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 |
| DEDICATION. | 1 |
| NOTES. | 14 |
| GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS | 15 |
| ARISTOPHANES | 15 |
| I. | 24 |
| II. | 24 |
| III. | 25 |
| LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA | 25 |
| I. | 25 |
| II. | 26 |
| III. | 26 |
| BY THE NORTH SEA | 28 |
| BY THE NORTH SEA | 29 |
| I. | 29 |
| II. | 30 |
| III. | 31 |
| IV. | 32 |
| V. | 34 |
| VI. | 34 |
| VII. | 36 |
To Mrs. Lynn Linton.
Daughter in spirit elect and consecrate
By love and reverence of the Olympian
sire
Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great,
And found so gracious toward my long desire
To bid that love in song before his gate
Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre,
To none save one it now may dedicate
Song’s new burnt-offering on a century’s
pyre.
And though the
gift be light
As ashes in men’s
sight,
Left by the flame of no ethereal fire,
Yet, for his worthier
sake
Than words are
worthless, take
This wreath of words ere yet their hour
expire:
So, haply, from some heaven
above,
He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love.
May 24, 1880.
SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
1.
Five years beyond an hundred years have seen
Their winters, white as faith’s
and age’s hue,
Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between,
And hope’s young conquering colours
reared anew,
Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keen
Smote sharper once than ever storm-wind
blew,
A head predestined for the girdling green
That laughs at lightning all the seasons
through,
Nor frost or change
can sunder
Its crown untouched
of thunder
Leaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grew
Alone for brows
too bold
For storm to sear
of old,
Elect to shine in time’s eternal
view,
Rose on the verge of radiant
life
Between the winds and sunbeams mingling love with
strife.
2.
The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth
To Milton’s white republic undefiled
That might endure so few fleet years on earth
Bore in him likewise as divine a child;
But born not less for crowns of love and mirth,
Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild,
The leaf that girds about with gentler girth
The brow steel-bound in battle, and the
wild
Soft spray that flowers above
The flower-soft
hair of love;
And the white lips of wayworn winter smiled
And grew serene
as spring’s
When with stretched
clouds like wings
Or wings like drift of snow-clouds massed
and piled
The godlike giant, softening,
spread
A shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head.
3.
And o’er it brightening bowed the wild-haired
hour,
And touched his tongue with honey and
with fire,
And breathed between his lips the note of power
That makes of all the winds of heaven
a lyre
Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that
tower
To softest springs of waters that suspire,
With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower
Breathless with hope and dauntless with
desire:
4.
Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder
Or love could lift them for the sun to
smite,
His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder
Had risen, perplexing the presageful night
With shadow and glory around her sphere and under
And portents prophesying by sound and
sight;
And half the sound was song and half was thunder,
And half his life of lightning, half of
light:
And in the soft
clenched hand
Shone like a burning
brand
A shadowy sword for swordless fields of
fight,
Wrought only for
such lord
As so may wield
the sword
That all things ill be put to fear and
flight
Even at the flash and sweep
and gleam
Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream.
5.
Like the sun’s rays that blind the night’s
wild beasts
The sword of song shines as the swordsman
sings;
From the west wind’s verge even to the arduous
east’s
The splendour of the shadow that it flings
Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts
Of men fulfilled with food of evil things;
Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests,
Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands
of kings;
Turns dark the
lamp’s hot light,
And turns the
darkness bright
As with the shadow of dawn’s reverberate
wings;
And far before
its way
Heaven, yearning
toward the day,
Shines with its thunder and round its
lightning rings;
And never hand yet earlier
played
With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire
its blade.
6.
As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew
More soft than slumber’s, fell the
first note’s sound
From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier
through
Than leaves through calm air wheeling
toward the ground
Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue
Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound,
Ere winter loosen all the AEolian crew
With storm unleashed behind them like
a hound.
As lightly rose
and sank
Beside a green-flowered
bank
The clear first notes his burning boyhood
found
To sing her sacred
praise
Who rode her city’s
ways
Clothed with bright hair and with high
purpose crowned;
A song of soft presageful
breath,
Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death;
7.
Who should love two things only and only praise
More than all else for ever: even
the glory
Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days
Take light whereby death’s self
seems transitory;
And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise,
Love that wipes off the miry stains and
gory
From Time’s worn feet, besmirched on bloodred
ways,
And lightens with his light the night
of story;
Love that lifts
up from dust
Life, and makes
darkness just,
And purges as with fire of purgatory
The dense disastrous
air,
To burn old falsehood
bare
And give the wind its ashes heaped and
hoary;
Love, that with eyes of ageless
youth
Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth.
8.
For at his birth the sistering stars were one
That flamed upon it as one fiery star;
Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun,
And Song, whose fires are quenched when
Freedom’s are.
Of all that love not liberty let none
Love her that fills our lips with fire
from far
To mix with winds and seas in unison
And sound athwart life’s tideless
harbour-bar
Out where our
songs fly free
Across time’s
bounded sea,
A boundless flight beyond the dim sun’s
car,
Till all the spheres
of night
Chime concord
round their flight
Too loud for blasts of warring change
to mar,
From stars that sang for Homer’s
birth
To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth
9.
Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave,
Stars of our worship, lights of our desire!
For never man that heard the world’s wind rave
To you was truer in trust of heart and
lyre:
Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave
Beheld your flame against the wind burn
higher:
Nor all the gusts that blanch life’s worldly
wave
With surf and surge could quench its flawless
fire:
No blast of all
that blow
Might bid the
torch burn low
That lightens on us yet as o’er
his pyre,
Indomitable of
storm,
That now no flaws
deform
Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire,
One light of godlike breath
and flame,
To write on heaven with man’s most glorious
names his name.
10.
The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew
And freaked with fire as when God’s
hand would mar
Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue
Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous
car,
That saw how swift a gathering glory grew
About him risen, ere clouds could blind
or bar
A splendour strong to burn and burst them through
And mix in one sheer light things near
and far.
