Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

‘Mistress of gods and men! I have been thine
From boy to man, and many a myrtle rod
Have I made grow upon thy sacred sod,
Nor ever have I passed thy white shafts nine
Without some votive offering for the shrine,
Carved beryl or chased bloodstone;—aid me now,
And I will live to fashion for thy brow
Heart-breaking priceless things: oh, make her mine.’

Venus inclined her ear, and through the Stone
Forthwith slid warmth like spring through sapling-stems,
And lo, the eyelid stirred, beneath had grown
The tremulous light of life, and all the hems
Of her zoned peplos shook—upon his breast,
She sank by two dread gifts at once oppressed.

194

THE SWAN.

With broad soft breast, with pliant neck and long
To reach the small fish down among the reeds,
Hitherward scattering the fresh water-beads
The snowy beauty comes. O fair and strong,
Thou Laïs, queen of pleasure, with my song
I would enrich thee were it worthier,
And if it could be but the minister
Of love, that to such goddess should belong.

So I held out to her this page where lay
Some dainty fruits, and flowers, a rare bouquet;—
Whereat she smote her ample wings abroad,
Raised her black mouth from whence a bruised worm fell,
And hissed, as good deeds may be hissed in hell:
The spray fell over me upon the sod.

195

SPRING LOVE.

From morn to evening, this day, yesterday,
We've walked within the garden'd paths of love,
Till the moon rose the darkening woods above:
We've seen the blossoming apple's crimson spray,
And watched the hiving bees work lustily,
As if their time was short as it was sweet:
Along love's meadow-lands too, with glad feet,
We've welcomed all the wild flowers come with May.

Bend thy sweet head; I've strung this long woodbine
With primroses and cowslips—golden prize
For golden hair, and flowers that best express
The opening of the year, the mild sunshine,
And the frank clearness of those trusting eyes,
Through which there gleams scarce-trusted blessedness.

196

AN ANNIVERSARY.

Madonna! all the year's sweet flowers are dead;
Christmas is come, and now thou art mine own.
When first I saw thee in thy girlhood's gown,
Within the myrtle hedge of maidenhood,
Waiting, your frank brow with its auburn snood,
Like an enchanted tower girt round with fire,
I thought, ah me! how can I so aspire;—
And now for years our lives as one have sped.

Since then what wild adventures we've essayed;
What jesting comedies our fates have played!
'Tis now long since I ceased to look on thee
With wonder: that head lies by mine all night;
Thou art a book read three times o'er to me,
And yet thy last words are quite infinite.

197

THE MIDNIGHT CITY.

Past these tall houses and closed doors we wind,
Nor ever any living thing we meet,
Along each dimly lamp-lit, clean-swept street:
Bolted and barred within, the human kind,
Like Egypt's mummied dead, lie still and blind,
Stretched out beneath the hands of sleep and night;—
Will they indeed re-wake with morning's light?
An awful thing this lifeless town I find.

'Tis strange to think too, eons long ago,
Ere any eyes or any hearts were here,
These stars shone out the same—unnumbered, clear;
And at this moment where warm breezes blow,
Filling the sails that left our quays last year,
The sun lights up another hemisphere!

198

KISSES.

I

Within her lips my mistress, then a child,
Held up a crumb to her caged bird; and I,
A stripling, very awkwardly stood by,
Lost in presentiment;—was't but a mild
Girl's coquetry, and was my heart beguiled?
Or was it earnest of the days to be,
When I too, like that linnet, no more free,
By those dear lips am fed and reconciled?

A crumb of bread sometimes—the bread of life,
And sometimes but a worthless sugarplum,
To her new slave those rounded lips present,
Now very gently, then in well-feigned strife;
Beforehand I can't tell what next may come,
So I look forward, very well content.

199

II

Who can tell why Queen Venus raised the dove
To be her bird? Why not the statelier swan,
Seamew or albatross? Our Queen began
In sea sun-smitten, and the wave-foam wove
Her only veil;—What charioteer for Love
Were better, and what lovelier thing is there
Than swan full winged, and for the wilder pair,
Do they not triumph tides and storms above?

I think it must have been the turtle's claim
To the arcane invention of the kiss,
That taught the Golden Age how first to woo!
But now-a-days we would be much to blame,
Needing such lessons in love's lore as this;
So let us hope we are her love-birds too.

