 | Verses by W. H. Mallock |  |
97
STROPHES
Strophe I.
I bowed my laurel'd headAbove my lyre, and said:
‘What new song shall I sing across the strings?
Madden'd for whose new sake
What new noise shall I make?’
And I answered: ‘Lo, I will sing of no new things;
I will turn to her once more
I have sung so oft before—
Freedom—and worship her, and curse some kings.
Set on her motherly knee,
Her nursing arms round me,
I will cling about her neck as a child clings,
Re-wounding with my kiss
Each scarce-healed cicatrice,
Doing to her divers and disgusting things;
Whilst in her ears my chaunt,
Re-risen and reboant,
Sounds as one sounds who, being senseless, sings.
98
Strophe II.
Oh, one cant name of many names I have chosen—Freedom—lo, once again I call to thee;
By the cold earth's iron-bound ends and oceans frozen,
By the rivers that run billowing to the sea,
By the lisp and laughter of Spring in leafy places,
By the storms that follow and the calms that flee,
By the pale light flung in men's funereal faces
From holocausts of kings, we burn to thee;
By the seas that link us and the lands that sever,
By the foes upon our weather-side and lee—
By all these things and all other things whatever,
We call and howl and squeak and shriek to thee,
Calling thee early and late,
Wild, inarticulate,
Calling and bawling that thou set something free.
99
Strophe III.
But where is the something—a land
In the east, or the uttermost west—
A land with a grievance, a curse?
I heed not her name or her place,
So shame on her brow be a brand,
So she have but a white scourged breast,
And a name that will scan in verse;
And I ask for the royal race,
For the land opprest.
In the east, or the uttermost west—
A land with a grievance, a curse?
I heed not her name or her place,
So shame on her brow be a brand,
So she have but a white scourged breast,
And a name that will scan in verse;
And I ask for the royal race,
For the land opprest.
But where shall I find her—where?
I mean the land with a wrong
Not already outworn
By those that have sung for her sake.
For Byron and bards that were,
Were singing of Freedom long
Before I was thought of or born,
And they plucked all the plums from the cake,
From the cake of song.
I mean the land with a wrong
Not already outworn
By those that have sung for her sake.
For Byron and bards that were,
Were singing of Freedom long
Before I was thought of or born,
And they plucked all the plums from the cake,
From the cake of song.
100
Strophe IV.
Ah, but would that I
Had been the first of these!
I would have drained them dry,
These themes of war and peace,
Nor have left one song to sing of Italy,
Nor a poet's picking on the bones of Greece.
Had been the first of these!
I would have drained them dry,
These themes of war and peace,
Nor have left one song to sing of Italy,
Nor a poet's picking on the bones of Greece.
Then with flowers and fire,
And bitter foam and wine,
And fangs and fierce desire,
And things I call divine,
I would nauseate so the world that no man's lyre
Should again be struck to a note I had once made mine.
And bitter foam and wine,
And fangs and fierce desire,
And things I call divine,
I would nauseate so the world that no man's lyre
Should again be struck to a note I had once made mine.
101
Epode
I hung my laurel'd headDown on my lyre, and said:
‘What answer does my sovereign, Freedom, make?’
And in the air I heard
Not even a whispered word
From her for whom my very lungs do ache,
And, as an addled egg is, is my brain:
Wherefore for her most royal and holy sake,
I think I will behowl her once again.
Hear me, O goddess! for it indeed is I
That call thee, at thy knees,
And don't be frightened, please,
At the many things I shall adjure thee by.
Come to us, bright in clear re-arisen ascendency,
Loosen o'er us all thine orient oriflamme!
By the power Mat Arnold calls ‘a stream of tendency,’
By the Christianity we have proved a sham,
By the lowering name that darkened Hebrew story
We have turned to Thou art not, that was once I Am;
We thy singers, we thy sons that work Thee glory
With the unburnt offerings of our worthless verses
Heaped on thy shrine, adjure thee and adore thee:
I, the clamouring herd's choregus, I implore thee
102
That is, by all the holy things that are,
Rise and make manifest upon us thy mercies,
Rise o'er us all a large and lovely star.
For the night is now far spent; the air gives warning
With a dewy stir and chillness of the morning,
And the wan dark whitens on the eastern hill.
Burn through the east, grow large, and lighten, until
In the saffron of the sunrise we discern thee
Shining and trembling like a tear of gladness.
Draw near to us, we will love thee, we will learn thee—
Learn thee to the heart, and love thee even to madness—
If thou wilt only hear us in our crying,
Across the night,
Conjuring thee by this our rhythmic sighing—
Our songs which might
Have many senses, but which have not one sense
A man may see;
By the sounding and the fluent foam of nonsense
We shower on thee;
By the shallow and the babbling things, our mothers,
From whom we spring;
By the barking and the braying things, our brothers,
Like whom we sing;
By all the fatuous things, our near relations,
That chaunt and cheer us;
By the people, and the people's demonstrations,
Oh, Freedom, hear us!
| Verses by W. H. Mallock | |