First flew before
his path
Light shafts of
love and wrath,
But winged and edged as elder warriors’
are;
Then rose a light
that showed
Across the midsea
road
From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar
The way of war and love and
fate
Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate.
11.
Mine own twice banished fathers’ harbour-land,
Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved,
By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned,
Flamed on him, and his burning lips were
moved
As that live statue’s throned on Lybian sand
When morning moves it, ere her light faith
roved
From promise, and her tyrant’s poisonous hand
Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved
More deadly than
despair
And falser even
than fair,
Though fairer than all elder hopes removed
As landmarks by
the crime
Of inundating
time;
Light faith by grief too loud too long
reproved:
For even as in some darkling
dance
Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his
heart from France.
12.
But past the snows and summits Pyrenean
Love stronger-winged held more prevailing
flight
That o’er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and AEgean
Shores lightened with one storm of sound
and light.
From earliest even to hoariest years one paean
Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar
of fight,
From Nestor’s tongue in accents Achillean
On death’s blind verge dominant
over night
For voice as hand
and hand
As voice for one
fair land
Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the
height
Where darkling
pines enrobe
The steel-cold
Lake of Gaube,
Deep as dark death and keen as death to
smite,
To where on peak or moor or
plain
His heart and song and sword were one to strike for
Spain.
13.
Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand
Pale in the light of war or treacherous
fate
Song bade before him all their shadows stand
For whom his will unbarred their funeral
grate.
The father by whose wrong revenged his land
Was given for sword and fire to desolate
Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand,
Great as the woes he wrought and bore
were great.
Fair as she smiled
and died,
Death’s
crowned and breathless bride
Smiled as one living even on craft and
hate:
And pity, a star
unrisen,
Scarce lit Ferrante’s
prison
Ere night unnatural closed the natural
gate
That gave their life and love
and light
To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight.
14.
Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell
In perfect notes of music-measured pain
On veiled sweet heads that heard not love’s
farewell
Sob through the song that bade them rise
again;
Rise in the light of living song, to dwell
With memories crowned of memory:
so the strain
Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles hell
And sweet the darkness of the breathless
plain,
And with Elysian
flowers
Recrowned the
wreathless hours
That mused and mourned upon their works
in vain;
For all their
works of death
Song filled with
light and breath,
And listening grief relaxed her lightening
chain;
For sweet as all the wide
sweet south
She found the song like honey from the lion’s
mouth.
15.
High from his throne in heaven Simonides,
Crowned with mild aureole of memorial
tears
That the everlasting sun of all time sees
All golden, molten from the forge of years,
Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees
Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners’
ears,
Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees
And honied as their harvest, that endears
The toil of flowery
days;
And smiling perfect
praise
Hailed his one brother mateless else of
peers:
Whom we that hear
not him
For length of
date grown dim
Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief
that hears;
And harshest heights of sorrowing
hours,
Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers.
16.
Therefore to him the shadow of death was none,
The darkness was not, nor the temporal
tomb:
And multitudinous time for him was one,
Who bade before his equal seat of doom
Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun
The weavers of the world’s large-historied
loom,
By their own works of light or darkness done
Clothed round with light or girt about
with gloom.
In speech of purer
gold
Than even they
spake of old
He bade the breath of Sidney’s lips
relume
The fire of thought
and love
That made his
bright life move
Through fair brief seasons of benignant
bloom
To blameless music ever, strong
As death and sweet as death-annihilating song.
17.
Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,
Love gave his thought strength equal to
release
From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam
Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease;
So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home
The soul’s large pinions till her
strife should cease:
And through the trumpet of a child of Rome
Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.
As though some
northern hand
Reft from the
Latin land
A spoil more costly than the Colchian
fleece
To clothe with
golden sound
Of old joy newly
found
And rapture as of penetrating peace
The naked north-wind’s
cloudiest clime,
And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time.
18.
He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy
Fade, and the darkness at Oenone’s
prayer
Close upon her that closed upon her boy,
For all the curse of godhead that she
bare;
And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy
With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering
hair;
And his love smitten in their dawn of joy
Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change
to wear;
And one in flowery
coils
Caught as in fiery
toils
Smite Calydon with mourning unaware;
And where her
low turf shrine
Showed Modesty
divine
The fairest mother’s daughter far
more fair
Hide on her breast the heavenly
shame
That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with
flame.
19.
Nor less the light of story than of song
With graver glories girt his godlike head,
Reverted alway from the temporal throng
Of lives that live not toward the living
dead.
The shadows and the splendours of their throng
Made bright and dark about his board and
bed
The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong
With sound of lutes or trumpets blown,
that led
Forth of the ghostly
gate
Opening in spite
of fate
Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread,
Divine and direful
things,
These foul as
priests or kings,
Those fair as heaven or love or freedom,
red
With blood and green with
palms and white
With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light.
20.
The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray
That keeps the place of Phocion’s
name serene
And clears the cloud from Kosciusko’s day,
Alternate as dark hours with bright between,
Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay
For all stars open that all eyes had seen
Rise on the night or twilight of the way
Where feet of human hopes and fears had
been.
Again the sovereign
word
On Milton’s
lips was heard
Living: again the tender three days’
queen
Drew bright and
gentle breath
On the sharp edge
of death:
And, staged again to show of mortal scene,
Tiberius, ere his name grew
dire,
Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and
fire.
21.
Most ardent and most awful and most fond,
The fervour of his Apollonian eye
Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond
Of time whose years beheld her and past
by
Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned
The casque again of Pallas; for her cry
Forth of the past and future, depths beyond
This where the present and its tyrants
lie,
As one great voice
of twain
For him had pealed
again,
Heard but of hearts high as her own was
high,
High as her own
and his
And pure as love’s
heart is,
That lives though hope at once and memory
die:
And with her breath his clarion’s
blast
Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with
past.
22.
