The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
Death, thou must stand aside! The mood is not
Upon me, and my gold is only dug
I'the vein. The microcosmos, like its twin,
Hath climates and their seasonable fruits.
My brain is warm, and I behold the sun;
Clear as a pulsing wave of hyaline,
And I cry ‘Light;’ tender and beautiful
As the west waiting for the evening star,
And loveliness, like a fair girl, comes forth
Into the dewy silence. As I throb

The sense responds, and, like a courtier's eyes,
Finds for each royal folly of my soul
Portentous reason. The disordered fact
Outruns its antecedent, and so much
Eternity within doth set at nought
The wont of time, that I am stirred yet ere
Disturbance, and do suffer by the ill
Not yet admitted to the sum of things.
I will await what figure now unseen
Is to rise up and lay his charmed hand
Upon this inner harp, from string to string
Already trembling, and arrive, tho' late,
To give a name to that foredone effect
Which else had lacked a father.
[He meditates, writes, and reads aloud.
‘Then saw I Genius, blind, with upturned face,
As one who hears, and to the struggling sense
(Tottering beneath accomplishment, and faint
In touch of the inestimable prize)
Each from his office brings her conscript powers
Auxiliar, and in strained conflux sustains
The sole perception; happy so to gain
The one sufficient knowledge, and therein
Utterly blessed. Like a listening saint
Lifting her wrapt brow to the audible Heaven.
Nor sightless by defect, but that her lids
Closed o'er the needless eyes. Her moving lips
Perfunctory incessant murmur made,

And thus she held her unrespective way,
Following the upper sound which no man heard,
Summer and winter, day and night; but more
Like a sweet madness in those dearer times
Where?n the hornèd seasons fill and wane,
Spring, autumn. morn, and eve; o'er hill and alp,
Forest and city, steep and battlement,
Or wrought or native; through vales, gulphs, and ca
And midnight solitudes, and martial plains,
And sun, and storm, and frost, and flood, and fire.’
Bah, is this Genius who should rule the world
And be incarnate God? Rather, methinks,
Some maimed celestial, feeling back her way
To the lost heavens, or that fair Eve whom once
Genius, what time she ‘listened to the voice,’
Caught in his arms in Eden.
(Turning to a statue.)

Listening Eve!
What marvel that my spell-bound fancy drew
The captive, not the captor? As the earth
Revolves, and we behold the vanished stars
Of yesterday, that, being fixed, remain
To gladden lands beyond us, so in thee,
Immortal! this our Present, wondering, comes
Round to the sight of long lost Paradise,
And all the primal act. And we go down
To death, but thou, fast held, remainest to rise
On other times, and, orient by our fall,

Shalt light the orb of ages.

Thou rare power.
Sluggard, ungrateful, wayward, false, and vain,
Whom men call Muse! I cannot fetter thee,
But I can punish. Back into the void,
And bring me what I seek?

[He writes.

Now what art thou,
Genius? (reads.)
‘There came a chariot o'er the earth,
Swift on strange wheels, such as eye hath not seen,
Nor can see, in the speed of their great course
Viewless, but leaving tracks which nations ran
To wonder at. Whether o'er rugged rocks
Passing, and turning all their streams to tears
Sad down the channelled visage of the hills;
Or o'er the level sea, whirling strange dews
And rainbows to a luminous mist, wherein
Mermaids in sportive companies made play
Beneath their dark hair, till the heaving sea
Blushed like a cloudy morn, and dolphins leaped,
And Triton mounted on a foaming wave
Sounded pursuit; or o'er the beaten road
Of daily use raising a dust that fell
Upon the things that were, and made them new.
(The clime cleared, and on either hand the path
Arcadian did spontaneous holiday
Prankt with its herbs of grace. Fair sun and moon,
From signs of fortune with consenting stars
In sweet succession, or conjunctions rare

