
II.

What shall we make of sonnet gold for men?
The dove-wreathed cup some youth to Phryne gave?
Or dark Locusta's phial which shall have
Chiselled all round it, snakes from Horror's den?

Or that ill ring, which sank in fathoms ten,
When Faliero spoused the Venice wave?
Or Inez' funeral crown, the day the grave
Showed her for coronation, all myrrh then?

The best to make would be a hilt of gold
For Life's keen falchion,—like a dragon's head
Fierce and fantastic, massive in your hold;

But oft our goldsmith's chisel carves, instead,
A fretted shrine, for sorrows that are old
And passions that are sterile, or are dead.

OBERON'S LAST COUNCIL.
I.

If, on some woodland lawn, you see a ring
Of darker hue upon the paler grass—
The strange green growth which children as they pass
Still tell each other is a fairy thing

Left by the Elves o'er-night—let your soul cling
To the sweet thought that there the Elf King was
With all his crew at dawn; but that, alas!
They met there for their last, last gathering.

For they are fled: and though the sunshine still
Dances in flecks, as dance the leaves above,
And still the squirrel nibbles and the mouse,

The little folk are gone who used to fill
The hazel copses where the wild wood-dove
With cross-laid twigs still builds her breezy house.

OBERON'S LAST COUNCIL.
I.

He called a last assembly of the Elves.
Hundreds of Fairies in the forest met
Round one huge oak-tree—Sprites of dry and wet,
Pixies and Imps, and every gnome that delves:

And Oberon said: ‘We lurk by tens and twelves,
Starved in the woods. Man's faith—our food as yet—
Feeds us no more; the Fairies' sun has set:
We are but shadows of our former selves.

'Tis time to leave the woods and we must part.
When faith quite ends—so say the High Decrees—
Then death will strike us with his icy dart.

Long have we nestled in the hearts of trees;
Now we must nestle in the Poet's heart—
The only place where fairies never freeze.’

IN MEMORIAM.

Marston, mourn not; Rossetti is not dead,
Though chill as clay is now his shrouded brow
Nor grudge the grave the flesh it gathers now
The soul remains, to live on earth instead.

And thou that wast his friend, if e'er I said
A word in harshness, hear me disavow,
While such small wreath as I can wreathe I throw
Upon the stone that covers now his head.

The wintry breath of Azrael hath swept
A green leaf to the heap of bygone leaves
Where Alighieri and where Shakespeare lie.

Mourn not. Each day some brother dies unwept,
But he for whom the distant stranger grieves,
Outlives mere life; for men he doth not die.

April 14, 1882.

ROMAN BATHS.

There were some Roman baths where we spent hours:
Immense and lonely courts of rock-like brick,
All overgrown with verdure strong and thick,
And girding sweet wild lawns all full of flowers.

One day, beneath the turf, green with the showers
Of all the centuries since Genseric,
They found rich pavements hidden by Time's trick,
Adorned with tritons, dolphins, doves like ours.

So, underneath the surface of To-day,
Lies yesterday, and what we call the Past,
The only thing which never can decay.

Things bygone are the only things that last:
The Present is mere grass, quick-mown away;
The Past is stone, and stands for ever fast.

SPRING.

There lurks a sadness in the April air
For those who note the fate of earthly things;
A dreamy sense of what the future brings
To those too good, too hopeful or too fair.

An underthought of heartache, as it were,
Blends with the pæan that the new leaf sings;
And, as it were, a breeze from Death's great wings
Shakes down the blossoms that the fruit-trees bear.

The tide of sap flows up the forest trees;
The birds exult in every bough on high;
The ivy bloom is full of humming bees;

But if you list, you hear the latent sigh;
And each new leaf that rustles in the breeze
Proclaims the boundless mutability.

TO PHILIP MARSTON.

To walk in darkness through the sunlit wood,
And know no leaves but dead ones on the ground,
While Spring's young green is waving all around,
And joyous Nature spurns her widowhood;

To have no share in each successive mood
Of wayward Day, by Night for ever bound;
To know the Morn but by the growing sound,
Eve by its chill, not by its Sunset flood:

Such is thy portion in this world of light,
Where only voices—more like souls set free
Than living men—surround thee in thy plight.

