Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas

Now in wintry delights, and long fireside meditation,
'Twixt studies and routine paying due court to the Muses,
My solace in solitude, when broken roads barricade me
Mudbound, unvisited for months with my merry children,
Grateful t'ward Providence, and heeding a slander against me
Less than a rheum, think of me to-day, dear Lionel, and take
This letter as some account of Will Stone's versification.
We, whose first memories reach half of a century backward,
May praise our fortune to have outliv'd so many dangers,—
Faultiness of Nature's unruly machinery or man's—;
For, once born, whatever 'tis worth, life is to be held to,
Its mere persistence esteem'd as real attainment,
Its crown of silver reverenc'd as one promise of youth
Fruiting, of existence one needful purpose accomplish'd:
And 'twere worth the living, howe'er unkindly bereft of
Those joys and comforts, throu' which we chiefly regard it:
Nay,—set aside the pleasant unhinder'd order of our life,
Our happy enchantments of Fortune, easy surroundings,
Courteous acquaintance, dwelling in fair homes, the delight of
Long-plann'd excursions, the romance of journeying in lands
Historic, of seeing their glory, the famous adornments
Giv'n to memorial Earth by man, decorator of all-time,
(—As we saw with virginal eyes travelling to behold them,—)
Her gorgeous palaces, her tow'rs and stately cathedrals;
Where the turrets and domes of pictured Tuscany slumber,

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Or the havoc'd splendours of Rome imperial, or where
Glare the fretted minarets and mosks of trespassing Islam,
And old Nilus, amid the mummied suzerainty of Egypt,
Glideth, a godly presence, consciously regardless of all things,
Save his unending toil and eternal recollections:—
Set these out of account, and with them too put away art,
Those ravishings of mind, those sensuous intelligences,
By whose grace the elect enjoy their sacred aloofness
From Life's meagre affairs, in beauty's regenerate youth
Reading immortality's sublime revelation, adoring
Their own heav'nly desire; nor alone in worship assist they,
But take, call'd of God, part and pleasure in creation
Of that beauty, the first of His first purposes extoll'd:—
Yea, set aside with these all Nature's beauty, the wildwood's
Flow'ry domain, the flushing, softcrowding loveliness of Spring,
Lazy Summer's burning dial, the serenely solemn spells
Of Sibylline Autumn, with gay-wing'd Plenty departing;
All fair change, whether of seasons or bright recurrent day,
Morning or eve; the divine night's wonderous empyrean;
High noon's melting azure, his thin cloud-country, the landscape
Mountainous or maritime, blue calms of midsummer Ocean,
Broad corn-grown champaign goldwaving in invisible wind,
Wide-water'd pasture, with shade of whispering aspen;
All whereby Nature winneth our love, fondly appearing
As to caress her children, or all that in exaltation
Lifteth aloft our hearts to an unseen glory beyond her:—
Put these out of account; yea, more I say, banish also
From the credit sum of enjoyment those simple affections,
Whose common exercise informs our natural instinct;
That, set in our animal flesh-fabric, of our very lifeblood
Draw their subsistence, and even in ungenerous hearts

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Root, like plants in stony deserts and 'neath pitiless snows.
Yea, put away all Love, the blessings and pieties of home,
All delicate heart-bonds, vital tendernesses untold,
Joys that fear to be named, feelings too holy to gaze on;
And with his inviolate peace-triumph his passionate war
Be forgone, his mighty desire, thrilling ecstasies, ardours
Of mystic reverence, his fierce flame-eager emotions,
Idolatrous service, blind faith and ritual of fire.
If from us all these things were taken away, (that is all art
And all beauty whate'er, and all love's varied affection,)
Yet would enough subsist in other concerns to suffice us,
And feed intelligence, and make life's justification.
What this is, if you should ask me, beyond or above the rejoicing
In vegetant or brute existence, answer is easy;
'Tis the reflective effort of mind that, conscious of itself,
Fares forth exploring nature for principle and cause,
Keenly with all the cunning pleasure and instinct of a hunter,
Who, in craft fashioning weapon and sly snare, tracketh after
His prey flying afield, and that which his arm killeth eateth.
History and science our playthings are: what an untold
Wealth of inexhaustive treasure is stored up for amusement!
Shall the amass'd Earth-structure appeal to me less than in early
Childhood an old fives-ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound,
Untwining the ravel'd worsted, that mere rubbish and waste
Of leather and shavings had bound and moulded elastic
Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ball
Equally entertain a mature enquiry, reward our
Examination of its contexture, conglomerated
Of layer'd debris, the erosion of infinite ages?
Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scientific insight
On the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing,

412

I must wond'ring attend, nay learn myself to decipher
Time's rich hieroglyph, with vast elemental pencil
Scor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,—minute shells slowly collecting
Press'd to a stone, uprais'd to a mountain, again to a fine sand
Worn, burying the remains of an alien organic epoch,
In the flat accretions of new sedimentary strata;
All to be crush'd, crumpled, confused, contorted, abandon'd,
Broke, as a child's puzzle is, to be recompos'd with attention;
Nature's history-book, which she hath torn as asham'd of;
And lest those pictures on her fragmentary pages
Should too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laid
Ruin upon ruin, revolution upon revolution:
Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain
But, having order alike of fate, and faulty disorder,
Holds a record of Time, very vestiges of the Creation;
Which who will not attend scorns blindly the only commandments
By God's finger of old inscribed on table of earth-stone.

This for me wer' enough: yet confin'd Geology's field
Counts not in all Science more than the planet to the Cosmos;
Where our central Sun, almighty material author,
And sustainer, appears as a half-consumed vanishing spark,
Bearing along with it, entangled in immensity's onward
Spiral eddies, the blacken'd dust-motes whirl'd off from around it.
But tho' man's microscopical functions measure all things
By his small footprints, finger-spans and ticking of clocks,
And thereby conceive the immense—such multiple extent
As to defy Ideas of imperative cerebration,—
None the less observing, measuring, patiently recording,
He mappeth out the utter wilderness of unlimited space;
Carefully weigheth a weight to the sun, reckoneth for it its path
Of trackless travelling, the precise momentary places

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Of the planets and their satellites, their annual orbits,
Times, perturbations of times, and orbit of orbit.

What was Alexander's subduing of Asia, or that
Sheep-worry of Europe, when pigmy Napoleon enter'd
Her sovereign chambers, and her kings with terror eclips'd?
His footsore soldiers inciting across the ravag'd plains,
Thro' bloody fields of death tramping to an ugly disaster?
Shows any crown, set above the promise (so rudely accomplisht)
Of their fair godlike young faces, a glory to compare
With the immortal olive that circles bold Galileo's
Brows, the laurel'd halo of Newton's unwithering fame?
Or what a child's surmise, how trifling a journey Columbus
Adventur'd, to a land like that which he sail'd from arriving,
If compar'd to Bessel's magic divination, awarding
Magnificent Sirius his dark and invisible bride;
Or when Adams by Cam, (more nearly Leverrier in France,)
From the minutely measur'd vacillation of Uranus, augur'd
Where his mighty brother Neptune went wandering unnamed,
And thro' those thousand-million league-darknesses of space
Drew him slowly whene'er he pass'd, and slowly released him!
Nil admirari! 'Tis surely a most shabby thinker
Who, looking on Nature, finds not the reflection appalling.

And if these wonders we must with wonder abandon,
Astronomy's Cosmos, the Immense, and those physical laws
That link mind to matter, laws mutual in revelation,
Which measure and analyse Nature's primordial orgasm,
Lifegiving omnipotential Light, its speed to determine,
Untwist its rainbow of various earthcoloring rays,
Counting strictly to each its own millionth-millimetred
Wave-length, and mapping out on fray'd diffraction of ether
All the adust elements and furnaced alchemy of heav'n;
Laws which atone the disorder of infinit observation
With tyrannous numbers and abstract theory, closing

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Protean Nature with nets of principle exact;
Her metamorphoses transmuting by correlation,
All heat, all chemical concourse or electrical action,
All force and all motion of all matter, or subtle or gross:—

If we these wonders, I say, with wonder abandon,
Nor can for mental heaviness their high study pursue,
Yet no story of adventures or fabulous exploit
Of famous'd heroes hath so romantic a discourse,
As these growing annals of long heav'n-scaling achievement
And far discoveries, which he who idly neglecteth
Is but a boor as truly ridiculous as the village clown,
In whose thought the pleasant sun-ball performeth a circuit
Daily above mother earth, and resteth nightly beneath her.

Nor will a man, whose mind respects its own operations,
Lightly resign himself to remain in darkness uninform'd,
While any true science of fact lies easy within reach
Concerning Nature's eternal essential object,
Self-matter, embodying substratum of ev'ry relation
Both of Time and Space, at once the machinery and stuff
Of those Ideas; carrier, giver, only receiver
Of such perceptions as arise in sensible organs.

Now whether each element is a coherency of equal
Strictly symmetric atoms, or among themselves the atoms are
Like animals in a herd, having each an identity distinct,
—So that atoms of gold compar'd with sulphur or iron
Are but as ancient Greeks compar'd with Chinamen and Turks;—
Nor whether all elements are untransmutable offspring
From one kind or more thro' endless eternity changing,
Or whether invisibles claim rightly the name of immortals,
I make no enquiry; matter minutely divided
Showing a like paradox, with ever-continuous extent,
And, as Adam, the atom will pose as a naked assumption:—
But since all the knowledge which man was born to attain to
Hath these only channels, (which must limit and qualify it,)

415

We shall con the grammar, the material alphabet of life,
Yea, ev'n more from error to preserve our inquisitive mind,
Than to secure well-being against adversity and ill.
Surely if all is a flux, 'tis well to look into the fluid,
Inspect and question the apparent, shifty behaviour,
Wherein lurketh alone our witness of all physical law,
As we read the habits unchanging of invisible things,
Their timeless chronicles, the unintelligent ethic of dust:
In which dense labyrinth he who was guiding avised me,
With caution saying ‘Were this globe's area of land
‘Wholly cover'd from sight, pack'd close to the watery margins
‘With mere empty vessels, I could myself put in each one
‘Some different substance, and write its formula thereon.’

Thus would speak the chemist; and Nature's superabundance,
Her vast infinitude of waste variety untold,
As her immense extent and inconceivable object,
Squandering activities throughout eternity, dwarfeth
Man's little aim and hour, his doubtful fancy: what are we?
Our petty selfseekings, our speedily passing affections?
Life having existed so extravagantly before us;
Earth bearing so slight a regard or care for us; and all
After us unconcern'd to remain, strange, beautiful as now.
May not an idle echo of an antique poetry haunt me,
‘Friendship is all feigning, yea all loving is folly only’?
—Yet doth not very mention of antique poetry and love
Quickly recall to better motions my dispirited faith?
And I see man's discontent as witness asserting
His moral ideal, that, born of Nature, is heir to
Her children's titles, which nought may cancel or impugn;
Not wer' of all her works man least, but ranking among them
Highly or ev'n as best, he wrongs himself to imagine
His soul foe to her aim, or from her sanction an outlaw.

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Nay, but just as man should appear more fully accordant
With things not himself, would they rank with him as equals:
Judging other creatures he sets them wholly beneath him;
His disquiet among manifold and alien objects
Being sure evidence, the effect of an understanding,
And perception allow'd by Nature solely to himself.

Highly then is to be prais'd the resourceful wisdom of our time,
That spunged out the written science and theories of life,
And, laying foundation of its knowledge in physical law,
Gave it preeminence o'er all enquiry, erecting
Superstructive of all, bringing ev'ry research to the object,
Boldly a new science of MAN, from dreamy scholastic
Imprisoning set free, and inveterate divination,
Into the light of truth, to the touch of history and fact.

Since ‘the proper study of mankind is man’,—nor aforetime
Was the proverb esteem'd as a truism less than it is now,—
'Tis strange that the method lay out of sight unaccomplisht,
And that we, so late to arrive, should first set a value
On the delusive efforts of human babyhood; and so
Witnessing impatiently the rear of their disappearance,
Upgathering the relics and vestiges of primitive man,
Should ratify instinct for science, look to the darkness
For light, find a knowledge where 'twas most groping or unknown:
While civilization's advances mutely regarding
Talk we of old scapegoats, discuss bloodrites, immolations,
Worship of ancestors; explain complexities involved
Of tribal marriages, derivation of early religions,
Priestly taboos, totems, archaic mysteries of trees,
All the devils and dreams abhorr'd of barbarous ages.

