Vigil and vision :: :: University of Virginia Library

WHEN I of poets dream, not Spenser sweet
Nor Hafiz high it is that holds my thought;
Nor Shakspeare, last for crowning wonder wrought;
Nay, in my mind I see Ravenna street
And there, head bowed beneath the noontide heat,
A black-robed dreamer fare, austere and haught,
With eyes turned inward, unregarding aught,
Who no man greeteth and whom none doth greet:
And as he goes, at him the passers-by
Point with scared looks and murmur, “This is he
“Who did hell-fire and purging pains aby.
“Mark but how black his cheeks and temples be!”
Fools, see ye not upon his brows hell's stress
Not only writ, but Heaven's approof no less?

SPENSER.

SPENSER, thou first inspirer of my song,
That o'er the hills and meads of Arcady
Thy radiant train of ladies sweet to see
And mail-clad knights the woodways lead'st along,
The eternal laws of honour, right and wrong
Still hymning, who is there can vie with thee
For dear delight and frolic fantasy?
Others in sterner measures and more strong
Of heaven and hell have sung and to a height
O'ervaulting thine have stopped the tuneful reed,
Of love and war discoursing, hap and need:
Yet from their thunder-tide the sated spright
Still to thy tempered woodlands takes its way
And turns for solace to thy leisured lay.

KEATS.

IF, in our English muster-roll of song,
Our nightingale was Shakspeare, Nature's son,
Milton our thrush, second (save him) to none,
Shelley our skylark lilting loud and long,
Thou wast the ousel of our tuneful throng,
That, in the solemn setting of the sun,
When all was silent else for day fordone,
Wakedst the woods with music sweet and strong.
Yet but brief time with us thou might'st abide:
Alack! La Belle Dame sans merci,
The woodnymph wild and sweet, the April-eyed
Strong sorceress, that men call Poesy,
Unsparing whom she loves , had thee in thrall
And to her heaven too soon did thee recall.

Cf. Kraszewski's Dämon.

SCHOPENHAUER.

THOU, that hast weighed the world and found it nil,
That with the sword of thought hast rent apart
The inmost veil from off its quivering heart,
Meting the measure of its good and ill,
And as the leach that seeks to cure or kill,
Hast, to their eyes who shrink not from the smart
Of Truth's untempered, life-offending dart,
Bared all the workings of the wheels of Will;
The butt of brainless witlings who outright
All that's unflattering to their wit uncouth
And gross dull sense reject,—the mere dismay
Of those who fear to see the face of light,
Still in their hearts thou dwellest, come what may,
Who look for leading to the torch of Truth.

PARS POETAE.

1.

I never could conceive why men should hold
The poet bound to don the huckster's dress
And tug and jostle in the motley press
Of the uncooked, to let himself be sold,
For gazing-stock, to idlers young and old,
Or with the mammon of unrighteousness
To truck and chaffer for a cheap success,
Which, gotten thus, were nought but flittergold.
An if the approof, to his endeavour due,
Be, as of right, vouchsafed by those (too few)
For judgment apt, 'tis well. But, if spite still
The voices of his peers, then those the wight
Must wait who shall come after and who will,
As without favour, judge without despite .

2.

Nor with religions hath the poet aught
To meddle, whose religion is to do
Justly and to love mercy and the True,
Righteous and Fair still served to have and sought,
As his observance is, in word and thought
And action, from the world, as morning-dew,
Himself to hold unspotted nor ensue
The ways of men, where all is sold and bought.
The profane vulgar neither love nor hate
Shall he nor hearken to the scoffers' prate
Nor mingle with the vain uncaring crowd,
But with high thoughts his hungering soul shall feed
And Nature's voices list by mount and mead,
Thicket and waste, where lark and thrush are loud.

Etiamsi omnibus tecum viventibus silentium livor indixerit, venient qui sine offensâ, sine gratiâ judicent. SENECA.

LOVE AND SONG.

NEEDS must the poet early sing and late
Of Love, that is Life's spring and fountain-head,
Of Love, that dieth not, when all is dead,
That wreathes with flowers the sullen steps of Fate;
Nor, though the Fair he love and imprecate
Confusion on the Foul, upon his head
That evil doth no curse of him is said;
No room there is within his heart for hate.
Nay, since the most part of the poet's wit
From Love, that moves the stars, he hath to boon,
Still in the fair God's track his feet must run;
For song, that hath nor love nor faith in it,
To nothing may be likened but a moon
That unenlightened is of any sun.

SURSUM CORDA.

1. SHAKSPEARE.

IN this our paltry day of dull pretence,
When no mere wage for noble work well done
Save by the Fates' sheer favour may be won
And he who serves the highest those, when hence
He's gone, who without favour or offence
Shall come and judge, must wait and else for none
To do him justice look beneath the sun,—
'Tis Shakspeare's self must give us confidence,
In that grim drama of the soul's despair,
Where Timon damns the inhuman human crew,
The Sursum Corda, from this modern hell
Our hearts that lifts into the upper air,
Who speaks,—“There is no time so miserable
“But that a man may yet in it be true.”

