The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
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The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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Table of Contents | |
Section | Page |
Start of eBook | 1 |
THE SEABOARD. | 1 |
A HAVEN. | 1 |
ON A COUNTRY ROAD. | 2 |
THE MILL GARDEN. | 2 |
A SEA-MARK. | 3 |
THE CLIFFSIDE PATH. | 4 |
IN THE WATER. | 4 |
THE SUNBOWS. | 5 |
ON THE VERGE. | 6 |
TO VICTOR HUGO | 7 |
I. | 7 |
II. | 8 |
III. | 8 |
IV. | 8 |
V. | 9 |
VI. | 9 |
VII. | 9 |
VIII. | 9 |
IX. | 10 |
X. | 10 |
XI. | 10 |
XII. | 10 |
XIII. | 11 |
XIV. | 11 |
XV. | 11 |
XVI. | 12 |
XVII. | 12 |
XVIII. | 12 |
XIX. | 12 |
XX. | 13 |
XXI. | 13 |
XXII. | 13 |
XXIII. | 14 |
XXIV. | 14 |
XXV. | 14 |
NOTES | 14 |
I. | 20 |
II. | 20 |
III. | 20 |
IV. | 20 |
V. | 20 |
VI. | 21 |
VII. | 21 |
VIII. | 21 |
IX. | 21 |
I. | 25 |
II. | 25 |
III. | 25 |
IV. | 25 |
V. | 25 |
VI. | 25 |
VII. | 26 |
I. | 26 |
II. | 26 |
III. | 26 |
I. | 27 |
II. | 27 |
III. | 27 |
I. | 27 |
II. | 28 |
III. | 28 |
I. | 29 |
II. | 29 |
III. | 29 |
IV. | 30 |
I. | 30 |
II. | 30 |
III. | 30 |
I. | 32 |
II. | 32 |
III. | 32 |
I. | 36 |
II. | 36 |
III. | 36 |
IV. | 36 |
V. | 36 |
VI. | 36 |
VII. | 37 |
VIII. | 37 |
IX. | 37 |
I. | 37 |
II. | 37 |
III. | 38 |
IV. | 38 |
V. | 38 |
VI. | 38 |
VII. | 39 |
VIII. | 39 |
IX. | 39 |
The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word
Is soft as the least wave’s lapse in a still
small reach.
From bay into bay, on quest of a goal deferred,
From headland ever to headland and breach to breach
Where earth gives ear to the message that all days
preach
With changes of gladness and sadness that cheer and
chide,
The lone way lures me along by a chance untried
That haply, if hope dissolve not and faith be whole,
Not all for nought shall I seek, with a dream for
guide.
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
The trackless ways are untravelled of sail or bird;
The hoar wave hardly recedes from the soundless beach.
The silence of instant noon goes nigh to be heard,
The viewless void to be visible: all and each,
A closure of calm no clamour of storm can breach
Concludes and confines and absorbs them on either
side,
All forces of light and of life and the live world’s
pride.
Sands hardly ruffled of ripples that hardly roll
Seem ever to show as in reach of a swift brief stride
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
The waves are a joy to the seamew, the meads to the
herd,
And a joy to the heart is a goal that it may not reach.
No sense that for ever the limits of sense engird,
No hearing or sight that is vassal to form or speech,
Learns ever the secret that shadow and silence teach,
Hears ever the notes that or ever they swell subside,
Sees ever the light that lights not the loud world’s
tide,
Clasps ever the cause of the lifelong scheme’s
control
Wherethrough we pursue, till the waters of life be
dried,
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
Friend, what have we sought or seek we, whate’er
betide,
Though the seaboard shift its mark from afar descried,
But aims whence ever anew shall arise the soul?
Love, thought, song, life, but show for a glimpse
and hide
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
East and north a waste of waters, south and west
Lonelier lands than dreams in sleep would feign to
be,
When the soul goes forth on travel, and is prest
Round and compassed in with clouds that flash and
flee
Dells without a streamlet, downs without a tree,
Cirques of hollow cliff that crumble, give their guest
Little hope, till hard at hand he pause, to see
Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side
nest.
Many a lone long mile, by many a headland’s
crest,
Down by many a garden dear to bird and bee,
Up by many a sea-down’s bare and breezy breast,
Winds the sandy strait of road where flowers run free.
Here along the deep steep lanes by field and lea
Knights have carolled, pilgrims chanted, on their
quest,
Haply, ere a roof rose toward the bleak strand’s
lee,
Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side
nest.
Are the wild lands cursed perchance of time, or blest,
Sad with fear or glad with comfort of the sea?
Are the ruinous towers of churches fallen on rest
Watched of wanderers woful now, glad once as we,
When the night has all men’s eyes and hearts
in fee,
When the soul bows down dethroned and dispossest?
Yet must peace keep guard, by day’s and night’s
decree,
Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side
nest.
Friend, the lonely land is bright for you and me
All its wild ways through: but this methinks
is best,
Here to watch how kindly time and change agree
Where the small town smiles, a warm still sea-side
nest.
Along these low pleached lanes, on such a day,
So soft a day as this, through shade and sun,
With glad grave eyes that scanned the glad wild way,
And heart still hovering o’er a song begun,
And smile that warmed the world with benison,
Our father, lord long since of lordly rhyme,
Long since hath haply ridden, when the lime
Bloomed broad above him, flowering where he came.
Because thy passage once made warm this clime,
Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name.
Each year that England clothes herself with May,
She takes thy likeness on her. Time hath spun
Fresh raiment all in vain and strange array
For earth and man’s new spirit, fain to shun
Things past for dreams of better to be won,
Through many a century since thy funeral chime
Rang, and men deemed it death’s most direful
crime
To have spared not thee for very love or shame;
And yet, while mists round last year’s memories
climb,
Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name.
Each turn of the old wild road whereon we stray,
Meseems, might bring us face to face with one
Whom seeing we could not but give thanks, and pray
For England’s love our father and her son
To speak with us as once in days long done
With all men, sage and churl and monk and mime,
Who knew not as we know the soul sublime
That sang for song’s love more than lust of
fame.
Yet, though this be not, yet, in happy time,
Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name.
Friend, even as bees about the flowering thyme,
Years crowd on years, till hoar decay begrime
Names once beloved; but, seeing the sun the same,
As birds of autumn fain to praise the prime,
Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name.
Stately stand the sunflowers, glowing down the garden-side,
Ranged in royal rank arow along the warm grey wall,
Whence their deep disks burn at rich midnoon afire
with pride,
Even as though their beams indeed were sunbeams, and
the tall
Sceptral stems bore stars whose reign endures, not
flowers that fall.
Lowlier laughs and basks the kindlier flower of homelier
Softlier here the flower-soft feet of refluent seasons
glide,
Lightlier breathes the long low note of change’s
gentler call.
Wind and storm and landslip feed the lone sea’s
gulf outside,
Half a seamew’s first flight hence; but scarce
may these appal
Peace, whose perfect seal is set for signet here on
all.
Steep and deep and sterile, under fields no plough
can tame,
Dip the cliffs full-fledged with poppies red as love
or shame,
Wide wan daisies bleak and bold, or herbage harsh
and chill;
Here the full clove pinks and wallflowers crown the
love they claim.
Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the
mill!
All the place breathes low, but not for fear lest
ill betide,
Soft as roses answering roses, or a dove’s recall.
Little heeds it how the seaward banks may stoop and
slide,
How the winds and years may hold all outer things
in thrall,
How their wrath may work on hoar church tower and
boundary wall.
Far and wide the waste and ravin of their rule proclaim
Change alone the changeless lord of things, alone
the same:
Here a flower is stronger than the winds that work
their will,
Or the years that wing their way through darkness
toward their aim.
Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the
mill!
Friend, the home that smiled us welcome hither when
we came,
When we pass again with summer, surely should reclaim
Somewhat given of heart’s thanksgiving more
than words fulfil—
More than song, were song more sweet than all but
love, might frame.
Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the
mill!
Rains have left the sea-banks ill to climb:
Waveward sinks the loosening seaboard’s floor:
Half the sliding cliffs are mire and slime.
Earth, a fruit rain-rotted to the core,
Drops dissolving down in flakes, that pour
Dense as gouts from eaves grown foul with grime.
One sole rock which years that scathe not score
Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Time were even as even the rainiest clime,
Life were even as even this lapsing shore,
Might not aught outlive their trustless prime:
Vainly fear would wail or hope implore,
Vainly grief revile or love adore
Seasons clothed in sunshine, rain, or rime
Now for me one comfort held in store
Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Once, by fate’s default or chance’s crime,
Each apart, our burdens each we bore;
Heard, in monotones like bells that chime,
Chime the sounds of sorrows, float and soar
Joy’s full carols, near or far before;
Heard not yet across the alternate rhyme
Time’s tongue tell what sign set fast of yore
Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Friend, the sign we knew not heretofore
Towers in sight here present and sublime.
Faith in faith established evermore
Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Seaward goes the sun, and homeward by the down
We, before the night upon his grave be sealed.
Low behind us lies the bright steep murmuring town,
High before us heaves the steep rough silent field.
Breach by ghastlier breach, the cliffs collapsing
yield:
Half the path is broken, half the banks divide;
Flawed and crumbled, riven and rent, they cleave and
slide
Toward the ridged and wrinkled waste of girdling sand
Deep beneath, whose furrows tell how far and wide
Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
Star by star on the unsunned waters twiring down.
Golden spear-points glance against a silver shield.
Over banks and bents, across the headland’s
crown,
As by pulse of gradual plumes through twilight wheeled,
Soft as sleep, the waking wind awakes the weald.
Moor and copse and fallow, near or far descried.
Feel the mild wings move, and gladden where they glide:
Silence, uttering love that all things understand,
Bids the quiet fields forget that hard beside
Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
Yet may sight, ere all the hoar soft shade grow brown,
Hardly reckon half the lifts and rents unhealed
Where the scarred cliffs downward sundering drive
and drown,
Hewn as if with stroke of swords in tempest steeled,
Wielded as the night’s will and the wind’s
may wield.
Crowned and zoned in vain with flowers of autumn-tide,
Soon the blasts shall break them, soon the waters
hide,
Soon, where late we stood, shall no man ever stand.
Life and love seek harbourage on the landward side:
Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
Friend, though man be less than these, for all his
pride,
Yet, for all his weakness, shall not hope abide?
Wind and change can wreck but life and waste but land:
Truth and trust are sure, though here till all subside
Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
The sea is awake, and the sound of the song
of
the joy of her waking is rolled
From afar to the star that recedes, from anear
to
the wastes of the wild wide shore.
Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward:
if
dawn in her east be acold,
From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle
the
life that it kindled before,
Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us,
her
kisses to bless as of yore?
For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause
in
the sky, neither fettered nor free,
Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter
Life holds not an hour that is better to live in:
the
past is a tale that is told,
The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep,
with
a blessing in store.
As we give us again to the waters, the rapture
of
limbs that the waters enfold
Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby,
though
the burden it quits were sore,
Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will
are
absorbed in the life they adore—
In the life that endures no burden, and bows not
the
forehead, and bends not the knee—
In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven,
in
the laws that atone and agree,
In the measureless music of things, in the fervour
of
forces that rest or that roam,
That cross and return and reissue, as I
after
you and as you after me
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and
beseeches, athirst for the foam.
