Poems By Richard Chenevix Trench: New ed |
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NATURAL MYTHOLOGY. |
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NATURAL MYTHOLOGY.
THE PHŒNIX.When Adam ate of that forbidden food,
Sole bird that shared not in his sin was I:
And so my life is evermore renewed,
And I among the dying never die.
THE PELICAN.
I am the bird that from my bleeding breast
Draw the dear stream which nourishes my brood;
And feebly unto men his love attest,
True pelican, that feeds them with his blood.
THE HALCYON.
For twice seven days, in winter's middle rage,
The winds are hushed, the billows are at rest;
Heaven all for me their fury doth assuage,
While I am brooding o'er my fluctuant nest.
THE COCK.
What time an ass with horrid bray you hear,
Believe he sees a wicked sprite at hand;
But when I make my carol loud and clear,
Know that an angel doth before me stand.
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I, clapping on my sides my wings with might,
First to myself the busy morn proclaim:
Who others will to tasks and toil incite,
Should first himself have summoned to the same.
THE PEACOCK.
I, glorying in my tail's extended pride,
See my foul legs, and then I shriek outright;
So shrieks a human soul, which has descried
Its baseness 'mid vainglorious self-delight.
THE EAGLE.
I no degenerate progeny will raise,
But try my callow offspring, which will look
In the sun's eye with peremptory gaze;
Nor feebler nurslings in my nest will brook.
THE ERMINE.
To miry places me the hunters drive,
Where I my robe of purest white must stain;
Then yield I, nor for life will longer strive;
For spotless death, not spotted life, is gain.
THE MANDRAKE.
I from the earth with bleeding roots am wrung,
With shriekings heard far off and keen lament:
So thou and all who to the world have clung
Shall from the world with piercing cries be rent.
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We light on fruits and flowers and purest things;
For if on carcasses or aught unclean,
When homeward we returned, with mortal stings
Would slay us the keen watchers round our queen.
THE DIAMOND.
I only polished am in mine own dust;
Nought else against my hardness will prevail:
And thou, O man, in thine own sufferings must
Be polished: every meaner art will fail.
THE NIGHTINGALE.
Leaning my bosom on a pointed thorn,
I bleed, and bleeding sing my sweetest strain;
For sweetest songs of saddest hearts are born,
And who may here dissever love and pain?
THE SNAKE.
Myself I force some narrowest passage through,
Leaving my old and wrinkled skin behind,
And issuing forth in splendour of my new:
Hard entrance into life all creatures find.
THE TIGER.
Hearing sweet music, as in fell despite,
Enraged, myself I do in pieces tear:
The melody of other men's delight
There are of you who can as little bear.
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Angels are we, who once from heaven exiled,
Would scale its crystal battlements again;
But have their keen-eyed watchers not beguiled,
Thrust by their glittering lances back amain.
THE YOUNG CHILDREN.
Fair sight are we, white doves, which refuge sure
Are finding in a tall rock's rifted side;
Types of a fairer thing, of children pure,
Which early did their lives with Jesu hide.
MORNING.
Day conquers: night, that was day's foe, is dead,
And right across the morning's threshold lies:
Day's golden sword its crimson blood hath shed,
Which overfloweth all the eastern skies.
THE FOUR EVANGELISTS.
As those four streams that had in Eden birth,
And did the whole world water, four ways going,
With spiritual freshness fill our thirsty earth
Four fountains from one sacred mountain flowing.
ST. STEPHEN (Στεφανος).
Of all which thou shouldst be thy glorious name
Was prophecy and omen long before,
Who, being Stephen, from the first didst claim
The crown at length thy conquering temples wore
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