And 'tis a far escape from wires, wheels and penny papers
And the worried congestion of our Victorian era,

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Whose many inventions of world-wide luxury have changed
Life's very face:—but enough we hear of progress, enough have
Our conscious science and comforts trumpeted; altho'
Hardly can I, who so many years eagerly frequented
Bartholomew's fountain, not speak of things to awaken
Kind old Hippocrates, howe'er he slumbereth, entomb'd
'Neath the shatter'd winejars and ruined factories of Cos,
Or where he wander'd in Thessalian Larissa:
For when his doctrine, which Rome had wisely adopted,
Sank lost with the treasures of her deep-foundering empire,
No art or science grew so contemptible, order'd
So by mere folly, windy caprice, superstition and chance,
As boastful Medicine, with humours fit for a madhouse,
Save when some Sydenham, like Samson among the Philistines,
Strode bond-bursting along with a smile of genial instinct.
Nor when here and there some ray, in darkness arising,
Hopefully seem'd to herald the coming dawn, (as when a Laennec
Or Jenner invented his meed of worthy remembrance,)
Did one mind foresee, one seer foretell the appearance
Of that unexpected daylight that arose upon our time.

Who dream'd that living air poison'd our surgery, coating
All our sheeny weapons with germs of an invisible death,
Till he saw the sterile steel work with immunity, and save
Quickly as its warring scimitars of victory had slain?
Saw what school-tradition for nature's kind method admir'd,
—In those lifedraining slow cures and bedridden agues,—
Forgotten, or condemn'd as want of care in a surgeon?

Tho' Medicine makes not so plain an appeal to the vulgar,
Yet she lags not a whit: her pregnant theory touches
Deeper discoveries, her more complete revolution
Gives promise of wider benefits in larger abundance.

Where she nam'd the disease she now separates the bacillus;

418

Sets the atoms of offence, those blind and sickly bloodeaters,
'Neath lens and daylight, forcing their foul propagations,
Which had ever prosper'd in dark impunity unguest,
Now to behave in sight, deliver their poisonous extract
And their strange self-brew'd, self-slaying juice to be handled,
Experimented upon, set aside and stor'd to oppose them.

So novel and obscure a research, such hard revelations
Of Nature's cabinet,—tho' with fact amply accordant,
And by hypothesis much dark difficulty resolving,
Are not quickly receiv'd nor approv'd, and sensitive idlers,
Venturing in the profound terrible penetralia of life,
Are shock'd by a method that shuns not contamination
With cruel Nature's most secret processes unmaskt.
And yet in all mankind's disappointed history, now first
Have his scouts push'd surely within his foul enemies' lines,
And his sharpshooters descried their insidious foe,
Those swarming parasites, that barely within the detection
Of manifold search-light, have bred, swimming unsuspected
Thro' man's brain and limbs, slaying with loathly pollution
His beauty's children, his sweet scions of affection,
In fev'rous torment and tears, his home desolating
Of their fair innocence, breaking his proud passionate heart,
And his kindly belief in God's good justice arraigning.

With what wildly directed attack, what an armory illjudged,
Has he, (alas, poor man,) with what cumbrous machination
Sought to defend himself from their Lilliputian onslaught;
Aye discharging around him, in obscure night, at a venture,
Ev'ry missile which his despair confus'dly imagin'd;
His simples, compounds, specifics, chemical therapeutics,
Juice of plants, whatever was nam'd in lordly Salerno's
Herbaries and gardens, vipers, snails, all animal filth,
Incredible quackeries, the pretentious jugglery of knaves,
Green electricities, saints' bones and priestly anointings.
Fools! that oppose his one scientific intelligent hope!
Grant us an hundred years, and man shall hold in abeyance
These foul distempers, and with this world's benefactors

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Shall Pasteur obtain the reward of saintly devotion,
His crown heroic, who fought not destiny in vain.

'Tis success that attracts: 'twas therefore so many workers
Ran pellmell to the schools of Nature in our generation,
While other employments have lack'd their genius and pined.
Our fathers' likings we thought semibarbarous, our art
Self-consciously sickens in qualms of an æsthetic aura,
Noisily in the shallows splashing and disporting uninspir'd.
Our famed vulgarities whether in speech, taste or amusement,
Are not amended: Is it foolish, hoping for a rescue,
First to appeal to the strong, for health to the healthy amongst us?
—For the Sophists' doctrine that Grace is dying of old age
I hold in derision, their inkpot theories of man,
Of his cradle of art, his deathbed of algebra;—and see
How Science has wrought, since we went idling at Eton,
One thing above surmise:—An' if I may dare to remind you
How Vergil praises your lov'd Lucretius, (of whom
My matter and metre have set you thinking, as I fear,)
In that glory which ends ‘et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari’:
Sounded not most empty to us such boast of a pagan,
Strangely to us tutor'd to believe, with faith mediæval,
Torture everlasting to be justly the portion of all souls,
Nor but by the elects' secret predestiny escaped?
If you think to reply,—making this question in answer,—
‘Did the belief disturb for a moment our pleasure in life?’
No.—And men gather in harvest on slopes of an active
Volcano: natheless the terror's enormity was there;
Now 'tis away: Science has pierced man's cloudy commonsense,
Dow'rd his homely vision with more expansive an embrace,
And the rotten foundation of old superstition exposed.
That trouble of Pascal, those vain paradoxes of Austin,
Those Semitic parables of Paul, those tomes of Aquinas,

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All are thrown to the limbo of antediluvian idols,
Only because we learn mankind's true history, and know
That not at all from a high perfection sinfully man fell,
But from baseness arose: We have with sympathy enter'd
Those dark caves, his joyless abodes, where with ravening brutes,
Bear or filthy hyena, he once disputed a shelter:—
That was his Paradise, his garden of Eden,—abandon'd
Ages since to the drift and drip, the cementing accretions
Whence we now separate his bones buried in the stalagma,
His household makeshifts, his hunting tools, his adornments,
From the scatter'd skeletons of a lost prehistoric order,
Its mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, the machairodos, and beasts
Whose unnamed pastures the immense Atlantic inundates.

In what corner of earth lie not dispersed the familiar
Flinty relics of his old primitive stone-cutlery? what child
Kens not now the design, the adapted structure of each one
Of those hand-labor'd chert-flakes, whether axe, chisel, or knife,
Spearhead, barb of arrow, rough plane or rudely serrate saw?
Stones that in our grandsires' time told no sermon, (awaiting
Indestructible, unnumber'd, on chary attention,)
From their preadamite pulpits now cry Revelation.

Not to a Greek his chanted epic had mortal allurement,
Conjuring old-world fancies of Ilium and of Olympus,
As this story to me, this tale primæval of unsung,
Unwritten, ancestral fate and adversity, this siege
Of courage and happiness protracted so many thousand
Thousand years in a slow persistent victory of brain
And right hand o'er all the venom'd stings, sharpnesses of fang
And dread fury whate'er Nature, tirelessly devising,
Could develop with tooth, claw, tusk, or horn to oppose them.
See now Herakles, who strangled snakes when an infant
In his cradle alone; and nought but those petty stonechips

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For the battle: 'twas wonder above wonders his achievement:
Yea, and since he thought as a child 'twas natural in him,
Meeting in existence with purposes antagonistic,
Circumstances oppos'd to desire, vast activities, which
Thwarted effort, to assume All-might as spiteful against him.
Nay, as an artist born, impell'd to devise a religion,—
So to relate himself ideally with the immortal,—
This quarrel of reason with what displeas'd his affections
Was not amiss. The desire and love of beauty possess man:
Art is of all that beauty the best outwardly presented;
Truth to the soul is merely the best that mind can imagine.
No lover eternal will hold to an older opinion
If but lovelier ideas, with Nature agreeing,
Are to his understanding offer'd...But enough: 'tis an unsolv'd
Mystery.—Yet man dreams to flatter his deity saying
‘Beautiful is Nature!’ rather 'tis various, endless,
And her efforts fertile in error tho' grand in attainment.
If we, while praising her scheme and infinite order,
Are compell'd to select, our choice condemns the remainder;
Nor can wisdom honour those loathly polluting offences,
Whose very names to the Muse are either accursed or unknown.
Nay, if such foul things thou deemest worthy, the fault was
Making us, O Nature, thy judge and tearful accuser.

Turn our thought for awhile to the symphonies of Beethoven,
Or the rever'd preludes of mighty Sebastian; Is there
One work of Nature's contrivance beautiful as these?
Judg'd by beauty alone man wins, as sensuous artist;
And for other qualities, the spirit's differentia, Nature
Scarce observes them at all: that keen unfaltering insight,
Whereby earthly desire's roaming wildernesses are changed
Into a garden a-bloom; its wandering impossible ways
Into pillar'd avenues, alleys and fair-flow'ry terrac'd walks,
(Where God talks with man, as once 'twas fancied of Eden;)
That transcendental supreme interpreting of sense,

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Rendering intelligence passionate with mystery, linking
Sympathy with grandeur, the reserve of dignity with play;
Those soul-formalities, the balance held 'twixt the denial
And the betrayal of intention, whose masteries invite,
Entice, welcome ever, meet, and with kindliness embrace;
Those guarded floodgates of boundless, lovely resources,
Whence nothing ill issues, no distraction nor abortion
Hindering enjoyment, but in easy security flow forth
Ecstasies of fitness, raptures and harmonies of heav'n.
Surely before such work of man, so kindly attemper'd,
Nature must be asham'd, has she not this ready answer,
‘Fool, and who made thee?’—

I shall not seem a deserter,
Where in an idle essay my verse to a fancy abandon'd
Praiseth others: rather while art and beauty delight us,
While hope, faith and love are warm and lively in our hearts,
Sweet our earthly desire and dear our human affection,
We may, joyfully despising the pedantries of old age,
Hold to the time, nor lose the delight of mortal attainment;
Keenly rejoicing in all that wisdom approves, nor allowing
Ourselves at the challenge of younger craft to be outsailed;
But trimming our old canvas in all change of weather and wind,
Freely without fear urge o'erseas our good vessel onward,
Piloting into the far, unmapp'd futurity.—Farewell.

423

2
EPISTLE II
TO A SOCIALIST IN LONDON

No ethical system, no contemplation or action,
No reason'd attitude of mind nor principle of faith,
Neither Socratical wisdom nor saintly devotion,
Buildeth a fortress against heart-ache & compassionate grief,
Nor responds to desire, nor with true mastery yieldeth
Easy repose to the mind; And since all our study endeth
Emptily in full doubt,—fathoming the divine intention
In this one thing alone, that, howsoe'er it affect us,
'Twas never intended for mortal fancy to compass,—
I have concluded that from first purposes unknown
None should seek to deduce ideal laws to be liv'd by;
And, loving art, am true to the Muse, & poetry extol:
Therefore 'twas that afore I prais'd & heartily enjoy'd
Your human verses, Fraser, when nobody bought them,
More than again I praise those serious exhortations,
Wherewith you wu'd amend the degraded people about you.
Nay tho' like a prophet with heav'n-sent dignity inspir'd,
With ready convincement and stern example assuring,
Mightily you proclaim your love-messag' in the assembly,
Exhibiting panaceas of ancient ill, propagating
Out of a Scotch cerebrum the reforming zeal of a Tolstoi,
I listen all unmov'd, as a sceptic among the believers.
Yet what a charm has an earnest soul, whom sympathy uncheckt
For human suffering has strengthen'd and dedicated
Bravely to serve his kind, to renounce his natural instinct,
And liv' apart, indulging in acts of mercy, delighted
In wisdom's rock-hewn citadel her law to illustrate,
Embodying the pattern of self-integrity complete.

