The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

As the slow weary life-hours stroll along
And I find nought of gladness, nought of rest,
And win small pleasure from white softest breast,
And smaller pleasure from the summer throng
Of flowers whose early scent was sweet and strong,—
I yearn the more to be again caressed
By thee, at whose voice once my weary quest
Was ended—dead at whose feet fell each wrong!

The longer that the past behind us grows,
The more we need each other. Life turns pale,
And withering petals cluster on each rose,
And through gold beech-leaves sounds the wind's wild wail,
And what of pain may be in front who knows?
Oh, stand thou stedfast by me. Never fail!

SONNET II
TO L. S. B.

One breath of passion surging into song
Hath far more worth than philosophic dreams.
Why waste thine instrument on rugged themes,
Or by the tuneless fountains tarry long?
When thou art just thine own self, thou art strong,
But weak when for thine own heart's sunny gleams
Over and round thee the cold moonlight beams.
To thine own self thou doest the deadliest wrong!

If thou wouldst have thy soul's clear song abide
Changeless and endless in the hearts of men,
Sing thou of love,—never hath love-song died!
Sing thou of passion,—and be deathless then!
Sing of the sea's soul,—be thy soul as wide:
Its chant shall echo back thy chant again.

SONNET III
CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE

Ah! longest thou, grim obelisk beside
Our eddying muddy Thames, for days of yore
When by a sun-kissed smooth far other shore
Thou watchedst the dim brown-sailed boats collide,
Midmost the Nile's broad reptile-haunted tide,
And heardest the strange desert monsters roar?
What scenes thou hast marked! what galleys with gold oar
And silken perfumed sail thou hast descried!

And now thou art here, and round about thee flows
The breathless life of London. Thou art torn
From thine ancestral measureless repose:
Us thou regardest with Egyptian scorn:
What dateless dreams are in thine heart who knows?
Dreams of the princes and the gods of morn.

SONNET IV
TO VICTOR HUGO

Measureless spirit! In whom the winds unite
Their viewless strength,—for whom the stars and seas
Sing,—and the soft voice of the fragrant breeze
Of summer, and the snow-storms wild and white;
Through whom the human limitless delight
Of passion trembles:—at whose kingly knees
Love rests content, while evil quails and flees;
Thy brow with God's own golden dawn is bright.

All blood-stained terror, and pale sin, and crime,
Thou viewest with equal, yet most burning, eyes:—
Before thee open the blue folds of skies:—
Thou canst outsing the stormiest surge of time,—
Stand where the rocks and rolling thunders chime,—
Yet through thy song the prayers of children rise.

SONNET V
ON READING “LES CONTEMPLATIONS” OF VICTOR HUGO

First through the early ways of love made bright
With tenderest blossoms, holding his strong hand
I wandered. Airs of morning soft and bland
Played round us; through the greenwood's dense delight
Of tangled flowers and shrubs shone Venus white:—
The silver-fringed small wavelets kissed the land;
We mixed with many a laughing lover-band;
The world was fair to touch and fair to sight.

Then came a change. By many a river-steep
We passed: the blossoms less abundant grew.
Still the same gold stars watched above our sleep,
And the same high interminable blue.
At last before the poet who led and me
Following, a grey waste gleamed:—Death and the sea.

SONNET VI
VICTOR HUGO'S RETURN TO FRANCE IN 1870

Yes: the same meadows,—the horizon clear,—
The same tall poplars by the unchanged streams;
For just one moment the pale exile dreams
That sweet unchanged fair former France is here.
But what is this that seizes eye and ear?—
What is that far-off smoke,—those fiery gleams?
A sound of shouts,—a sound of women's screams,—
French soldiers, wild and blood-stained, fleeing in fear!

This was his welcome. As his eager glance
Shot forth, it met a mixed ill-omened throng,—
Blue tunics flying before the Uhlans' lance;
Red-trousered weary troops who limped along;
This was the payment given by Fate and France
For nineteen years of exile and of song.

SONNET VII
WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

O one grey dead leaf in a poet's wreath!
Is it this the sunlit mountains taught to thee,
This? When the moon above the impurpled lea
Soared, did her soft lips chant to thee of death?
O gentlest of all bards who e'er drew breath,
What were the whispers of the hollow sea?
What were the hints of bird and flower and tree
And stormy upland,—and of pathless heath?

In this sole thing, O bard, thou hast been untrue
To thine own soul,—nor only unto this;
Untrue besides to Nature's kindly kiss
Upon thy lips,—faithless to mountains blue
And golden sunsets and the bright lakes' hue:
False to the whole world's higher sympathies.