2. RABELAIS.

UP hearts! Refit and sail again the seas!
The soft mysterious pipe of birds at dawn,
The opening of the crocus on the lawn,
The April wind among the blossomed trees,
The cowslips gathering on the grass-grown leas,
These all, no less than Winter's woes bygone,
Witness to us how Life from Death is drawn
And how continuance Nature seeks, not ease.
He most in tune with her is, who, when wrecked
His hopes are, wastes no time in vain lament,
But of the wreckage builds the raft Content,
Wherewith to ride out the surge perilous
Of Life, and Pantagruel-like, confect
Is in contempt of things fortuitous.

HAFIZ AND PAUL.

TWO in my thought still linked together be,
Hafiz, the singer of the clustering vine,
And Paul, the mystic of the Gnostic shrine,
As being, both alike, in ecstasy,
Beyond the bounds of earth and sky and sea,
In contemplation of the things divine
Still rapt and drunken with the spirit's wine,
Calénders of the soul's debauchery.
And in this heaven I joy of old and new,
Where bard and prophet mingle good and ill,
Where Antioch Fars, where Hafiz joins with Paul,
As being both deceivers and yet true,
Both sorrowful and yet rejoicing still,
Both having nothing, yet possessing all.

WORDSWORTH.

1.

IN our loud times thy voice is little heard,
Singer of homely things and humbleness;
The roar of trade and strife, the battle's press
Well nigh thy memory from men's thoughts have blurred.
Yet, in life's pauses, like the mellow bird,
That, when the storm hath spent its wailing stress,
Sings in the setting from the wood-recess,
There cometh to our ears thy quiet word;
Thy quiet song, that tells of quiet days
And peaceful nights, with Heaven and Nature spent,
Far from Life's battle and the weary ways,
Where men for sorrow strive and miscontent,
And to our prisoned thought the worlds unbars,
That lie beyond the ether and the stars.

2.

Thy song is like the light of stars and moon,
Austere and pale and cold, belike, that show
To the hot blood: to others we must go
For the sheer splendours of the summer-noon,
The joys of May, the mellow nights of June,
When heaven above consenting, earth below,
With wine of rapture drunken, to and fro
Sway to the nightingale's ecstatic tune.
Too soft thou speak'st for youth's imperious ear;
It craves another and a stormier song:
But, when the leaves of life are falling sere,
The shriller songsters strike a note of wrong
For the tired sense, and to thy strain austere
It turns for still content and quiet cheer.

3.

Thou lov'dst the lowly of this world of ours;
The grazing herds, the flocks of sheep or geese,
The sunlight falling on some snowy fleece,
Thou sang'st, the wilder ways, the homelier flowers:
In Nature's less intoxicating hours
Most at thine ease thou wast; the slow increase
Of morning in the East, the quiet cease
Of daylight in the West, the evening showers,
More than the stormful sunset's thunderous towers
Or the sheer splendours of the Summer day
Gladdened thy soul: more than the frontispiece
The book thou lov'dst and from the heavenly powers
Sought'st, for the solace of thy pilgrim way,
The things that make for rapture less than peace.

4.

Thou wast not glad; yet sorry wast thou not;
The note of all thy being plain content,
Peace without passion, as without lament,
The golden mean was betwixt cold and hot.
Enough for thee it was to know Life's what;
Its How thou soughtest not nor its intent,
But mad'st, amidst the days that came and went,
Thy heaven in common things and common lot.
For us, whose lips have drained Life's cup of brine,
Thine aim too humble is, thy speech too cold;
Yet, when the thought is purged by life's decline
And good and ill show clear, as we grow old,
We count thy water more than others' wine,
Thy silver more of price than others' gold.

5.

Others have struck a stronger note than thou,
With more ecstatic strains to hopes more high
Our hearts have raised and to the topmost sky
Have drawn our souls up from the worldly slough,
With Pythian songs of Nature's Why and How;
But thou alone hast taught us from things nigh
And common help to seek and to rely,
Not on what may be Then, but what is Now.
So, when all other voices have their soul
Of charm and healing lost, to thee we turn
And from thy word in peace contentment learn
To find and faith in Life's Eternal Whole
And Duty, Past and Present and To-be
Binding in chains of heavenly harmony.

HERMAN MELVILLE.

NONE of the sea that fables but must yield
To Melville; whether with Whitejacket fain
We are to share, or Redburn, joy and pain;
Whether through Mardi's palaces, palm-ceiled,
We stray or wander in Omoo afield
Or dream with Ishmael cradled at the main,
High in the crow's-nest o'er the rocking plain,
Few such enchantments o'er the soul can wield.
But, over all the tale of Typee vale,
O'er all his idylls of the life afloat,
“The Whale” I prize, wherein, of all that wrote
Of Ocean, none e'er voiced for us as he
The cachalot's mad rush, the splintered boat,
The terrors and the splendours of the sea.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ.