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Yea, what a charm pervades discourse, that loftily reason'd
Points the narrow pathway throu' this world's ugly disorder;
How very fair wil appear any gate of cleanliness, open
From the city's tumult, its rank impurity, its dread
Vulgarity's triumph: Nay sure & bounteous as Truth,
Beautiful in confusion appeareth Simplicity's way.
—‘Simple it is, (you say) God is good,—Nature is ample,—
‘Earth yields plenty for all,—and all might share in abundance,
‘Were profit and labour but fairly divided among them.
‘Scarce any laws are needed in our Utopia but these,—
‘No fruitless labour to provide mere useless adornment,
‘No money encouraging man's sloth & slavery, no rents
‘Of titeld landlords, no pamper'd luxury breeding
‘Fleshly disease, worst fiend & foe of mind body and soul;
‘All should work, and only produce life's only requirements:
‘So with days all halfholidays, toil healthfully enjoy'd,
‘Each might, throu' leisure hours of amusement piety and peace,
‘In the domestic joys & holy community partake.—’
—This wer' a downleveling, my friend; you need, to assure me,
Fix a limit to the folk; else, as their number is increas't,
Their happiness may dwindle away, & what was at outset
Goal & prize, the provoker of all your wise revolution,
Will by subdivision disappear in course of atainment.
When goods are increas'd, mouths are increas'd to devour them:
If the famine be reliev'd this season in India, next dearth
Will be a worse. You know how one day Herschel acosted
Such a philanthropical Save-all, who claimed to acomplish
Some greatest happiness for a greatest number; ‘Attend, man;
(Said-he) Resolve me anon one query: Suppose Adam and Eve
First created on Earth but twice ten centuries ere Christ,

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That they gat four children in all, who liv'd, getting also
Four to the pair: Had thus mankind ever equaly increast
By moderate families but doubling in each generation,
How many souls would now be alive to revise the conundrum
Of greatest happiness? No answer? Well, 'tis a long sum.
Say if on earth such a crowd could stand. No? Pray then imagine
All earth's land as a plain, & all this company thereon,
Piled together like peas in a pintpot: How many layers?
No guess? Then how high the column? How far wu'd it extend
Into the sky?—To the moon?—Further—To the sun?—To the sun! Pshaw!
That column of happy men would reach up, as I fathom its height,
Million diameters of Neptune's infinit' orbit.’

My objection annoys your kindly philanthropy?—‘It proves
‘Too much.’—Yes nature shows in that scrutiny bankrupt;
Mere matter in deposit gives out. You wish to determine
No limit of future polities: your actual object
Is to relieve suffering, to repeal injustice acruing
From monied inheritance, which makes a nonentity potent
For public mischief, who might, if usefully harness'd
In common employment, have assisted social order.
Why should Law give fifty talents where Nature alloys one?
For money is the talent of supreme empery: Gold, Gold
Envieth all, getteth all, absorbeth, mastereth all things:
It pusheth out & thrusteth away pitilessly the weak ones,
Those ill-fated, opprest, unfortun'd needy: Beneath them
Yawns the abyss. Down down they fall, as a stream on a mountain,
With ceaseless cataract. None hearkeneth; only the silent
Grave, that darkly devours their cry of desperate anguish.
Spare me the story; believe more feel this grief than avow it:

426

'Tis put aside from thought with death's incurable evil;
Left for them, that assume mankind as cause, to lament it.
And what if all Nature ratify this merciless outrage?
If her wonder of arch-wonders, her fair animal life,
Her generate creatures, her motion'd warmblooded offspring,
Haunters of the forest & royal country, her antler'd
Mild-gazers, that keep silvan sabbath idly without end;
Her herded galopers, sleeksided stately careerers
Of trembling nostril; her coy unapproachable estrays,
Stealthy treaders, climbers; her leapers furry, lissom-limb'd;
Her timorous burrowers, and grangers thrifty, the sandy
Playmates of the warren; her clumsy-footed, shaggy roamers;
Her soarers, the feather'd fast-fliers, loftily floating
Sky-sailers, exiles of high solitudinous eyries;
Her perching carolers, twitterers, & sweetly singing birds:
All ocean's finny clans, mute-mouthers, watery breathers,
Furtive arrow-darters, and fan-tail'd easy balancers,
Silvery-scale, gilt-head, thorn-back, frill'd harlequinading
Globe and slimy ribbon: Shell-builders of many-chamber'd
Pearly dwellings, soft shapes mosslike or starry, adorning
With rich floral fancy the gay rock-garden of ebb-tide:
All life, from the massive-bulkt, ivory-tusht, elephantine
Centenarian, acknowledging with crouching obeisance
Man's will, ev'n to the least petty whiffling ephemeral insect,
Which in a hot sunbeam engend'ring, when summer is high,
Vaunteth an hour his speck of tinsely gaudiness and dies:
Ah! what if all & each of Nature's favorite offspring,
'Mong many distinctions, have this portentous agreement,
Mouth, Stomach, Intestine? Question that brute apparatus,
So manifoldly devis'd, set alert with furious instinct:
What doth it interpret but this, that Life Liveth on Life?
That the select creatures, who inherit earth's domination,
Whose happy existence is Nature's intelligent smile,
Are bloody survivors of a mortal combat, a-tweenwhiles
Chanting a brief pæan for victory on the battlefield?

427

Since that of all their kinds most owe their prosperous estate
Unto the art, whereby they more successfully destroy'd
Their weaker brethren, more insatiably devour'd them;
And all fine qualities, their forms pictorial, admired,
Their symmetries, their grace, & beauty, the loveliness of them,
Were by Murder evolv'd, to 'scape from it or to effect it.

‘Surely again (you say) too much is proven, it argues
‘Mere horror & despair; unless persuasion avail us
‘That the moral virtues are man's idea, awaken'd
‘By the spirit's motions; & therefore not to be conceiv'd
‘In Nature's outward & mainly material aspect,
‘As that is understood. You, since you hold that opinion,
‘Run your own ship aground invoking Nature against me.’—

Then withdraw the appeal, my friend, to her active aliance;
Be pessimist Nature with a pitchfork manfully expell'd,
Not to return. Yet soul in hand, with brutal alegiance,
Hunters & warriors do not forget the comandment.
See how lively the old animal continueth in them:
Of what trifling account they hold life, yet what a practis'd
Art pursue to preserve it: if I should rightly define sport
Slaughter with danger, what were more serious and brave?
Their love of air, of strength, of wildness, afford us an inkling
Of the delight of beasts, with whom they might innocently
Boast a fellow-feeling, summoning them forth to the combat.
Nay dream not so quickly to see her ladyship expell'd.
Those prowling Lions of stony Kabylia, whose roar
Frights from sleep the huddled herdsmen, soon as the sudden night
Falls on Mount Atlas, those grave uxorious outlaws
Wandering in the Somali desert or waste Kalahari,
Sound a challenge that amid summer-idling London is answer'd
Haply in Old Bond Street, where some fashionably attired youth
Daintily stands poising the weapon foredoom'd to appay them:

428

Or he mentally sighteth a tiger of India, that low
Crouches among the river jungles, or hunts desolating
Grassy Tarai, 'neath lofty Himalya, or far southward
Outacamund, Mysore's residency, the Nilgherry mountains
By Malabar; yea, and ere-long shall sight him in earnest,
Stalked as a deer, surprised where he lay slumbering at noon
Under a rock full-gorged, or deep in reedy covert hid
By the trackers disturbed: Two grand eyes shall for a moment
Glare upon either side the muzzle. Woe then to the hunter,
If he blench! That fury beclouded in invisible speed
What marksman could arrest? what mortal abide his arrachement?
Standing above the immense carcase he gratefully praiseth
God for a man-eater so fine, so worthy the slaying.

See him again; 'tis war: one hill-rock strongly defended
Checks advance, to be stormed at cost of half the assailants.
Gaily away they go, Highlanders, English, or Irish,
Or swart Ghoorkas against the leaden hail, climbing, ascending,
Lost in a smoke, scattering, creeping, here there, ever upwards:
Till some change cometh o'er confusion. Who winneth? ah! see!
Ours have arrived, and he who led their bravery is there.
None that heard will ever forget that far-echoing cheer:
Such heard Nelson, above the crashings & thundering of guns:
At Marathon 'twas heard and all time's story remembers.

See him again, when at home visiting his episcopal uncle:
That good priest contrast with this good captain, assay them:
Find a common-measure equating their rival emotions;
Evaporate the rubbish, the degrading pestiferous fuss
Of stuck-up importance, the palatial coterie, weigh out
Then the solids: whose life would claim the award of an umpire
For greatest happiness? High-priest or soldier? Adjudge it

429

By their books: Let a child give sentence. Ev'n as a magnet
Turns and points to the north, so children's obstinate insight
Flies to the tale of war, hairbreadth scapes, daring achievements,
Discoveries, conquests, the romance of history: these things
Win them away from play to devour with greedy attention
Till they long to be men; while all that clerkly palaver
Tastes like wormwood.—‘Avast! (I hear you calling) Avast there!
‘I forbid the appeal.’—Well, style my humour atrocious;
Granted a child cannot understand; yet see what a huge growth
Stands to be extermin'd, ere you can set dibble in ground.
Nay, more yet; that mighty forest, whose wildness offends you,
And silences appal, where earth-life self-suffocating
Seethes, lavish as sun-life in a red star's fi'ry corona;
That waste magnificence, and vain fecundity, breeding
Giants & parasites embrac'd in flowery tangle,
Interwoven alive and dead, where one tyrannous tree
Blights desolating around it a swamp of rank vegetation;
Where Reason yet dreams unawakt, & throu' the solemn day
Only the monkey chatters, & discordant the parrot screams:
All this is in man's heart with dateless sympathy worshipt,
With filial reverence, & awful pieties involv'd;
While that other picture, your formal fancy, the garden
Of your stingy promise, must that not quench his imagin'd
Ideals of beauty, his angel hope of attainment?
What to him are the level'd borders, the symmetric allotments,
Where nothing exceedeth, nothing encroacheth, nor assaileth;
Where Reason now drudgeth a sad monomaniac, all day
Watering & weeding, digging & diligently manuring
Her label'd families, starch-makers, nitrogen-extract-
Purveyors, classified potherbs & empty pretenders
Of medical virtues; nay ev'n and their little impulse

430

T'ward liberal fruiting disallow'd by stern regulation;
So many beans to a pod, with so many pods to a beanstalk;
Prun'd, pincht, economiz'd miserly til' all is abortion,
Save in such specimens as, but for an extravagant care,
Had miserably perish'd. What madness works to delude you,
Being a man, that you see not mankind's predilection
Is for Magnificence, Force, Freedom, Bounty; his inborn
Love for Beauty, his aim to possess, his pride to devise it:
And from everlasting his heart is fixt with affections
Preengag'd to a few sovranly determinate objects,
Toys of an eternal distraction. Beautiful is Gold,
Clear as a trumpet-call, stirring where'er it appeareth
All high pow'rs to battle; with magisterial ardour
Glowing among the metals, elemental drops of a fire-god's
Life-blood of old outpour'd in Chaos: Magical also
Ev'ry recondite jewel of Earth, with their seraphim-names,
Ruby, Jacynth, Emerald, Amethyst, Sapphire; amaranthine
Starry essences, elect emblems of purity, heirlooms
Of deathless glories, most like to divine imanences.
Then that heart-gladdening highpriz'd ambrosia, blending
Their dissolute purples & golds with sparkling aroma,
That ruddy juice exprest from favour'd vintages, infus'd
With cosmic laughter, when upon some secular epact
Blandly the sun's old heart is stirr'd to a septennial smile,
Causing strangefortun'd comfort to melancholy mortals:
Friend to the flesh, if mind be fatigued; rallying to the sound mind,
When succour is needed 'gainst fainting weariness of flesh;
Shall Wine not be belov'd? Or now let Aristotle answer
What goods are,—Time leaves the scholar's inventory unchang'd;—
All Virtues & Pow'rs, Honour & Pleasure, all that in our life
Makes us self-sufficient, Friends, Riches, Comeliness, and Strength;

431

They that have these things in plenty desire to retain them,
And win more; while they that lack are pleas'd to desire them.
Nay and since possession will leave the desire unappeased,
Save in mere appetites that vary with our physical state,
Surely delight in goods is an ecstasy rather attendant
On their mental image, than on experienc'd operation.
So the shepherd envies the monarch, the monarch the shepherd's lot,—
‘O what a life were this, How sweet, how lovely!’ the king cries.
Whence, I say, as a man feels brave who reads of Achilles,
One looking on riches may learn some kindred elation,
And whatever notions of fortune, luxury, comfort,
Genius or virtue, are shown to him, only as aspects
Of possible being, 'tis so much gain to desire them;
Learning Magnificence in mean obscurity, tasting
Something of all those goods which Fate outwardly denies him.
But say none shall again be king or prosperous or great,—
Arguing ‘all eminence is unequal, unequal is unjust’,—
Should that once come about, then alas for this merry England,
Sunk in a grey monotone of drudgery, dreamily poring
O'er her illumin'd page of history, faln to regretful
Worship of ancestors, with nought now left to delight her,
Nought to attain, save one nurst hope, one ambition only
Red Revolution, a wild Reawakening, & a Renaissance.