As a wave only obsequious to the wind
Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids
it leap,
Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned
By the strong god’s breath moving
on the deep
From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind
That shakes the plain where no men sow
nor reap,
So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned
And pity toward all tears he saw men weep,
Arose to take
man’s part
His loving lion
heart,
Kind as the sun’s that has in charge
to keep
Earth and the
seed thereof
Safe in his lordly
love,
Strong as sheer truth and soft as very
sleep;
The mightiest heart since
Milton’s leapt,
The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare
slept.
23.
Like the wind’s own on her divided sea
His song arose on Corinth, and aloud
Recalled her Isthmian song and strife when she
Was thronged with glories as with gods
in crowd
And as the wind’s own spirit her breath was
free
And as the heaven’s own heart her
soul was proud,
But freer and prouder stood no son than he
Of all she bare before her heart was bowed;
None higher than
he who heard
Medea’s
keen last word
Transpierce her traitor, and like a rushing
cloud
That sundering
shows a star
Saw pass her thunderous
car
And a face whiter and deadlier than a
shroud
That lightened from it, and
the brand
Of tender blood that falling seared his suppliant
hand.
24.
More fair than all things born and slain of fate,
More glorious than all births of days
and nights,
He bade the spirit of man regenerate,
Rekindling, rise and reassume the rights
That in high seasons of his old estate
Clothed him and armed with majesties and
mights
Heroic, when the times and hearts were great
And in the depths of ages rose the heights
Radiant of high
deeds done
And souls that
matched the sun
For splendour with the lightnings of their
lights
Whence even their
uttered names
Burn like the
strong twin flames
Of song that shakes a throne and steel
that smites;
As on Thermopylae when shone
Leonidas, on Syracuse Timoleon.
25.
Or, sweeter than the breathless buds when spring
With smiles and tears and kisses bids
them breathe,
Fell with its music from his quiring string
Fragrance of pine-leaves and odorous heath
Twined round the lute whereto he sighed to sing
Of the oak that screened and showed its
maid beneath,
Who seeing her bee crawl back with broken wing
Faded, a fairer flower than all her wreath,
And paler, though
her oak
Stood scathless
of the stroke
More sharp than edge of axe or wolfish
teeth,
That mixed with
mortals dead
Her own half heavenly
head
And life incorporate with a sylvan sheath,
And left the wild rose and
the dove
A secret place and sacred from all guests but Love.
26.
But in the sweet clear fields beyond the river
Dividing pain from peace and man from
shade
He saw the wings that there no longer quiver
Sink of the hours whose parting footfalls
fade
On ears which hear the rustling amaranth shiver
With sweeter sound of wind than ever made
Music on earth: departing, they deliver
The soul that shame or wrath or sorrow
swayed;
And round the
king of men
Clash the clear
arms again,
Clear of all soil and bright as laurel
braid,
That rang less
high for joy
Through the gates
fallen of Troy
Than here to hail the sacrificial maid,
Iphigeneia, when the ford
Fast-flowing of sorrows brought her father and their
lord.
27.
And in the clear gulf of the hollow sea
He saw light glimmering through the grave
green gloom
That hardly gave the sun’s eye leave to see
Cymodameia; but nor tower nor tomb,
No tower on earth, no tomb of waves may be,
That may not sometime by diviner doom
Be plain and pervious to the poet; he
Bids time stand back from him and fate
make room
For passage of
his feet,
Strong as their
own are fleet,
And yield the prey no years may reassume
Through all their
clamorous track,
Nor night nor
day win back
Nor give to darkness what his eyes illume
And his lips bless for ever:
he
Knows what earth knows not, sings truth sung not of
the sea.
28.
Before the sentence of a curule chair
More sacred than the Roman, rose and stood
To take their several doom the imperial pair
Diversely born of Venus, and in mood
Diverse as their one mother, and as fair,
Though like two stars contrasted, and
as good,
Though different as dark eyes from golden hair;
One as that iron planet red like blood
That bears among
the stars
Fierce witness
of her Mars
In bitter fire by her sweet light subdued;
One, in the gentler
skies
Sweet as her amorous
eyes:
One proud of worlds and seas and darkness
rude
Composed and conquered; one
content
With lightnings from loved eyes of lovers lightly
sent.
29.
And where Alpheus and where Ladon ran
Radiant, by many a rushy and rippling
cove
More known to glance of god than wandering man,
He sang the strife of strengths divine
that strove,
Unequal, one with other, for a span,
Who should be friends for ever in heaven
above
And here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan,
And the awless lord of kings and shepherds,
Love:
All the sweet
strife and strange
With fervid counterchange
Till one fierce wail through many a glade
and grove
Rang, and its
breath made shiver
The reeds of many
a river,
And the warm airs waxed wintry that it
clove,
Keen-edged as ice-retempered
brand;
Nor might god’s hurt find healing save of godlike
hand.
30.
As when the jarring gates of thunder ope
Like earthquake felt in heaven, so dire
a cry,
So fearful and so fierce—’Give the
sword scope!’—
Rang from a daughter’s lips, darkening
the sky
To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope
With starless horror: nor the God’s
own eye
Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope,
Might well endure to see the adulteress
die,
The husband-slayer
fordone
By swordstroke
of her son,
Unutterable, unimaginable on high,
On earth abhorrent,
fell
Beyond all scourge
of hell,
Yet righteous as redemption: Love
stood nigh,
Mute, sister-like, and closer
clung
Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening
tongue.
31.
All these things heard and seen and sung of old,
He heard and saw and sang them. Once
again
Might foot of man tread, eye of man behold
Things unbeholden save of ancient men,
Ways save by gods untrodden. In his hold
The staff that stayed through some AEtnean
glen
The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled
And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even
as then
Became a prophet’s
rod,
A lyre on fire
of God,
Being still the staff of exile: yea,
as when
The voice poured
forth on us
Was even of AEschylus,
And his one word great as the crying of
ten,
Crying in men’s ears
of wrath toward wrong,
Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song.
32.