200

THE TRAVELLER LOST.

That winding pathway on this windless day,
With flowering turfs and pebbles here and there;
That hawthorn-hedge irregularly bare
And blossoming; the sky-lark far away;—
That very twig and leaf and clambering spray:
And now behind me, from the unseen shore,
A curlew!—Yes, I have been here before,
And God hath brought me back another way.

One instant! the memorial sense has flown,
Leaving all blank as the Atlantic tides
Fronting Columbus: it was like the moon
To the half awake,—as if I had gone down
That fabulous well where Truth from mortals hides,
And, looking up, beheld the stars at noon!

201

THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD.

Is that the much-desired, the wondrous wail
Of the brown bird by poets loved so long?
Nay, it is but the thrush's rich clear song
Through the red sunset rung; but down the vale,
Beneath the starlight, never do we fail
To hear the love-lorn singer: still and dark
Above our heads the black boughs arch; and, hark!
A wild short note—another—then a trail
Of loud clear song is drawn athwart the glow.
Filling the formless night with cheerfulness.
But sure we know that melody full well,—
The dear old blackbird! Let's no further go;
There's no brown bird;—Ye poets all, confess
That Fancy only is your Philomel.

202

IN ROME, A.D. 150.

[_]

(FOR A PICTURE.)

Face against face the New Faith meets the Old:
The New with its inspiring hopes of life
Beyond the Agape and all earth-strife,
God-guided through an alien world, with cold
Postponement of the triumph-crown of gold;
The Old irresolute and faint of heart,
But loving all sweet things, and flowers, and art,
That deifies nature's fashions manifold.

Sceptre and wreath, they ask for: ‘Now, this hour
Be kind to us, O Gods; let us not dare
And lose the prize; let the sun shine to-day,
The song be heard!’ but gone is all their power;
Their eyes are dark; a cry is in the air:
‘Awake! arise, arise, and come away!’

203

COMING AND GOING.

In the bright margin of the salt sea tide,
Flooding the sands, his tiny shallop tries
A boy, with new delights in his clear eyes;
Wading far in and watching it with pride
Tacking, returning, as the wavelets guide;
Until the ebb set in unknown to him,
And then across the seas into the dim
Green waste he saw his little frigate ride!

Will it sail on for ever and a day,
Or will they hail it from some new strange land?
Why went it from me at the last away?
He asked, and empty-handed turned to go.
And often wandering on life's wave-worn strand,
Perplexed, he questions still that ebb and flow.

204

MY. MOTHER.

(ST. LEONARDS, EDINBURGH, 1826.)

A pebbled pathway led up to the door
Where I was born, with holly hedge confined,
Whose leaves the winter snows oft interlined;
Oft now it seems, because the year before
My sister died, we were together more,
And from the parlour window every morn
Looked on that hedge, while mother's face, so worn
With fear of coming ill, bent sweetly o'er.

And when she saw me watching, smile would she,
And turn away with many things distraught;
Thus was it manhood took me by surprise,
The sadness of her heart came into me,
And everything I ever yet have thought
I learned then from her anxious loving eyes.

205

(PORTOBELLO, NEAR EDINBURGH, 1851.)

There was a gathered stillness in the room,
Only the breathing of the great sea rose
From far off, aiding that profound repose,
With regular pulse and pause within the gloom
Of twilight, as if some impending doom
Was now approaching;—I sat moveless there,
Watching with tears and thoughts that were like prayer,
Till the hour struck,—the thread dropped from the loom;
And the Bark passed in which freed souls are borne.
The dear stilled face lay there; that sound forlorn
Continued; I rose not, but long sat by:—
And now my heart oft hears that sad seashore,
When she is in the far-off land, and I
Wait the dark sail returning yet once more.

1871.

206

ASSISTANCE DELAYED.

Had that hand hailed me and that cheerful song,
Had that good chance befallen me, while the blood
Was juvenescent, and the vista long,
And life's mid-year unbridged: while yet all-good
Appeared the triumphs to be won, the men
Who had attained, all gods, amidst the mist
Blood-red o'er youth's long sunrise. Doubtless then
Proudly had I leapt forth and dared the best,
Either with tricks fantastic, or high faith
And art,—the best that in this right arm lay!
But now the game seems boy's play: keep your breath
To cool your pottage, wise old proverbs say.
The world still grudgingly unties her store:
Fame and reward are ours when they are prized no more.

