A Poet's Harvest Home :: :: University of Virginia Library

JONSON.
If but stage actors all the world displays,
Where shall be found spectators of the plays?

SHAKESPEARE.
Little or much of what we see we do,
We are all actors and spectators too.

This is the street where Shakespeare's childhood grew
To Shakespeare's manhood, back to which he drew,
To walk in peace along the paths he knew.
At morn and eve of quiet days
To hear the small birds' well-known lays,
To see the bat flit noiselessly,
And rooks against the molten sky,
He passed the loud-mouthed audience by,
And left to all the winds of fate
The poet's immortality,
Yea, even to the green-room care
Heminge and Condell had to spare.
So act the strong self-centred great!
‘Children we are as ye,’ they say,
‘Players, spectators, for life's day,
Which are the masters of the play?’

118

II. SHAKESPEARE.

Give me but fame! the poetaster cries,
Standing on tiptoe so to touch the skies.

Why gather empty shells by God's ebb-shore, Vital no more,
Records of what has been, what matter they?
My soul's in mine own hand to-day;—
Quoth Shakespeare, and to Stratford bent his way.

119

III. THE KESSELSTADT MASK.

(FROM AN ARTISTIC POINT OF VIEW).

That round-cheeked, flat-faced Stratford bust
Sank one's ideal to the dust,
But heaven be praised, for by its grace
We have found our Shakespeare's face.

Gerard's own bust they well could spare,
So they mounted it up there!
As for the portrait by Droeshout,
Perhaps his fingers had the gout!

But here's the king of men divine,—
The Elizabethan profile line,—
Let Gerard and Droeshout give place—
We have found our Shakespeare's face.

120

IV. DANTE. I.

Before the dawn of modern day,
Saint Francis and Saint Dominic
Forgathered on sweet Fiesole.
They waled from all the young and quick
The tenderest heart on all the earth,
Now, said they, this thin heart and we
Shall make a bond, and it shall be
'Tween poetry and sulphurous fear;
Nor any more shall love make mirth
In Italy our garden dear,
Nor manhood's virtues hold a part
In our Italian rhythmic art.

So then, from market or from well,
The women ran when Dante passed,
The cruel sight-seer back from Hell
Had borne with him an evil blast;
And though from Paradise at last
He brought some flowers of asphodel,
The compact hath not passed away
Made then upon sweet Fiesole.

121

V. DANTE. II.

A celtic saint the tale once told,—
Ere Dante's birth the tale was old—
That he in faith, with mortal eyes
Had been uplifted through the skies,
And saw the winged in Paradise.
He had been hand led down below
Where Purgatorial sulphurs flow,
And round the furthest confines there
Had seen the vast high wall of Hell:
But not even angel-guides could tell
What horrors Satan might prepare
For inmates at the Judgment-knell;
As yet it was a waste, no soul
Till then might reach that hopeless goal,
But Dante forestalled time, full well
He knew the pits and filled all Hell.

122

VI. DANTE AND BEATRICE.

Ah, did she pass so coldly by
The tenderest love in all the earth,
Making his lifetime one long sigh,
That never knew a morn of mirth?
High up the Paradisal stair
Did he refind amidst the glare
This matron's breast without a heart,
Transformed to Theologic Art?

Ah, well for us 'tis not our part
In England's fresher, stronger air,
To shrine this saint-elected pair,
This mythologic, cleric dream,
Instead of Shakespeare, our supreme,
Humane, and multiform, and clear,
Exhaustless, blood-red, near and dear.

123

VII. WORDSWORTH.

Earth! through whom we come and go,
Mother of Prometheus! fair.
Thy temples rose in warmer air,
Thou many-breasted, ever young,
To sounding cymbals wast thou sung
Two thousand years ago;
Yet here again
The wisest man of many men,
The truest bard of latest days
Has made his life thy hymn of praise.

124

VIII. SOUTHEY.

ON READING ‘THE LIFE,’ BY PROFESSOR DOWDEN.

Job heard a sweet sound, Job awoke,
And saw a faint white light,
He turned, he deemed the night was spent,
'Twas but the first watch of the night,
Day had not broke,
It was Jehovah's angel spoke,
Bright in the opening of the tent.

Job, the Lord hath heard your prayer,
And sends me here to thee, I bear
Your recompense, which shall it be,
Goodness or Greatness? say and see.

Job knelt, Lord, give me charity,
The rest perhaps will come to me.

He looked, the angel was no more,
Job rose in purple from the floor.

125

IX. BURNS.

HIS COTTAGE AND MONUMENT.

This is the cottage as it was of old,
The window four small panes, and in the wall
The box-bed where the first daylight did fall
Upon their new-born infant: narrow fold
And poor, when times were hard and winds were cold
As they were still to him. And now close by
Above Corinthian columns mounted high,
The famed Choragic Tripod shines in gold!

The lumbering carriages of these dull years
Have pass'd away, their dust has ceased to whir
Round the pedestrian, silent to our ears
Is that maelstrom of Scottish men, this son
Of that poor cot we count the kingliest one;
Such is time's justice, time the harvester.

126

X. CHATTERTON.

Oh cruel night, that closed those questioning eyes,—
Nay, kindly say, stars shine in darkening skies.

Oh cruel night, that stopped those wondering ears,—
Nay, kindly say, who knows what now he hears?

127

XI. SAPPHO.

Sisters! sisters Nine and mine!
Take my latest lustral wine;
This lyre no more to be attuned by me,
I dedicate,
Alas, too late,
Brass-hearted Artemis, to thee;
And this, my weary body, to the sea.

128

XII. ORPHEUS.

Thy mother, Calliope, gave thee power
Over the heart of man, above the laws
Of savage nature: in the perilous hour
Over the triple Dog's dismembering claws;
Ixion leant a moment on his wheel,
And Tantalus forgot his thirst to feel,
When thy voice throughout hell began to peal:
But not the Nine, nor even the Gods, can save
Their best-beloved children from the grave.

129

XIII. BYRON.

He was Childe Harold pacing there
The dark deck of that exile-ship,
When twenty years scarce fringed his lip,
Pacing in a boy's despair.

He was Don Juan, not too soon
Sent from the glimpses of the moon.

And had he lived a little longer,
He would have risen greater, stronger;
King of the Greeks, he had been then
Agamemnon, King of men.
Yet not the best of warriors he
Who crossed towards Troy the Ægean sea.

130

XIV. SHELLEY. I.

The three words yet to dominate
This world with peace and love elate,
We rede upon the ruined wall Palatial,
Once the witless Bourbon's pride,
Words written large from side to side;
And on the pavement where we stood
Lay fratricidal blood.
What wonder then eyes fixed so far,—
Faith and to-day so coiled in war,—
Directest steps may go amiss?
Inspiréd speech be vague as his?

Yet shall these three words be one day,
Our full-grown manhood's rondelay,
The sensitive plant shall surely grow
Beside the myrtle and the bay,
When we with him have passed away,
And shall not know.

131

XV. SHELLEY. II.

That reason-born millennium,
He thought so near, shall surely come,
Shall come when days have longer grown,
And nights are longer too,
When bread from richer tilth is mown,
And all our powers are born anew:
Millions of years far off, may be,
Eons of ages, it shall come,
But then the Poet men may see
Shall throw all our poetics dumb.
For then, as now, the poet's lyre
Must shine with light as well as fire;
And he sings best whose clear plain song
Beats with our hearts and makes us strong.