SONNET VIII
LOUIS BONAPARTE

O one great stain upon the English race,—
That when the third Napoleon's warriors slew
Women and children (though at Waterloo
His uncle's men looked strong men in the face!)—
When Paris reeked with blood, and when the base
Came to the front, and exiled were the few
Heroic souls to love and freedom true—
That then this man at our blind hearts found grace.

That, when the soul through whom the century sings
Found nought of help or refuge but the sea,
And must for nineteen years an exile be,
Guarded by lone stars and the tempest's wings,
Our England's statesmen could so low descend
As to call Louis Bonaparte a friend!

SONNET IX
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

When quiet meadows shine beneath the sun
Of the grand twentieth century: when the race
Lifts up towards cloudless heaven a tearless face:
When the far hills we cannot climb are won,
Strange prospects seen, and deeds undreamed of done:
Look back,—look back,—ye dwellers in the land,
To us who at the century's strong gates stand
But pass them not—fast falling one by one!—

We sang the future, though the past loomed dread
Behind us: sang the morning though the night
Had not yet opened full-fledged wings for flight;
Born in the mid-strife of a century red,
We sang the advent of a century white:—
We sang the living,—knee-deep in the dead.

SONNET X
“IF EVER, ROUSED BY SOME INVADER'S TREAD”

If ever, roused by some invader's tread,
England awaketh from her centuries' sleep
And findeth with a heart-thrill strange and deep
That she must rise in earnest,—or fall dead;
If ever alien hands our harvests reap,
And our chalk roads are splashed with angry red,
And village houses riddled with fierce lead,—
While in the houses English women weep:—

If ever this be so, what chance have we?
Little: if our one friend who, ages long,
Has hemmed us in with walls of billows strong
Forsakes us,—lost through our own treachery.
Little: if we have hushed the warning song
Of pathless winds, and bridged the bridgeless sea.

SONNET XI
THE CITY OF THE DEAD

In early youth how far that City seems!—
When our friends die, they seem to pass away
Into some land where all the airs are grey,—
Some viewless region too remote for dreams
Even,—where never sun of daylight gleams:—
Our own steps loiter onward day by day;
O'er many a dark-blue lake and sunny bay
We sail; we kiss white hands on moonlit streams.

We gather flowers: the City of the dead
Is still remote. “Which is the fairest thing,”
We say—“a red mouth, or this rose of red?”
Along the May-bright lanes we laugh and sing.
We turn a sudden corner:—Lo! the dread
City before us,—in the sunsetting.

SONNET XII
ROSSETTI AND LONGFELLOW

O great dead poet who thine English lyre
With somewhat of the Italian charm didst sweep,
Is thy sweet song thus early lulled to sleep?
Hast thou too passed beyond our strong desire?—
But yesterday the wild world paused to weep
For Longfellow,—yet Spring new-clothed with fire
Is flushing as of old green bank and briar,
And through the perfumed woods the flowers' eyes peep.

Ye both are gone. Ye leave the Spring behind;
But, singers, is it summer where ye go?
Do there the eternal golden blossoms blow
That here just through one sunny May we find?
Is new strange fragrance wafted on the wind?
We ask, and doubt, and wonder,—but ye know.

April 12, 1882.

SONNET XIII
ENGLAND AND ITALY

Talk not to me of Italy!—Hast thou seen
The fern-draped vales of Devon? Hast thou felt
The sweetness of the morning through thee melt
Within the moist dense tangled woods that screen
Blue Derwentwater, stretching broad and green
Along the mountain-margins, belt on belt?
Hast thou through months of golden summer dwelt
Where white Penzance basks, sunlit and serene?—

Talk not to me of Italy!—In our clime
Wonders undreamed of I will show to thee:
Is not this black-tressed pine-forest sublime?
Inhale (could Southern fragrance daintier be?)
This slumbrous scent of meadow-sweet and thyme
Mixed with the scent that comes up from the sea.

100

SONNET XIV
ART

Art is a jealous mistress. Who will hold
My lady in his arms, must serve her long:
Yet must he follow her with footstep strong,
And woo her fickle heart with pleading bold.
If ever in fair arms he would enfold
The goddess, he must quit the noisy throng
And follow her the silent hills among,—
Marking far off her gleaming locks of gold.

A time shall come when by some lonely lake,
Some mountain-tarn, she shall look round at him:
And all the distant view shall seem to swim
In passionate tears as he doth fully take
My lady to his breast, and fully slake
Years of forlorn desire and yearning grim.

