University of Virginia Library

And have I lived so vainly? From the child
Beside the Devon seas, past wars and wars,
Up to this twelve years lodging? But I think
Not vainly, from the first; can I think false,
Who have not done aught else but merely think
Through twelve years gradual moons? But that is past
Now, and instead of a world's history's
Dead weight within my brain, Guyana gold
Shall gleam and glamour me across the seas,
And burnish the grey dreams about my sleep,
And I shall play the willing fool once more
Beneath gold's gracious smile. What bars me here?
Is gold so viler than the holier pearl,
Chrysolite—than the jewel-fires that flash
Through John's Apocalypse, that I should keep
My lips from kissing gold? Well, this one time,
Hard by the shades, truth shall have farther flight
Than I am used to grant her—I have lived
Ever in the world and made the seasons serve—
The Devon shores were lighter. Wars, quick clash
Of living blades athwart the heat o' the sun
Everywhere—France and the Netherlands—
Ah me, war's pulsing passion! I was then
Young, and the years were mine, and little need
To waste my wisdom on dead men, dead deeds,
To moralise old worlds, when death-clutched gulphs
And hidden continents of solemn cold
Called to me: and I went with him who dreams
Down in the lower calm below the winds,
Unvexed of violent nights—Gilbert and I
Northward together sailed an empty quest;
Wherefore perforce I slaughtered Irish folk
Until my star should rise: and my star rose,
A sudden glory blossomed into light
Along the lively skies: nay, no far star
Tremulous in the low sun's waving fields—
But my star was the sun, that drew me close
Within the splendour of its path, whereon
It moved with music, and the dancing spheres
Sang crystalline concent: my sixty years
Keep still the thrill of it. Virginia—
The maiden land, crown of that unworn world
Mine, mine own work laboured in praise of her,
The Virgin Queen to whom some gave their hearts
And all of us our breath—Virginia
Will hold me in men's memories until
A newer world enthral them. And I won
Honour from out the whirl of warring ships
Midway the English waters, when the west
Swayed on to death a world of Spanish ships
And Spain upon the wrathful curling wastes
And paths illimitable between all lands
Would lay his domination: but the winds
Whirled and the winds were against him, shielding us:
And into northern waves that storm of death
Wind-wildered fell away. Now though I die
Dishonoured, having known this one great thing,
I have not lived so vainly—nay but now
Most richly, having loved: love won me next,
Love that is lord of life, whose dominance
Is life's justification: and with love,
Under my sun's eclipse—two present suns
Were over glory—with my light of love
I lay i' the fields of Sherborne, shutting out
Keen-griding wars and careful courtier-cares
To carol all I knew, mere lilting wise,
I could not make fair music, but I drew
That deathless breath of music from the wilds
Werethrough it thrilled, across the opalled path
And palace of the sun: ah, and all lutes,
All viols of the morning failed, all harps
Left off to speak their meaning, for the strange
Calm beauty of that passionate large tone
And paradisal quiring, when the song
Of loftiest Spenser charmed them. Then I sailed,
Breaking from love: was there not gold and gold
And still gold, in the forest world that lay
A glory of sunflushed flowers and flowing leagues
Of unimagined waterways, that lay
I' the south, a Patmos-vision? Always gold
Is the most mightiest lord; and so I sailed,
Days and nights, days and nights, an upright life
Close to white stars and throbbing suns, with winds
Blown round it from the waters, and blue gulphs
Pearl-islanded on high—I think those seas
Are holier than all soil with gold in it,
That are thus large-natured: I think that scarce
Between the Clashing Rocks and scarce amid
Night's utter peril and star-blinding wrath
One thought of possible Glauce stung the heart
Of Jason Argonaut—the seas forbade,
And his dark isolate love sufficed him there
Afar from venomous Corinth. At the end,
Touching on Trinidad, we wrested that
From the branding grasp of Spain and set our sails
To win the golden country. Ah, the pang
Beating upon our hearts when that fresh world
Flashed, and the thunder of our triumph cry
Rang down the glinting surf: and suddenly,
With hearts aflame and eyes whirling, we swept
Out from the heaving ocean glare and won
The breast of Orinoco! And meseems,
Sitting here far enough from any wild
Voices of hurricane and battle roar,
That only up those virgin-furrowed leagues
Where the mere air breathed glory, and a world
Panted a purer passion than elsewhere
Poisons all innocent life, that only there
I touched that earlier height, wherefrom fair Greeks
Beside the breathless beautiful hyaline
Spoke with night's choral voices, and were blest
With fervency of instant suns, and knew
The secular love of earth. Woe's me, the tense
Passion of our strange voyage when we dreamed
Old phantasies of Zion citadel,
And won their revelation! for by day
Wonderful living flames blinded and smote
The quickened air with music: and we cried
That surely these were spirits of the Throne
And very Seraphim: and the rich nights
Heavy-breathed, flower-passioned, when our sleep
Whispered low Spanish syllables, and one
Waking caught murmured names of faery towns,
Manoa—El Dorado—or a star
Fell from its fellows and was lost—gold, gold,
Ever more gold for gleaning; then a breath
Fired the wide east with flame-flowers, and the night
Became coruscant crystal purple-veined
And pierced with paling planets: but we found
Never our hungered city, where it glows
A glory and a silence evermore,
Men shall not walk there—never won our quest
Crowning our sea-worn foreheads: but we won
Open embrace of ocean falling down
Into the flame-pulsed gulphs, and fought the winds
And brought our memories home. The rest? for the rest—
A trouble of worldly glare wherein I laughed
All chains of conscience from me, rising high
Beyond the bars of friendship, and false thoughts
Of common kindliness—that Cadiz hour,
A very blast of battle—and the fall
Of that high star that swept too nigh the sun
Athwart my path; my sphere strode passingly
Its lightning field of lustre; but perchance
The fallen Essex found as fair a lot
I' the night where to I thrust him: for a cold
Shudder of death swayed heavily over us
And smote upon our sun: and all we paled
Darkling and undistinguished, while mere night
Crept on our faded heavens, that we traced
An obscure orbit striking transverse ways
About the dubious gloom: and when he came,
This James of Scotland from his bleak-blown north,
This pitiful meanly passioned fitfulness
Of devious starlight flickering a sickly glow
Athwart the great sky pastures, verily
My sphere, out-passioning his, affrighted him;
And from the morning glory perishing
I vailed me of my brightness. Oh, I mind me
The beautiful grey city and the press
Thronging their justice hall, and lending me
The love of kindly eyes; and at the last
Mine enemies had their will, vouchsating me
To dwell twelve years in dreamland; of the which
I dream this last of all, looking to take
The sea's rough kiss erelong, and never dream
Aught else but merely gold until I die
And fill death's lingered pause with weary dreams,
Thinking no more of gold.