For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply
the
heart of a man may be bold
To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother’s
that
saith to the son she bore,
Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit
the
breath in thy lips from of old?
Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength,
and
thy foolishness learn of my lore?
Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or
made not
the
might of thy gladness more?
And surely his heart should answer, The light
of
the love of my life is in thee.
She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not fairer,
the
wind is not blither than she:
From my youth hath she shown me the joy of her bays
that
I crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb,
Till now that the twain of us here, in desire
of
the dawn and in trust of the sea,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and
beseeches, athirst for the foam.
Friend, earth is a harbour of refuge for winter,
a
covert whereunder to flee
When day is the vassal of night, and the strength
of
the hosts of her mightier than he;
But here is the presence adored of me, here
my
desire is at rest and at home.
There are cliffs to be climbed upon land, there are
ways
to
be trodden and ridden, but we
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and
beseeches, athirst for the foam.
Spray of song that springs in April,
light
of love that laughs through May,
Live and die and live for ever:
nought
of all thing far less fair
Keeps a surer life than these
that
seem to pass like fire away.
In the souls they live which are
but
all the brighter that they were;
In the hearts that kindle, thinking
what
delight of old was there.
Wind that shapes and lifts and shifts them
bids
perpetual memory play
Over dreams and in and out
of
deeds and thoughts which seem to wear
Light that leaps and runs and revels
through
the springing flames of spray.
Dawn is wild upon the waters
where
we drink of dawn to-day:
Wide, from wave to wave rekindling
in
rebound through radiant air,
Flash the fires unwoven and woven
again
of wind that works in play,
Working wonders more than heart
may
note or sight may wellnigh dare,
Wefts of rarer light than colours
rain
from heaven, though this be rare.
Arch on arch unbuilt in building,
reared
and ruined ray by ray,
Breaks and brightens, laughs and lessens,
even
till eyes may hardly bear
Light that leaps and runs and revels
through
the springing flames of spray.
Year on year sheds light and music
rolled
and flashed from bay to bay
Round the summer capes of time
and
winter headlands keen and bare
Whence the soul keeps watch, and bids
her
vassal memory watch and pray,
If perchance the dawn may quicken,
or
perchance the midnight spare.
Silence quells not music, darkness
takes
not sunlight in her snare;
Shall not joys endure that perish?
Yea,
saith dawn, though night say nay:
Life on life goes out, but very
life
enkindles everywhere
Light that leaps and runs and revels
through
the springing flames of spray.
Friend, were life no more than this is,
well
would yet the living fare.
All aflower and all afire
and
all flung heavenward, who shall say
Such a flash of life were worthless?
This
is worth a world of care—
Light that leaps and runs and revels
through
the springing flames of spray.
Here begins the sea that ends not
till
the world’s end. Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark
set
beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath
known,
nor eye of man hath scanned.
Nought beyond these coiling clouds
that
melt like fume of shrines that steam
Breaks or stays the strength of waters
till
they pass our bounds of dream.
Where the waste Land’s End leans westward,
Sail on sail along the sea-line
fades
and flashes; here on land
Flash and fade the wheeling wings
on
wings of mews that plunge and scream.
Hour on hour along the line
of
life and time’s evasive strand
Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes,
slays
and dies: and scarce they seem
More than motes that thronged and trembled
in
the brief noon’s breath and beam.
Some with crying and wailing, some
with
notes like sound of bells that toll,
Some with sighing and laughing, some
with
words that blessed and made us whole,
Passed, and left us, and we know not
what
they were, nor what were we.
Would we know, being mortal? Never
breath
of answering whisper stole
From the shore that hath no shore
beyond
it set in all the sea.
Shadows, would we question darkness?
Ere
our eyes and brows be fanned
Round with airs of twilight, washed
with
dews from sleep’s eternal stream,
Would we know sleep’s guarded secret?
Ere
the fire consume the brand,
Would it know if yet its ashes
may
requicken? yet we deem
Surely man may know, or ever
night
unyoke her starry team,
What the dawn shall be, or if
the
dawn shall be not, yea, the scroll
Would we read of sleep’s dark scripture,
pledge
of peace or doom of dole.
Ah, but here man’s heart leaps, yearning
toward
the gloom with venturous glee,
Though his pilot eye behold
nor
bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal,
From the shore that hath no shore
beyond
it set in all the sea.
Friend, who knows if death indeed
have
life or life have death for goal?
Day nor night can tell us, nor
may
seas declare nor skies unroll
What has been from everlasting,
or
if aught shall always be.
Silence answering only strikes
response
reverberate on the soul
From the shore that hath no shore
beyond
it set in all the sea.
A NEW-YEAR ODE
Twice twelve times have the springs of years refilled
Their fountains from the river-head of
time
Since by the green sea’s marge, ere autumn chilled
Waters and woods with sense of changing
clime,
A great light rose upon my soul, and thrilled
My spirit of sense with sense of spheres
The spirit of God, whose breath of life is song,
Moved, though his word was human, on the
face
Of those deep waters of the soul, too long
Dumb, dark, and cold, that waited for
the grace
Wherewith day kindles heaven: and as some throng
Of quiring wings fills full some lone
chill place
With sudden rush of life and joy, more strong
Than death or sorrow or all night’s
darkling race,
So was my heart,
that heard
All heaven in
each deep word,
Filled full with light of thought, and
waxed apace
Itself more wide
and deep,
To take that gift
and keep
And cherish while my days fulfilled their
space;
A record wide as earth and
sea,
The Legend writ of Ages past and yet to be.
As high the chant of Paradise and Hell
Rose, when the soul of Milton gave it
wings;
As wide the sweep of Shakespeare’s empire fell,
When life had bared for him her secret
springs;
But not his various soul might range and dwell
Amid the mysteries of the founts of things;
Nor Milton’s range of rule so far might swell
Across the kingdoms of forgotten kings.
Men, centuries,
nations, time,
Life, death, love,
trust, and crime,
Rang record through the change of smitten
strings
That felt an exile’s
hand
Sound hope for
every land
More loud than storm’s cloud-sundering
trumpet rings,
And bid strong death for judgment
rise,
And life bow down for judgment of his awless eyes.
And death, soul-stricken in his strength, resigned
The keeping of the sepulchres to song;
And life was humbled, and his height of mind
Brought lower than lies a grave-stone
fallen along;
And like a ghost and like a God mankind
Rose clad with light and darkness; weak
and strong,
Clean and unclean, with eyes afire and blind,
Wounded and whole, fast bound with cord
and thong,
Free; fair and
foul, sin-stained,
And sinless; crowned
and chained;
Fleet-limbed, and halting all his lifetime
long;
Glad of deep shame,
and sad
For shame’s
sake; wise, and mad;
Girt round with love and hate of right
and wrong;
Armed and disarmed for sleep
and strife;
Proud, and sore fear made havoc of his pride of life.
Shadows and shapes of fable and storied sooth
Rose glorious as with gleam of gold unpriced;
Eve, clothed with heavenly nakedness and youth
That matched the morning’s; Cain,
self-sacrificed
On crime’s first altar: legends wise as
truth,
And truth in legends deep embalmed and
spiced;
The stars that saw the starlike eyes of Ruth,
The grave that heard the clarion call
of Christ.
And higher than
sorrow and mirth
The heavenly song
of earth
Sprang, in such notes as might have well
sufficed
To still the storms
of time
And sin’s
contentious clime
With peace renewed of life reparadised:
Earth, scarred not yet with
temporal scars;
Goddess of gods, our mother, chosen among the stars.
Earth fair as heaven, ere change and time set odds
Between them, light and darkness know
not when,
And fear, grown strong through panic periods,
Crouched, a crowned worm, in faith’s
Lernean fen,
And love lay bound, and hope was scourged with rods,
And death cried out from desert and from
den,
Seeing all the heaven above him dark with gods
And all the world about him marred of
men.
Cities that nought
might purge
Save the sea’s
whelming surge
From all the pent pollutions in their
pen
Deep death drank
down, and wrought,
With wreck of
all things, nought,
That none might live of all their names
again,
Nor aught of all whose life
is breath
Serve any God whose likeness was not like to death.
Till by the lips and eyes of one live nation
The blind mute world found grace to see
and speak,
And light watched rise a more divine creation
At that more godlike utterance of the
Greek,
Let there be freedom. Kings whose orient station
Made pale the morn, and all her presage
bleak,
Girt each with strengths of all his generation,
Dim tribes of shamefaced soul and sun-swart
cheek,
Twice, urged with
one desire,
Son following
hard on sire,
With all the wrath of all a world to wreak,
And all the rage
of night
Afire against
the light
Whose weakness makes her strong-winged
empire weak,
Stood up to unsay that saying,
and fell
Too far for song, though song were thousand-tongued,
to tell.
From those deep echoes of the loud AEgean
That rolled response whereat false fear
was chid
By songs of joy sublime and Sophoclean,
Fresh notes reverberate westward rose
to bid
All wearier times take comfort from the paean
That tells the night what deeds the sunrise
did,
Even till the lawns and torrents Pyrenean
A star more prosperous than the storm-clothed east’s
Clothed all the warm south-west with light
like spring’s,
When hands of strong men spread the wolves their feasts
And from snake-spirited princes plucked
the stings;
Ere earth, grown all one den of hurtling beasts,
Had for her sunshine and her watersprings
The fire of hell that warmed the hearts of priests,
The wells of blood that slaked the lips
of kings.
The shadow of
night made stone
Stood populous
and alone,
Dense with its dead and loathed of living
things
That draw not
life from death,
And as with hell’s
own breath
And clangour of immitigable wings
Vexed the fair face of Paris,
made
Foul in its murderous imminence of sound and shade.
And all these things were parcels of the vision
That moved a cloud before his eyes, or
stood
A tower half shattered by the strong collision
Of spirit and spirit, of evil gods with
good;
A ruinous wall rent through with grim division,
Where time had marked his every monstrous
mood
Of scorn and strength and pride and self-derision:
The Tower of Things, that felt upon it
brood
Night, and about
it cast
The storm of all
the past
Now mute and forceless as a fire subdued:
Yet through the
rifted years
And centuries
veiled with tears
And ages as with very death imbrued
Freedom, whence hope and faith
grow strong,
Smiles, and firm love sustains the indissoluble song.
Above the cloudy coil of days deceased,
Its might of flight, with mists and storms
beset,
Burns heavenward, as with heart and hope increased,
For all the change of tempests, all the
fret
Of frost or fire, keen fraud or force released,
Wherewith the world once wasted knows
not yet
If evil or good lit all the darkling east
From the ardent moon of sovereign Mahomet.
Sublime in work
and will
The song sublimer
still
Salutes him, ere the splendour shrink
and set;
Then with imperious
eye
And wing that
sounds the sky
Soars and sees risen as ghosts in concourse
met
The old world’s seven
elder wonders, firm
As dust and fixed as shadows, weaker than the worm.