God said from out the Darkness, ‘Let Light be’;
And Day sprang dazzling from the lap of Night.
Alas, my Friend, He said it not for thee.

OXFORD.

So you will see what I can see no more;
The old black stone, all round the bright young grass;
The towers, panelled halls, and fair stained glass;
The sunlit turf through some old oaken door;

And that green river with the sedgy shore;
The motley barges, and the huddled mass
Of breathless cheerers, as the swift eights pass
In desperate race, with long bent feathering oar.

The years go by, and all is fading fast;
The crowd in cap and gown are mere ghosts now
And that bright river glides into the Past;

The colleges and elm-girt towers grow
Each year more unsubstantial than the last,
Like fair dissolving views that lose their glow.

MUSSET'S LOUIS D'OR.

Asleep, a little fisher-girl one day
Lay on the shingle in an old boat's shade;
Her skirt was tattered, and the sea-breeze played
With her brown loosened hair a ceaseless play.

A poet chanced to pass as there she lay;
Her sun-burnt face, her tatters he surveyed;
A golden coin between her lips he laid,
And, letting her sleep on, he went his way.

What came of that gold windfall? Did it breed
Those long-loved coins which patient thrift can show
With proud pure smile, to meet the household need?

Or stolen gold? or those curst coins which grow
Each year more sought, more loathed, and are the meed
Of women's loveless kisses? Who can know?

PROMETHEAN FANCIES.
I.

When on to shuddering Caucasus God pours
The phials of his fury hoarded long,
Plunging in each abyss his fiery prong
As if to find a Titan; when loud roars

The imprisoned thunder groping for the doors
Of never-ending gorges; when, among
The desperate pines, Storm howls his battle song—
Then wakes Prometheus, and his voice upsoars.

Yea, when the midnight tempest hurries past,
There sounds within its wail a wilder wail
Than that which tells the anguish of the blast;

And when the thunder thunders down the gale,
A laugh within its laugh tells woe so vast
That God's own angels in the darkness quail.

100

PROMETHEAN FANCIES.
II.

Prometheus—none may see him. But at night,
When heaven's bolt has made some forest flare
On Caucasus, and when the broad red glare
Flushes from crag to crag at infinite height,

Staining the snow, or running ruby-bright
Along the myriad glacier-crests to scare
The screaming eagles out of black chasms, where,
But half dislodged, the dark still grapples tight:

Then on some lurid monstrous wall of rock
The Titan's shadow suddenly appears
Gigantic, flickering, vague; and, storm-unfurled,

Seems still to brave, with hand that dim chains lock
Midway in the unendingness of years,
The Author of the miscreated world.

101

GOLD OF MIDAS.

The poet is the alchymist of thought—
The Midas whose too sovereign touch, of old,
Transmuted every trifle into gold,
And gilt the very clay the potter wrought.

No common mountain torrent he has sought
And bathed his soul in, but has straightway roll'd
Auriferous sands; no maze where he has stroll'd,
But gleams with ponderous ingots rich as aught

That Midas ever gilt.—But woe, thrice woe,
If, locked in his own gold, he should forget,
Like that same Midas, how and why we live:

He craved a Universe of gold; and lo,
The bread became a nugget as he ate,
And filled his mouth with all that gold can give.

102

BAUDELAIRE.

A Paris gutter of the good old times,
Black and putrescent in its stagnant bed,
Save where the shamble oozings fringe it red,
Or scaffold trickles, or nocturnal crimes.

It holds dropped gold; dead flowers from tropic climes;
Gems true and false, by midnight maskers shed;
Old pots of rouge; old broken phials that spread
Vague fumes of musk, with fumes from slums and slimes.

And everywhere, as glows the set of day,
There floats upon the winding fetid mire
The gorgeous iridescence of decay:

A wavy film of colour, gold and fire,
Trembles all through it as you pick your way,
And streaks of purple that are straight from Tyre.

103

NIGHT.

Thou heedest not, inexorable Night,
Whether besought from some lone prison cell
To stay thy hours, by one whose dying knell
Will sound not later than return of light,

Or prayed to urge them by some suffering wight
Who notes their creep as wearily and well
As men not for eternity in Hell
May note the purging flames' decreasing height.