207

UNWORTHY AMBITION.

[_]

(ON THE PORTRAITS OF LORDS BROUGHAM AND LYNDHURST.)

To rise up step by step from hall to daïs;
To take the best seat at the best repast,
While adulating eyes are toward him cast
By the upstanding hungry; to have praise
From those he scorns: to see the base hand raise
The limp hat to him as he hastens by,
Not deigning to return the courtesy;
To ride while others tramp the miry ways.

These are the honours of a hot-breathed world,
These the civilian honours, these the prize
In church or bar. Behold that wig deep-curled,
The symbol of a long life's toil, those eyes
Below it like a tipstaff's!—shut thine own,
And think of Christ or of the sky star-sown!

208

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

(1837; REVISED 1872.)

All things were created by numbers, and again it must be so. Plato.

The Angel of Death through the dry earth slid,
Like a mole to the Dervish Yan,
Lying beneath the turf six feet,
Till he reached the coffin and smote its lid

209

With his hammer that wakes the Mosleman;
And whispered thus through board and sheet,
‘Arise, that thy closed eye and ear
The things that Are may see and hear!’
The Dervish turned him round, and rose
On his knees at the sound of the three dread blows:
He was alive and a man again,
Yet he felt no earth, nor of it thought,
But rose without a strain.

Friends wept aloud for the Dervish Yan,
And a wife she wept for a Christian man,
A long train of mutes had but lately laid
Under the sward in the cool green shade
Of a sanctified wall whose stones divide
The earth where heretic corses hide,
From that set apart for the faithful alone,
And over him carved his name on a stone;
But the dead man laughed as he woke below,
For he rejoiced at wakening so,—
‘I am awake, awake and well;
Am I myself indeed, and where?—
Here is no light, here is no air,
Here is neither heaven nor hell.’
The Angel of Death stooping clasped his hand,
And silenced him, whispering, ‘I command
The power whose song shall answer thee,—
As it hath been, so shall it be.’

210

Beneath the head
When the Jew is dead
Is a clod of quick clay kneaden:
And as the mourners backward go,
Three turfs, green turfs, to the grave they throw,
Saying, ‘Thou shalt like these green turfs grow,
May thy soul be buried in Eden.’
Thus in the Levites' vault was laid
A Rabbi, thus were the last rites paid,
At the same time that the Summoner
Made the two Gentile corses stir,
And with a writhe like theirs, his eyes
The Rabbi opening, tried to rise.
‘Have the demons power o'er me?’ he cries,
Dragging himself with painful toil
From the mould which is the earth-worm's spoil,
And trembled to hear the words ‘Follow thou too,
Within the sphere of the melody
That re-createth those who die!’

And thus have these three mortals passed,
Being dead, into the formless vast,
Which we in life, expectant, still
By creeds and myths and fancies, fill
With hopes and fears like life on earth,—
Things for the days 'tween death and birth,
For which we care not any more
Down upon the further shore.

211

‘By what uncertain sense we're led,
Born thus again—the body dead
Our mother—the grave our nursing bed!

‘Haunted still with hearth and home,
Hammer in hand, sword, pen, and tome,
Sun and moon and starry dome.

‘Morn till evening toil-in-vain,
Market loss and market gain,
Restless sea and wheaten plain.

‘Down the darkness go we still,
Go we without choice of will;
From Gentile's scoff and scorner's rail,
From worm and asp, from kiss and wail;
From master's whip, Muezzim's cry,
Camel and rice, and blank white sky.