High witness borne of knights high-souled and hoary
Before death’s face and empire’s
rings and glows
Even from the dust their life poured forth left gory,
As the eagle’s cry rings after from
the snows
Supreme rebuke of shame clothed round with glory
And hosts whose track the false crowned
eagle shows;
More loud than sounds through stormiest song and story
The laugh of slayers whose names the sea-wind
knows;
More loud than
peals on land
In many a red
wet hand
The clash of gold and cymbals as they
close;
Loud as the blast
that meets
The might of marshalled
fleets
And sheds it into shipwreck, like a rose
Blown from a child’s
light grasp in sign
That earth’s high lords are lords not over breeze
and brine.
Above the dust and mire of man’s dejection
The wide-winged spirit of song resurgent
sees
His wingless and long-labouring resurrection
Up the arduous heaven, by sore and strange
degrees
Mount, and with splendour of the soul’s reflection
Strike heaven’s dark sovereign down
upon his knees,
Pale in the light of orient insurrection,
And dumb before the almightier lord’s
decrees
Who bade him be
of yore,
Who bids him be
no more:
And all earth’s heart is quickened
as the sea’s,
Even as when sunrise
burns
The very sea’s
heart yearns
That heard not on the midnight-walking
breeze
The wail that woke with evensong
From hearts of poor folk watching all the darkness
long.
Dawn and the beams of sunbright song illume
Love, with strange children at her piteous
breast,
By grace of weakness from the grave-mouthed gloom
Plucked, and by mercy lulled to living
rest,
Soft as the nursling’s nigh the grandsire’s
tomb
That fell on sleep, a bird of rifled nest;
Soft as the lips whose smile unsaid the doom
That gave their sire to violent death’s
arrest.
Even for such
love’s sake strong,
Wrath fires the
inveterate song
That bids hell gape for one whose bland
mouth blest
All slayers and
liars that sighed
Prayer as they
slew and lied
Till blood had clothed his priesthood
as a vest,
And hears, though darkness
yet be dumb,
The silence of the trumpet of the wrath to come.
Nor lacked these lights of constellated age
A star among them fed with life more dire,
Lit with his bloodied fame, whose withering rage
Made earth for heaven’s sake one
funereal pyre
And life in faith’s name one appointed stage
For death to purge the souls of men with
fire.
Heaven, earth, and hell on one thrice tragic page
Mixed all their light and darkness:
Another year, and hope triumphant heard
The consummating sound of song that spake
Conclusion to the multitudinous word
Whose expectation held her spirit awake
Till full delight for twice twelve years deferred
Bade all souls entering eat and drink,
and take
A third time comfort given them, that the third
Might heap the measure up of twain, and
make
The sinking year
sublime
Among all sons
of time
And fan in all men’s memories for
his sake.
Each thought of
ours became
Fire, kindling
from his flame,
And music widening in his wide song’s
wake.
Yea, and the world bore witness
here
How great a light was risen upon this darkening year.
It was the dawn of winter: sword in sheath,
Change, veiled and mild, came down the
gradual air
With cold slow smiles that hid the doom beneath.
Five days to die in yet were autumn’s,
ere
The last leaf withered from his flowerless wreath.
South, east, and north, our skies were
all blown bare,
But westward over glimmering holt and heath
Cloud, wind, and light had made a heaven
more fair
Than ever dream
or truth
Showed earth in
time’s keen youth
When men with angels communed unaware.
Above the sun’s
head, now
Veiled even to
the ardent brow,
Rose two sheer wings of sundering cloud,
that were
As a bird’s poised for
vehement flight,
Full-fledged with plumes of tawny fire and hoar grey
light.
As midnight black, as twilight brown, they spread,
But feathered thick with flame that streaked
and lined
Their living darkness, ominous else of dread,
From south to northmost verge of heaven
inclined
Most like some giant angel’s, whose bent head
Bowed earthward, as with message for mankind
Of doom or benediction to be shed
From passage of his presence. Far
behind,
Even while they
seemed to close,
Stoop, and take
flight, arose
Above them, higher than heavenliest thought
may find
In light or night
supreme
Of vision or of
dream,
Immeasurable of men’s eyes or mounting
mind,
Heaven, manifest in manifold
Light of pure pallid amber, cheered with fire of gold.
And where the fine gold faded all the sky
Shone green as the outer sea when April
glows,
Inlaid with flakes and feathers fledged to fly
Of cloud suspense in rapture and repose,
With large live petals, broad as love bids lie
Full open when the sun salutes the rose,
And small rent sprays wherewith the heavens most high
Were strewn as autumn strews the garden-close
With ruinous roseleaves
whirled
About their wan
chill world,
Through wind-worn bowers that now no music
knows,
Spoil of the dim
dusk year
Whose utter night
is near,
And near the flower of dawn beyond it
blows;
Till east and west were fire
and light,
As though the dawn to come had flushed the coming
night.
The highways paced of men that toil or play,
The byways known of none but lonely feet,
Were paven of purple woven of night and day
With hands that met as hands of friends
might meet—
As though night’s were not lifted up to slay
And day’s had waxed not weaker.
Peace more sweet
Than music, light more soft than shadow, lay
On downs and moorlands wan with day’s
defeat,
That watched afar
above
Life’s very
rose of love
Let all its lustrous leaves fall, fade,
and fleet,
And fill all heaven
and earth
Full as with fires
of birth
Whence time should feed his years with
light and heat:
Nay, not life’s, but
a flower more strong
Than life or time or death, love’s very rose
of song.
Song visible, whence all men’s eyes were lit
With love and loving wonder: song
that glowed
Through cloud and change on souls that knew not it
And hearts that wist not whence their
comfort flowed,
Whence fear was lightened of her fever-fit,
Whence anguish of her life-compelling
load.
Yea, no man’s head whereon the fire alit,
Of all that passed along that sunset road
Westward, no brow
so drear,
No eye so dull
of cheer,
No face so mean whereon that light abode,
But as with alien
pride
Strange godhead
glorified
Each feature flushed from heaven with
fire that showed
The likeness of its own life
wrought
By strong transfiguration as of living thought.
Nor only clouds of the everlasting sky,
Nor only men that paced that sunward way
To the utter bourne of evening, passed not by
Unblest or unillumined: none might
say,
Of all things visible in the wide world’s eye,
That all too low for all that grace it
lay:
The lowliest lakelets of the moorland nigh,
The narrowest pools where shallowest wavelets
play,
Were filled from
heaven above
With light like
fire of love,
For, when such light is in the world, we share,
All of us, all the rays thereof that shine:
Its presence is alive in the unseen air,
Its fire within our veins as quickening
wine;
A spirit is shed on all men everywhere,
Known or not known of all men for divine.
Yea, as the sun makes heaven, that light makes fair
All souls of ours, all lesser souls than
thine,
Priest, prophet,
seer and sage,
Lord of a subject
age
That bears thy seal upon it for a sign;
Whose name shall
be thy name,
Whose light thy
light of fame,
The light of love that makes thy soul
a shrine;
Whose record through all years
to be
Shall bear this witness written—that its
womb bare thee.
O mystery, whence to one man’s hand was given
Power upon all things of the spirit, and
might
Whereby the veil of all the years was riven
And naked stood the secret soul of night!
O marvel, hailed of eyes whence cloud is driven,
That shows at last wrong reconciled with
right
By death divine of evil and sin forgiven!
O light of song, whose fire is perfect
light!
No speech, no
voice, no thought,
No love, avails
us aught
For service of thanksgiving in his sight
Who hath given
us all for ever
Such gifts that
man gave never
So many and great since first Time’s
wings took flight.
Man may not praise a spirit
above
Man’s: life and death shall praise him:
we can only love.
Life, everlasting while the worlds endure,
Death, self-abased before a power more
high,
Shall bear one witness, and their word stand sure,
That not till time be dead shall this
man die
Love, like a bird, comes loyal to his lure;
Fame flies before him, wingless else to
fly.
A child’s heart toward his kind is not more
pure,
An eagle’s toward the sun no lordlier
eye.
Awe sweet as love
and proud
As fame, though
hushed and bowed,
Yearns toward him silent as his face goes
by:
All crowns before
his crown
Triumphantly bow
down,
For pride that one more great than all
draws nigh:
All souls applaud, all hearts
acclaim,
One heart benign, one soul supreme, one conquering
name.
St. V.
V. 3. La Legende des Siecles:
Le Sacre de la Femme.
4.
La Conscience.
7.
Booz endormi.
8.
Premiere rencontre du Christ avec le tombeau.
9.
La Terre: Hymne.
VI. 3. Les Temps Paniques.
9.
La Ville Disparue.
VII. Les Trois Cents.
VIII. 1. Le Detroit de l’Euripe:
La Chanson de Sophocle a Salamine.
7.
Le Romancero du Cid.
IX. 3. Le Petit Roi de Galice.
5.
Le Jour des Rois.
9.
Montfaucon.
X. La vision d’ou est
sorti ce livre.
XI. 9. L’an neuf de l’Hegire.
12. Les sept
merveilles du monde.
XII. 1. Les quatre jours d’Elciis.
4.
Le Regiment du baron Madruce.
7.
La Chanson des Aventuriers de la Mer.
9.
Les Reitres.
12. La Rose
de l’Infante.
XIII. 1. Le Satyre.
12. Les paysans
au bord de la mer.
XIV. 1. Les pauvres gens.
5.
Petit Paul.
7.
Guerre Civile.
9.
La Vision de Dante.
15. La Trompette
du Jugement.
XV. Torquemada (1882).
XVI. La Legende des Siecles: tome
cinquieme et dernier (1883). XVII. November
25, 1883.
LINES ON THE MONUMENT OF GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.
Italia, mother of the souls of men,
Mother divine,
Of all that served thee best with sword or pen,
All sons of thine,
Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best
Before thee stands,
The head most high, the heart found faithfullest,
The purest hands.
Above the fume and foam of time that flits,
The soul, we know,
Now sits on high where Alighieri sits
With Angelo.
Not his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech
Enough to say
What this man was, whose praise no thought may reach,
No words can weigh.
Since man’s first mother brought to mortal birth
Her first-born
son,
Such grace befell not ever man on earth
As crowns this
one.
Of God nor man was ever this thing said,
That he could
give
Life back to her who gave him, whence his dead
Mother might live.
But this man found his mother dead and slain,
With fast sealed
eyes,
And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise.
And all the world was bright with her through him:
But dark with
strife,
Like heaven’s own sun that storming clouds bedim,
Was all his life.
Life and the clouds are vanished: hate and fear
Have had their
span
Of time to hunt, and are not: he is here,
The sunlike man.
City superb that hadst Columbus first
For sovereign
son,
Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst
This mightier
one.
Glory be his for ever, while his land
Lives and is free,
As with controlling breath and sovereign hand
He bade her be.
Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told
That crown her
fame,
But highest of all that heaven and earth behold
Mazzini’s
name.
LES CASQUETS.
From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken
With change everlasting of life and of
death,
Where hardly by noon if the lulled ear hearken
It hears the sea’s as a tired child’s
breath,
Where hardly by night if an eye dare scan it
The storm lets shipwreck be seen or heard,
As the reefs to the waves and the foam to the granite
Respond one merciless
word,
Sheer seen and far, in the sea’s live heaven,
A seamew’s flight from the wild
sweet land,
White-plumed with foam if the wind wake, seven
Black helms as of warriors that stir not
stand.