FRIEND of my youth, with whom I shared the chance
Of life for thirty years in joy and woe,
That hand in hand and heart in heart didst go
With me, though England's I and thou of France,
Thou hast fared on before me, in advance,
Into the mystic seas, to ebb and flow
Of time that answer not nor to and fro
Are shaken of the surge of circumstance.
Brother, farewell! I shall not see thee more;
I know that nevermore, for joy or pain
Our eyes shall meet, our hands shall clasp again;
Yet closelier, I doubt not, than of yore
Our souls shall join in some translunar sphere,
Where never Winter comes nor leaves are sere.

AUGUSTE VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM.

VILLIERS, old friend, strange spirit, weird but true,
Seeker of that which no man, new or old,
Of woman born might ever yet behold,
What sad sardonic Fate, in days undue,
Was it thy footsteps to the tomb that drew?
What Parcæ, lustres nine scarce overtold,
Put thy fair lamp out, froze thy hot blood cold,
Whilst yet the light of life in thee was new?
Alack, the abyss, by Fate's relentless law,
Once gazed upon, the life to it doth draw,
And thou, beyond the bounds of nights and days
Seeking, with straining hands and eyes that yearn,
Hadst trespassed on the undiscovered ways
And looked upon the Land of No Return.

THEODORE DE BANVILLE.

A songbird thou, if ever was there one!
Pure 'midst corruption, fearless 'midst affray,
Thou faredst still on thine unfaltering way,
In that sad France of thine, the self-undone,
Damned over self with victory never won.
A lark that never doubted of the day,
Thou sangest still, undaunted, on the spray
And through hate's mists look'dst ever for Love's sun.
Thou gav'st me love and comfort in the days
When my heart fainted for my soul's amaze;
Before mine eyes, bedimmed with sorrow's spell,
Thy hand it was that held hope's shining sign;
Nor ever shall I know thy parallel
For songful cheer and kindliness divine.

E. J. W. GIBB.

COMRADE, fare well, whose feet the untravelled East
Long time in equal measure trod with me!
From that fair land of flowers, where strand and sea
Shine with the sun of fable, last not least
Of those who for us Westerns spread the feast
Of Orient lore and Eastern poesy,
I ne'er shall look upon the like of thee
For love of song and care of bird and beast.
The pen is fallen from thine eager hand,
Death's finger laid upon the page undone:
Yet, in some interstellar Morning-land,
I doubt not but thy gentle soul shall find
Its earthly dreams fulfilled in heavenly kind,
Where Life and Death, where Love and Truth are one.

LECONTE DE LISLE.

“HOPE infinite,” saidst thou, “doth Death contain”.
When to Life's buttress-wall at the world's end
With death thou wonnest, Master mine and friend,
Whereas, Time's travel done, the soul full fain
Unto the eternal rest returns again,
What visions met thy view, what shapes did wend
Before thy glances, where the grey beach-bend
Of Life slopes down into Death's surgeless main?
Master, thou never shalt return to show
That which thou foundest in that shoreless sea;
Thou mayst not come to us; but we, to thee
O'erpassing, haply yet shall win to know
If there thy hopes accomplished thou didst see
Or the black night of blank Nonentity.

TRINITAS ANGLICA.

THREE names o'er all do glorify our land;
First his, whilere in England's mightiest day
Our stage illustrious over all for aye
Who made to many an undiscovered strand:
Next his, love, tears and laughter hand in hand
Unpeered to lead; and last, not least, to say,
His, on the canvas who in bright array
Set the whole glorious scheme by Nature planned.
Hereafterward, if any question make
Of thee what men have,—most of all the men
Writ down for great upon the roll of fame,—
For England's glory wrought with brush and pen,
These three for thine exemplars shalt thou take
And Shakspeare, Dickens, Turner shalt thou name.

WITH A COPY OF SULLY PRUDHOMME'S “LES VAINES TENDRESSES”.

HERE, for such as will, are roses;
None of that bright host that flowers,
At the beck of sun and showers,
When the middle May uncloses
All the rapture that reposes
In earth's frost-enchanted bowers;
Such as in the shortening hours
Blow are these for Autumn's posies.
Yet, for some they have their featness,
Gentle souls that from life's madness,
From its cruel cold completeness,
From its hot hysteric gladness
Shrink, content from love and sadness
Still to crush a curious sweetness.

POPULARITY.

TO him, who seeks what is not bought or sold,
Who will not bow the neck in servitude
Nor pander to the unthinking multitude,
Approof comes seldom till his bones are cold,
Or, at the least, until he waxeth old,
Till hope is dead and may not be renewed
And all that life can show of fair and good
Dead leaves and ashes grown, like elfin gold.
So to the poet popularity,
Denied in youth and given when on the wane
Are life and hope, is like the promised fee,
So long withheld and paid at last in vain,
That damned Mehmóud to all eternity,
The gifts that crossed Firdausi's funeral train.