Impatiently enough you hear me, longing to refute me,
While I in privileg'd pulpit my period expand.
Who could allow such a list of strange miscellaneous items,
So-call'd goods, Strength, Riches, Honour, Gold, Genius, and Wine?
Is not Wisdom above Rubies? more than Coral or Pearl?
Yours is a scheme deep-laid on true distinctive asortment,
Parting use or good from useless or evil asunder;
Dismissing accessories, while half my heathenish invoice

432

Are Vanity's vanities. Well; truly, as old Solomon said,
So they be: What is excepted? What scapes his araignment?
Is't Pleasure or Wisdom? Nay ask Theologia: Goodworks,
Saith-she, offend her nostril. If I distinguish, asserting,
Say, that if I enjoyed my neighbour's excessive income
I would hire me a string-quartett not an automaton car,
You blame equally both our tastes for luxury, indeed
His shows more of a use. If man's propensity is vain,
Vulgar, inane, unworthy; 'tis also vain to bewail it:
Think you to change his skin? 'Twere scale by scale to regraft it
With purer traditions; and who shall amend the amenders?
Nay let be the bubbles, till man grow more solid in mind,
Condemn not the follies: My neighbour's foolery were worse,
Sat he agape listening to Mozart, intently desiring
All that time to be rattling along on a furious engine
In caoutchouc carapace, with a trail of damnable oilstench.
Yea, blame not the pleasures; they are not enough; pleasure only
Makes this life liveable: nor scout that doctrine as unsound:
Consider if mankind from puling birth to bitter death
Knew nought but the sorrows, endured unrespited always
Those agonizing assaults which no flesh wholly can escape;
Were his hunger a pang like his starvation, alievement
Thereof a worse torture, like that which full many die with;
Did love burn his soul as fire his skin; did affections
Rend his will, as Turks rend men with horses asunder;
Were his labour a breathless effort; his slumber occasion
For visiting Furies to repair his temple of anguish;
Were thoughts all mockeries; slow intelligence a deception;
His mind's far ventures, her voyages into the unseen
But horror & terrified nightmare; None then had ever heard
Praise of a Creator, nor seen any Deity worshipped.
'Twas for heav'nly Pleasure that God did first fashion all thing,

433

Nor with other benefit would holy Religion attract us
Picturing of Paradise. Consult our Lady's Evangel,
Where Saint Luke,—colouring (was it unconsciously, suppose you?)
Fact and fable alike,—contrasts a beggar with a rich man,
And from holding a fool's happiness too greatly in esteem
Makes pleasure eternal the balance of temporal evil,
And the reverse; nor shrinks, ascribing thus to the next world
Vaster inequalities, harsher perversity than this.
You have a soul's paradise, its entry the loop of a needle,
Come hither & prithy tell me what I must do to be saved,
I, that feeding on Ideals in temperat' estate
Seem so wealthy to poor Lazarus, so needy to Dives:
What from my heav'n-bound schooner's dispensable outfit
Has to be cast o'erboard? What see you here that offends you?
These myriad volumes, these tons of music:—allow them
Or disallow? Fiddle and trichord?—Must all be relinquished?
Such toys have not a place in your society; you say
Nobody shall make them, nor made may justly acquire them.
Yet, should a plea be alleged for life's most gracious adornment,
For contemplative art's last transcendental achievement,
Grief's almighty solace, frolicking Mirth's Purification,
For Man's unparagon'd High-poetess, inseparate Muse
Companion, the belov'd most dearly among her sisters,
Revivifier of age, fairest instructor of all grace,
His peacemaker alert with varied sympathy, whose speech
Not to arede and love is wholly to miss the celestial
Consolatries, the divine interpreting of physical life,—
You wince? make exception? allow things musical? admit
So many faked viols, penny trumpets, and amateurish
Performers? Nay, nay! stand firm, for concession is vain.
Music is outmeasurably a barefaced luxury, her plea
Will cover art, (—almost to atone art's vile imitations—)

434

My Japanese paintings, my fair blue Cheney, Hellenic
Statues and Caroline silver, my beautiful Aldines,
Prized more highly because so few, so fondly familiar,
Need no tongue to defend them against rude hands, that assail them
Only because their name is Rarity; hands insensate,
Rending away pitilessly the fair embroideries of life,
That close-clust'ring man, his comfort pared to the outskirts
Of his discomfort, may share in meanness unenvied.
But what if I unveil the figure that closely beside you
Half hides his Hell-charred skeleton with mysteries obscene,
That foul one, that Moloch of all Utopias, ancient
Poisoner & destroyer-elect of innumerous unborn?

Know you the story of our hive-bees, the yellow honey-makers,
Whose images from of old have haunted Poetry, settling
On the blossoms of man's dream-garden, as on the summer-flow'rs,
Pictures of happy toil, sunny glances, gendering always
Such sweet thoughts, as be by slumbrous music awaken'd?
How all their outward happiness,—that fairy demeanour
Of busy contentment, singing at their work,—is an inborn
Empty habit, the relics of a time when considerate joy
Truly possest their tiny bodies; when golden abundance
Was not a State-kept hoard; when feasts were plentiful indulg'd
With wine well-fermented, or old-stored spicy metheglin:
For they died not then miserably within the second moon
Forgotten, unrespected of all; but slept many winters,
Saw many springs, liv'd, lov'd like men, consciously rejoicing
In Nature's promises, with like hopes and recollections.
Intelligence had brought them Science, Genius enter'd;
Seers and sages arose, great Bees, perfecting among them
Copious inventions, with man's art worthily compared.
Then was a time when that, which haps not in ages of ages,
Strangely befel: they stole from Nature's secresy one key,

435

Found the hidden motive which works to variety of kind;
And thus came wondrously possest of pow'r to determine
Their children's qualities, habitudes, yea their specialized form
Masculine or feminine to produce, or asexual offspring
Redow'rd and differenced with such alternative organs
As they chose, to whate'er preferential function adapted,
Wax-pocket or honey-bag, with an instinct rightly acordant.

We know well the result, but not what causes effected
Their decision to prefer so blindly the race to the unit,
As to renounce happiness for a problem, a vain abstraction;
Making home and kingdom a vast egg-factory, wherein
Food and life are stor'd up alike, and strictly proportion'd
In loveless labour with mean anxiety. Wondrous
Their reason'd motive, their altruistic obedience
Unto a self-impos'd life-sentence of prison or toil.
Wonder wisely! then ask if these ingenious insects,
(Who made Natur' against her will their activ' acomplice,
And, methodizing anew her heartless system, averted
From their house the torrent of whelming natural increase,)
Are blood-guiltless among their own-born progeny: What skill
Keeps their peace, or what price buys it? Alack! 'tis murder,
Murder again. No worst Oriental despot, assuring
'Gainst birthright or faction or envy his ill-gotten empire,
So decimates his kin, as do these rown-bodied egg-queens
Surprise competitors, and stab their slumbering infants,
Into the wax-cradles replunging their double-edged stings.
Or what a deed of blood some high-day, when the summer hath
Their clammy cells o'erbrim'd, and already ripening orchards
And late flow'rs proclaim that starving winter approacheth,
Nor will again any queen lead forth her swarm, dispeopling
Their strawbuilt citadel; then watch how these busy workers
Cease for awhile from toil; how crowding upon the devoted

436

Drones they fall; those easy fellows gave some provocation;
Yet 'tis a foul massacre, cold murder of unsuspecting
Life-long companions; and done bloodthirstily:—is not
Exercise of pow'r a delight? have you not a doctrine
That calls duty pleasure? What an if they make merry, saying
‘Lazy-livers, runagates, evil beasts, greedy devourers,
‘Too happy and too long ye've liv'd, unashamed to have outliv'd
‘Your breeders, feeders, warmers and toiling attendants;
‘Had-ye ever been worthy a public good to accomplish,
‘Each had nobly perish'd long-ago. Unneeded, obese ones,
‘Impious encumbrance, whose hope of service is over,
‘Who did not, now can not, assist the community, Ye die!’

My parable may serve. What wisdom man hath attain'd to
Came to him of Nature's goodwill throu' tardy selection:
Should her teaching accuse herself and her method impugn,
I may share with her the reproach of approving as artist
Far other ideals than what seem needful in action.
This difficulty besets our time. If you have an answer,
Write me it, as you keep your salt in savour; or if toil
Grant you an indulgence, here lies fair country, direct then
Your Sabbath excursion westward, and spend a summer-day
Preaching among the lilies what you have preached to the chimneys.

437

3
EVENING

[_]

From Wm. Blake

Come, rosy angel, thy coronet donning
Of starry jewels, smile upon ev'ry bed,
And grant what each day-weary mortal,
Labourer or lover, asketh of thee.

Smile thou on our loves, enveloping the land
With dusky curtain: consider each blossom
That timely upcloseth, that opens
Her treasure of heavy-laden odours.

Now, while the west-wind slumbereth on the lake,
Silently dost thou with delicate shimmer
O'erbloom the frowning front of awful
Night to a glance of unearthly silver.

No hungry wild beast rangeth in our forest,
No tiger or wolf prowleth around the fold:
Keep thou from our sheepcotes the tainting
Invisible peril of the darkness.

4
POVRE AME AMOUREUSE

[_]

From Louise Labe, 1555

[_]

(Sapphics)

When to my lone soft bed at eve returning
Sweet desir'd sleep already stealeth o'er me,
My spirit flieth to the fairy-land of her tyrannous love.

438

Him then I think fondly to kiss, to hold him
Frankly then to my bosom; I that all day
Have looked for him suffering, repining, yea many long days.

O blessèd sleep, with flatteries beguile me;
So, if I ne'er may of a surety have him,
Grant to my poor soul amorous the dark gift of this illusion.

5
THE FOURTH DIMENSION

[_]

(Hendecasyllables)

Truest-hearted of early friends, that Eton
Long since gave to me,—Ah! 'tis all a life-time,—
With my faithfully festive auspication
Of Christmas merriment, this idle item.

Plato truly believ'd his archetypal
Ides to possess the fourth dimension:
For since our solid is triple, but always
Its shade only double, solids as umbrae
Must lack equally one dimension also.
Could Plato have avoided or denied it?

So Saint Paul, when in argument opposing
To our earthly bodies bodies celestial,
Meant just those pretty Greek aforesaid abstracts
Of four Platonical divine dimensions.

If this be not a holy consolation
More than plumpudding and a turkey roasted,
Whereto you but address a third dimension,
Try it, pray, as a pill to aid digestion:
I can't find anything better to send you.

439

6
JOHANNES MILTON, Senex

[_]

Scazons

Since I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Man's Maker and Judge, Overruler of Fortune,
'Twere strange should I praise anything and refuse Him praise,
Should love the creature forgetting the Creator,
Nor unto Him in suff'ring and sorrow turn me:
Nay how could I withdraw me from His embracing?

But since that I have seen not, and cannot know Him,
Nor in my earthly temple apprehend rightly
His wisdom and the heav'nly purpose eternal;
Therefore will I be bound to no studied system
Nor argument, nor with delusion enslave me,
Nor seek to please Him in any foolish invention,
Which my spirit within me, that loveth beauty
And hateth evil, hath reprov'd as unworthy:

But I cherish my freedom in loving service,
Gratefully adoring for delight beyond asking
Or thinking, and in hours of anguish and darkness
Confiding always on His excellent greatness.

7
PYTHAGORAS

[_]

Scazons

Thou vainly, O Man, self-deceiver, exaltest
Thyself the king and only thinker of this world,
Where life aboundeth infinite to destroy thee.

440

Well-guided are thy forces and govern'd bravely,
But like a tyrant cruel or savage monster
Thou disregardest ignorantly all being
Save only thine own insubordinate ruling:

As if the flower held not a happy pact with Spring;
As if the brutes lack'd reason and sorrow's torment;
Or ev'n divine love from the small atoms grew not,
Their grave affection unto thy passion mingling.

An truly were it nobler and better wisdom
To fear the blind thing blindly, lest it espy thee;
And scrupulously do honour to dumb creatures,

No one offending impiously, nor forcing
To service of vile uses; ordering rather
Thy slave to beauty, compelling lovingkindness.

So should desire, the only priestess of Nature
Divinely inspir'd, like a good monarch rule thee,
And lead thee onward in the consummate motion
Of life eternal unto heav'nly perfection.

441

Elegiacs

8
AMIEL

Why, O Maker of all, madest thou man with affections
Tender above thyself, scrupulous and passionate?
Nay, if compassionate thou art, why, thou lover of men,
Hidest thou thy face so pitilessly from us?
If thou in priesthoods and altar-glory delitest,
In torment and tears of trouble and suffering,
Then wert thou displeas'd looking on soft human emotion,
Thou must scorn the devout love of a sire to a son.
'Twas but vainly of old, Man, making Faith to approach thee,
Held an imagin'd scheme of providence in honour;
And, to redeem thy praise, judg'd himself cause, took upon him
Humbly the impossible burden of all misery.
Now casteth he away his books and logical idols
Leaveth again his cell of terrified penitence;
And that stony goddess, his first-born fancy, dethroning,
Hath made after his own homelier art another;
Made sweet Hope, the modest unportion'd daughter of anguish,
Whose brimming eye sees but dimly what it looketh on;
Dreaming a day when fully, without curse or horrible cross,
Thou wilt deign to reveal her vision of happiness.