101

SONNET XV
THE SONG-BRIDE

God hath his sea-waves, and his flowers and trees:
Think you that in God's eyes one single rose
Less beautiful and pure of petal blows
Because no mortal the bright blossom sees?
The haunt of every violet God's heart knows:
And all the golden gorse upon the leas
That loads with lavish scent the lingering breeze
For God in its rich glory of colour glows.

God hears all Nature singing unto him:—
And so the poet inwardly is 'ware
Of his own song's divine blue summer air,—
Yea, though the world of man should wax quite dim,
Still would that summer of his song be fair
And fill the cup of rapture to the brim.

102

SONNET XVI
THE SPEECH OF THE DEAD MAN

Ah! was it worth while?—Yes, I have renown.
Through the white folds of this embracing shroud
I hear them crying my old name aloud
On earth: they bring my silent corpse a crown.
But ah, the fruitless gift! Could I bend down
Just once again, though even in humble bower,
And gather once again love's humblest flower—
Could I gaze deep into soft eyes of brown—
Could I feel once again the gracious hand
Of woman,—waiting as the sweet night grows
One with the passionate heart of every rose
In every garden of the moonlit land,—
'Twould be worth more than mightiest labours reap,
Crowned or uncrowned, that end in unkissed sleep.

103

SONNET XVII
THE WORLD'S MODEL

Not till thine eyes shine, are the sea-waves blue:
Not till the beauty of thy breast was born,
Did white foam put white lily-cups to scorn:
No stars were golden till thy hair's bright hue
Flashed on the planet's morning. Over and through
The woodlands sighed no tender summer breeze
Till thy voice gave its key-note melodies
To every leaf, to every wind that blew.

Never an ash-tree bent with supple charm
Till thou didst teach the boughs and stem their skill
By curve of gracious body or throat or arm:—
Till thou didst sing, the bird-choirs all were mute:
Thy laughter gave its music to the rill;
And thy lips reddened the yet pallid fruit.

104

SONNET XVIII
THE FIRST KISS

Lo! the first kiss of Eve when the first night
Fell over Paradise,—the blue profound
Far heaven of darkness slowly closing round
And silent star-ships steering into sight.
The world is shadowed, but Eve's eyes are bright
And sunshine in her golden locks is bound:—
First they had feared the unheard-of dark,—but found
The passionate darkness sweeter than the light.

Yes: the first kiss. And since that far-off hour
Lips tender and innumerable have met;
And lips shall meet sweeter than any yet;
But in that star-watched and God-hallowed bower
Man's hand first gathered love, the dark night's flower,
And when the sun rose, dropped it with regret.

105

SONNET XIX
THE LAST KISS

Yes: the last kiss. For there shall come a last.—
When the whole race has dwindled, and the air
No longer serves us,—dense or over-rare;
When human history hath an endless past,
But not one future day: when tired winds cast
About for flowers, but find no flowers to wear:
When the last rose on the sparse hedge is fair:
When the whole living world's flag flies half-mast:—

Then there shall come a last kiss.—Shall not it,
Full of a desperate sweetness unforeseen,
Something of all past history's raptures win,—
And shall the woman's wild eyes not be lit
With stranger light than of the setting sun?
Will all life die not, when that kiss is done?

106

SONNET XX
MY ISLAND

“O one sweet island in my soul's waste sea!” —Philip Bourke Marston.

Thou art my island in some Southern sea!
Brood over me with long green tender hair
And kiss me with strange blossoms, and with air
Of speechless and undreamed-of purity.
O island, give thy magic calm to me:
Embrace me with thy night, when thou dost wear
The jewels of all the skies,—and with thy fair
Blue lustrous morning: clasp me laughingly.

Within thine island-arms no death abides,
Nor sin, nor any horror. Lift me and save
With thine unsearchable and viewless bloom.
Sing to me with thy coral-kissing tides:
Flow round my body with thine amorous wave:
And, when sweet life is over, be my tomb!

107

SONNET XXI
OUR LOVE-LEGACY

O lovers of the future, unto you
I give the wreath my love took joy to wear—
In summer woven, when the golden air
Kissed from the meadow-sweet its pearls of dew.
I give the passion of the wide sea's blue
And the star-blossoms that the black meads bear
To you;—and all we found so very fair,—
The honeysuckle's scent, the tulip's hue.

Love ye the better that we leave you this,
Our passion-legacy:—the lofty night,
The morning's rapture and the storm-wind's bliss;
Aye, more, love's strange immeasurable delight.
Be yours—as ours—the memory of a kiss
To tarry with you till pale time takes flight.

108

SONNET XXII
“THOU ART THE SAME”

I.