From the depths that abide and the waves that environ
Seven rocks rear heads that the midnight
masks,
And the strokes of the swords of the storm are as
iron
On the steel of
the wave-worn casques.
Be night’s dark word as the word of a wizard,
Be the word of dawn as a god’s glad
word,
Like heads of the spirits of darkness visored
That see not for ever, nor ever have heard,
These basnets, plumed as for fight or plumeless,
Crowned of the storm and by storm discrowned,
Keep ward of the lists where the dead lie tombless
And the tale of
them is not found.
Nor eye may number nor hand may reckon
The tithes that are taken of life by the
dark,
Or the ways of the path, if doom’s hand beckon,
For the soul to fare as a helmless bark—
Fare forth on a way that no sign showeth,
Nor aught of its goal or of aught between,
A path for her flight which no fowl knoweth,
Which the vulture’s
eye hath not seen.
Here still, though the wave and the wind seem lovers
Lulled half asleep by their own soft words,
A dream as of death in the sun’s light hovers,
And a sign in the motions and cries of
the birds.
Dark auguries and keen from the sweet sea-swallows
Strike noon with a sense as of midnight’s
breath,
And the wing that flees and the wing that follows
Are as types of
the wings of death.
For here, when the night roars round, and under
The white sea lightens and leaps like
fire,
Acclaimed of storm and applauded in thunder,
Sits death on the throne of his crowned
desire.
Yea, hardly the hand of the god might fashion
A seat more strong for his strength to
take,
For the might of his heart and the pride of his passion
To rejoice in
the wars they make.
When the heart in him brightens with blitheness of
battle
And the depth of its thirst is fulfilled
with strife,
And his ear with the ravage of bolts that rattle,
And the soul of death with the pride of
life,
Till the darkness is loud with his dark thanksgiving
And wind and cloud are as chords of his
hymn,
There is nought save death in the deep night living
And the whole
night worships him.
Heaven’s height bows down to him, signed with
his token,
And the sea’s depth, moved as a
heart that yearns,
Heaves up to him, strong as a heart half broken,
A heart that breaks in a prayer that burns
Of cloud is the shrine of his worship moulded,
But the altar therein is of sea-shaped
stone,
Whereon, with the strength of his wide wings folded,
Sits death in
the dark, alone.
He hears the word of his servant spoken,
The word that the wind his servant saith,
Storm writes on the front of the night his token,
That the skies may seem to bow down to
death
But the clouds that stoop and the storms that minister
Serve but as thralls that fulfil their
tasks;
And his seal is not set save here on the sinister
Crests reared
of the crownless casques.
Nor flame nor plume of the storm that crowned them
Gilds or quickens their stark black strength.
Life lightens and murmurs and laughs right round them,
At peace with the noon’s whole breadth
and length,
At one with the heart of the soft-souled heaven,
At one with the life of the kind wild
land:
But its touch may unbrace not the strengths of the
seven
Casques hewn of
the storm-wind’s hand.
No touch may loosen the black braced helmlets
For the wild elves’ heads of the
wild waves wrought.
As flowers on the sea are her small green realmlets,
Like heavens made out of a child’s
heart’s thought;
But these as thorns of her desolate places,
Strong fangs that fasten and hold lives
fast:
And the vizors are framed as for formless faces
That a dark dream
sees go past.
Of fear and of fate are the frontlets fashioned,
And the heads behind them are dire and
dumb.
When the heart of the darkness is scarce impassioned,
Thrilled scarce with sense of the wrath
to come,
They bear the sign from of old engraven,
Though peace be round them and strife
seem far,
That here is none but the night-wind’s haven,
With death for
the harbour bar.
Of the iron of doom are the casquets carven,
That never the rivets thereof should burst.
When the heart of the darkness is hunger-starven,
And the throats of the gulfs are agape
for thirst,
And stars are as flowers that the wind bids wither,
And dawn is as hope struck dead by fear,
The rage of the ravenous night sets hither,
And the crown
of her work is here.
All shores about and afar lie lonely,
But lonelier are these than the heart
of grief,
These loose-linked rivets of rock, whence only
Strange life scarce gleams from the sheer
main reef,
With a blind wan face in the wild wan morning,
With a live lit flame on its brows by
night,
That the lost may lose not its word’s mute warning
And the blind
by its grace have sight.
Here, walled in with the wide waste water,
Grew the grace of a girl’s lone
life,
The sea’s and the sea-wind’s foster-daughter,
And peace was hers in the main mid strife.
For her were the rocks clothed round with thunder,
And the crests of them carved by the storm-smith’s
craft:
For her was the mid storm rent in sunder
As with passion
that wailed and laughed.
For her the sunrise kindled and scattered
The red rose-leaflets of countless cloud:
For her the blasts of the springtide shattered
The strengths reluctant of waves back-bowed.
For her would winds in the mid sky levy
Bright wars that hardly the night bade
cease
At noon, when sleep on the sea lies heavy,
For her would
the sun make peace.
Peace rose crowned with the dawn on golden
Lit leagues of triumph that flamed and
smiled:
Peace lay lulled in the moon-beholden
Warm darkness making the world’s
heart mild
For all the wide waves’ troubles and treasons,
One word only her soul’s ear heard
Speak from stormless and storm-rent seasons,
And nought save
peace was the word.
All her life waxed large with the light of it,
All her heart fed full on the sound:
Spirit and sense were exalted in sight of it,
Compassed and girdled and clothed with
it round.
Sense was none but a strong still rapture,
Spirit was none but a joy sublime,
Of strength to curb and of craft to capture
The craft and
the strength of Time.
Time lay bound as in painless prison
There, closed in with a strait small space.
Never thereon as a strange light risen
Change had unveiled for her grief’s
far face
Three white walls flung out from the basement
Girt the width of the world whereon
Gazing at night from her flame-lit casement
She saw where
the dark sea shone.
Hardly the breadth of a few brief paces,
Hardly the length of a strong man’s
stride,
The small court flower lit with children’s faces
Scarce held scope for a bud to hide.
Yet here was a man’s brood reared and hidden
Between the rocks and the towers and the
foam,
Where peril and pity and peace were bidden
As guests to the
same sure home.
Here would pity keep watch for peril,
And surety comfort his heart with peace.
No flower save one, where the reefs lie sterile,
Gave of the seed of its heart’s
increase.
Pity and surety and peace most lowly
Were the root and the stem and the bloom
of the flower:
And the light and the breath of the buds kept holy
That maid’s
else blossomless bower.
With never a leaf but the seaweed’s tangle,
Never a bird’s but the seamew’s
note,
It heard all round it the strong storms wrangle,
Watched far past it the waste wrecks float.
But her soul was stilled by the sky’s endurance,
And her heart made glad with the sea’s
content;
And her faith waxed more in the sun’s assurance
For the winds
that came and went.
Sweetness was brought for her forth of the bitter
Sea’s strength, and light of the
deep sea’s dark,
From where green lawns on Alderney glitter
To the bastioned crags of the steeps of
Sark.
These she knew from afar beholden,
And marvelled haply what life would be
On moors that sunset and dawn leave golden,
In dells that
smile on the sea.
And forth she fared as a stout-souled rover,
For a brief blithe raid on the bounding
brine:
And light winds ferried her light bark over
To the lone soft island of fair-limbed
kine.
But the league-long length of its wild green border,
And the small bright streets of serene
St. Anne,
Perplexed her sense with a strange disorder
At sight of the
works of man.
The world was here, and the world’s confusion,
And the dust of the wheels of revolving
life,
Pain, labour, change, and the fierce illusion
Of strife more vain than the sea’s
old strife.
And her heart within her was vexed, and dizzy
The sense of her soul as a wheel that
whirled:
She might not endure for a space that busy
Loud coil of the
troublous world.
Too full, she said, was the world of trouble,
Too dense with noise of contentious things,
And shews less bright than the blithe foam’s
bubble
As home she fared on the smooth wind’s
wings.
For joy grows loftier in air more lonely,
Where only the sea’s brood fain
would be;
Where only the heart may receive in it only
The love of the
heart of the sea.
A BALLAD OF SARK.
High beyond the granite portal arched across
Like the gateway of some godlike giant’s
hold
Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss
East and westward, and the dell their
slopes enfold
Basks in purple, glows in green, exults
in gold
Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark
Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark
Full of spicery wrought from herb and
flower and tree.
None would dream that grief even here may disembark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and
sea.
Rocks emblazoned like the mid shield’s royal
boss
Take the sun with all their blossom broad
and bold.
None would dream that all this moorland’s glow
and gloss
Could be dark as tombs that strike the
spirit acold
Even in eyes that opened here, and here
behold
Now no sun relume from hope’s belated spark
Any comfort, nor may ears of mourners hark
Though the ripe woods ring with golden-throated
glee,
While the soul lies shattered, like a stranded bark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and
sea.
Death and doom are they whose crested triumphs toss
On the proud plumed waves whence mourning
notes are tolled.
Wail of perfect woe and moan for utter loss
Raise the bride-song through the graveyard
on the wold
Where the bride-bed keeps the bridegroom
fast in mould,
Where the bride, with death for priest and doom for
clerk,
Hears for choir the throats of waves like wolves that
bark,
Sore anhungered, off the drear Eperquerie,
Fain to spoil the strongholds of the strength of Sark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and
sea.
Prince of storm and tempest, lord whose ways are dark,
Wind whose wings are spread for flight that none may
mark,
Lightly dies the joy that lives by grace
of thee.
Love through thee lies bleeding, hope lies cold and
stark,
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and
sea.
NINE YEARS OLD.
February 4, 1883.
Lord of light, whose shine no hands destroy,
God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses,
Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy,
Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses
Ring forth gold of strains without alloy,
Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses
Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy,
Since the child whose head this dawn bedews
is
Sweet as once thy violet-cradled boy.
Even as he lay lapped about with flowers,
Lies the life now nine years old before
us
Lapped about with love in all its hours;
Hailed of many loves that chant in chorus
Loud or low from lush or leafless bowers,
Some from hearts exultant born sonorous,
Some scarce louder-voiced than soft-tongued showers
Two months hence, when spring’s
light wings poised o’er us
High shall hover, and her heart be ours.
Even as he, though man-forsaken, smiled
On the soft kind snakes divinely bidden
There to feed him in the green mid wild
Full with hurtless honey, till the hidden
Birth should prosper, finding fate more mild,
So full-fed with pleasures unforbidden,
So by love’s lines blamelessly beguiled,
Laughs the nursling of our hearts unchidden
Yet by change that mars not yet the child.
Ah, not yet! Thou, lord of night and day,
Time, sweet father of such blameless pleasure,
Time, false friend who tak’st thy gifts away,
Spare us yet some scantlings of the treasure,
Leave us yet some rapture of delay,
Yet some bliss of blind and fearless leisure
Unprophetic of delight’s decay,
Yet some nights and days wherein to measure
All the joys that bless us while they may.
