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

The poet's work is one.—He sings in divers places
Of summer and of spring, and soft and deep-lined faces,—
Of rapture and despair:
Of all the sorrow of love, and joy that this surpasses;
Of the lark's nest amid the deep May-scented grasses;
Of floating sea-weed and drowned golden hair.

The universe is one to him.—He passes through it
And at one glance, at times, like large-eyed God can view it:
The whole of things he owns:—
Death, horror, and the cry of human pain he fears not;
There is not any note amid the whole he hears not,—
Laughter of love, or sorrow's piercing tones.

190

And then ye take his work and say “There's evil in it!”
—Because the eagle is there, and not alone the linnet:
—The lion, and yet the fawn:
—The bitter cry of men upon the midnight tossing,
When o'er their vessel's bows the white-maned waves are crossing:
—The smile with which creation meets the dawn.

Shall he say but one thing? Shall he sing but one season?
Give all his heart to Spring? That were unheard-of treason
To Summer's wishful gaze!
Not fields are bright with corn alone, but also bloody
With gaping wounds of men when the August moon gleams ruddy
Over the landscape through a smoky haze.

Doth the high god of dawn drape ever his bridal-chamber
In the old yellow tints and glorious gold-washed amber?
Doth he not deck the sky
With splendid vast superb rich crimson radiation
And with strange azure dyes and sudden deep carnation
That blushes deeper as his bride draws nigh?

191

Are all the forests full of flowers of but one colour?
If roses grew alone, how infinitely duller
This ruddier world would be!
If ever the white manes of maddening mad sea-horses
Raged, whirling round about the black ships' plunging courses,
How we should miss our blue and foamless sea!

So is the poet's song a diverse thing and ample.—
He saw the wild red steeds the yielding corn-blades trample
At far-off Waterloo.
He heard the weird strange shrieks and deep groans of the dying,
And saw upon the field the blood-stained bear-skins lying,—
Blood on the scarlet coats, blood on the blue.

He hears to-day the wind sweep o'er the same wide meadows
And sees the gold corn flecked with countless dancing shadows;
No dying forms are there;
Only the blaze of calm triumphant summer sunlight,—
Not as when all lights merged their lustre in the one light,
The light that flames from battle's eyes and hair.

192

Just as the wind has purged with infinite filtration
That far-off battle-field where nation against nation
Wrestled, for life or death:
Just as the sea heeds not the dead vast hordes within it
But laughs in God's clear eyes as virginal this minute
As under the first morning's golden breath:

Just as the forest heeds the countless dying flowers
Within it not at all, but buildeth up new bowers
More fair than all the old:
Just as within the streets of white immortal Paris
No sign to-day of red mad Revolution tarries
But only gay wheels where the cannon rolled:

So in the poet's song are all things found united:—
Are lovers when they wind close clinging arms affrighted
In that their marriage-bed
Hath ere this heard the sighs of lonely souls unmarried?
What is it unto them that their white couch hath carried
The helpless cold weight of the inamorous dead?

193

What is it that the moon through their bright curtains peeping
Hath, through those curtains bright, gazed once upon the weeping
Of some forsaken heart?—
Just so, all-seeing at once, from palace unto prison
Passes the undisturbed and all-embracing vision
Of pitying pitiless soul-sleepless Art.

In one house lo! a death. A marriage in another.
The strange joy mixed with tears of some pale new-made mother
Perhaps in an upper room.
Perhaps in a room below some sorrow past expression.—
Art graspeth all alike, and taketh full possession
Alike of sunlit space and starless gloom.

So with superb strong poise of pinions never-ending
The soul of Art flies forth, her force of being blending
With God's own power of will:
Seeing with equal sight in plunging white sea-valleys
The overburthened ship that pants but never rallies
And groups of children playing on yon green hill.

April, 1883.