Him too whom none save one before him ever
Beheld, nor since hath man again beholden,
Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giver
Of all gifts back to man by time withholden,
Shakespeare—him too, whom sea-like ages
sever,
As waves divide men’s eyes from
lights upholden
To landward, from our songs that find him never,
Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden—
Him too this one
song found,
And raised at
its sole sound
Up from the dust of darkling dreams and
olden
Legends forlorn
of breath,
Up from the deeps
of death,
Ulysses: him whose name turns all
songs golden,
The wise divine strong soul,
whom fate
Could make no less than change and chance beheld him
great.
33.
Nor stands the seer who raised him less august
Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe,
Less constant or less loving or less just,
But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith,
Holding all high and gentle names in trust
Of time for honour; so his quickening
breath
Called from the darkness of their martyred dust
Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth,
Revived and reinspired
With speech from
heavenward fired
By love to say what Love the Archangel
saith
Only, nor may
such word
Save by such ears
be heard
As hear the tongues of angels after death
Descending on them like a
dove
Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love.
34.
All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things,
All generous names and loyal, and all
wise,
With all his heart in all its wayfarings
He sought, and worshipped, seeing them
with his eyes
In very present glory, clothed with wings
Of words and deeds and dreams immortal,
rise
Visible more than living slaves and kings,
Audible more than actual vows and lies:
These, with scorn’s
fieriest rod,
These and the
Lord their God,
The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the
skies
As they Lord Gods
of earth,
These with a rage
of mirth
He mocked and scourged and spat on, in
such wise
That none might stand before
his rod,
And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or
God.
35.
For of all souls for all time glorious none
Loved Freedom better, of all who have
loved her best,
Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun
Writ as with fire and light on heaven’s
own crest,
Of all words heard on earth the noblest one
That ever spake for souls and left them
blest:
Gladly we should rest ever,
had we Won
freedom: We have lost,
and very gladly rest.
O poet hero, lord
And father, we
record
Deep in the burning tablets of the breast
Thankfully those
divine
And living words
of thine
For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest
With strokes engraven past
hurt of years
And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears.
36.
But who being less than thou shall sing of thee
Words worthy of more than pity or less
than scorn?
Who sing the golden garland woven of three,
Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the
morn,
More godlike than the graven gods men see
Made all but all immortal, human born
And heavenly natured? With the first came He,
Led by the living hand, who left forlorn
Life by his death,
and time
More by his life
sublime
Than by the lives of all whom all men
mourn,
And even for mourning
praise
Heaven, as for
all those days
These dead men’s lives clothed round
with glories worn
By memory till all time lie
dead,
And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare’s
head.
37.
Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours,
Came girt with Grecian gold the second
Grace,
And verier daughter of his most perfect hours
Than any of latter time or alien place
Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers
Only, nor wearing on her statelier face
The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers
That graced and guarded round that holiest
race,
That heavenliest
and most high
Time hath seen
live and die,
Poured all their power upon him to retrace
The erased immortal
roll
Of Love’s
most sovereign scroll
And Wisdom’s warm from Freedom’s
wide embrace,
The scroll that on Aspasia’s
knees
Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.
38.
Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air,
Came laughing like Etrurian spring the
third,
With green Valdelsa’s hill-flowers in her hair
Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice
the bird
Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair
As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that
engird
The walls engirdling with a circling stair
My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word
Fell from her
flowerlike mouth
Not sweet with
all the south;
As though the dust shrined in Certaldo
stirred
39.
No lovelier laughed the garden which receives
Yet, and yet hides not from our following
eyes
With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves,
Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,
Bowed like a flowering reed when May’s wind
heaves
The reed-bed that the stream kisses and
sighs,
In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes
What yet the wisest of the starriest wise
Whom Greece might
ever hear
Speaks in the
gentlest ear
That ever heard love’s lips philosophize
With such deep-reasoning
words
As blossoms use
and birds,
Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they
rise
Far off, in no wise over far,
Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.
40.
What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,
Darkening the light of heaven, lightening
the night,
Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre
That makes time’s face pale with
its reflex light
And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,
A shadow of red remembrance? Right
nor might
Alternating wore ever shapes more dire
Nor manifest in all men’s awful
sight
In form and face
that wore
Heaven’s
light and likeness more
Than these, or held suspense men’s
hearts at height
More fearful,
since man first
Slaked with man’s
blood his thirst,
Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in
fight,
Till tower on ruining tower
was hurled
Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world.
41.
Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand
Who carved their several praise in words
of gold
To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand,
Made shelterless of laurels bought and
sold
For price of blood or incense, dust or sand,
Triumph or terror. He that sought
of old
His father Ammon in a stranger’s land,
And shrank before the serpentining fold,
Stood in our seer’s
wide eye
No higher than
man most high,
And lowest in heart when highest in hope
to hold
Fast as a scripture
furled
The scroll of
all the world
Sealed with his signet: nor the blind
and bold
First thief of empire, round
whose head
Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets
fed.[1]
42.
As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,
He saw the light of death, riotous and
red,
Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis
Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian
dead,
Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,
The steely snows of Russia, for the tread
Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss
The snaky lines of blood violently shed.
43.
As light that blesses, hallowing with a look;
He saw the godhead in Vittoria’s
face
Shine soft on Buonarroti’s, till he took,
Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace,
A strength more heavenly to confront and brook
All ill things coiled about his worldly
race,
From the bright scripture of that present book
Wherein his tired grand eyes got power
to trace
Comfort more sweet
than youth,
And hope whose
child was truth,
And love that brought forth sorrow for
a space,
Only that she
might bear
Joy: these
things, written there,
Made even his soul’s high heaven
a heavenlier place,
Perused with eyes whose glory
and glow
Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo.
44.