Not the waste Arcadian woodland, wet
Still with dawn and vocal with Alpheus,
Reared a nursling worthier love’s regret,
Lord, than this, whose eyes beholden free
us
Straight from bonds the soul would fain forget,
Fain cast off, that night and day might
see us
Clear once more of life’s vain fume and fret:
Leave us, then, whate’er thy doom
decree us,
Yet some days wherein to love him yet.
Yet some days wherein the child is ours,
Ours, not thine, O lord whose hand is
o’er us
Always, as the sky with suns and showers
Dense and radiant, soundless or sonorous;
Yet some days for love’s sake, ere the bowers
Fade wherein his fair first years kept
chorus
Night and day with Graces robed like hours,
Ere this worshipped childhood wane before
us,
Change, and bring forth fruit—but no more
flowers.
Love we may the thing that is to be,
Love we must; but how forego this olden
Joy, this flower of childish love, that we
Held more dear than aught of Time is holden—
Time, whose laugh is like as Death’s to see—
Time, who heeds not aught of all beholden,
Heard, or touched in passing—flower or
tree,
Tares or grain of leaden days or golden—
More than wind has heed of ships at sea?
First the babe, a very rose of joy,
Sweet as hope’s first note of jubilation,
Passes: then must growth and change destroy
Next the child, and mar the consecration
Hallowing yet, ere thought or sense annoy,
Childhood’s yet half heavenlike
habitation,
Bright as truth and frailer than a toy;
Whence its guest with eager gratulation
Springs, and life grows larger round the boy.
Yet, ere sunrise wholly cease to shine,
Ere change come to chide our hearts, and
scatter
Memories marked for love’s sake with a sign,
Let the light of dawn beholden flatter
Yet some while our eyes that feed on thine,
Child, with love that change nor time
can shatter,
Love, whose silent song says more than mine
Now, though charged with elder loves and
latter
Here it hails a lord whose years are nine.
AFTER A READING.
For the seven times seventh time love would renew
the
delight without end or alloy
That it takes in the praise as it takes in the presence
of
eyes that fulfil it with joy;
But how shall it praise them and rest unrebuked
by
the presence and pride of the boy?
Praise meet for a child is unmeet for an elder
whose
winters and springs are nine
What song may have strength in its wings to expand
them,
or
light in its eyes to shine,
That shall seem not as weakness and darkness if matched
with
the theme I would fain make mine?
The round little flower of a face that exults
in
the sunshine of shadowless days
Defies the delight it enkindles to sing of it
aught
not unfit for the praise
Of the sweetest of all things that eyes may rejoice
in
and
tremble with love as they gaze.
Such tricks and such meanings abound on the lips
and
the brows that are brighter than light,
The demure little chin, the sedate little nose,
and
the forehead of sun-stained white,
That love overflows into laughter and laughter
subsides
into love at the sight.
Each limb and each feature has action in tune
with
the meaning that smiles as it speaks
From the fervour of eyes and the fluttering of hands
in
a foretaste of fancies and freaks,
When the thought of them deepens the dimples that
laugh
in
the corners and curves of his cheeks.
As a bird when the music within her is yet
too
intense to be spoken in song,
That pauses a little for pleasure to feel
how
the notes from withinwards throng,
So pauses the laugh at his lips for a little,
and
waxes within more strong.
As the music elate and triumphal that bids
all
things of the dawn bear part
With the tune that prevails when her passion has risen
into
rapture of passionate art,
So lightens the laughter made perfect that leaps
from
its nest in the heaven of his heart.
Deep, grave and sedate is the gaze of expectant
intensity
bent for awhile
And absorbed on its aim as the tale that enthralls
him
uncovers
the weft of its wile,
Till the goal of attention is touched, and expectancy
kisses
delight in a smile.
And it seems to us here that in Paradise hardly
the
spirit of Lamb or of Blake
May hear or behold aught sweeter than lightens
and
rings when his bright thoughts break
In laughter that well might lure them to look,
and
to smile as of old for his sake.
O singers that best loved children, and best
for
their sakes are beloved of us here,
In the world of your life everlasting, where love
has
no thorn and desire has no fear,
All else may be sweeter than aught is on earth,
nought
dearer than these are dear.
MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER.
A new year gleams on us, tearful
And troubled and smiling dim
As the smile on a lip still fearful,
As glances of eyes that swim:
But the bird of my heart makes cheerful
The days that are bright for him.
Child, how may a man’s love merit
The grace you shed as you stand,
The gift that is yours to inherit?
Through you are the bleak days bland;
Your voice is a light to my spirit;
You bring the sun in your hand.
The year’s wing shows not a feather
As yet of the plumes to be;
Yet here in the shrill grey weather
The spring’s self stands at my knee,
And laughs as we commune together,
And lightens the world we see.
The rains are as dews for the christening
Of dawns that the nights benumb:
The spring’s voice answers me listening
For speech of a child to come,
While promise of music is glistening
On lips that delight keeps dumb.
The mists and the storms receding
At sight of you smile and die:
Your eyes held wide on me reading
Shed summer across the sky:
Your heart shines clear for me, heeding
No more of the world than I.
The world, what is it to you, dear,
And me, if its face be grey,
And the new-born year be a shrewd year
For flowers that the fierce winds fray?
You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear;
You laugh, and the month turns May.
Love cares not for care, he has daffed her
Aside as a mate for guile:
The sight that my soul yearns after
Feeds full my sense for awhile;
Your sweet little sun-faced laughter,
Your good little glad grave smile.
Your hands through the bookshelves flutter;
Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught;
Blake’s visions, that lighten and mutter;
Moliere—and his smile has nought
Left on it of sorrow, to utter
The secret things of his thought.
No grim thing written or graven
But grows, if you gaze on it, bright;
A lark’s note rings from the raven,
And tragedy’s robe turns white;
And shipwrecks drift into haven;
And darkness laughs, and is light.
Grief seems but a vision of madness;
Life’s key-note peals from above
With nought in it more of sadness
Than broods on the heart of a dove:
At sight of you, thought grows gladness,
And life, through love of you, love.
A DOUBLE BALLAD OF AUGUST.
(1884.)
All Afric, winged with death and fire,
Pants in our pleasant English air.
Each blade of grass is tense as wire,
And all the wood’s loose trembling hair
Stark in the broad and breathless glare
Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree.
This bright sharp death shines everywhere;
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre;
The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear.
All power to fear, all keen desire,
Lies dead as dreams of days that were
Before the new-born world lay bare
In heaven’s wide eye, whereunder we
Lie breathless till the season spare:
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire
On spirit and sense, divide and share
The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire,
The throes of dreams that scarce forbear
One mute immitigable prayer
For cold perpetual sleep to be
Shed snowlike on the sense of care.
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
The dust of ways where men suspire
Seems even the dust of death’s dim lair.
But though the feverish days be dire
The sea-wind rears and cheers its fair
Blithe broods of babes that here and there
Make the sands laugh and glow for glee
With gladder flowers than gardens wear.
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
The music dies not off the lyre
That lets no soul alive despair.
Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choir
Of waves whose note bids sorrow spare.
As glad they sound, as fast they fare,
As when fate’s word first set them free
And gave them light and night to wear.
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
For there, though night and day conspire
To compass round with toil and snare
And changeless whirl of change, whose gyre
Draws all things deathwards unaware,
The spirit of life they scourge and scare,
Wild waves that follow on waves that flee
Laugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair,
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
HEARTSEASE COUNTRY.
TO ISABEL SWINBURNE.
The far green westward heavens are bland,
The far green Wiltshire downs are clear
As these deep meadows hard at hand:
The sight knows hardly far from near,
Nor morning joy from evening cheer.
In cottage garden-plots their bees
Find many a fervent flower to seize
And strain and drain the heart away
From ripe sweet-williams and sweet-peas
At every turn on every way.
But gladliest seems one flower to expand
Its whole sweet heart all round us here;
’Tis Heartsease Country, Pansy Land.
Nor sounds nor savours harsh and drear
Where engines yell and halt and veer
Can vex the sense of him who sees
One flower-plot midway, that for trees
Has poles, and sheds all grimed or grey
For bowers like those that take the breeze
At every turn on every way.
Content even there they smile and stand,
Sweet thought’s heart-easing flowers,
nor fear,
With reek and roaring steam though fanned,
Nor shrink nor perish as they peer.
The heart’s eye holds not those
more dear
That glow between the lanes and leas
Where’er the homeliest hand may please
To bid them blossom as they may
Where light approves and wind agrees
At every turn on every way.
Sister, the word of winds and seas
Endures not as the word of these
Your wayside flowers whose breath would
say
How hearts that love may find heart’s ease
At every turn on every way.
A BALLAD OF APPEAL.
TO CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
Song wakes with every wakening year
From hearts of birds that only feel
Brief spring’s deciduous flower-time near:
And song more strong to help or heal
Shall silence worse than winter seal?
From love-lit thought’s remurmuring cave
The notes that rippled, wave on wave,
Were clear as love, as faith were strong;
And all souls blessed the soul that gave
Sweet water from the well of song.
All hearts bore fruit of joy to hear,
All eyes felt mist upon them steal
For joy’s sake, trembling toward a tear,
When, loud as marriage-bells that peal,
Or flutelike soft, or keen like steel,
Sprang the sheer music; sharp or grave,
We heard the drift of winds that drave,
And saw, swept round by ghosts in throng,
Dark rocks, that yielded, where they clave,
Sweet water from the well of song.
Blithe verse made all the dim sense clear
That smiles of babbling babes conceal:
Prayer’s perfect heart spake here: and
here
Rose notes of blameless woe and weal,
More soft than this poor song’s
appeal.
Where orchards bask, where cornfields wave,
They dropped like rains that cleanse and lave,
And scattered all the year along,
Like dewfall on an April grave,
Sweet water from the well of song.
Ballad, go bear our prayer, and crave
Pardon, because thy lowlier stave
Can do this plea no right, but wrong.
Ask nought beside thy pardon, save
Sweet water from the well of song.
CRADLE SONGS.
(TO A TUNE OF BLAKE’S)
Baby, baby bright,
Sleep can steal from sight
Little of your light:
Soft as fire in dew,
Still the life in you
Lights your slumber through.
Four white eyelids keep
Fast the seal of sleep
Deep as love is deep:
Yet, though closed it lies,
Love behind them spies
Heaven in two blue eyes.
Baby, baby dear,
Earth and heaven are near
Now, for heaven is here.
Heaven is every place
Where your flower-sweet face
Fills our eyes with grace.
Till your own eyes deign
Earth a glance again,
Earth and heaven are twain.
Now your sleep is done,
Shine, and show the sun
Earth and heaven are one.
Baby, baby sweet,
Love’s own lips are meet
Scarce to kiss your feet.
Hardly love’s own ear,
When your laugh crows clear,
Quite deserves to hear.
Hardly love’s own wile,
Though it please awhile,
Quite deserves your smile.
Baby full of grace,
Bless us yet a space:
Sleep will come apace.
Baby, baby true,
Man, whate’er he do,
May deceive not you.
Smiles whose love is guile,
Worn a flattering while,
Win from you no smile.
