Musa Verticordia :: :: University of Virginia Library

To thee, whom I have followed all my days,
I dedicate these lays;
Stern goddess, of the strong, relentless heart
To hold me to my part
Nor ever let me swerve from this my road,
Which now I print with blood,
To thee I bring the votive scroll, with tears
For all my ruined years.

Why didst thou charm me with thy trancing eyes,
Dark pools of deepest lies,
Where floated images of far delight,
Else hid from mortal sight,

Of happy hills and meadows fair to tread,
Now countries of the dead,
And shining seas that beckoned to my bark,
Yon stranded, shattered ark?

Vowed vestal, who hast made me pine and sigh
For thy virginity,
Demanding my devotion, since, a boy,
I left for thee my joy,—
Disdainful, thy dread beauty to be near,
Of all that men hold dear
(Though not to me was wanting worldly power
To snatch the prosperous hour):

Thou cruel mistress of the mental woe
That fades the summer glow,
Where once the lilies and the heart's-ease grew
Planting the bitter rue,

Making the garden of the soul a plot
Where none may pull a knot
Of gracious flowers; since rosemary now grows
Where once there flashed the rose:

Would that I might renounce thee and return
From thy regards, that burn
My heart with this imperishable flame,
The jest of foes, the blame
Of friends and lovers,—unremitting Thought,—
Distempered and distraught
By that mad anger at the World's mad ways
Which ends in mad amaze;

Or would I dared to listen to the throng
And their concenting song,
That teaches all endeavour is in vain,
All energy insane,

Except the acrobatic, to beguile
Gold-worshippers to smile;
For still the discontent within their souls
This iterate burden tolls:

“Why should we ponder on unhappy things,
Anticipate the stings
Of Fate and Death, and forge a thousand links
To falsify the Sphinx,
Who, with supreme indifference or disdain,
Still snaps the flimsy chain,
Destroying Reason, full of fleck and flaw,
By Life's unreasoning Law?”

Ah, sometimes still unwittingly I sigh
To sing the facile lie,
The old familiar fancies,—women, wine,
Pale moonlight and moonshine,

Faint ecstasies of pure religious faith,
The legend and the wraith,
With birds and butterflies, and dreams of gold,
The new dream and the old,—

A Watteau Shepherdess, with pastoral crook,
A level-flowing brook,
A Phrygian Shepherd, to whose piping bound
Angora sheep around,
Like tambour-pictures, worked in various wools,
For sofas and for stools,—
This is the Art, remote from sacred fires,
The common crowd admires.

For this is Nature seen by foolish eyes,
And this the Art of lies,—
The copied copy,—aye, a thousand-fold,—
The loved illusion old;

And hence the buzzing melodies abound
That kill the spheral sound,
And hence the copious verses issue, vain,
Inept, inert, inane.

Hence poetry is held in poor regard:
The mountebank and bard
Has each an equal duty on him laid,
Since both for tricks are paid,
To titillate, distract, amuse, and please,
The modern mind to ease
Of that which most the modern mind annoys,
The craving for new toys!

If it be said that simple folk delight
In simple sound and sight,
Then let them hasten to the fields and flowers,
And spend their simple hours

In murmuring woods, beside a murmuring stream,
Or where long grasses gleam
With light that chases shadow,—shadow, light,—
Like water ruffled white:

Or let them wander down a country lane,
Still wet with early rain,
And seek for Spring's nativity,—her sign,
A star of celandine,
That first (except the snowdrop, rarely found)
Adventures from the ground,
Ere yet is kindled by faint suns of March
The purple-tufted larch:

And so through all the pageant of the year,
From seed-time to full ear,
From celandine to saffron, let them stray
Their unpretentious way,

Till fall the leaves; and then, as sinks the sleep
On field and forest, keep
Brave vigil, till the sun unlock the floods
Of life and break the buds.

But let them never ask the lily white
The fount of her delight,
Nor why the golden pollen on her breast,
With open pride confessed,
Has made her no more envious of the rose,
Nor whether pansies close
Their petals to Love's colour-changing dart
Or press it to their heart.

And when 'neath acorned oaks, the moss they tread,
Or else a passage thread
Through fronds of bracken, when the mast is down,
Beneath the beeches brown,

Let them not marvel at yon shriek of pain
In Nature's own domain,
Nor what import those piteous feathers gay
That strew the woody way.

For they who hate to wonder and to weep,
Their eyes must ever keep
From stern Imagination's potent spell,
Whereby their gaze may dwell
No more on surfaces; for else they see,
Not that which seems to be,
But that which is: intolerable light,
As blinding as the night.

For thus have I been tortured, Syren dread,
And numbered with thy dead;
Casting my soul before thy awful throne,
Ere yet my doom was known,—

To be confined in Freedom, pent in Space,
For ever face to face
With Love and Truth and Beauty, all unfeigned,
And therefore unattained.

Ah, whither fled that confidence that first
In vernal hours I nursed,
Oft wandering by the Thames' pale eddying tide,
Where fast his waters glide
By cloistered Eton's elm-trees; fain to trace
Faint glimpses of thy grace,
Not fearing, in the trust of untaught years,
Thy power to teach me tears?

With what a solemn joy was I elate,
Dreaming to be thy mate!
The seaward-winding water I outsped,
Outsoared the lark o'erhead,

And shouted when in bordering snow was seen
The harvest's film of green:
Ah, mightst thou not have spared, from field or tide,
One hour to be my bride?

But thou wert proud, and proud to keep aloof,
Save for the sharp reproof
That stung my ears, and thereby stung my will
To importune thee still!
I sought to find in thee love, life, and rest,
Above what I possessed,
And give them to the World: but no! Thy thrall
Must suffer loss of all.

Must suffer loss of all: then be it so;
Some day the World will know
The martyrdom of thy enamoured swains,
Their patience and the pains

That they endure for men. But that will be,
When Thought at last is free,
To prove itself a passion more intense
Than all the lust of sense.