With balms and dews of blessing he consoled
The fair fame wounded by the black priest’s
fang,
Giovanna’s, and washed off her blithe and bold
Boy-bridegroom’s blood, that seemed
so long to hang
On her fair hand, even till the stain of old
Was cleansed with healing song, that after
sang
Sharp truth by sweetest singers’ lips untold
Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note
rang
From other strings
divine
Ere his rekindling
line
With yet more piteous and intolerant pang
Pierced all men’s
hearts anew
That heard her
passion through
Till fierce from throes of fiery pity
sprang
Wrath, armed for chase of
monstrous beasts,
Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests.
45.
He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth
And majesty of meanest men born free,
That made with Luther’s or with Hofer’s
birth
The whole world worthier of the sun to
see:
The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth
Wherein souls festered by the servile
sea
That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth
Thronged round with worship in Parthenope.
His hand bade
Justice guide
Her child Tyrannicide,
Light winged by fire that brings the dawn
to be;
And pierced with
Tyrrel’s dart
Again the riotous
heart
That mocked at mercy’s tongue and
manhood’s knee:
And oped the cell where kinglike
death
Hung o’er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth.
46.
Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind
He bared the heart of Essex, twain and
one,
For the base heart that soiled the starry mind
Stern, for the father in his child undone
Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed
With their sweet image visibly set on
As by God’s hand, clear as his own designed
The likeness radiant out of ages gone
That none may
now destroy
Of that high Roman
boy
Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son
True-born of sovereign
seed,
Foredoomed even
thence to bleed,
The stately grace of bright Caesarion,
The head unbent, the heart
unbowed,
That not the shadow of death could make less clear
and proud.
47.
With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus
At once by service and similitude,
Service devout and worship emulous
Of the same golden Muses once they wooed,
The names and shades adored of all of us,
The nurslings of the brave world’s
earlier brood,
Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus
First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed
With blessings
bright like tears
From the old memorial
years,
And loves and lovely laughters, every
mood
Sweet as the drops
that fell
Of their own oenomel
From living lips to cheer the multitude
That feeds on words divine,
and grows
More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.
48.
Peace, the soft seal of long life’s closing
story,
The silent music that no strange note
jars,
Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory
Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual
scars
Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary
With much long warfare, and with gradual
bars
Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory,
Broke, and the power came back that passion
mars:
And at the lovely
last
Above all anguish
past
Before his own the sightless eyes like
stars
Arose that watched
arise
Like stars in
other skies
Above the strife of ships and hurtling
cars
The Dioscurian songs divine
That lighten all the world with lightning of their
line.
49.
He sang the last of Homer, having sung
The last of his Ulysses. Bright and
wide
For him time’s dark strait ways, like clouds
that clung
About the day-star, doubtful to divide,
Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue
Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried,
Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung,
Homer, and grey Laertes at his side
Kingly as kings
are none
Beneath a later
sun,
And the sweet maiden ministering in pride
To sovereign and
to sage
In their more
sweet old age:
These things he sang, himself as old,
and died.
And if death be not, if life
be,
As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.
50.
Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love
Was pure toward all high poets, all their
kind
And all bright words and all sweet works thereof;
Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight
kind;
Heart that no fear but every grief might move
Wherewith men’s hearts were bound
of powers that bind;
The purest soul that ever proof could prove
From taint of tortuous or of envious mind;
Whose eyes elate
and clear
Nor shame nor
ever fear
But only pity or glorious wrath could
blind;
Name set for love
apart,
Held lifelong
in my heart,
Face like a father’s toward my face
inclined;
No gilts like thine are mine
to give,
Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.
[1] Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write?
Time, in his children’s
blood who takes delight.
From the Greek of Landor.
6. See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor.
10. The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir.
13. Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este.
14, 15. Poems ‘on the Dead.’
16. Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.
17, 18. Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris Aram.
19, 20. Imaginary Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; AEschines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and Marvell; Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania.
21, 22, 23. Hellenics: To Corinth.
24. Hellenics: Regeneration.
25. The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.
26. The Shades of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia.
27. Enallos and Cymodameia.
28. The Children of Venus.
29. Cupid and Pan.
30. The Death of Clytemnestra; The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of Orestes.
32. The Last of Ulysses.
33. Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt.
35. Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos.
36. The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.
37. Pericles and Aspasia.
38. The Pentameron.
39. Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
40. Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio AEmilianus, Polybius, and Panaetius.
41. Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the Senate.
42. The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff.
43. Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti.
44. Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five Scenes (Beatrice Cenci).
45. Luther’s Parents: The Death of Hofer: (Imaginary Conversations) Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge Wolfgang and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (The Last Fruit off an Old Tree): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn.
46. Essex and Spenser (Imaginary Conversations): Essex and Bacon: Antony and Octavius (Scenes for the Study).
47. Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus.
48, 49. Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha.
‘J’en passe, et des meilleurs.’ But who can enumerate all or half our obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible genius of the great man whose life and whose labour lasted even from the generation of our fathers’ fathers to our own? Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so deeply as I feel the inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect gratitude to the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but ‘such as I had have I given him.’
FROM
Attempted in English verse after the original metre.
I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical invention of the anapaestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapaestic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language; and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees: and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line—which I doubt—could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause, in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who
’dance
as ’twere to the music
Their own hoofs make.’
I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation: but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare’s to praise at once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes.
THE BIRDS.
(685-723.)
Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and
like to the leaves’
generations,
That are little of might, that are moulded of mire,
unenduring and
shadowlike
nations,
Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as
visions of creatures
fast
fleeing,
Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and
dateless the date of
our
being:
Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all
of whose thoughts
are
eternal;
That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all
things aright as to
matters
supernal,
Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of
streams, and the
dark
beyond reaching,
Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus
pack with his preaching.
It was Chaos and Night at the first, and
the blackness of darkness, and
hell’s
broad border,
Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths
of the womb of the
dark
without order
First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was
a wind-egg hatched
in
her bosom,
Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love
burst out as a
blossom,
Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds
gustily turning. He, after his wedlock with Chaos,
whose wings are of darkness, in hell
broad-burning,
For his nestlings begat him the race of us first,
and upraised us to
light
new-lighted.