9 [Ah, what a change! Thou, who didst emptily thy happiness seek]

Ah, what a change! Thou, who didst emptily thy happiness seek
In pleasure, art finding thy pleasure in happiness.
Slave to the soul, whom thou heldest in slavery, art thou?
Thou, that wert but a vain idol, adored a goddess?

442

10
WALKING HOME

[_]

From the Chinese

Thousand threads of rain and fine white wreathing of airmist
Hide from us earth's greenness, hide the enarching azure.
Yet will a breath of Spring homeward convoying attend us,
And the mellow flutings of passionate Philomel.

11
THE RUIN

[_]

From the Chinese

These grey stones have rung with mirth and lordly carousel;
Here proud kings mingled poetry and ruddy wine.
All hath pass'd long ago; nought but this ruin abideth,
Sadly in eyeless trance gazing upon the river.
Wouldst thou know who here visiteth, dwelleth and singeth also,
Ask the swallows flying from sunny-wall'd Italy.

12
REVENANTS

[_]

From the French

At dead of unseen night ghosts of the departed assembling
Flit to the graves, where each in body had burial.
Ah, then revisiting my sad heart their desolate tomb
Troop the desires and loves vainly buried long ago.

443

13 [Mortal though I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment]

[_]

From the Greek

Mortal though I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment
I gaze up to the night's starry domain of heaven,
Then no longer on earth I stand; I touch the Creator,
And my lively spirit drinketh immortality.

14
ANNIVERSARY

See, Love, a year is pass'd: in harvest our summer endeth:
Praising thee the solemn festival I celebrate.
Unto us all our days are love's anniversaries, each one
In turn hath ripen'd something of our happiness.
So, lest heart-contented adown life easily floating,
We note not the passage while living in the delight,
I have honour'd always the attentive vigil of Autumn,
And thy day set apart holy to fair Memory.

15
COMMUNION OF SAINTS

[_]

From André Chenier

What happy bonds together unite you, ye living and dead,
Your fadeless love-bloom, your manifold memories.

EPITAPHS

16 [Fight well, my comrades, and prove your bravery. Me too]

Fight well, my comrades, and prove your bravery. Me too
God call'd out, but crown'd early before the battle.

444

17 [I died in very flow'r: yet call me not unhappy therefore]

I died in very flow'r: yet call me not unhappy therefore,
Ye that against sweet life once a lament have utter'd.

18 [When thou, my beloved, diedst, I saw heaven open]

When thou, my beloved, diedst, I saw heaven open,
And all earthly delight inhabiting Paradise.

19 [Where thou art better I too were, dearest, anywhere, than]

Where thou art better I too were, dearest, anywhere, than
Wanting thy well-lov'd lovely presence anywhere.

20
IBANT OBSCURI

[_]

A line for line paraphrase of a part of Virgil's Æneid, Bk. VI.

They wer' amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscure
Walking forth i' the void and vasty dominyon of Ades;
As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin'd
One goeth in the forest, when heav'n is gloomily clouded,
And black night hath robb'd the colours and beauty from all things.

Here in Hell's very jaws, the threshold of darkening Orcus,
Have the avenging Cares laid their sleepless habitation,
Wailing Grief, pallid Infections, & heart-stricken Old-age,
Dismal Fear, unholy Famine, with low-groveling Want,
Forms of spectral horror, gaunt Toil and Death the devourer,
And Death's drowsy brother, Torpor; with whom, an inane rout,
All the Pleasures of Sin; there also the Furies in ambusht

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Chamber of iron, afore whose bars wild War bloodyhanded
Raged, and mad Discord high brandisht her venomous locks.

Midway of all this tract, with secular arms an immense elm
Reareth a crowd of branches, aneath whose leafy protection
Vain dreams thickly nestle, clinging unto the foliage on high:
And many strange creatures of monstrous form and features
Stable about th'entrance, Centaur and Scylla's abortion,
And hundred-handed Briareus, and Lerna's wildbeast
Roaring amain, and clothed in frightful flame the Chimæra,
Gorgons and Harpies, and Pluto's three-bodied ogre.

In terror Æneas upheld his sword to defend him,
With ready naked point confronting their dreaded onset:
And had not the Sibyl warn'd how these lively spirits were
All incorporeal, flitting in thin maskery of form,
He had assail'd their host, and wounded vainly the void air.

Hence is a road that led them a-down to the Tartarean streams,
Where Acheron's whirlpool impetuous, into the reeky
Deep of Cokytos disgorgeth, with muddy burden.
These floods one ferryman serveth, most awful of aspect,
Of squalor infernal, Charon: all filthily unkempt
That woolly white cheek-fleece, and fiery the blood-shotten eyeballs:
On one shoulder a cloak knotted-up his nudity vaunteth.
He himself plieth oar or pole, manageth tiller and sheet,
And the relics of men in his ash-grey barge ferries over;
Already old, but green to a god and hearty will age be.

Now hitherward to the bank much folk were crowding, a medley
Of men and matrons; nor did death's injury conceal
Bravespirited heroes, young maidens beauteous unwed,
And boys borne to the grave in sight of their sorrowing sires.

Countless as in the forest, at a first white frosting of autumn
Sere leaves fall to the ground; or like whenas over the ocean
Myriad birds come thickly flocking, when wintry December
Drives them afar southward for shelter upon sunnier shores,

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So throng'd they; and each his watery journey demanded,
All to the further bank stretching-out their arms impatient:
But the sullen boatman took now one now other at will,
While some from the river forbade he', an' drave to a distance.

Æneas in wonder alike and deep pity then spake.
‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘my guide, why flock these crowds to the water?
Or what seek the spirits? or by what prejudice are these
Rudely denied, while those may upon the solemn river embark?’
T'whom then briefly again the Avernian priestess in answer.
‘O Son of Anchises, heavn's true-born glorious offspring,
Deep Cokytos it is thou seest & Hell's Stygian flood,
Whose dread sanction alone Jove's oath from falsehood assureth.
These whom thou pitiedst, th'outcast and unburied are they;
That ferryman Charon; those whom his bark carries over
Are the buried; nor ever may mortal across the livid lake
Journey, or e'er upon Earth his bones lie peacefully entomb'd:
Haunting a hundred years this mournful plain they wander
Doom'd for a term, which term expired they win to deliv'rance.’

Then he that harken'd stood agaze, his journey arrested,
Grieving at heart and much pitying their unmerited lot.
There miserably fellow'd in death's indignity saw he
Leucaspis with his old Lycian seachieften Orontes,
Whom together from Troy in home-coming over the waters
Wild weather o'ermaster'd, engulphing both shipping and men.
And lo! his helmsman, Palinurus, in eager emotion,
Who on th'Afric course, in bright star-light, with a fair wind,
Fell by slumber opprest unheedfully into the wide sea:
Whom i' the gloom when hardly he knew, now changed in affliction,

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First he addrest. ‘What God, tell me O Palinurus, of all gods
Pluckt you away and drown'd i' the swift wake-water abandon'd?
For never erst nor in else hath kind responsive Apollo
Led me astray, but alone in this thing wholly deluded,
When he aver'd that you, to remote Ausonia steering,
Safe would arrive. Where now his truth? Is this the promis'd faith?’
But he, ‘Neither again did Phœbus wrongly bespeak thee,
My general, nor yet did a god in his enmity drown me:
For the tiller, wherewith I led thy fleet's navigation,
And still clung to, was in my struggling hold of it unshipt,
And came with me’ o'erboard, Ah! then, by ev'ry accurst sea,
Tho' in utter despair, far less mine own peril awed me
Than my thought o' the ship, what harm might hap to her, yawing
In the billows helmless, with a high wind and threatening gale.
Two nights and one day buffeted held I to the good spar
Windborne, with the current far-drifting, an' on the second morn
Saw, when a great wave raised me aloft, the Italyan highlands;
And swimming on with effort got ashore, nay already was saved,
Had not there the wrecking savages, who spied me defenceless,
Scarce clinging outwearied to a rock, half-drowned & speechless,
Beat me to death for hope of an unfound booty upon me.
Now to the wind and tidewash a sport my poor body rolleth.
Wherefore thee, by heav'n's sweet light & airness, I pray,
By thy Sire's memories, thy hope of youthful Iulus,
Rescue me from these ills, brave master; Go to Velija,
O'er my mortality's spoil cast thou th'all-hallowing dust:

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Or better, if so be the goddess, heav'n's lady-Creatress,
Show thee the way,—nor surely without high favoring impulse
Mak'st thou ventur' across these floods & black Ereban lake,—
Give thy hand to me', an' o'er their watery boundary bring me
Unto the haven of all, death's home of quiet abiding.’
Thus he lamented, anon spake sternly the maid of Avernus.
‘Whence can such unruly desire, Palinurus, assail thee?
Wilt thou th'Eumenidan waters visit unburied? o'erpass
Hell's Stygian barrier? Charon's boat unbidden enter?
Cease to believe that fate can be by prayer averted.
Let my sooth a litel thy cruel destiny comfort
Surely the people of all thy new-found country, determin'd
By heav'n-sent omens will achieve thy purification,
Build thee a tomb of honour with yearly solemnity ordain'd,
And dedicate for ever thy storied name to the headland.’

These words lighten awhile his fear, his sadness allaying,
Nor vain was the promise his name should eternally survive.

They forthwith their journey renew, tending to the water:
Whom when th'old boatman descried silently emerging
Out o' the leafy shadows, advancing t'ward the river-shore,
Angrily gave he challenge, imperious in salutation.
‘Whosoever thou be, that approachest my river all-arm'd,
Stand to announce thyself, nor further make footing onward.
Here 'tis a place of ghosts, of night & drowsy delusion:
Forbidden unto living mortals is my Stygian keel:
Truly not Alkides embarkt I cheerfully, nor took
Of Theseus or Pirithous glad custody, nay though
God-sprung were they both, warriors invincible in might:
He'twas would sportively the guard of Tartarus enchain,
Yea and from the palace with gay contumely dragged him:
They to ravish Hell's Queen from Pluto's chamber attempted.’

Then thus th'Amphrysian prophetess spake briefly in answer.
‘No such doughty designs are ours, Cease thou to be moved!
Nor these sheeny weapons intend force. Cerberus unvext

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Surely for us may affray the spirits with ‘howling eternal,
And chaste Persephone enjoy her queenly seclusion.
Troian Æneas, bravest and gentlest-hearted,
Hath left earth to behold his father in out-lying Ades.
If the image of a so great virtue doth not affect thee,
Yet this bough’—glittering she reveal'd its golden avouchment—
‘Thou mayst know.’ Forthwith his bluster of heart was appeased:
Nor word gave he, but admiring the celestial omen,
That bright sprigg of weird for so long period unseen,
Quickly he turneth about his boat, to the margin approaching,
And the spirits, that along the gun'al benchways sat in order,
Drave he ashore, offering readyroom: but when the vessel took
Ponderous Æneas, her timbers crankily straining
Creak'd, an' a brown water came trickling through the upper seams.
Natheless both Sibyl and Hero, slow wafted across stream,
Safe on th'ooze & slime's hideous desolation alighted.

Hence the triple-throated bellowings of Cerberus invade
All Hell, where opposite the arrival he lies in a vast den.
But the Sibyl, who mark'd his necklaces of stiffening snakes,
Cast him a cake, poppy-drench'd with drowsiness and honey-sweeten'd.
He, rabid and distending a-hungry' his triply-cavern'd jaws,
Gulp'd the proffer'd morsel; when slow he relaxt his immense bulk,
And helplessly diffused fell out-sprawl'd over the whole cave.
Æneas fled by, and left full boldly the streamway,
That biddeth all men across but alloweth ne'er a returning.

Already now i' the air were voices heard, lamentation,
And shrilly crying of infant souls by th'entry of Ades.
Babes, whom unportion'd of sweet life, unblossoming buds,
One black day carried off and chokt in dusty corruption.—
Next are they who falsely accused were wrongfully condemn'd

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Unto the death: but here their lot by justice is order'd.
Inquisitor Minos, with his urn, summoning to assembly
His silent council, their deed or slander arraigneth.—
Next the sullen-hearted, who rashly with else-innocent hand
Their own life did-away, for hate or weariness of light,
Imperiling their souls. How gladly, if only in Earth's air,
Would they again their toil, discomfort, and pities endure!
Fate obstructs: deep sadness now, unloveliness awful
Rings them about, & Styx with ninefold circle enarmeth.—

Not far hence they come to a land extensive on all sides;
Weeping Plain 'tis call'd:—such name such country deserveth.
Here the lovers, whom fiery passion hath cruelly consumed,
Hide in leafy alleys and pathways bow'ry, sequester'd
By woodland myrtle, nor hath Death their sorrow ended.
Here was Phædra to see, Procris and sad Eriphyle,
She of her unfilial deathdoing wound not ashamed,
Evadne, and Pasiphae and Laodamia,
And epicene Keneus, a woman to a man metamorphos'd,
Now by Fate converted again to her old feminine form.