Hark! in the street I hear a distant sound
Of music and of laughter and of song,
As go a band of revellers their round:

And under prison-walls it comes along,
And under dull sick-rooms, where moans abound;
For who shall grudge their strumming to the strong?

104

THE DEATH OF PUCK.
I.

I fear that Puck is dead—it is so long
Since men last saw him—dead with all the rest
Of that sweet elfin crew that made their nest
In hollow huts, where hazels sing their song;

Dead and for ever, like the antique throng
The elves replaced; the Dryad that you guessed
Behind the leaves; the Naiad weed-bedressed;
The leaf-eared Faun that loved to lead you wrong.

Tell me, thou hopping Robin, hast thou met
A little man, no bigger than thyself,
Whom they call Puck, where woodland bells are wet?

Tell me, thou Wood-Mouse, hast thou seen an elf
Whom they call Puck, and is he seated yet,
Capped with a snail-shell, on his mushroom shelf?

105

THE DEATH OF PUCK.
II.

The Robin gave three hops, and chirped, and said:
‘Yes, I knew Puck, and loved him; though I trow
He mimicked oft my whistle chuckling low;
Yes, I knew cousin Puck; but he is dead.

We found him lying on his mushroom bed—
The Wren and I—half covered up with snow,
As we were hopping where the berries grow.
We think he died of cold. Ay, Puck is fled.’

And then the Wood-Mouse said: ‘We made the Mole
Dig him a little grave beneath the moss,
And four big Dormice placed him in the hole.

The Squirrel made with sticks a little cross;
Puck was a Christian elf, and had a soul;
And all we velvet jackets mourn his loss.’

106

TO FLORENCE SNOW.

[_]

FOR THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF SONNETS.

I send these berries which in sweet woods grew;
Small crimson crans, on which has slept the deer;
Spiked red-dropt butcher's broom, the bare foot's fear;
Blue berries of the whortle wet with dew;

And gummy berries of the tragic yew;
With mistletoe,—each bead a waxen tear;
And ripe blue sloes that mark a frosty year;
And hips and haws, from lanes that Keats once knew.

I know not if the berries of the West
Are such as those of Europe; but I know
That Kansas breeds a flower, which, unguessed,

Can climb up prison-walls, and gently grow
Through prison-bars where suffering has its nest,
And where the wingless hours crawl sad and slow.

107

TO A HANDFUL OF MUMMY WHEAT.

Thou'rt older than would be that pale gold wheat
Which, on a harvest evening, in the youth
Of fields of corn, the wistful gleaner Ruth
Saw in the fragrant twilight at her feet.

Wave after wave of human life has beat
Against the silent tomb in which, like truth
Locked in dark error, thou hast braved the tooth
Of nibbling Time, safe in a mummy's sheet.

Go forth, go forth, that once again the sun
May kiss thee into ripeness, and the breath
Of morn make ripples in thy golden dun;

And multiply till every grain beneath
My finger, fills a garner; so that none
May say that in the Past there is but Death.

108

ON THE FLY-LEAF OF DANTE'S ‘VITA NUOVA.’

There was a tall stern Exile once of old,
Who paced Verona's streets as dusk shades fell,
With step as measured as the vesper bell,
And face half-hidden by his hood's dark fold;

One whom the children, as he grimly stroll'd,
Would shrink from in the fear of a vague spell,
Crying, ‘The man who has been down to Hell,’
Or hanging in his footsteps, if more bold.

This little book is not by that stern man,
But by his younger self, such as he seems
In Giotto's fresco, holding up the flower,

Thinking of her whose hand, by Fate's strange plan,
He never touched on earth, but who, in dreams,
Oft led him into Heaven for an hour.

109

FAITH.

There is a startling legend that is known
To Spanish scholars: how the fertile land
For years was ravaged by a robber band,
Led by a Knight with visor ever down;

And how, at last, when he was overthrown,
The shape which made so desperate a stand
And quivered still, was found to be, when scann'd,
A suit of armour, empty heel to crown.

