University of Virginia Library

Later Poems

OCCASIONAL ODES &C.

1
RECOLLECTIONS OF SOLITUDE

An Elegy

Ended are many days, and now but few
Remain; since therefore it is happy and true
That memoried joys keep ever their delight,
Like steadfast stars in the blue vault of night,
While hours of pain (among those heavenly spheres
Like falling meteors, the martyr's tears)
Dart their long trails at random, and anon,
Ere we exclaim, pass, and for aye are gone;
Therefore my heedy thought will oft restore
The long light-hearted days that are no more,
Save where in her memorial crypt they shine
Spangling the silent past with joy divine.
But why in dream of this enchanted mood
Should all my boyhood seem a solitude?
Good reason know I, when I wander there,
In that transmuted scene, why all is fair;
The woods as when in holiday of spring
Million buds burst, and flowers are blossoming;
The meadows deep in grass, the fields unshorn
In beauty of the multitudinous corn,
Where the strait alleys hide me, wall'd between
High bloomy stalks and rustling banners green;
The gardens, too, in dazzling hues full-blown,
With wafted scent and blazing petals strewn;
The orchards reddening thro' the patient hours,
While idle autumn in his mossy bowers
Inviteth meditation to endear
The sanctuaries of the mellowing year;
And every spot wherein I loved to stray
Hath borrowed radiance of eternal day;
But why am I ever alone, alone?
Here in the corner of a field my throne,
Now in the branching chair of some tall tree
Drinking the gale in bird-like liberty;
Or to the seashore wandered in the sun
To watch the fateful waves break one by one;
Or if on basking downs supine I lie
Bathing my spirit in blue calms of the sky;
Or to the river bank am stolen by night
Hearkening unto the moonlit ripple bright
That warbles o'er the shallows of smooth stone;
Why should my memory find me all alone,
When I had such companions every day
Jocund and dear? 'Twixt glimpses of their play
'Tis a vast solitude, wherein I see
Only myself and what I came to be.
O mighty Muse, wooer of virgin thought,
Beside thy charm all else counteth as nought;
The revelation of thy smile doth make
Him whom thou lovest reckless for thy sake;
Earthborn of suffering, that knowest well
To call thine own, and with enamouring spell
Feedest the stolen powers of godlike youth
On dear imagination's only truth,
Building with song a temple of desire;
And with the yearning music of thy quire,
In nuptial sacrament of thought and sense
Hallowest for toil the hours of indolence:
Thou in thy melancholic beauty drest,
Subduest ill to serve thy fair behest,
With tragic tears, and sevenfold purified
Silver of mirth; and with extremest pride,
With secret doctrine and unfathomed lore
Remainest yet a child for evermore,
The only enchantress of the earth that art
To cheer his day and staunch man's bleeding heart.
O heavenly Muse, for heavenly thee we call
Who in the fire of love refinest all,
Accurst is he who heark'neth not thy voice;
But happy he who, numbered of thy choice,
Walketh aloof from nature's clouded plan:
For all God's world is but the thought of man;
Wherein hast thou re-formed a world apart,
The mutual mirror of his better heart.
There is no foulness, misery, nor sin,
But he who loves finds his desire therein,
And there with thee in lonely commerce lives:
Nay, all that nature gave or fortune gives,
Joys that his spirit is most jealous of,
His only-embraced and best-deserving love,
Who walketh in the noon of heavenly praise,
The troubled godhead of his children's gaze,
Wear thine eternity, and are loved best
By thee transfigured and in thee possest;
Who madest beauty, and from thy boundless store
Of beauty shalt create for evermore.

2
A VIGNETTE

3
MILLICENT

4
VIVAMUS

5

[One grief of thine]

6

[In still midsummer night]

7
MELANCHOLIA

The sickness of desire, that in dark days
Looks on the imagination of despair,
Forgetteth man, and stinteth God his praise;
Nor but in sleep findeth a cure for care.
Incertainty that once gave scope to dream
Of laughing enterprise and glory untold,
Is now a blackness that no stars redeem,
A wall of terror in a night of cold.
Fool! thou that hast impossibly desired
And now impatiently despairest, see
How nought is changed: Joy's wisdom is attired
Splendid for others' eyes if not for thee:
Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled:
If they delite thee not, 'tis thou art dead.

8
TO THE PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD

9
TO JOSEPH JOACHIM

10
TO THOS. FLOYD

11
LA GLOIRE DE VOLTAIRE

A Dialogue in Verse.

A.
Je donnerais pour revivre à vingt ans
L'or de Rothschild, la gloire de Voltaire.
I like that: Béranger in his printems,
Voltaire and Rothschild: what three graces there
Foot it together! But of old Voltaire,
I'd ask what Béranger found so sublime
In that man's glory to adorn his rhyme.
Was it mere fame?