'Mong these shades, her wound yet smarting ruefully, Dido
Wander'd throu' the forest-obscurity; and Æneas
Standing anigh knew surely the dim form, though i' the darkness
Veil'd,—as when one seeth a young moon on the horizon,
Or thinketh to 'have seen i' the gloaming her delicate horn;
Tearfully in oncelov'd accents he lovingly addrest her.
‘Unhappy! ah! too true 'twas told me' O unhappy Dido,
Dead thou wert; to the fell extreme didst thy passion ensue.
And was it I that slew thee? Alas! Smite falsity, ye heav'ns!
And Hell-fury attest me', if here any sanctity reigneth,
Unwilling, O my Queen, my step thy kingdom abandon'd.
Me the command of a god, who here my journey determines
Through Ereban darkness, through fields sown with desolation,

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Drave me to wrong my heart. Nay tho' deep-pain'd to desert thee
I ne'er thought to provoke thy pain of mourning eternal.
Stay yet awhile, ev'n here unlook'd-for again look upon me:
Fly me not ere the supreme words that Fate granteth us are said.’

Thus he: but the spirit was raging, fiercely defiant,
Whom he approach'd with words to appease, with tears for atonement.
She to the ground downcast her eyes in fixity averted;
Nor were her features more by his pleading affected,
Than wer' a face of flint, or of ensculptur'd alabaster.
At length she started disdainful, an' angrily withdrew
Into a shady thicket: where her grief kindly Sychæus
Sooth'd with other memories, first love and virginal embrace.
And ever Æneas, to remorse by deep pity soften'd,
With brimming eyes pursued her queenly figure disappearing.

Thence the Sibyl to the plain's extremest boundary led him,
Where world-fam'd warriors, a lionlike company, haunted.
Here great Tydeus saw he eclips'd, & here the benighted
Phantom of Adrastus, of stalwart Parthenopæus.
Here long mourn'd upon earth went all that prowess of Ilium
Fallen in arms; whom, when he beheld them, so many and great,
Much he bewail'd. By Thersilochus his mighty brothers stood,
Children of Antenor; here Demetrian Polyphates,
And Idæus, in old chariot-pose dreamily stalking.
Right and left the spirits flocking on stood crowding around him;
Nor their eyes have enough; they touch, find joy unwonted
Marching in equal step, and eager of his coming enquire.
But th'Argive leaders, and they that obey'd Agamemnon
When they saw that Trojan in arms come striding among them,
Old terror invaded their ranks: some fled stricken, as once

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They to the ships had fled for shelter; others the alarm raise,
But their thin utterance mock'd vainly the lips wide parted.
Here too Deiphobus he espied, his fair body mangled,
Cruelly dismember'd, disfeatur'd cruelly his face,
Face and hands; and lo! shorn closely from either temple,
Gone wer' his ears, and maim'd each nostril in impious outrage.
Barely he knew him again cow'ring shamefastly' an' hiding
His dire plight, & thus he 'his old companyon accosted.
‘Noblest Deiphobus, great Teucer's intrepid offspring,
Who was it, inhuman, coveted so cruel a vengeance?
Who can hav' adventur'd on thee? That last terrible night
Thou wert said to hav' exceeded thy bravery, an' only
On thy faln enemies wert faln by weariness o'ercome.
Wherefor' upon the belov'd sea-shore thine empty sepulchral
Mound I erected, aloud on thy ghost tearfully calling.
Name and shield keep for thee the place; but thy body, dear friend,
Found I not, to commit to the land ere sadly' I left it.’

Then the son of Priam ‘I thought not, friend, to reproach thee:
Thou didst all to the full, ev'n my shade's service, accomplish.
'Twas that uninterdicted adultress from Lacedæmon
Drave me to doom, & planted in hell, her trophy triumphant.
On that night,—how vain a security and merrymaking
Then sullied us thou know'st, yea must too keenly remember,—
When the ill-omened horse o'erleapt Troy's lofty defences,
Dragg'd in amidst our town pregnant with a burden of arm'd men.
She then, her Phrygian women in feign'd phrenzy collecting,
All with torches aflame, in wild Bacchic orgy paraded,
Flaring a signal aloft to her ambusht confederate Greeks.
I from a world of care had fled with weariful eyelids
Unto my unhappy chamber', an' lay fast lockt in oblivyon,

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Sunk to the depth of rest as a child that nought will awaken.
Meanwhile that paragon helpmate had robb'd me of all arms,
E'en from aneath the pillow my blade of trust purloining;—
Then to the gate; wide flings she it op'n an' calls Menelaus.
Would not a so great service attach her faithful adorer?
Might not it extinguish the repute of her earlier illdeeds?
Brief be the tale. Menelaus arrives: in company there came
His crime-counsellor Æolides. . So, and more also
Dealye', O Gods, to the Greeks! an' if I call justly upon you.—
But thou; what fortune hitherward, in turn prithy tell me,
Sent thee alive, whether erring upon the bewildering Ocean,
Or high-prompted of heav'n, or by Fate wearily hunted,
That to the sunless abodes and dusky demesnes thou approachest?’

Ev'n as awhile they thus converse it is already mid-day
Unperceiv'd, but aloft earth's star had turn'd to declining.
And haply' Æneas his time in parley had outgone,
Had not then the Sibyl with word of warning avized him.
‘Night hieth, Æneas; in tears our journey delayeth.
See our road, that it here in twain disparteth asunder;
This to the right, skirting by th'high city-fortresses of Dis,
Endeth in Elysium, our path; but that to the leftward
Only receives their feet who wend to eternal affliction.’
Deiphobus then again, ‘Speak not, great priestess, in anger;
I will away to refill my number among th'unfortun'd.
Thou, my champyon, adieu! Go where thy glory awaits thee!’
When these words he 'had spok'n, he-turn'd and hastily was fled.

Æneas then look'd where leftward, under a mountain,
Outspread a wide city lay, threefold with fortresses engirt,
Lickt by a Tartarean river of live fire, the torrential
Red Phlegethon, and huge boulders his roundy bubbles be:
Right i' the front stareth the columnar gate adamantine,
Such that no battering warfare of men or immortals

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E'er might shake; blank-faced to the cloud its bastion upstands.
Tisiphone thereby in a bloodspotty robe sitteth alway
Night and day guarding sleeplessly the desperat entrance,
Wherefrom an awestirring groan-cry and fierce clamour outburst,
Sharp lashes, insane yells, dragg'd chains and clanking of iron.

Æneas drew back, his heart by' his hearing affrighted:
‘What manner of criminals, my guide, now tell me,’ he-question'd,
‘Or what their penalties? what this great wail that ariseth?’
Answering him the divine priestess, ‘Brave hero of Ilium,
O'er that guilty threshold no breath of purity may come:
But Hecate, who gave me to rule i' the groves of Avernus,
Herself led me around, & taught heav'n's high retribution.
Here Cretan Rhadamanthus in unblest empery reigneth,
Secret crime to punish,—full surely he wringeth avowal
Even of all that on earth, by vain impunity harden'd,
Men sinning have put away from thought till impenitent death.
On those convicted tremblers then leapeth avenging
Tisiphone with keen flesh-whips and vipery scourges,
And of her implacable sisters inviteth attendance.’
—Now sudden on screeching hinges that portal accursed
Flung wide its barriers.—‘In what dire custody, mark thou,
Is the threshold! guarded by how grim sentry the doorway!
More terrible than they the ravin'd insatiable Hydra
That sitteth angry within. Know too that Tartarus itself
Dives sheer gaping aneath in gloomy profundity downward
Twice that height that a man looketh-up t'ward airy Olympus.
Lowest there those children of Earth, Titanian elders,
In the abyss, where once they fell hurl'd, yet wallowing lie.
There the Aloidæ saw I, th'ungainly rebel twins
Primæval, that assay'd to devastate th'Empyræan

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With huge hands, and rob from Jove his kingdom immortal.
And there Salmoneus I saw, rend'ring heavy payment,
For that he idly' had mockt heav'n's fire and thunder electric;
With chariot many-yoked and torches brandishing on high
Driving among 'his Graian folk in Olympian Elis;
Exultant as a God he rode in blasphemy worshipt.
Fool, who th'unreckoning tempest and deadly dreaded bolt
Thought to mimic with brass and confus'd trample of horses!
But 'him th'Omnipotent, from amidst his cloudy pavilyon,
Blasted, an' eke his rattling car and smoky pretences
Extinguish'd at a stroke, scattering his dust to the whirlwind.
There too huge Tityos, whom Earth that gendereth all things
Once foster'd, spreadeth-out o'er nine full roods his immense limbs.
On him a wild vulture with hook-beak greedily gorgeth
His liver upsprouting quick as that Hell-chicken eateth.
She diggeth and dwelleth under the vast ribs, her bloody bare neck
Lifting anon: ne'er loathes she the food, ne'er fails the renewal.
Where wer' an end their names to relate, their crimes and torments?
Some o'er whom a hanging black rock, slipping at very point of
Falling, ever threateneth: Couches luxurious invite
Softly-cushion'd to repose: Tables for banqueting outlaid
Tempt them ever-famishing: hard by them a Fury regardeth,
And should they but a hand uplift, trembling to the dainties,
She with live firebrand and direful yell springeth on them.

Their crimes,—not to' hav lov'd a brother while love was allow'd them;
Or to' hav struck their father, or inveigled a dependant;
Or who chancing alone on wealth prey'd lustfully thereon,
Nor made share with others, no greater company than they:

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Some for adultery slain; some their bright swords had offended
Drawn i' the wrong: or a master's trust with perfidy had met:
Dungeon'd their penalties they await. Look not to be answer'd
What that doom, nor th'end of these men think to determine.
Some aye roll heavy rocks, some whirl dizzy on the revolving
Spokes of a pendant wheel: sitteth and to eternity shall sit
Unfortun'd Theseus; while sad Phlegias saddeneth hell
With vain oyez to' all loud crying a tardy repentance,
“Walk, O man, i' the fear of God, and learn to be righteous!”
Here another, who sold for gold his country, promoting
Her tyrant; or annull'd for a base bribe th'inviolate law.
This one had unfather'd his blood with bestial incest:
All some fearful crime had dared & vaunted achievement.
What mind could harbour the offence of such recollection,
Or lend welcoming ear to the tale of iniquity and shame,
And to the pains wherewith such deeds are justly requited?

Ev'n when thus she' had spok'n, the priestess dear to Apollo,
‘But, ready, come let us on, perform we the order appointed!
Hast'n we (saith she), the wall forged on Cyclopian anvils
Now I see, an' th'archway in Ætna's furnace attemper'd,
Where my lore biddeth us to depose our high-privileg'd gift.’

Then together they trace i' the drooping dimness a foot-path,
Whereby, faring across, they arrive at th'arches of iron.
Æneas stept into the porch, and duly besprinkling
His body with clear water affixt his bough to the lintel;
And, having all perform'd at length with ritual exact,
They came out on a lovely pleasance, that dream'd-of oasis,
Fortunate isle, the abode o' the blest, their fair Happy Woodland.
Here is an ampler sky, those meads ar' azur'd by a gentler

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Sun than th'Earth, an' a new starworld their darkness adorneth.

Some were matching afoot their speed on a grassy arena,
In playful combat some wrestling upon the yellow sand,
Part in a dance-rhythm or poetry's fine phantasy engage;
While full-toga'd anear their high-priest musical Orpheus
Bade his prime sev'n tones in varied harmony discourse,
Now with finger, anon sounding with an ivory plectrum.
And here Æneas met Teucer's fortunate offspring,
High-spirited heroes, fair-favor'd sons o' the morning,
Assarac and Ilos and Dardan founder of Ilium:
Their radiant chariots he' espied rank't empty afar off,
Their spears planted afield, their horses wandering at large,
Grazing around:—as on earth their joy had been, whether armour
Or chariot had charmed them, or if 'twer' good manage and care
Of the gallant warhorse, the delight liv'd here unabated:
Lo! then others, that about the meadow sat feasting in idless,
And chanting for joy a familyar pæan of old earth,
By fragrant laurel o'ercanopied, where 'twixt enamel'd banks
Bountiful Eridanus glides throu' their bosky retirement.
Here were men who bled for honour, their country defending;
Priests, whose lives wer' a flame of chastity on God's altar;
Holy poets, content to await their crown of Apollo;
Discoverers, whose labour had aided life or ennobled;
Or who fair memories had left through kindly deserving.
On their brow a fillet pearl-white distinguisheth all these:
Whom the Sibyl, for they drew round, in question accosted,
And most Musæus, who tower'd noble among them,
Center of all that sea of bright faces looking upward.
‘Tell, happy souls, and thou poet and high mystic illustrious,
Where dwelleth Anchises? what home hath he? for 'tis in his quest

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We hither have made journey across Hell's watery marches.’