But now I know this truth at least of all
Imaginable truths! that I have lived
(As would I live again, were that to be?)
Ever for mine own sake. I will not say
That I have lived in vain, judging myself
As from a clear decision. In this whirl,
Strain, clash of circumstance where men strike out
Wildly and gasp for air and gasp for light
But the keen air reels, and the light cleaves, blinds—oh here
I cannot pluck truth from a common road,
Find faith beside the path; but in myself
Groping I clamber toward the lonely sun,
A mark for staring men—and yet
When the pierced heart of music throbs away
Its terror of pitiless thrills, or when a sob
Pants through the beautiful waters for a sign,
And foreword of Typhoon coming with far
Resonant thunder-sway of swooping waves,
And vast inhuman whirl of cloud-passion
Vibrating the clear stars, and on the low
Marmoreal fields of sunset shuddering
Havoc and dull eclipse; then even I,
Raleigh, the courtly traitor, I, Raleigh,
A clarion name in fight, I have felt at these
Rare vision-hours a spirit lily-souled
Float through the waste air-spaces, with strange flowers
Fulfilling barren hollows, on the heights
Naked of any beauty, any grace
Desirable, shedding an aureole
Of triple-enfolded flame—and then at close
The circling echo breaks, and the drear seas
Shiver discoloured coldly, and the flight
Of saffron wings chills the grey wastes of air,
And I have learnt my lesson: never peace,
Never a visioned beauty, but some death
Outstretching hands of ice ensnareth it;
And then come delicate pangs playing a low
Sweet undertone of sorrow: once I caught
The very tune of it, and fashioned it
Into a careless song, and sang it out
Among the Sherborne birds:—

A provident song, with hope to help it fly
Scaling the summer air! and yet it rests
Merely on death's solution, whereupon
All tired labours rest: myself have known
Death's province peopled proudly; our lone queen
Rules there her solitude of cold; and there
Fair Henry's lips laugh gently; and high souls
Scorn there the wingless waters—not more high
Ulysses hailed his brothers bowed to death
Discomfortably moaning. O great Death!
Imperial, perdurable, ancient of days!
That I must die, broken with breaking years,
Embittered past my mood, not having won
Any so great a thing that I would leave
The Devon coast, and be no more a child,
Were I a child there now, to toil for it!
That death must be my crown and goal! I pray
Death reap me with the glitter of sudden steel
Or find me on the sea ways: I would hate
A crown that were no crown: I that have flared
My years out mid the windy battle breath,
And known the tempest and insatiate wings
Of outlawed shrieking winds: I that have hailed
(Hath ever an ocean speech so terrible
As tragic antiphons alternating
Extremes o' the world's old passion? hath the sea
Surges thus earth-shaking?) I that have hailed
Lips of so mighty a music, and have heard
The fiery voices of battalioned stars
Clang through the ways of darkness and upflow
Among the springs of light, reverberate
From mouths fulfilled with thunder and the thoughts
That fought at Shakespeare's heart: I too that thus
Captive have wrestled these laborious years
To tell a world of weariness, a world
Starred with long burning splendours, a world grown
From unconceived abeyance to a full
Stature and complete present—can I pass
Utterly, and the world be never stirred
With memories of me? And though the world,—
The far, unknowing, unfamiliar world,—
Find me no soul to praise, no starry brow
To circle with high praises, what skills then
Praise or dispraise to mould men's dreams in death?
Yet to live on past death a popular scorn
Surpasses silence. And at least that style,
Shepherd of Ocean, will not suffer me
Find sheer forgetfulness. Ah, scorn of fate!
Shepherd of Ocean! shepherding the flock
Of all my days far down the whelming seas
To fold with Death i' the West! Such poison-spilth
Hath chymic fate shed over the clear phrase
That leaped to hail me from pure Spenser's lips
Instinct with silvern notes by the pure flow
Of Heliconian Mulla.
But do I see so clearly at this last,
That I may part the clouds this way and that
Tracing a path for truth? I do not know
More than men may—therein the laughter lies
That shrills our work to death: and though I loathed
Dark Spain's priest-kindly smile, and though I gave
Such love as I could find about my heart
To comfort her curst wounds, yet of these things
I know no word to say: we never know,
Always that is the pity; if we might know,
Faith had less evil feet. Ah, was it thus
With sickly thoughts and waste of weakling words
The world once heard me speak? I think the world
Will never lose the trumpet of my tongue,
Set blown by godlike Grenville dying there
Amid the Spanish faces. I could speak
Man's language then, long since. Well, these twelve years
Have left me somewhat weary, though I sail
Gold-greedy to Guyana; and I think
I shall have silence round about my sleep
Presently.