B.
Nay: for as wide a fame
Was won by the gold-garnering millionaire,
Who in the poet's verse might read his name:
And what is that? when so much froth and scum
Float down the stream of Time (as Bacon saith),
What is that for deliverance from the death?
Could any sober man be proud to hold
A lease of common talk, or die consoled
For thinking that on lips of fools to come
He'll live with Pontius Pilate and Tom Thumb?
That were more like eternal punishment,
The true fool's Paradise by all consent.
Béranger thought to set a crown on merit.

A.
Man's merit! and to crown it in Voltaire?
The modest eye, the gentle, fearless heart,
The mouth of peace and truth, the angelic spirit!
Why Arouet was soufflé with the leaven,
Of which the little flock was bid beware:
His very ambition was to play a part;
Indifferent whether he did wrong or right,
So he won credit; eager to deny
A lie that failed, by adding lie to lie;
Repaying evil unto seven-times-seven;
A fount of slander, flattery and spite;
Vain, irritable; true but to his face
Of mockery and mischievous grimace,
A monkey of the schools, the saints' despair!

B.
Yet for his voice half Europe stood at pause
To hear, and when he spoke rang with applause.

A.
Granted he was a wonder of his kind.
There is a devilish mockery in things
Which only a born devil can enjoy.
True banter is of melancholy mind,
Akin to madness; thus must Shakespeare toy
With Hamlet's reason, ere his fine art dare
Push his relentless humour to the quick;
And so his mortal thrusts pierce not the skin.
But for the superficial bickerings
That poison life and never seem to prick,
The reasonable educated grin,
Truly no wag is equal to Voltaire,
His never-dying ripple, wide and light,
Has nigh the force of Nature: to compare,
'Tis like the ocean when the sky is bright,
And the cold north-wind tickles with surprise
The briny levels of the infinite sea.
—Shall we conclude his merit was his wit,
His magic art and versatility?

B.
And think of those foredoom'd in Dante's pit,
Who, sunk at bottom of the loathly slough,
Made the black mud up-bubble with their sighs;
And all because they were unkind to Mirth,
And went with smoky heart and gloomy brow
The while they lived upon the pleasant earth
In the sweet air that rallies to the sun,
And ne'er so much as smiled or gave God thanks:
Surely a sparkle of the Frenchman's fun
Had rescued all their souls.

A.
I think I see
The Deity who in this Heaven abides,
Le bon Dieu, holding both his aching sides,
With radiant face of Pan, ruddy and hairy:
Give him his famous whistles and goat-shanks,
And then present him to Alighieri.

B.
Nay, 'twixt the Frenchman and the Florentine
I ask no truce, grave Dante weaving well
His dark-eyed thought into a song divine,
Drawing high poetry from heaven and hell—
And him who lightly mockt at all in turn.

A
It follow'd from his mundane thought of art
That he contemn'd religion: his concern
Was comfort, taste, and wit: he had no heart
For man's attempt to build and beautify
His home in Nature; so he set all by
That wisdom had evolved with purpose kind;
Stamped it as folly, or as fraud attacked;
Never discerning how his callow zest
Was impiously defiling his own nest;
Whereas the least philosophy may find
The truths are the ideas; the sole fact
Is the long story of man's growing mind.

B.
Upon your thistle now I see my fig—
Béranger thought of Voltaire as a seer,
A latter-day John Baptist in a wig;
A herald of that furious gospel-storm
Of words and blood, that made the nations fear;
When sickening France adulterously sinn'd
With Virtue, and went mad conceiving wind.
He ranks him with those captains of reform,
Luther and Calvin; who, whate'er they taught,
Led folk from superstition to free thought.

A.
They did. But whence or whither led Voltaire?
The steward with fifty talents given in charge,
Who spent them on himself, and liv'd at large;
His only virtue that he did not hide
The pounds, but squander'd them to serve his pride;
His praise that, cunning in his generation,
He of the heavenly treasure did not spare
To win himself an earthly habitation.

B.
Deny him not this laurel, nor to France
The apostolate of modern tolerance:
Their Theseus he, who slew the Minotaur,
The Dragon Persecution, in which war
He tipp'd the shafts that made the devil bleed;
And won a victory that hath overcome
Many misdoings in a well-done deed;
And more, I think, the mind of Christ revealing,
Yea, more of common-sense and human feeling
Than all the Creeds and Bulls of Christendom.

A.
Yet was he only one of them that slew:
The fiend had taken a deadly wound from Bayle;
And did he ‘roar to see his kingdom fail’
'Neath Robespierre, or raise his head anew?
Nay, Voltaire's teaching never cured the heart:
The lack of human feeling blots his art.
When most his phrase with indignation burns,
Still to the gallery his face he turns.