Therto with brief parley rejoin'd that mystic of old-time.
‘In no certain abode we remain: by turn the forest glade
Haunt we, lilied stream-bank, sunny mead; and o'er valley and rock
At will rove we: but if ye aright your purpose arede me,
Mount ye the hill: myself will prove how easy the pathway.’
Speaking he led: and come to the upland, sheweth a fair plain
Gleaming aneath; and they, with grateful adieu, the descent made.

Now Lord Anchises was down i' the green valley musing,
Where the spirits confin'd that await mortal resurrection
While diligently he mark'd, his thought had turn'd to his own kin,
Whose numbers he reckon'd, an' of all their progeny foretold
Their fate and fortune, their ripen'd temper an' action.
He then, when he' espied Æneas t'ward him approaching
O'er the meadow, both hands uprais'd and ran to receive him,
Tears in his eyes, while thus his voice in high passion outbrake.
‘Ah, thou'rt come, thou'rt come! at length thy dearly belov'd grace
Conquering all hath won thee the way. 'Tis allow'd to behold thee,
O my son,—yea again the familyar raptur' of our speech.
Nay, I look't for't thus, counting patiently the moments,
And ever expected; nor did fond fancy betray me.
From what lands, my son, from what life-dangering ocean
Art thou arrived? full mighty perils thy path hav' opposed:
And how nearly the dark Libyan thy destiny o'erthrew!’
Then 'he, ‘Thy spirit, O my sire, 'twas thy spirit often
Sadly appearing aroused me to seek thy thy far habitation
My fleet moors i' the blue Tyrrhene: all with me goeth well.
Grant me to touch thy hand as of old, and thy body embrace.’
Speaking, awhile in tears his feeling mutinied, and when
For the longing contact of mortal affection, he out-held

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His strong arms, the figure sustain'd them not: 'twas as empty
E'en as a windworn cloud, or a phantom of irrelevant sleep.

On the level bosom of this vale more thickly the tall trees
Grow, an' aneath quivering poplars and whispering alders
Lethe's dreamy river throu' peaceful scenery windeth.
Whereby now flitted in vast swarms many people of all lands,
As when in early summer 'honey-bees on a flowery pasture
Pill the blossoms, hurrying to' an' fro,—innumerous are they,
Revisiting the ravish'd lily cups, while all the meadow hums.

Æneas was turn'd to the sight, and marvelling inquired,
‘Say, sir, what the river that there i' the vale-bottom I see?
And who they that thickly along its bank have assembled?’

Then Lord Anchises, ‘The spirits for whom a second life
And body are destined ar' arriving thirsty to Lethe,
And here drink th'unmindful draught from wells of oblivyon.
My heart greatly desired of this very thing to acquaint thee,
Yea, and show thee the men to be born, our glory her'after,
So to gladden thine heart where now thy voyaging endeth.’
‘Must it then be believ'd, my sire, that a soul which attaineth
Elysium will again submit to her old body-burden?
Is this well? what hap can awake such dire longing in them?’
‘I will tell thee', O son, nor keep thy wonder awaiting,’
Answereth Anchises, and all expoundeth in order.
‘Know first that the heavens, and th'Earth, and space fluid or void,
Night's pallid orb, day's Sun, and all his starry coævals,
Are by one spirit inly quickened, and, mingling in each part,
Mind informs the matter, nature's complexity ruling.
Thence the living creatures, man, brute, and ev'ry feather'd fowl,
And what breedeth in Ocean aneath her surface of argent:
Their seed knoweth a fiery vigour, 'tis of airy divine birth,
In so far as unimpeded by an alien evil,
Nor dull'd by the body's framework condemn'd to corruption.
Hence the desires and vain tremblings that assail them, unable

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Darkly prison'd to arise to celestial exaltation;
Nor when death summoneth them anon earth-life to relinquish,
Can they in all discard their stain, nor wholly away with
Mortality's plaguespots. It must be that, O, many wild graffs
Deeply at 'heart engrain'd have rooted strangely upon them:
Wherefore must suffering purge them, yea, Justice atone them
With penalties heavy as their guilt: some purify exposed
Hung to the viewless winds, or others long watery searchings
Low i' the deep wash clean, some bathe in fiery renewal:
Each cometh unto his own retribution,—if after in ample
Elysium we attain, but a few, to the fair Happy Woodland,
Yet slow time still worketh on us to remove the defilement,
Till it hath eaten away the acquir'd dross, leaving again free
That first fiery vigour, the celestial virtue of our life.
All whom here thou seest, hav' accomplished purification:
Unto the stream of Lethe a god their company calleth,
That forgetful of old failure, pain & disappointment,
They may again into' earthly bodies with glad courage enter.’

Twin be the gates o' the house of sleep: as fable opineth
One is of horn, and thence for a true dream outlet is easy:
Fair the other, shining perfected of ivory carven;
But false are the visions that thereby find passage upward.
Soon then as Anchises had spok'n, he led the Sibyl forth
And his son, and both dismisst from th'ivory portal.

461

21
PRIAM & ACHILLES

[_]

Line for line paraphrase of Homer Iliad xxiv. 339–660

Thus sed he, & Hermes hearing did not disobey him,
But stoop'd quickly to bind his winged shoon on his ankles
Gold-glittering, which bear him aloft whether over the ocean
Journeying, or whether over the broad earth, swift as a wild wind;
And his Rod, wherewith men's eyes he drowsily sealeth,
Whom that he list, or again from torpor awakeneth—his wand
Seiz'd he in hand, an' arose & sped forth, God's merry angel.
Till when soon he espied fair Troy & briny Hellespont,
Then he alighted on earth, to a young prince likening himself
With first down on his cheek in manhood's most loveable prime.

They meantime onward past th'old tomb-tower of Ilos
Had driven, & were halting awhile their teams to refresh them
At the river: when now, as nightfall already darken'd,
Idaeus descried Hermes very near them approaching,
And turning to Priam, he in earnest whisper addrest him.

‘Haste to avise thee, my liege! an affair for discretion asketh:
I see a man, who I think very soon may annihilate us both.
Say now, will you we urge our steeds to 'escape from him, or stay
Friendly to deal, and humbly with all entreaty beseech him?’

Thus sed he, but th'old king lost heart & greatly affrighted
Felt his skin to be staring, an' all his limbs wer' atremble:
Dazed he stood: but anon Hermes coming up to him outheld

462

His right hand, and thus with frank enquiry accosted.

‘Where ever, O father, farest thou with this equipment
In the hallow'd starlight, when men are wont to be sleeping?
Art thou not then afraid o' the slaughter-breathing Achaeans,
Those monsters of fury relentless lurking around thee?
Haply an if one here espied thee, neath the flying night
Convoying such a prize, how then would thy business be?
Thyself art not young, and th'old man here thy attendant
Scarce would serve to protect thee against whoso shd attack thee.
Ne'ertheless I'd not wrong thee a whit, would rather against all
Strive to defend; for like mine own father thou appearest.’

Him then in answer addrest god-like Priam, Ilyon's old king.
‘Truly it is very much, my dear son, as thou opinest;
Yet some god, 'twd appear, vouchsafes me a kindly protection,
Sending upon my journey to meet me so able a helper
As thyself, for in outward mien not comelier art thou
Than thou show'st in mind: blessed & happy are thy parents.’
Then bespake him again God's angel, slayer of Argus.
‘Nay and what thou say'st, sir, is all most rightfully spoken.
But now tell me, I pray, & speak thou truthfully plain words,
If thou'rt convoying thy wealth & costly-treasur'd store
Unto some outland folk to remain safe for thee in hiding,
Or whether all your warrior-folk are abandoning Ilyon
In dismay, since that their bravest champyon is undone,
Thy son, who was fearless afield to resist the Achaeans.’
Him then in answer addrest god-like Priam, Ilyon's old king.
‘Who then, valyant sir, may'st thou be, an' of what parents,
That to me such fair speech hast made of my unhappy son's death?’
Then bespake him again God's angel, slayer of Argus.
‘Thou wouldst prove me, O king, in making question of Hector.

463

Him many times I have seen scattering with glorious onset
All the battle's nobley: then too when he drave the Achaeans
Back to the ships, & smote with trenchant blade the flying ranks.
That day stood we aloof wond'ring, for not yet Achilles
Would let us out to battle, since Atreides had aggriev'd him.
'Tis to him I give fealty; the same good ship carried us both.
Myrmidon is my nation, a man of plenty, Polyctor,
Is my sire, in his age reverend & grey-headed as thou.
Six sons hath he beside myself, and I, the seventh son,
In the brothers' lotterie was cast for service against Troy.
Now I am come to the plain here scouting, for the Achaeans
Will sally forth at dawn in full puissance to attack you:
Long they chafe sitting idle, an' all their kings are unable
In their impacience any more from fight to withhold them.’
Him then in answer addrest god-like Priam, Ilyon's old king.
‘If that thou indeed be the squire of mighty Achilles,
Tell me the whole truth plainly, I pray, nor seek to delude me.
Lyeth yet by the shipping my son's body, or hath Achilles
Rent and cast it away for beasts piecemeal to devour it?’
Then bespake him again God's angel, slayer of Argus.
‘O good sire, not yet hath foul dog nor ravening bird
Made their prey of him: ev'n as he was, so lies he neglected
Hard by Achilles' ship i' the camp: and already twelve days
There hath lain, nor doth his flesh rot nor the corrupt worms
Touch him, that fatten on mankind nor spare the illustrious.
But when morning appears Achilles cometh & draggeth him forth
Trailing around the barrow builded to his old companyon.
Nor yet is injury done: thou mightest go thither and see
How dew-fresh he lieth, how free from death's blemish or stain:

464

His blood bathed away, & healed those heavy wounds all
Where many coward spears had pierc'd his fair body fallen.
Such care take the blessed gods for thy dearly belov'd son,
Yea, tho' he live no more; since they full heartily lov'd him.’
Thussed he, & th'old king reassured spake after in answer.
‘See, lad, how good it is to offer due gifts in atonement
Unto the gods: for, sure as he liv'd, my son never injur'd,
Nay nor at home forgat, the powers that rule in Olympos:
Wherefore ev'n i' the grave have they his piety remember'd.
But come, an' at my hands this daintily-wrought flagon accept:
And thou guard & guide me, that I, if so be the gods' will,
Safe may arrive with these my goods to the tent of Achilles.’
Him then in answer addrest high Zeuses favouring angel.
‘Tempt not a young man, sire! Thou wilt not lightly corrupt me,
Thus proffering me presents of worth unknown to Achilles;
Whom I fear, nor ever my heart for shame would allow me
So to defraud, lest haply some ill should come to me after.
But as a guide wd I aid thee; yea, ev'n to illustrious Argos
Faithfully both by land and sea wd accompany thy way;
And not a man for scorn of thine escort shd attack thee.’
Thus saying, on to the car high heav'n's merry fortuner upsprang,
And, with his either hand reins and whip seizing alertly,
Both mules and wearied horses with fresh vigour inspired.
Till to the fosse they came, & rampart, where the defenders
Chanc't to be off their guard, busilie with their supper engaged;
Whom Hermes drowz'd deeply, in senseless slumber immersing
Ev'ryone, and coming up to the gate & thrusting it open
Brought Priam into the camp, & Hector's ransom in his train.
So full soon they arriv'd at Achilles' lofty pavilyon,
That high house which for their king his folk had erected,
Hewing pines o' the hill for timbering, & for a roof-thatch

465

Harvesting the rushes that grew i' the lowland pastures;
And had around the dwelling fenc't for their chieften a wide court
With thick stakes, & one huge bar clos'd its carriage-entry,
Made of a pine, which three men of his servants, pulling all three
All together, would shift back or forwards, so immense was
His gate-bar, but Peleides would handle it himself.
This gate for th'old king th'archfortuner easily open'd,
And brought in the treasures of Troy to the house of Achilles;
And there standing awhile turn'd t'wards Priam, & bespake him.
‘O sir, I that accost thee am in good truth the celestial
Hermes, whom great Zeus did charge to attend thee in escort:
But hence must I turn me again, nor now will I enter
Into Achilles' sight; twould make good cause for his anger
Were an immortal god to befriend men so manifestly.
Enter thou, and as thou pray'st, in lowliness embrace
His knees, & by his sire & fair heav'n-born mother implore
And by his son, that thou may'st melt his soul with emotion.’
With these words Hermes sped away for lofty Olympos:
And Priam all fearlessly from off his chariot alighted,
Ordering Idaeus to remain i' the entry to keep watch
Over the beasts: th'old king meanwhile strode doughtily onward,
Where Achilles was then most wont to be, and sitting indoors
Found he him; all his men sat apart; for his only attendance
His squire Automedon and Alkimos in battle upgrown
Mov'd busilie to and fro serving, for late he had eaten,
And the supper-table disfurnish'd yet stood anigh him.
And Priam entering unperceiv'd til he well was among them,
Clasp'd his knees & seized his hands all humbly to kiss them,
Those dread murderous hands which his sons so many had slain.