And before this was not the race of the gods, until
all things by Love
were
united;
And of kind united with kind in communion of nature
the sky and the sea
are
Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the
gods everlasting and
blest.
So that we are
Far away the most ancient of all things blest.
And that we are of Love’s
generation
There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings,
and with us have the
Loves
habitation;
And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once,
ere the bloom of
them
ended,
Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued,
by the help of us
only
befriended,
With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or
a cock’s comb staring
and
splendid.
All best good things that befall men come
from us birds, as is plain to
all
reason:
For first we proclaim and make known to them spring,
and the winter and
autumn
in season;
Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric,
October 19, 1880.
OFF SHORE.
When the might of the
summer
Is most on the sea;
When the days overcome her
With joy but to be,
With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that
sets her not free,
But for hours upon hours
As a thrall she remains
Spell-bound as with flowers
And content in their chains,
And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock
of their deep white
manes;
Then only, far under
In the depths of her hold,
Some gleam of its wonder
Man’s eye may behold,
Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive
and gold.
Still deeper and dimmer
And goodlier they glow
For the eyes of the swimmer
Who scans them below
As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows
not of sunshine and
snow.
Soft blossomless frondage
And foliage that gleams
As to prisoners in bondage
The light of their dreams,
The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the
wings of its beams.
Not as prisoners entombed
Waxen haggard and wizen,
But consoled and illumed
In the depths of their prison
With delight of the light everlasting and vision of
dawn on them risen,
From the banks and the
beds
Of the waters divine
They lift up their heads
And the flowers of them shine
Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them
of water that glimmers
like wine.
Bright bank over bank
Making glorious the gloom,
Soft rank upon rank,
Strange bloom after bloom,
They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the
dim sea’s womb.
Through the subtle and
tangible
Gloom without form,
Their branches, infrangible
Ever of storm
Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the
woodland when April is
warm.
As the flight of the
thunder, full
Charged with its word,
Dividing the wonderful
Depths like a bird,
Speaks wrath and delight to the heart of the night
that exults to have
heard,
So swiftly, though soundless
In silence’s ear,
Light, winged from the boundless
Blue depths full of cheer,
Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not
before him, but hear.
Light, perfect and visible
Godhead of God,
God indivisible,
Lifts but his rod,
And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness
is light at his nod.
At the touch of his wand,
At the nod of his head
From the spaces beyond
Where the dawn hath her bed,
Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as
one risen from the
dead.
He puts forth his hand,
And the mountains are thrilled
To the heart as they stand
In his presence, fulfilled
With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and
her sorrows are
stilled.
The moan of her travail
That groans for the light
Till dayspring unravel
The weft of the night,
At the sound of the strings of the music of morning,
falls dumb with
delight.
He gives forth his word,
And the word that he saith,
Ere well it be heard,
Strikes darkness to death;
For the thought of his heart is the sunrise, and dawn
as the sound of his
breath.
And the strength of its
pulses
That passion makes proud
Confounds and convulses
The depths of the cloud
Of the darkness that heaven was engirt with, divided
and rent as a shroud,
As the veil of the shrine
Of the temple of old
When darkness divine
Over noonday was rolled;
So the heart of the night by the pulse of the light
is convulsed and
controlled.
And the sea’s heart,
groaning
For glories withdrawn,
And the waves’ mouths, moaning
All night for the dawn,
Are uplift as the hearts and the mouths of the singers
on leaside and lawn.
And the sound of the
quiring
Of all these as one,
Desired and desiring
Till dawn’s will be done,
Fills full with delight of them heaven till it burns
as the heart of the
sun.
Till the waves too inherit
And waters take part
In the sense of the spirit
That breathes from his heart,
And are kindled with music as fire when the lips of
the morning part,
With music unheard
In the light of her lips,
In the life-giving word
Of the dewfall that drips
On the grasses of earth, and the wind that enkindles
the wings of the
ships.
White glories of wings
As of seafaring birds
That flock from the springs
Of the sunrise in herds
With the wind for a herdsman, and hasten or halt at
the change of his
words.
As the watchword’s
change
When the wind’s note shifts,
And the skies grow strange,
And the white squall drifts
Up sharp from the sea-line, vexing the sea till the
low cloud lifts.
At the charge of his
word
Bidding pause, bidding haste,
When the ranks are stirred
And the lines displaced,
They scatter as wild swans parting adrift on the wan
green waste.
At the hush of his word
In a pause of his breath
When the waters have heard
His will that he saith,
They stand as a flock penned close in its fold for
division of death.
As a flock by division
Of death to be thinned,
As the shades in a vision
Of spirits that sinned;
So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds
on the stream of the
wind.
But the sun stands fast,
And the sea burns bright,
And the flight of them past
Is no more than the flight
Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and
afloat in the light.
Like flowers upon flowers
In a festival way
When hours after hours
Shed grace on the day,
White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through
the snows of the
spray.
Like snow-coloured petals
Of blossoms that flee
From storm that unsettles
The flower as the tree
They flutter, a legion of flowers on the wing, through
the field of the
sea.
Through the furrowless
field
Where the foam-blossoms blow
And the secrets are sealed
Of their harvest below
They float in the path of the sunbeams, as flakes
or as blossoms of snow.
Till the sea’s
ways darken,
And the God, withdrawn,
Give ear not or hearken
If prayer on him fawn,
And the sun’s self seem but a shadow, the noon
as a ghost of the dawn.
No shadow, but rather
God, father of song,
Shew grace to me, Father
God, loved of me long,
That I lose not the light of thy face, that my trust
in thee work me not
wrong.
While yet I make forward
With face toward thee
Not turned yet in shoreward,
Be thine upon me;
Be thy light on my forehead or ever I turn it again
from the sea.
As a kiss on my brow
Be the light of thy grace,
Be thy glance on me now
From the pride of thy place:
As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my
face of thy face.
Thou wast father of olden
Times hailed and adored,
And the sense of thy golden
Great harp’s monochord
Was the joy in the soul of the singers that hailed
thee for master and
lord.