Death! Still thou art the same. We know thee well,
And yet we know thee not.—The son to thee
Gives up his grey-haired mother, and the sea
Yields up its lords; the green stalk yields its bell.
The first-born rose at night's first footstep fell,
And last night's deaths solved not the mystery:—
We know not what behind the veil may be—
Limitless heaven, or unimagined hell!

Thou art not changed. While love and passion veer
Like storm-beat ships, and all the ways of man
Waver, thou dost one changeless straight course steer:
Tight on the tiller are thy fingers wan:
Thy lips have never lost that mocking sneer
With which their cruel curséd work began.

109

SONNET XXIII
“THOU ART THE SAME”

II.

Thou hast not changed since far-off Rachel wept
For her first-born. A million mothers more
Have wailed as through their hearts thine arrow tore
And their hearts' darlings on a sudden slept.
O'er countless battle-fields thy foot has leapt,
Splashing exhilarate 'mid the dull red gore:—
Thine ears have bent to hear their hollow roar,
When over choking ships thy waves' lips crept.

Thou art the same. And, long ere history spoke,—
Ages ere e'en papyrus-leaves preserved
The deeds of man,—thou wast as cruel; thou
Watching the ruin wrought by thy sword-stroke
In some dim heart and tawny body curved
Over her dead in lands the sea holds now.

110

SONNET XXIV
THE MIRAGE-RIVER

Between us after loving faithful years
An ever-widening river seemed to spread;
The grass on either side was dank and dead;
We seemed too far apart even for tears.
Smaller to each, each other's figure grew
And fainter,—till against the sunset red
Gleamed only an expanse of steely blue:—
Where joy had been, waste water stretched instead.

But on a sudden lo! a thrush sang out.—
Then we took heart and towards each other came
And lo! the river was a mirage. Flame
Of deep green grass and flowers gleamed all about:
Where ripples desolate had plashed and rolled,
Our hands were powdered with the lilies' gold.

111

SONNET XXV
FIRST LOVE

O first love,—tender holy blind pure phase!—
For then it seemeth to the soul that one
And but one woman liveth,—that the sun
Finds but one blossom worthy of his gaze.
Is it a snowdrop?—Then by green hedge-ways
We think no gleaming rose-bush ever grew!
White is our flower,—so never harebells blue
The sun loved, nor the rich gorse' golden blaze!

Ah!—Some day blind eyes open and we see
On every side far fairer than the old
New blossoms springing,—marvelling we behold
Petunia, cowslip, heath, anemone:—
As from our heart a sudden veil is rolled,—
We revel in Woman's sweet diversity.

112

SONNET XXVI
NEW LANDS, NEW POETS

New lands will bring new poets. By the streams
Of far Australia poets will be heard,
Choosing their similes from strange-fledged bird,—
Writing love-sonnets where blue water gleams
By banks of flowers more gorgeous than our dreams!—
In South America, or Mexico,
Or where the Indian feathery palm-fronds grow,
Song will awake,—and search out untried themes.

New Beatrices in those far-off lands
Shall thrill new Dantes into song as large:
When songless is our old grey ocean's marge,
Sonnets shall watch the moon from far-off sands;
And song shall find a new diviner bower
When the new hemisphere breaks into flower!

113

SONNET XXVII
LOST RICHES

O riches of all the ages we have missed!
Dark eyes, dark tresses, in old Eastern lands,—
Wonderful thrilling of electric hands,—
Lips fairer than all flowers, alas! unkissed.
Blue tender veins on Cleopatra's wrist,—
Eyes gazing over thirsty Indian sands,—
Eyes watching wild waves break on Northern strands
Pine-shadowed;—oh, the long heart-piercing list!

And whom of all that long list have we seen?
Poets, who have the eternal heart of Time
Mixed with your own in magnitude sublime,
Ye have kissed the lips it may be of one queen
Of love and song, and crowned her in your rhyme,—
One!—yet red lips are numberless, I ween!

114

SONNET XXVIII
EVEN IN HELL

In what strange places have our spirits met!—
Sometimes upon the green downs high and bare;
Sometimes amid the tossed sea's stormy air;
Sometimes in gladness; often in regret.
Only one thing has happened never yet,—
That I should call, and thou shouldst not be there!
Desire,—and find no answer to my prayer;—
I owe thy faithfulness a ceaseless debt.

Such woes we have conquered, and such barriers scaled,
And after such defeats have risen upright,
That, if hell's fiery storm-bolts round me hailed,
I should expect thee to divide that night
And, vainly by the lurid ghosts assailed,
To bring me with thyself the old delight.