466

As when a man whom spite of fate hath curs'd in his own land
For homicide, that he fleeeth abroad & seeketh asylum
With some lord, and they that see him are fill'd with amazement,
Ev'n so now Achilles was amaz'd as he saw Priam enter,
And the men all wer'amaz'd, & lookt upon each other in turn.
But Priam (as Hermes had bade) bow'd down to beseech him.
‘O God-like Achilles, thy father call to remembrance,
How he is halting as I, i' the dark'ning doorway of old age,
And desolately liveth, while all they that dwell about him
Vex him, nor hath he one from their violence to defend him:
Yet but an heareth he aught of thee, thy wellbeing in life,
Then he rejoiceth an' all his days are glad with a good hope
Soon to behold thee again, his son safe home from the warfare.
But most hapless am I, for I had sons numerous and brave
In wide Troy; where be they now? scarce is one o' them left.
They were fifty the day ye arriv'd hither out of Achaia,
Nineteen royally born princes from one mother only,
While the others women of my house had borne me; of all these
Truly the greater part hath Ares in grim battle unstrung.
But he, who was alone the city's lov'd guardian and stay,
Few days since thou slew'st him alas! his country defending,
Hector, for whose sake am I come to the ships of Achaia
His body dear to redeem, offering thee a ransom abundant.
O God-like Achilles, have fear o' the gods, pity him too,
Thy sire also remember, having yet more pity on me,
Who now stoop me beneath what dread deed mortal ever dar'd,
Raising the hand that slew his son pitiably to kiss it.’

467

Then did Achilles yearn for thought of his ancient father
And from th'old king's seizure his own hand gently disengag'd.
And each brooded apart; Priam o'er victorious Hector
Groan'd, low faln to the ground unnerved at feet of Achilles,
Who sat mourning awhile his sire, then turn'd to bewailing
Patroclus; while loudly the house with their sobbing outrang.
But when Achilles now had sooth'd his soul in affection,
And all his bosom had disburden'd of passion extreme,
Swiftly from off his seat he arose, & old Priam uprais'd,
In pity & reverence for his age & silvery-blancht head,
And making full answer addrest him in airywinged words.
‘Unhappy man! what mighty sorrows must thy spirit endure!
Nay, how durst thou come thus alone to the ships of Achaia,
Into the sight of him who thy sons so many and good
Spoil'd and sent to the grave? Verilie thy heart is of iron.
But come, sit thee beside me upon my couch; let us alwise
Now put away our griefs, sore tho' we be plagued with affliction.
Truly there is no gain in distressful lamentation,
Since the eternal gods have assign'd to us unhappy mortals
Hardship enough, while they enjoy bliss idly without end.
Two jars, say they, await God's hand at th'entry of his court,
Stor'd ready with free gifts, of good things one, one of evil.
If mingling from both heav'n's thunderer equaly dispense,
Then will a man's fortune be chequer'd with both sorrow and joy;
But to' whom Zeus giveth only of evil that man is outcast,
Hunger houndeth him on disconsolate over the brave earth,
Unrespected alike whether of mortals or immortals.
So my sire Peleus was dow'r'd with favour abounding,
And, from birth and cradle honour'd, all men living outshone

468

In wealth & happiness, king o'er his Myrmidon armies:
And tho' he was but a man, Zeus made him a fair goddess espouse.
But yet an' ev'n to him was an ill thrown in, that he hath not
Sons born into his house to retain its empery,—one son
Only he gat, one doom'd to a fate untimely, nor evn he
Comforts th'old man at home, since exiled far from him I bide
Here in Troy, thy sons' destruction compassing and thine.
Thou too, sir, we have heard enjoy'd'st good fortune aforetime;
From Mytilene in Lesbos away to the boundary eastward
Of Phrygia's highlands, & north to the briny Hellespont.
Thou, sir, didst all men for wealth & progeny excel:
But when once th'high gods let loose this mischief anigh thee,
Thy city was compast with nought but fierce battle and blood.
Bear up, allow thy temper awhile some respite of anguish:
Thou wilt not benefit thy dear son vainly bewailing,
Nor restore him alive ere thou taste further affliction.’
Him then in answer addrest god-like Priam, Ilyon's old king.
‘Bid me not, O heav'nborn, to be seated, while ever Hector
Lyeth i' the camp dishonour'd, nay rather quickly with all speed
Fetch him here to my eyes; & this great ransom apportion'd
Unto his worth accept: may it serve thy good pleasure, & thou
Safely return to thy home & sire, since now thou allow'st me
Still to renew my days i' the light o' the sun to behold it.’
Then glancing full dourly bespake him swift-foot Achilles.
‘O sir, vex me no more: myself I am already minded
Now to restore him. Awhile Zeus sent one here to command me,

469

My mother,—& the wizard who hometh in Ocean is her sire.
Yea, an' I know, Priam, also of thee,—think not to deceive me—
That 'twas a god who brought thee hither to the ships of Achaia,
Since no mortal alive would dare, nay not one in his prime,
Here to' intrude, neither cd he pass our senteries unseen,
Nor the resistant bars of my doors easily undo.
Spare then again to provoke my soul o'erstrain'd in affliction,
Lest, old king, I do thee a wrong in thine enemy's camp,
Lest I in anger offend mine own honour & sin against God.’

Thus he spake, and th'old king afeard in trembling obey'd him.
Peleides then arose, and sprang out over the doorway
Like a lion, nor alone; for with him two followers went,
Automedon the renown'd, and Alkimos, of many heroes
First in honour since Patroclus was lost to him in death.
They then quickly the beasts all from their harnessing unyoked,
And bidding into the house the herald in royal attendance,
Made him there to be seated: anon they from the wagon lift
Great Hector's body-ransom of ungrudg'd costliness untold:
Two rich mantles left they, a tunicle of linen also,
Comely to shroud his corpse when 'twas given-up to be borne home.
And the women were call'd who laved it an' after anointed
Laid in a chamber apart, lest if Priam 'haply beheld it
In his affliction he might restrain not his undying anger,
But break out and kindle the anguisht heart of Achilles,
Who might slay him an' in blind recklessness sin against God.

So the women-servants lav'd Hector's corpse an' anointed,
Shrouded it in the linen with broider'd mantle around it:

470

Then himself Achilles on a fair bier laid it, assisted
By his two followers, and on to Priam's wagon upraised,
Groaning deeply' and calling aloud on his old companyon.

‘Be not aggriev'd, Patroclus, against me an' if thou hearest,
Tho' i' the grave, that now I allow the surrender of Hector
Unto his sire, for surely he pays me full ample a ransom.
Thine is it all, as ever thou sharedst with me in all things.’

With these words he return'd to his house, god-hearted Achilles,
Taking again his accustom'd seat whence late he had upris'n,
On one side opposite to Priam whom straight he addrest thus.

‘Thy son now, sir, is ev'n as thou hast pray'd to me restor'd.
His body lies on a bier, with dawn thou'rt free to behold him
And to depart with him home: take thought now but to refresh thee.
Nay nor was grand-tress'd Niobe disdainful of eating,
When her twelve children lay dead in her palace outstretch'd.
Six blossoming daughters had she 'and six lusty growing sons,
But her boys did Apollo in silvery archery destroy
Wrathful against her, an' all her daughters Artemis o'erthrew,
For that against Leto the goddess their great mother had she
Vaunted, “thou'st two only, but I have borne many myself.”
Then they, tho' but a pair, all her fair quantity fordid.
Nine days lay they on earth expos'd in butchery, no one
Could bury them, for men smitten in God's fury were as stones.
Then the 'high gods themselves came down & their burial made.
But Niobe took thought to renounce not food in affliction;
And somewhere ev'n now, on a mountain pasture among rocks,
On Sipylus, where, as 'tis told, all-nightly the nymphs lie,

471

Who by day go dancing along splendent Achelous,
There in stone the mother sits brooding upon the goddes wrong.
But come, now let us also remember, most reverend guest,
Our food. After again, at what time thou carry him home,
Thou may'st weep thy son; heavy too will that sorrowing be.’
Thussed he, & forthwith went out, & seizing a white sheep
Kill'd it, an' his followers skinning & dismembering aptly
Into lesser portions cut it up, which fixing upon spits
Laid they anigh to the fire, & drew off daintily roasted.
Meanwhile Automedon set fine loaves out on a table
In baskets, but Achilles made the apportioning of flesh.
Then leapt forth their hands to the good cheer outspread afore them.
But when anon they had ta'en their fill of drinking an' eating,
Then Priam in wonder sat mute as he gaz'd on Achilles,
In what prime, yea a man whom no god's beauty cd excel;
And Achilles on comely Priam look'd, marvelling also,
Considering his gracious address and noble bearing:
Till their hearts wer' appeas'd gazing thus on each other intent.
When first broke silence god-like Priam, Ilyon's old king.
‘Lead me to bed, heav'n-born, as soon as may be, let us both
In kind slumber awhile forgetfully drowse our senses:
For never hath sweet sleep seal'd mine eyelids for a moment
Since the sad hour when aneath thy hand mine unhappy son fell:
But ever o'erbrooding the deluge of my sorrow I lay
'Mong the cattle grovelling disgraced i' the mire o' the courtyard.
But now bread have I eaten again, & pour'd the mellow wine
Down my throat: but afore until now nought had I eaten.’

472

Thus sed he, & Achilles bade his handmaids an' attendants
Place bedsteads i' the south corridor, with mattresses & rugs
Of fair scarlet dye, and counterpanes spread above them:
Also ther'on for night-apparel two warm woolly mantles.
So the women came torches in hand forth from the inner rooms,
And working busilie laid out very quickly the two beds.
Then laughingly to godly Priam spake swift-foot Achilles.
‘I must lodge thee without, dear sir; lest someone of our folk
Haply come in: 'tis ever some councillor asking an audience.
And ther' is old counsel when they sit with me debating.
If one of all that flock chanc'd here i' the swift-shadowing night
Thee to espy, 'twd reach the shepherd, their great Agamemnon,
And there might be delay in accomplishing our agreement.
But come, tell thy mind to me nor make scruple about it,
How many days thou'rt fain to devote to the mourning of Hector,
That for so long a time I await & from battle abstain.’
Whom answer'd then again god-like Priam, Ilyon's old king.
‘If thou nobly desire me to bate my son's honour in nought,
Scarce, Achilles, couldst thou with a greater kindness attach me. . . .

University of Virginia Library

Poems in Classical Prosody

1 EPISTLE I TO L. M. WINTRY DELIGHTS

2 EPISTLE II TO A SOCIALIST IN LONDON

3 EVENING

4 POVRE AME AMOUREUSE

5 THE FOURTH DIMENSION

6 JOHANNES MILTON, Senex

7 PYTHAGORAS

Elegiacs

8 AMIEL

9

[Ah, what a change! Thou, who didst emptily thy happiness seek]

10 WALKING HOME

11 THE RUIN

12 REVENANTS

13

[Mortal though I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment]

14 ANNIVERSARY

15 COMMUNION OF SAINTS

EPITAPHS

16

[Fight well, my comrades, and prove your bravery. Me too]

17

[I died in very flow'r: yet call me not unhappy therefore]

18

[When thou, my beloved, diedst, I saw heaven open]

19

[Where thou art better I too were, dearest, anywhere, than]

20 IBANT OBSCURI

21 PRIAM & ACHILLES

1
EPISTLE I
TO L. M. WINTRY DELIGHTS