One, the smile alone
Out of love’s heart grown,
Ever wins your own.
Man, a dunce uncouth,
Errs in age and youth:
Babies know the truth.
Baby, baby fair,
Love is fain to dare
Bless your haughtiest air.
Baby blithe and bland,
Reach but forth a hand
None may dare withstand;
Love, though wellnigh cowed,
Yet would praise aloud
Pride so sweetly proud.
No! the fitting word
Even from breeze or bird
Never yet was heard.
Baby, baby kind,
Though no word we find,
Bear us yet in mind.
Half a little hour,
Baby bright in bower,
Keep this thought aflower—
Love it is, I see,
Here with heart and knee
Bows and worships me.
What can baby do,
Then, for love so true?—
Let it worship you.
Baby, baby wise,
Love’s divine surmise
Lights your constant eyes.
Day and night and day
One mute word would they,
As the soul saith, say.
Trouble comes and goes;
Wonder ebbs and flows;
Love remains and glows.
As the fledgeling dove
Feels the breast above,
So your heart feels love.
PELAGIUS.
The sea shall praise him and the shores bear part
That reared him when the bright south
world was black
With fume of creeds more foul than hell’s
own rack,
Still darkening more love’s face with loveless
art
Since Paul, faith’s fervent Antichrist, of heart
Heroic, haled the world vehemently back
From Christ’s pure path on dire
Jehovah’s track,
And said to dark Elisha’s Lord, ‘Thou
art.’
But one whose soul had put the raiment on
Of love that Jesus left with James and John
Withstood that Lord whose seals of love
were lies,
Seeing what we see—how, touched by Truth’s
bright rod,
The fiend whom Jews and Africans called God
Feels his own hell take hold on him, and
dies.
The world has no such flower in any land,
And no such pearl in any gulf the sea,
As any babe on any mother’s knee.
But all things blessed of men by saints are banned:
God gives them grace to read and understand
The palimpsest of evil, writ where we,
Poor fools and lovers but of love, can
see
Nought save a blessing signed by Love’s own
hand.
The smile that opens heaven on us for them
Hath sin’s transmitted birthmark
hid therein:
The kiss it craves calls down
from heaven a rod.
If innocence be sin that Gods condemn,
Praise we the men who so being born in
sin
First dared the doom and broke
the bonds of God.
Man’s heel is on the Almighty’s neck who
said,
Let there be hell, and there was hell—on
earth.
But not for that may men forget their
worth—
Nay, but much more remember them—who led
The living first from dwellings of the dead,
And rent the cerecloths that were wont
to engirth
Souls wrapped and swathed and swaddled
from their birth
With lies that bound them fast from heel to head.
Among the tombs when wise men all their lives
Dwelt, and cried out, and cut themselves with knives,
These men, being foolish, and of saints abhorred,
Beheld in heaven the sun by saints reviled,
Love, and on earth one everlasting Lord
In every likeness of a little child.
LOUIS BLANC.
THREE SONNETS TO HIS MEMORY.
The stainless soul that smiled through glorious eyes;
The bright grave brow whereon dark fortune’s
blast
Might blow, but might not bend it, nor
o’ercast,
Save for one fierce fleet hour of shame, the skies
Thrilled with warm dreams of worthier days to rise
And end the whole world’s winter;
here at last,
If death be death, have passed into the
past;
If death be life, live, though their semblance dies.
Hope and high faith inviolate of distrust
Shone strong as life inviolate of the
grave
Through each bright word and
lineament serene.
Most loving righteousness and love most just
Crowned, as day crowns the dawn-enkindled
wave,
With visible aureole thine
unfaltering mien.
Strong time and fire-swift change, with lightnings
clad
And shod with thunders of reverberate
years,
Have filled with light and sound of hopes
and fears
The space of many a season, since I had
Grace of good hap to make my spirit glad,
Once communing with thine: and memory
hears
The bright voice yet that then rejoiced
mine ears,
Sees yet the light of eyes that spake, and bade
Fear not, but hope, though then time’s heart
were weak
And heaven by hell shade-stricken, and
the range
Of high-born hope made questionable and
strange
As twilight trembling till the sunlight speak.
Thou sawest the sunrise and the storm
in one
Break: seest thou now the storm-compelling
sun?
Surely thou seest, O spirit of light and fire,
Surely thou canst not choose, O soul,
but see
The days whose dayspring was beheld of
thee
Ere eyes less pure might have their hope’s desire,
Beholding life in heaven again respire
Where men saw nought that was or was to
be,
Save only death imperial. Thou and
he
Who has the heart of all men’s hearts for lyre,
Ye twain, being great of spirit as time is great,
And sure of sight as truth’s own
heavenward eye,
Beheld the forms of forces passing by
And certitude of equal-balanced fate,
Whose breath forefelt makes darkness palpitate,
And knew that light should live and darkness
die.
VOS DEOS LAUDAMUS:
THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNALIST’S ANTHEM.
’As a matter of fact, no man living, or who ever lived—not CAESAR or PERICLES, not SHAKESPEARE or MICHAEL ANGELO—could confer honour more than he took on entering the House of Lords.’—Saturday Review, December 15, 1883.
’Clumsy and shallow snobbery—can do no hurt.’—Ibid.
O Lords our Gods, beneficent, sublime,
In the evening, and before the morning
flames,
We praise, we bless, we magnify your names.
The slave is he that serves not; his the crime
And shame, who hails not as the crown of Time
That House wherein the all-envious world
acclaims
Such glory that the reflex of it shames
All crowns bestowed of men for prose or rhyme.
The serf, the cur, the sycophant is he
Who feels no cringing motion twitch his knee
When from a height too high for Shakespeare
nods
The wearer of a higher than Milton’s crown.
Stoop, Chaucer, stoop: Keats, Shelley, Burns,
bow down:
These have no part with you, O Lords our
Gods.
O Lords our Gods, it is not that ye sit
Serene above the thunder, and exempt
From strife of tongues and casualties
that tempt
Men merely found by proof of manhood fit
For service of their fellows: this is it
Which sets you past the reach of Time’s
attempt,
Which gives us right of justified contempt
For commonwealths built up by mere men’s wit:
That gold unlocks not, nor may flatteries ope,
The portals of your heaven; that none may hope
With you to watch how life beneath you
plods,
Save for high service given, high duty done;
That never was your rank ignobly won:
For this we give you praise, O Lords our
Gods.
O Lords our Gods, the times are evil: you
Redeem the time, because of evil days.
While abject souls in servitude of praise
Bow down to heads untitled, and the crew
Whose honour dwells but in the deeds they do,
From loftier hearts your nobler servants
raise
More manful salutation: yours are
bays
That not the dawn’s plebeian pearls bedew;
Yours, laurels plucked not of such hands as wove
Old age its chaplet in Colonos’ grove.
Our time, with heaven and with itself
at odds,
Makes all lands else as seas that seethe and boil;
But yours are yet the corn and wine and oil,
And yours our worship yet, O Lords our
Gods.
December 15.
ON THE BICENTENARY OF CORNEILLE,
CELEBRATED UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF VICTOR HUGO.
Scarce two hundred years are gone, and the world is
past away
As a noise of brawling wind, as a flash
of breaking foam,
That beheld the singer born who raised up the dead
of Rome;
And a mightier now than he bids him too
rise up to-day,
All the dim great age is dust, and its king is tombless
clay,
But its loftier laurel green as in living
eyes it clomb,
And his memory whom it crowned hath his
people’s heart for home,
And the shade across it falls of a lordlier-flowering
bay.
Stately shapes about the tomb of their mighty maker
pace,
Heads of high-plumed Spaniards shine, souls revive
of Roman race,
Sound of arms and words of wail through the glowing
darkness rise,
Speech of hearts heroic rings forth of
lips that know not breath,
And the light of thoughts august fills the pride of
kindling eyes
Whence of yore the spell of song drove
the shadow of darkling death.
IN SEPULCRETIS.
’Vidistis ipso rapere de rogo coenam.’—CATULLUS, LIX. 3.
’To publish even one line of an author which he himself has not intended for the public at large—especially letters which are addressed to private persons—is to commit a despicable act of felony.’—HEINE.
It is not then enough that men who give
The best gifts given of man to man should
feel,
Alive, a snake’s head ever at their
heel:
Small hurt the worms may do them while they live—
Such hurt as scorn for scorn’s sake may forgive.
But now, when death and fame have set
one seal
On tombs whereat Love, Grief, and Glory
kneel,
Men sift all secrets, in their critic sieve,
Of graves wherein the dust of death might shrink
To know what tongues defile the dead man’s
name
With loathsome love, and praise that stings
like shame.
Rest once was theirs, who had crossed the mortal brink:
No rest, no reverence now: dull fools
undress
Death’s holiest shrine, life’s
veriest nakedness.
A man was born, sang, suffered, loved, and died.
Men scorned him living: let us praise
him dead.
His life was brief and bitter, gently
led
And proudly, but with pure and blameless pride.
He wrought no wrong toward any; satisfied
With love and labour, whence our souls
are fed
With largesse yet of living wine and bread.
Come, let us praise him: here is nought to hide.
Make bare the poor dead secrets of his heart,
Strip the stark-naked soul, that all may
peer,
Spy, smirk, sniff, snap, snort, snivel,
snarl, and sneer:
Let none so sad, let none so sacred part
Lie still for pity, rest unstirred for
shame,
But all be scanned of all men. This
is fame.
’Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!’[1]
If one, that strutted up the brawling
streets
As foreman of the flock whose concourse
greets
Men’s ears with bray more dissonant than brass,
Would change from blame to praise as coarse and crass
His natural note, and learn the fawning
feats
Of lapdogs, who but knows what luck he
meets?
But all in vain old fable holds her glass.
Mocked and reviled by men of poisonous breath,
A great man dies: but one thing worst
was spared,
Not all his heart by their base hands
lay bared.
One comes to crown with praise the dust of death;
And lo, through him this worst is brought
to pass.
Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!
[Footnote 1: Titus Andronicus, Act iv., Scene 2.]
Shame, such as never yet dealt heavier stroke
On heads more shameful, fall on theirs
through whom
Dead men may keep inviolate not their
tomb,
But all its depths these ravenous grave-worms choke
And yet what waste of wrath were this, to invoke
Shame on the shameless? Even their
twin-born doom,
Their native air of life, a carrion fume,
Their natural breath of love, a noisome smoke,
The bread they break, the cup whereof they drink,
The record whose remembrance damns their
name,
Smells, tastes, and sounds of nothing
but of shame.
If thankfulness nor pity bids them think
What work is this of theirs, and pause
betimes,
Not Shakespeare’s grave would scare
them off with rhymes.
LOVE AND SCORN.
Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things,
Immortal that shouldst be, though all
else end,
In plighted hearts of fearless friend
with friend,
Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings?
Not grief’s nor time’s: though these
be lords and kings
Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions
bend,
They may not pierce the spirit of sense,
or blend
Quick poison with the soul’s live watersprings.
The true clear heart whose core is manful trust
Fears not that very death may turn to dust
Love lit therein as toward a brother born,
If one touch make not all its fine gold rust,
If one breath blight not all its glad
ripe corn,
And all its fire be turned to fire of
scorn.
Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof
By keen experience of a trustless heart,
Bears burning in her new-born hand the
dart
Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof
Falls of his palace, and the storied woof
Long woven of many a year with life’s
whole art
Is rent like any rotten weed apart,
And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof
Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt
Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt,
And hardly saved by pity. Woe are
we
That once we loved, and love not; but we know
The ghost of love, surviving yet in show,
Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief
must be.
O sacred, just, inevitable scorn,
Strong child of righteous judgment, whom
with grief
The rent heart bears, and wins not yet
relief,
Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born,
Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn,
One doit of all the treasure? not one
sheaf,
Not one poor doit of all? not one dead
leaf
Of all that fell and left behind a thorn?
Is man so strong that one should scorn another?
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DOYLE.
A light of blameless laughter, fancy-bred,
Soft-souled and glad and kind as love
or sleep,
Fades, and sweet mirth’s own eyes
are fain to weep
Because her blithe and gentlest bird is dead.
Weep, elves and fairies all, that never shed
Tear yet for mortal mourning: you
that keep
The doors of dreams whence nought of ill
may creep,
Mourn once for one whose lips your honey fed.
Let waters of the Golden River steep
The rose-roots whence his grave blooms
rosy-red
And murmuring of Hyblaean hives be deep
About the summer silence of its bed,
And nought less gracious than a violet peep
Between the grass grown greener round
his head.
IN MEMORY OF HENRY A. BRIGHT.
Yet again another, ere his crowning year,
Gone from friends that here may look for
him no more.
Never now for him shall hope set wide
the door,
Hope that hailed him hither, fain to greet him here.
All the gracious garden-flowers he held so dear,
Oldworld English blossoms, all his homestead
store,
Oldworld grief had strewn them round his
bier of yore,
Bidding each drop leaf by leaf as tear by tear;
Rarer lutes than mine had borne more tuneful token,
Touched by subtler hands than echoing
time can wrong,
Sweet as flowers had strewn his graveward
path along.
Now may no such old sweet dirges more be spoken,
Now the flowers whose breath was very song are broken,
Nor may sorrow find again so sweet a song.
A SOLITUDE.
Sea beyond sea, sand after sweep of sand,
Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged
with flow
Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow,
Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland
Grey gleam of skies whose smile on wave and strand
Shines weary like a man’s who smiles
to know
That now no dream can mock his faith with
show,
Nor cloud for him seem living sea or land.
Is there an end at all of all this waste,
These crumbling cliffs defeatured and defaced,
These ruinous heights of sea-sapped walls that slide
Seaward with all their banks of bleak
blown flowers
Glad yet of life, ere yet their hope subside
Beneath the coil of dull dense waves and
hours?
VICTOR HUGO: L’ARCHIPEL DE LA MANCHE.
Sea and land are fairer now, nor aught is all the
same,
Since a mightier hand than Time’s
hath woven their votive wreath.
Rocks as swords half drawn from out the smooth wave’s
jewelled sheath,
Fields whose flowers a tongue divine hath numbered
name by name,
Shores whereby the midnight or the noon clothed round
THE TWILIGHT OF THE LORDS.
Is the sound a trumpet blown, or a bell for burial
tolled,
Whence the whole air vibrates now to the
clash of words like swords—
’Let us break their bonds in sunder,
and cast away their cords;
Long enough the world has mocked us, and marvelled
to behold
How the grown man bears the curb whence his boyhood
was controlled’?
Nay, but hearken: surer counsel more
sober speech affords:
’Is the past not all inscribed with
the praises of our Lords?
Is the memory dead of deeds done of yore, the love
grown cold
That should bind our hearts to trust in their counsels
wise and bold?
These that stand against you now, senseless
crowds and heartless hordes,
Are not these the sons of men that withstood your
kings of old?
Theirs it is to bind and loose; theirs
the key that knows the wards,
Theirs the staff to lead or smite; yours, the spades
and ploughs and hods:
Theirs to hear and yours to cry, Power is yours, O
Lords our Gods.’
Hear, O England: these are they that would counsel
thee aright.
Wouldst thou fain have all thy sons sons
of thine indeed, and free?
Nay, but then no more at all as thou hast
been shalt thou be:
Needs must many dwell in darkness, that some may look
on light;
Needs must poor men brook the wrong that ensures the
rich man’s right.
How shall kings and lords be worshipped,
if no man bow the knee?
How, if no man worship these, may thy
praise endure with thee?
How, except thou trust in these, shall thy name not
lose its might?
These have had their will of thee since the Norman
came to smite:
Sires on grandsires, even as wave after
wave along the sea,
Sons on sires have followed, steadfast as clouds or
hours in flight.
Time alone hath power to say, time alone
hath eyes to see,
If your walls of rule be built but of clay-compacted
sods,
If your place of old shall know you no more, O Lords
our Gods.
Through the stalls wherein ye sit sounds a sentence
while we wait,
Set your house in order: is it not
builded on the sand?
Set your house in order, seeing the night
is hard at hand.
As the twilight of the Gods in the northern dream
of fate
Is this hour that comes against you, albeit this hour
come late.
Ye whom Time and Truth bade heed, and
ye would not understand,
Now an axe draws nigh the tree overshadowing
all the land,
And its edge of doom is set to the root of all your
state.
Light is more than darkness now, faith than fear and
hope than hate,
And what morning wills, behold, all the
night shall not withstand.
Rods of office, helms of rule, staffs of wise men,
crowns of great,
While the people willed, ye bare; now
their hopes and hearts expand,
Time with silent foot makes dust of your broken crowns
and rods,
And the lordship of your godhead is gone, O Lords
our Gods.
CLEAR THE WAY!
Clear the way, my lords and lackeys! you have had
your day.
Here you have your answer—England’s
yea against your nay:
Long enough your house has held you: up, and
clear the way!
Lust and falsehood, craft and traffic, precedent and
gold,
Tongue of courtier, kiss of harlot, promise bought
and sold,
Gave you heritage of empire over thralls of old.
Now that all these things are rotten, all their gold
is rust,
Quenched the pride they lived by, dead the faith and
cold the lust,
Shall their heritage not also turn again to dust?
By the grace of these they reigned, who left their
sons their sway:
By the grace of these, what England says her lords
unsay:
Till at last her cry go forth against them—Clear
the way!
By the grace of trust in treason knaves have lived
and lied:
By the force of fear and folly fools have fed their
pride:
By the strength of sloth and custom reason stands
defied.
Lest perchance your reckoning on some latter day be
worse,
Halt and hearken, lords of land and princes of the
purse,
Ere the tide be full that comes with blessing and
with curse.
Where we stand; as where you sit, scarce falls a sprinkling
spray;
But the wind that swells, the wave that follows, none
shall stay:
Spread no more of sail for shipwreck: out, and
clear the way!
A WORD FOR THE COUNTRY.
Men, born of the land that for ages
Has been honoured where freedom was dear,
Till your labour wax fat on its wages
You shall never be peers of a peer.
Where might is,
the right is:
Long
purses make strong swords.
Let weakness learn
meekness:
God
save the House of Lords!
You are free to consume in stagnation:
You are equal in right to obey:
You are brothers in bonds, and the nation
Is your mother—whose sons are
her prey.
Those others your
brothers,
Who
toil not, weave, nor till,
Refuse you and
use you
As
waiters on their will.
But your fathers bowed down to their masters
And obeyed them and served and adored.
Shall the sheep not give thanks to their pastors?
Shall the serf not give praise to his
lord?
Time, waning and
gaining,
Grown
other now than then,
Needs pastors
and masters
For
sheep, and not for men.
If his grandsire did service in battle,
If his grandam was kissed by a king,
Must men to my lord be as cattle
Or as apes that he leads in a string?
To deem so, to
dream so,
Would
bid the world proclaim
The dastards for
bastards,
Not
heirs of England’s fame.
Not in spite but in right of dishonour,
There are actors who trample your boards
Till the earth that endures you upon her
Grows weary to bear you, my lords.
Your token is
broken,
It
will not pass for gold:
Your glory looks
hoary,
Your
sun in heaven turns cold.
They are worthy to reign on their brothers,
To contemn them as clods and as carles,
Who are Graces by grace of such mothers
As brightened the bed of King Charles.
What manner of
banner,
What
fame is this they flaunt,
That Britain,
soul-smitten,
Should
shrink before their vaunt?
Bright sons of sublime prostitution,
You are made of the mire of the street
Where your grandmothers walked in pollution
Till a coronet shone at their feet.
Your Graces, whose
faces
Bear
high the bastard’s brand,
Seem stronger
no longer
Than
all this honest land.
But the sons of her soldiers and seamen,
They are worthy forsooth of their hire.
If the father won praise from all free men,
Shall the sons not exult in their sire?
Let money make
sunny
And
power make proud their lives,
And feed them
and breed them
Like
drones in drowsiest hives.
But if haply the name be a burden
And the souls be no kindred of theirs,
Should wise men rejoice in such guerdon
Or brave men exult in such heirs?
Or rather the
father
Frown,
shamefaced, on the son,
And no men but
foemen,
Deriding,
cry ‘Well done’?
Let the gold and the land they inherit
Pass ever from hand into hand:
In right of the forefather’s merit
Let the gold be the son’s, and the
land.
Soft raiment,
rich payment,
High
place, the state affords;
Full measure of
pleasure,
But
now no more, my lords.
Is the future beleaguered with dangers
If the poor be far other than slaves?
Shall the sons of the land be as strangers
In the land of their forefathers’
graves?
Shame were it
to bear it,
And
shame it were to see:
If free men you
be, men,
Let
proof proclaim you free.
’But democracy means dissolution:
See, laden with clamour and crime,
How the darkness of dim revolution
Comes deepening the twilight of time!
Ah, better the
fetter
That
holds the poor man’s hand
Than peril of
sterile
Blind
change that wastes the land.
’Gaze forward through clouds that environ;
It shall be as it was in the past.
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded to last.’
So teach they,
so preach they,
Who
dream themselves the dream
That hallows the
gallows
And
bids the scaffold stream.
’With a hero at head, and a nation
Well gagged and well drilled and well
cowed,
And a gospel of war and damnation,
Has not empire a right to be proud?
Fools prattle
and tattle
Of
freedom, reason, right,
The beauty of
duty,
The
loveliness of light.
’But we know, we believe it, we see it,
Force only has power upon earth.’
So be it! and ever so be it
For souls that are bestial by birth!
Let Prussian with
Russian
Exchange
the kiss of slaves:
But sea-folk are
free folk
By
grace of winds and waves.
Has the past from the sepulchres beckoned?
Let answer from Englishmen be—
No man shall be lord of us reckoned
Who is baser, not better, than we.
No coward, empowered
To
soil a brave man’s name;
For shame’s
sake and fame’s sake,
Enough
of fame and shame.
Fame needs not the golden addition;
Shame bears it abroad as a brand.
Let the deed, and no more the tradition,
Speak out and be heard through the land.
Pride, rootless
and fruitless,
No
longer takes and gives:
But surer and
purer
The
soul of England lives.
He is master and lord of his brothers
Who is worthier and wiser than they.