Nought fights like Emptiness.—Beneath the veil
Of Islam's warlike Prophet, from Bagdad
To Roncevaux, it made the nations quail;

And once, as Templar and Crusader clad,
It shook the world.—Ev'n now, Faith's empty mail
Still writhes and struggles with the life it had.

110

FUMES OF CHARCOAL.
September, 1889. I.

Death has no shape more stealthy.—There you sit,
With all unchanged around you, in your chair,
Watching the wavy tremor of the air
Above the little brazier you have lit,

While Death begins to amorously flit
In silent circles round you, till he dare
Touch with his lips, and, crouching o'er you there,
Kiss you all black, and freeze you bit by bit.

Yet she could walk upon the bracing heath,
When steams the dew beneath the morning sun,
And draw the freshness of the mountain's breath:

Were charcoal fumes more sweet as, one by one,
Life's lights went out, beneath that kiss of Death,
And, turning black, the life-blood ceased to run?

111

FUMES OF CHARCOAL.
September, 1889. II.

If some new Dante in the shades below,
While crossing that wan wood, where the self slain,
Changed into conscious trees, soothe their dull pain
By sighs and plaints, as tears can never flow,

Should hear an English voice, like west wind low,
Come from the latest tree, and, letting strain
His ear against its trunk, should hear quite plain
The soul's heart tick within, though faint and slow:

Then let him ask: ‘O Amy, in the land
Of the sweet light and of the sweet live air,
Did you ne'er sit beside a friend's wheeled bed,

That you could thus destroy, at Hell's command,
All that he envied you, and choke the fair
Young flame of life, to dwell with the wan dead?’

112

ON THE FLY-LEAF OF LEOPARDI'S POEMS.

There was a hunch back in a slavish day,
Crushed out of shape by Heaven's iron weight,
Who made the old Italic string vibrate
In Freedom's harp, on which few dared to play;

A Titan's soul in Æsop's cripple clay;
A dwarf Prometheus, blasted by Jove's hate,
Who scorned the God that held him locked in fate,
And called the world the mud in which he lay.

And mud it is; but mud which can be tilled
To grow the wheat, the olive, and the grape,
And fill more garners than men's hands can build.

And those bare tracts, whence all would fain escape,
Conceal, perchance, some buried urn all filled
With golden Darics stamped with a winged shape.

113

THE GRAVE OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.

They washed his body with a wine of gold,
And wrapped it round, to meet his last desire,
In leaves of vine, whose every pale green spire
Tightened about him with an amorous hold;

And then they buried him in vineyard mould,
Where vintage hymns in Summer's dusk expire,
And where great vine-roots sucked all round him fire
For fiery cups, as ages o'er him roll'd.

A lethargy creeps o'er us on this spot
Where bulbul warbles on Oblivion's brink,
And all that man should live for is forgot.

The wine-girl floats towards us with her cup;
Or is it Azrael with darker drink?
Wake up, wake up; shake free thy soul; wake up!

114

TO MY TORTOISE ANANKÉ.

Say it were true, that thou outliv'st us all,
O footstool once of Venus; come, renew
Thy tale of old Greek isles, where thy youth grew
In myrtle shadow, near her temple wall;

Or tell me how the eagle let thee fall
Upon the Greek bard's head, from heaven's blue,
And Apathy killed Song.—And is it true
That thy domed shell would bear a huge stone ball?

O Tortoise, Tortoise, there are weights, alack,
Heavier than stone, and viewless as the air,
Which none have ever tried upon thy back;

Which, ever and anon, we men must bear;
Weights which would make thy solid cover crack;
And how we bear them, let those ask who care.

115

EPILOGUE TO THESE SONNETS.

I wrought them like a targe of hammered gold
On which all Troy is battling round and round;
Or Circe's cup, embossed with snakes that wound
Through buds and myrtles, fold on scaly fold;

Or like gold coins, which Lydian tombs may hold,
Stamped with winged racers, in the old red ground;
Or twined gold armlets from the funeral mound
Of some great viking, terrible of old.

I know not in what metal I have wrought;
Nor whether what I fashion will be thrust
Beneath the clods that hide forgotten thought;

But if it is of gold it will not rust;
And when the time is ripe it will be brought
Into the sun, and glitter through its dust.