‘Carried or driven, through sea, through air,
Carried sheer down by cloud or stair,
Are we or are we not—whither away?
Phantom's of life's fever-day.
Can we not return again,
As leaves come after spring-time's rain?
The trumpet cannot call the dead,
Yet I hear it overhead;
A madman's sleep is thick and brief;
The dawn would give us all relief!—

212

Ah, 'tis gone, and thou, the dearest!
Thou with moonlike light appearest;
Thou, mine own, beside the hearth,
Assiduous with childish mirth—
Dreams, only dreams! the past doth cry,
In the throes of dissolving memory.
O brother spectres who have come
Out of yourselves,—oh, can ye tell,
Rise we or sink—to heaven or hell?
But even now with my own old eyes
I saw the ghost of myself arise;
And then forthwith I was beguiled
To think myself again a child.
But what, alas! are those below
That to and fro
Pass like men walking fast, and then
Pass the very same again?
Alike they are, even every one,
Not as men beneath the sun;—
Now they stalk our heads above,
Now beneath our feet they move,
Now they pass through us quite, as though
Shadows with like shadows blent,
Shadows from some real things sent,
We their shadows cannot know!
Gone, gone, gone! a fiery wind
Severs the vision, and mountain or flood,
City or temple, or cedar-wood,

213

Or rock-walls with their multitude
Of caverns void and blind,
Fragments of this baseless world,
About us are flashed out and furled;
And phantoms without number vast,
Interlace the insane dream,
Hurtle together, and never get past:
And a leprous light, a light and breath,
Like the phosphor in the eyes of Death,
Follows each phantom; down they stream,
Wingless, from above descending,
Straight and stiff; nor is the hair
On their rigid shoulders pending
Stirred by any fitful air.
Together they rush now, from near and far,
As if around a central war,
And now in circles whirl, while we—
We cleave the whirlpool steadily.
If any god still hears our wail,
For an hour again
Let us be men,
Or now cease utterly and fail
To know ourselves, to think and be!

‘Hath our prayer been heard? Ah, no;
Spectres that have never trod
Earth with man or heaven with God
Rise stark and slow;

214

Rings of gold
About their corded locks are rolled,
Dreadful symbols of dead creeds,
And dripping brands
Are in their hands;—
Naked giants! how they hold
By the nostrils monstrous steeds!
They meet, they rush together: now
The furies of battle are over all,
And some struggle upwards in pain, some fall
Sheer through the seething gulf below;—
Allah el Allah, how are we
In this collapsing death-strife free?
Oh, that we could dissolve at once
To nothingness;—advance,
Ye barbed giants! smoke and fire
Lap us round till we expire,—
Expire, cease utterly and fail
To retract ourselves, to think and be!

Thus the dead men from the grave
Wailed as they went; but who can say
How to paint the unknown way
Within the wondrous door of death?
Or what the mysteries are that pave
The path to New Life, when the breath
And senses cease to be, as now,
The guardians of our souls? The plough

215

Casts up bones where warriors trod,
Belted, plumed, and iron-shod;
Those shreds the plough exhumes, I deem,
Little like the warriors seem.

Two lights, two haloed lights appear,
Round like the moon at the fall of the year,
When the sky is mantled o'er
With a fleece of mist, and of all the store
Of stars, not one can penetrate
To the traveller's eye till the night be late.
Two haloes slowly and steadily
Advancing like a double day,
Increasing in beauty more and more;—
Behold! they are the tires of light
On the heads of gods, and a golden sound,
Swooning and recreating, wound
From those two haloes, passed right round
The dead men's hearts with a painful might.
Would I could say
Whose voices or whose harps were they,
That had such vital force divine,
Holy Spirit, like to thine!
But what was the song
That bore along
These weary ghosts with a power so strong?
If we could repeat that lay
In the light of upper day,

216

It might unravel warp and woof
Of this prisoned conscious Life
Tear all sensuous ties aloof;
Of good and ill unwind the strife:
Interweave it with amaranth again,
Die it with nepenthe bloom,
That we no more knew sin or pain,
Nor feared the darks beyond the tomb!

But what was the song
That bore along
Those dead hearts with a power so strong?
Would I could repeat the lay
In the dull light of this cold day;
Wean the soul from the thirst to know,
By wisdom be as gods, that so
The slave unmanacle his hand,
The ploughshare rest upon the land.

When the sound of the wires
Of those holy lyres
Had the dead men's lives remade,
Did their shadows remain in the world of shade,
Their flesh in the earth
That gave it birth?
Then in what were they arrayed?
But the child just born forgetteth quite
Its ante-natal garments; night

217

And utter change doth interpose,
And when this life over the body doth close,
And the freed Soul hears without ears the hymn,
Sphere-music of God's cherubim,
And sees the haloed powers below,—
Utterly changeth it also;
And after the new birth again
Forget the ante-natal gain?
We cannot know.