Him only, him surely, shall others,
Else equal, observe and obey.
Truth, flawless
and awless,
Do
falsehood what it can,
Makes royal the
loyal
And
simple heart of man.
Who are these, then, that England should hearken,
Who rage and wax wroth and grow pale
If she turn from the sunsets that darken
And her ship for the morning set sail?
Let strangers
fear dangers:
All
know, that hold her dear,
Dishonour upon
her
Can
only fall through fear.
Men, born of the landsmen and seamen
Who served her with souls and with swords,
She bids you be brothers, and free men,
And lordless, and fearless of lords.
She cares not,
she dares not
Care
now for gold or steel:
Light lead her,
truth speed her,
God
save the Commonweal!
A WORD FOR THE NATION.
A word across the water
Against our ears is borne,
Of threatenings and of slaughter,
Of rage and spite and scorn:
We have not, alack, an ally to befriend us,
And the season is ripe to extirpate and end us:
Let the German touch hands with the Gaul,
And the fortress of England must fall;
And the sea shall be swept of her seamen,
And the waters they ruled be their graves,
And Dutchmen and Frenchmen be free men,
And
Englishmen slaves.
Our time once more is over,
Once more our end is near:
A bull without a drover,
The Briton reels to rear,
And the van of the nations is held by his betters,
And the seas of the world shall be loosed from his
fetters,
And his glory shall pass as a breath,
And the life that is in him be death;
And the sepulchre sealed on his glory
For a sign to the nations shall be
As of Tyre and of Carthage in story,
Once
lords of the sea.
The lips are wise and loyal,
The hearts are brave and true,
Imperial thoughts and royal
Make strong the clamorous crew,
Whence louder and prouder the noise of defiance
Rings rage from the grave of a trustless alliance,
And bids us beware and be warned,
As abhorred of all nations and scorned,
As a swordless and spiritless nation,
A wreck on the waste of the waves.
So foams the released indignation
Of
masterless slaves.
Brute throats that miss the collar,
Bowed backs that ask the whip,
Stretched hands that lack the dollar,
And many a lie-seared lip,
Forefeel and foreshow for us signs as funereal
As the signs that were regal of yore and imperial;
We shall pass as the princes they served,
We shall reap what our fathers deserved,
And the place that was England’s be taken
By one that is worthier than she,
And the yoke of her empire be shaken
Like
spray from the sea.
French hounds, whose necks are aching
Still from the chain they crave,
In dog-day madness breaking
The dog-leash, thus may rave:
But the seas that for ages have fostered and fenced
her
Laugh, echoing the yell of their kennel against her
And their moan if destruction draw near them
And the roar of her laughter to hear them;
For she knows that if Englishmen be men
Their England has all that she craves;
All love and all honour from free men,
All
hatred from slaves.
All love that rests upon her
Like sunshine and sweet air,
All light of perfect honour
And praise that ends in prayer,
She wins not more surely, she wears not more proudly,
Than the token of tribute that clatters thus loudly,
The tribute of foes when they meet
That rattles and rings at her feet,
The tribute of rage and of rancour,
The tribute of slaves to the free,
To the people whose hope hath its anchor
Made
fast in the sea.
No fool that bows the back he
Feels fit for scourge or brand,
No scurril scribes that lackey
The lords of Lackeyland,
No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet,
For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet,
No whelp of as currish a pack
As the litter whose yelp it gives back,
Though he answer the cry of his brother
As echoes might answer from caves,
Shall be witness as though for a mother
Whose
children were slaves.
But those found fit to love her,
Whose love has root in faith,
Who hear, though darkness cover
Time’s face, what memory saith,
Who seek not the service of great men or small men
But the weal that is common for comfort of all men,
Those yet that in trust have beholden
Truth’s dawn over England grow golden
And quicken the darkness that stagnates
And scatter the shadows that flee,
Shall reply for her meanest as magnates
And
masters by sea.
And all shall mark her station,
Her message all shall hear,
When, equal-eyed, the nation
Bids all her sons draw near,
And freedom be more than tradition or faction,
And thought be no swifter to serve her than action,
And justice alone be above her,
That love may be prouder to love her,
And time on the crest of her story
Inscribe, as remembrance engraves,
The sign that subdues with its glory
Kings,
princes, and slaves.
A WORD FROM THE PSALMIST.
PS. XCIV. 8.
’Take heed, ye unwise
among the people:
O ye fools, when
will ye understand?’
From pulpit or choir beneath
the steeple,
Though the words
be fierce, the tones are bland.
But a louder than the Church’s echo thunders
In the ears of men who may not choose
but hear,
And the heart in him that hears it leaps and wonders,
With triumphant hope astonished, or with
fear
For the names whose sound
was power awaken
Neither love nor
reverence now nor dread;
Their strongholds and shrines
are stormed and taken,
Their kingdom
and all its works are dead.
Take heed: for the tide
of time is risen:
It is full not
yet, though now so high
That spirits and hopes long
pent in prison
Feel round them
a sense of freedom nigh,
And a savour keen and sweet of brine and billow,
And a murmur deep and strong of deepening
strength.
Though the watchman dream, with sloth or pride for
pillow,
And the night be long, not endless is
its length.
From the springs of dawn,
from clouds that sever
From the equal
heavens and the eastward sea,
The witness comes that endures
for ever,
Till men be brethren
and thralls be free.
But the wind of the wings
of dawn expanding
Strikes chill
on your hearts as change and death.
Ye are old, but ye have not
understanding,
And proud, but
your pride is a dead man’s breath.
And your wise men, toward whose words and signs ye
hearken,
And your strong men, in whose hands ye
put your trust,
Strain eyes to behold but clouds and dreams that darken,
Stretch hands that can find but weapons
red with rust.
Their watchword rings, and
the night rejoices,
But the lark’s
note laughs at the night-bird’s notes—
’Is virtue verily found
in voices?
Or is wisdom won
when all win votes?
’Take heed, ye unwise
indeed, who listen
When the wind’s
wings beat and shift and change;
Whose hearts are uplift, whose
eyeballs glisten,
With desire of
new things great and strange.
Let not dreams misguide nor any visions wrong you:
That which has been, it is now as it was
then.
Is not Compromise of old a god among you?
Is not Precedent indeed a king of men?
But the windy hopes that lead
mislead you,
And the sounds
ye hear are void and vain.
Is a vote a coat? will franchise
feed you,
Or words be a
roof against the rain?
’Eight ages are gone
since kingship entered,
With knights and
peers at its harnessed back,
And the land, no more in its
own strength centred,
Was cast for a
prey to the princely pack.
But we pared the fangs and clipped the ravening claws
of it,
And good was in time brought forth of
an evil thing,
And the land’s high name waxed lordlier in war
because of it,
When chartered Right had bridled and curbed
the king.
And what so fair has the world
beholden,
And what so firm
has withstood the years,
As Monarchy bound in chains
all golden,
And Freedom guarded
about with peers?
’How think ye? know
not your lords and masters
What collars are
meet for brawling throats?
Is change not mother of strange
disasters?
Shall plague or
peril be stayed by votes?
Out of precedent and privilege and order
Have we plucked the flower of compromise,
whose root
Bears blossoms that shine from border again to border,
And the mouths of many are fed with its
temperate fruit.
Your masters are wiser than
ye, their henchmen:
Your lords know
surely whereof ye have need.
Equality? Fools, would
you fain be Frenchmen?
Is equity more
than a word indeed?
’Your voices, forsooth,
your most sweet voices,
Your worthy voices,
your love, your hate,
Your choice, who know not
whereof your choice is,
What stays are
these for a stable state?
Inconstancy, blind and deaf with its own fierce babble,
Swells ever your throats with storm of
uncertain cheers:
He leans on straws who leans on a light-souled rabble;
His trust is frail who puts not his trust
in peers.’
So shrills the message whose
word convinces
Of righteousness
knaves, of wisdom fools;
That serfs may boast them
because of princes,
And the weak rejoice
that the strong man rules.
True friends, ye people, are
these, the faction
Full-mouthed that
flatters and snails and bays,
That fawns and foams with
alternate action,
And mocks the
names that it soils with praise.
As from fraud and force their power had fast beginning,
So by righteousness and peace it may not
stand,
But by craft of state and nets of secret spinning,
Words that weave and unweave wiles like
ropes of sand
Form, custom, and gold, and
laws grown hoary,
And strong tradition
that guards the gate:
To these, O people, to these
give glory,
That your name
among nations may be great.
How long—for haply not now
much longer—
Shall fear put faith in a
faithless creed,
And shapes and shadows of truths be stronger
In strong men’s eyes
than the truth indeed?
If freedom be not a word that dies when spoken,
If justice be not a dream whence men must
wake,
How shall not the bonds of the thraldom of old be
broken,
And right put might in the hands of them
that break?
For clear as a tocsin from
the steeple
Is the cry gone
forth along the land,
Take heed, ye unwise among
the people:
O ye fools, when
will ye understand?
A BALLAD AT PARTING.
Sea to sea that clasps and fosters England, uttering
ever-more
Song eterne and praise immortal of the indomitable
shore,
Lifts aloud her constant heart up, south
to north and east to west,
Here in speech that shames all music, there in thunder-throated
roar,
Chiming concord out of discord, waking
rapture out of rest.
All her ways are lovely, all her works and symbols
are divine,
Yet shall man love best what first bade
leap his heart and bend his knee;
Yet where first his whole soul worshipped shall his
soul set up her shrine:
Nor may love not know the lovelier, fair
as both beheld may be,
Here the limitless north-eastern, there
the strait south-western sea.
Though their chant bear all one burden, as ere man
was born it bore;
Though the burden be diviner than the songs all souls
adore;
Yet may love not choose but choose between
them which to love the best.
Me the sea my nursing-mother, me the Channel green
and hoar,
Holds at heart more fast than all things,
bares for me the goodlier breast,
Lifts for me the lordlier love-song, bids for me more
sunlight shine,
Sounds for me the stormier trumpet of
the sweeter strain to me.
So the broad pale Thames is loved not like the tawny
springs of Tyne:
Choice is clear between them for the soul
whose vision holds in fee
Here the limitless north-eastern, there
the strait south-western sea.
Choice is clear, but dear is either; nor has either
not in store
Many a likeness, many a written sign of spirit-searching
lore,
Whence the soul takes fire of sweet remembrance,
magnified and blest.
Thought of songs whose flame-winged feet have trod
the unfooted water-floor
When the lord of all the living lords
of souls bade speed their quest,
Soft live sound like children’s babble down
the rippling sand’s incline,
Or the lovely song that loves them, hailed
with thankful prayer and plea;
These are parcels of the harvest here whose gathered
sheaves are mine,
Garnered now, but sown and reaped where
winds make wild with wrath or glee
Here the limitless north-eastern, there
the strait south-western sea.
Song, thy name is freedom, seeing thy strength was
born of breeze and brine.
Fare now forth and fear no fortune; such
a seal is set on thee.
Joy begat and memory bare thee, seeing in spirit a
two-fold sign,
Even the sign of those thy fosters, each
as thou from all time free,
Here the limitless north-eastern, there
the strait south-western sea.
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