Shone festal round the car, while Time himself
Grew young, and ran before. Fierce beasts that shun
The common sunshine, rose, and each subdued,
Moved to the genial light, from his dark den
Approaching tame by every forest glade,
Where Una led the lion. Nor rude race
Of daily men, that like a city flood,
Came headlong heedless mixed in civic din,
Escaped the spell; nor touched the enchanted ground
But sudden as to music in the air,
Grave measured step and custom of the gods
O'ertook them—Salian and Œnoplian dance
Heroic, and the front of golden days.)
Or whether over Alpine solitudes
Ploughing such record as nor mountain storms
That rage midway, nor high above the thunder
The ceaseless snows of silent centuries
Efface; or crossing immemorial plains
Indentured where the furrows fill with flowers
As with a Tyrian rain; where'er on earth
It found the barren wilderness, and left
Eden—if Eden was the rosy prime,
The master passion, and first ecstasy
Of this our world. Nor drawn by steed, nor steered
By human hand, it came an empty car
To the embattled people as of will,
And took its martial station in the van,
And post of honour. Then the mighty men

Climbed, venturous, its crystal sides wherein
The changing tumult of the mirrored field
Shone, like opposing armies. But behold
A marvel! for the empty car was full,
And none could enter. Therefore moved with fear
And jealous doubt, they called the legions round
To thrust it forth, which passive in the midst
Stood stirless—tho' still wheeled the wheeling wheels
Invisible with motion. But when spears
Were couched and charging, sudden from the ground
Wingless it rose! and all the baffled host
Fell with deceived expectance. As it rose
Slow thro' the day, the wondrous wheels being still
Hung in the air, and the great multitude
With upturned eyes amazed at once cried out
Their likeness, and of countless voices each
Belied its neighbour. But the car sublime
Above the round horizons, each on each
Widening like circles in the stagnant sea
Of space disturbed, showed like a lesser world
Dyed with the coloured earth, and as it went
Heavenward, and we astonished still beheld,
Lo! we were ware as of a countenance
Unspeakable, and as of burning hands
Waving farewells, and somewhat of a form
Sitting within the brightness. Then convulsed
With shame, both of their tardy eyes obscure
And lost revenge, from instant bows and slings,

Artillery and every loud offence,
Sudden the universal host upsent
Impotent rage. As tho' the earth that lay
A sleeping beast, sprang up, and with a roar
Shaking his shaggy hide, with thickest dust
Darkened the air.

Then the mysterious wheels
Whirled in the sky; the burning hands uplift
Pointed to Heaven; and the tremendous car
Launched thro' the seas of light, and passed the noon
As the mere yellow strand whence it set sail
To sea; careering as to reach the goal
Of all things, and come back. And, as it passed,
He whom we saw threw out a golden chain,
And linked the sun, and led him from his lair
Obedient, while night fell on earth; and He
Shot thro' the darkness and was lost. But soon,
—Himself unseen—I knew his viewless way,
Thro' the stirred Heavens where I saw the stars
Leaving their spheres, till as it were a host
Of meteors shone across the streaming sky.
Nor him victorious long the toil delayed,
But on a time thro' all the flaming air
Rose the large dawn of his far-off return,
And as it rose and rose embraced the earth
Into a breast of glory; such great day
Began the morning as if life had changed
Its metre, heaving nature had attained

To grander issues, and a rounded year
Came up the ampler east. And Him I saw
Rushing upon the Orient; in his train,
Fierce as reluctant lions dragged at speed
Behind a victor,—all their forest-brood
Roaring around and leaping—captive suns
Attend him, and their wild and scattered moons
Whiten the air. Then the pale nations cast
Dust on their heads, and hid their dazzled eyes,
And over all a great sound, full of death,
Shrieked like a plague-wind from a battle-field,
Noisome with mortal horror thro' the land.
“Woe, woe, we cast him from us in his day,
And now he will return to take the world
And burn it in his fury!”’

(Throws the MS. to the ground.)

Lie thou there!
Genius is yet unwritten.

[Through the door is heard the voice of Amy.

Happy eve, happy eve!
But the mavis singing in the eve,
Singeth for the silence of the eve.

Happy flower, happy flower,
But the golden secret of the flower,
Hidden honey sweeter than the flower.

Happy moon, happy moon,
But the loving moonlight of the moon,
Tender wonder fairer than the moon.

Little child, little child,
As the evening mavis unto me,
As the twilight mavis unto me.

Little child, little child,
As the hidden honey unto me,
As the golden honey unto me.

Little child, little child,
As the wondrous moonlight unto me,
As the better moonlight unto me.