B.
You bear him hard. Men are of common stuff,
Each hath some fault, and he had faults enough:
But of all slanderers that ever were
A virtuous critic is the most unfair.
In greatness ever is some good to see;
And what is character, unless it be
The colour of persistent qualities,
That, like a ground in painting, balances
All hues and forms, combining with one tone
Whatever lights or shades are on it thrown?
Now Voltaire had of Nature a rich ground,
Two virtues rarely in conjunction found:
Industry, which no pedant could excel,
He matched with gaiety inexhaustible;
And with heroic courage held these fast,
As sailors nail their colours to the mast,
With ruling excellence atoning all.
Though, for the rest, he still for praise may call;
Prudent to gain, as generous to share
Le superflu, chose si nécessaire;
To most a rare companion above scorn,
To not a few a kind, devoted friend
Through his long battling life, which in the end
He strove with good works richly to adorn.
I have admired, and why should I abuse
A man who can so long and well amuse?

A.
To some Parisian art there's this objection,
'Tis mediocrity pushed to perfection.

B.
‘Judge not,’ say I, ‘and ye shall not be judged!’

A.
Let me say, ‘praise men, if ye would be praised:’
Let your unwholesome flattery flow ungrudged,
And with ungrudging measure shall men pour
Their stifling homage back till ye be crazed,
And sane men humour you as fools past cure.
But these wise maxims deal not with the dead,
'Tis by example that the young are led,
And judgement owes its kindness but to them;
Nor will I praise, call you me hard or nice,
One that degraded art, and varnished vice.
They that praise ill thereby themselves condemn.

B.
Béranger could not praise.

A.
Few are who can;
Not he: if ever he assay'd to impart
A title loftier than his own renown,
Native irreverence defied his art,
His fingers soil'd the lustre of his crown.
Here he adored what he was envious of,
The vogue and dazzling fashion of the man.
But man's true praise, the poet's praise, is love.

B.
And that, perhaps, was hardly his affair . . .
Pray, now, what set you talking of Voltaire?

A.
This only, that in weeding out my shelves,
In fatherly regard for babes upgrown,
Until they learn to garden for themselves,
Much as I like to keep my sets entire,
When I came out to you I had just thrown
Three of his precious works behind the fire.

12
TO ROBERT BURNS

AN EPISTLE ON INSTINCT

13
THE PORTRAIT OF A GRANDFATHER

14
AN INVITATION TO THE OXFORD PAGEANT, JULY 1907

15
ODE TO MUSIC

WRITTEN FOR THE BICENTENARY COMMEMORATION OF HENRY PURCELL

I

Myriad-voiced Queen, Enchantress of the air,
Bride of the life of man! With tuneful reed,
With string and horn and high-adoring quire
Thy welcome we prepare.
In silver-speaking mirrors of desire,
In joyous ravishment of mystery draw thou near,
With heavenly echo of thoughts, that dreaming lie
Chain'd in unborn oblivion drear,
Thy many-hearted grace restore
Unto our isle our own to be,
And make again our Graces three.

II

III

IV

1

2

Yet shall his storm and mastering wave
Assure the empire to the brave;
And to his billowy bass belongs
The music of our patriot songs,
When to the wind his ridges go
In furious following, careering a-row,
Lasht with hail and withering snow:
And ever undaunted hearts outride
His rushing waters wide.

3

But when the winds fatigued or fled
Have left the drooping barks unsped,
And nothing stirs his idle plain
Save fire-breathed ships with silvery train,
While lovingly his waves he layeth,
And his slow heart in passion swells
To the pale moon in heav'n that strayeth,
And all his mighty music deep
Whispers among the heaped shells,
Or in dark caverns lies asleep;—
Then dreams of Peace invite,
Haunting our shore with kisses light:
Nay—even Love's Paphian Queen hath come
Out of her long retired home
To show again her beauty bright;
And twice or thrice in sight hath play'd
Of a young lover unaffray'd,
And all his verse immortal made.

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

To us, O Queen of sinless grace,
Now at our prayer unveil thy face:
Awake again thy beauty free;
Return and make our Graces three.
And with our thronging strength to the ends of the earth
Thy myriad-voiced loveliness go forth,
To lead o'er all the world's wide ways
God's everlasting praise,
And every heart inspire
With the joy of man in the beauty of Love's desire.

16
A HYMN OF NATURE

AN ODE WRITTEN FOR MUSIC

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Sweet compassionate tears
Have dimm'd my earthly sight,
Tears of love, the showers wherewith
The eternal morn is bright:
Dews of the heav'nly spheres.
With tears my eyes are wet,
Tears not of vain regret,
Tears of no lost delight,
Dews of the heav'nly spheres
Have dimm'd my earthly sight,
Sweet compassionate tears

VII