Fair father of all
In thy ways that have trod,
That have risen at thy call,
That have thrilled at thy nod,
Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to
be God.
As my soul has been dutiful
Only to thee,
O God most beautiful,
Lighten thou me,
As I swim through the dim long rollers, with eyelids
uplift from the sea.
Be praised and adored
of us
All in accord,
Father and lord of us
Alway adored,
The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light
of us all and our lord.
At the sound of thy lyre,
At the touch of thy rod,
Air quickens to fire
By the foot of thee trod,
The saviour and healer and singer, the living and
visible God.
The years are before
thee
As shadows of thee,
As men that adore thee,
As cloudlets that flee:
But thou art the God, and thy kingdom is heaven, and
thy shrine is the sea.
AFTER NINE YEARS.
TO JOSEPH MAZZINI.
Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena.
1.
The shadows fallen of years are nine
Since heaven grew seven times more divine
With thy soul entering, and the dearth
Of souls on earth
Grew sevenfold sadder, wanting One
Whose light of life, quenched here and done,
Burns there eternal as the sun.
2.
Beyond all word, beyond all deed,
Beyond all thought beloved, what need
Has death or love that speech should be,
Hast thou of me?
I had no word, no prayer, no cry,
To praise or hail or mourn thee by,
As when thou too wast man as I.
3.
Nay, never, nor as any born
Save one whose name priests turn to scorn,
Who haply, though we know not now,
Was man as thou,
A wanderer branded with men’s blame,
Loved past man’s utterance: yea, the same,
Perchance, and as his name thy name.
4.
Thou wast as very Christ—not he
Degraded into Deity,
And priest-polluted by such prayer
As poisons air,
Tongue-worship of the tongue that slays,
False faith and parricidal praise:
But the man crowned with suffering days.
5.
God only, being of all mankind
Most manlike, of most equal mind
And heart most perfect, more than can
Be heart of man
Once in ten ages, born to be
As haply Christ was, and as we
Knew surely, seeing, and worshipped thee.
6.
To know thee—this at least was ours,
God, clothed upon with human hours,
O face beloved, O spirit adored,
Saviour and lord!
That wast not only for thine own
Redeemer—not of these alone
But all to whom thy word was known.
7.
Ten years have wrought their will with me
Since last my words took wing for thee
Who then wast even as now above
Me, and my love.
As then thou knewest not scorn, so now
With that beloved benignant brow
Take these of him whose light wast thou.
FOR A PORTRAIT OF FELICE ORSINI.
Steadfast as sorrow, fiery sad, and sweet
With underthoughts of love and faith,
more strong
Than doubt and hate and all ill thoughts
which throng,
Haply, round hope’s or fear’s world-wandering
feet
That find no rest from wandering till they meet
EVENING ON THE BROADS.
Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in
peril,
Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with
irresolute light,
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the
sterile
Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed
by the night.
Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the
breathless
Twilight: yonder the depths darken
afar and asleep.
Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends
on the deathless
Waters: hardly the light lives on
the face of the deep—
Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey
soft shallow
Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight,
void of a star.
As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose
winglets are callow
Yet, but soon with their plumes will she
cover her brood from afar,
Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies
with their blossom
Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed
spring is encumbered with flowers.
World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth
of her bosom,
Warm and lustrous with life lovely to
look on as ours.
Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that
dissembles
Still with itself, being sick of division
and dimmed by dismay—
Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion
it trembles,
Fearful and fain of the night, lovely
with love of the day:
Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death,
and begotten
Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the
seed of the grave:
Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly
forgotten,
Only not wholly suppressed by the dark
as a wreck by the wave.
Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon,
in a vision
Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts
that are tired, and would rest.
But the glories beloved of the night rise all too
dense for division,
Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered
as doves in a nest.
Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season
enkindled
Wane, and the memories of hours that were
fair with the love of them
fade:
Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken
and dwindled,
Gather the signs of the love at the heart
of the night new-made.
New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable,
endless,
Opens the secret of love hid from of old
in her heart,
In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless
love of the friendless
Spirits of men that are eased when the
wheels of the sun depart.
THE EMPEROR’S PROGRESS.
A STUDY IN THREE STAGES.
(On the Busts of Nero in the Uffizj.)
A child of brighter than the morning’s birth
And lovelier than all smiles that may
be smiled
Save only of little children undefiled,
Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth,
Live rose of love, mute melody of mirth,
Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild,
Adorable as is nothing save a child,
Hails with wide eyes and lips his life on earth,
His lovely life with all its heaven to be.
And whoso reads the name inscribed or
hears
Feels his own heart a frozen well of tears,
Child, for deep dread and fearful pity of thee
Whom God would not let rather die than see
The incumbent horror of impending years.
Man, that wast godlike being a child, and now,
No less than kinglike, art no more in
sooth
For all thy grace and lordliness of youth,
The crown that bids men’s branded foreheads
bow
Much more has branded and bowed down thy brow
And gnawn upon it as with fire or tooth
Of steel or snake so sorely, that the
truth
Seems here to bear false witness. Is it thou,
Child? and is all the summer of all thy spring
This? are the smiles that drew men’s
kisses down
All faded and transfigured to the frown
That grieves thy face? Art thou this weary thing?
Then is no slave’s load heavier
than a crown
And such a thrall no bondman as a king.
Misery, beyond all men’s most miserable,
Absolute, whole, defiant of defence,
Inevitable, inexplacable, intense,
More vast than heaven is high, more deep than hell,
Past cure or charm of solace or of spell,
Possesses and pervades the spirit and
sense
Whereto the expanse of the earth pays
tribute; whence
Breeds evil only, and broods on fumes that swell
Rank from the blood of brother and mother and wife.
‘Misery of miseries, all is misery,’
saith
The heavy fair-faced hateful head, at strife
With its own lusts that burn with feverous
breath
Lips which the loathsome bitterness of life
Leaves fearful of the bitterness of death.
THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA.
(Gratefully inscribed to Dr. A.B. Grosart.)
Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song,
Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and
praise
To his good hand who travelling on strange
ways
Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along
Beneath dead leaves that many a winter’s wrong
Had rained and heaped through nigh three
centuries’ maze
Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze
The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong.
For thine have life, while many above thine head
Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead.
So now disburdened of such load above
That lay as death’s own dust upon thee shed
By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove
Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower
of love.
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY.
(On the refusal by the French Senate of the plenary amnesty demanded by Victor Hugo, in his speech of July 3rd, for the surviving exiles of the Commune.)
Thou shouldst have risen as never dawn yet rose,
Day of the sunrise of the soul of France,
Dawn of the whole world’s morning,
when the trance
Of all the world had end, and all its woes
Respite, prophetic of their perfect close.
Light of all tribes of men, all names
and clans,
Dawn of the whole world’s morning
and of man’s
Flower of the heart of morning’s mystic rose,
Dawn of the very dawn of very day,
When the sun brighter breaks night’s
ruinous prison,
Thou shouldst have risen as yet no dawn
has risen,
Evoked of him whose word puts night away,
Our father, at the music of whose word
Exile had ended, and the world had heard.
July 5, 1880.
Mala soluta navis exit alite.
HOR.
Rigged with curses dark.
MILTON.
THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA.
Gold, and fair marbles, and again more gold,
And space of halls afloat that glance
and gleam
Like the green heights of sunset heaven,
or seem
The golden steeps of sunrise red and cold
On deserts where dark exile keeps the fold
Fast of the flocks of torment, where no
beam
Falls of kind light or comfort save in
dream,
These we far off behold not, who behold
The cordage woven of curses, and the decks
With mortal hate and mortal peril paven;
From stem to stern the lines of doom engraven
That mark for sure inevitable wrecks
Those sails predestinate, though no storm vex,
To miss on earth and find in hell their
haven.
All curses be about her, and all ill
Go with her; heaven be dark above her
way,
The gulf beneath her glad and sure of
prey,
And, wheresoe’er her prow be pointed, still
The winds of heaven have all one evil will
Conspirant even as hearts of kings to
slay
With mouths of kings to lie and smile
and pray,
And chiefliest his whose wintrier breath makes chill
With more than winter’s and more poisonous cold
The horror of his kingdom toward the north,
The deserts of his kingdom
toward the east.
And though death hide not in her direful hold
Be all stars adverse toward her that come
forth
Nightly, by day all hours
till all have ceased:
Till all have ceased for ever, and the sum
Be summed of all the sumless curses told
Out on his head by all dark seasons rolled
Over its cursed and crowned existence, dumb
And blind and stark as though the snows made numb
All sense within it, and all conscience
cold,
That hangs round hearts of less imperial
mould
Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come.
O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be
All nature’s as all true men’s hearts
to thee,
A two-edged sword of judgment; hope be
far
And fear at hand for pilot oversea
With death for compass and despair for
star,
And the white foam a shroud for the White
Czar.
September 30, 1880.
SIX YEARS OLD.
To H.W.M.
Between the springs of six and seven,
Two fresh years’ fountains, clear
Of all but golden sand for leaven,
Child, midway passing here,
As earth for love’s sake dares bless heaven,
So dare I bless you, dear.
Between two bright well-heads, that brighten
With every breath that blows
Too loud to lull, too low to frighten,
But fain to rock, the rose,
Your feet stand fast, your lit smiles lighten,
That might rear flowers from snows.
You came when winds unleashed were snarling
Behind the frost-bound hours,
A snow-bird sturdier than the starling,
A storm-bird fledged for showers,
That spring might smile to find you, darling,
First born of all the flowers.
Could love make worthy things of worthless,
My song were worth an ear:
Its note should make the days most mirthless
The merriest of the year,
And wake to birth all buds yet birthless
To keep your birthday, dear.
But where your birthday brightens heaven
No need has earth, God knows,
Of light or warmth to melt or leaven
The frost or fog that glows
With sevenfold heavenly lights of seven
Sweet springs that cleave the snows.
Could love make worthy music of you,
And match my Master’s powers,
Had even my love less heart to love you,
A better song were ours;
With all the rhymes like stars above you,
And all the words like flowers.
September 30, 1880.
A PARTING SONG.
(To a friend leaving England for a year’s residence
in
Australia.)
These
winds and suns of spring
That
warm with breath and wing
The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake
She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break,
For
all good gifts they bring
Require
one better thing,
For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow
One sharper dole of sorrow,
To sunder soon by half a world of sea
Her son from England and my friend from me.
Nor
hope nor love nor fear
May
speed or stay one year,
Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain,
The seasons perish and be born again,
Restoring
all we lend,
Reluctant,
of a friend,
The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight
That lend their life and light
To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer,
Now lent again for one reluctant year.
So
much we lend indeed,
Perforce,
by force of need,
So much we must; even these things and no more
The far sea sundering and the sundered shore
A
world apart from ours,
So
much the imperious hours,
Exact, and spare not; but no more than these
All earth and all her seas
From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow,
Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow.
Through
bright and dark and bright
Returns
of day and night
I bid the swift year speed and change and give
His breath of life to make the next year live
With
sunnier suns for us
A
life more prosperous,
And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see
A merrier March for me,
A rosier-girdled race of night with day,
A goodlier April and a tenderer May.
For
him the inverted year
Shall
mark our seasons here
With alien alternation, and revive
This withered winter, slaying the spring alive
With
darts more sharply drawn
As
nearer draws the dawn
In heaven transfigured over earth transformed
And with our winters warmed
And wasted with our summers, till the beams
Rise on his face that rose on Dante’s dreams.
Till
fourfold morning rise
Of
starshine on his eyes,
Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across
At height of night with semblance of a cross
Whose
grace and ghostly glory
Poured
heaven on purgatory
Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow
glad
For love thereof it had
And lovely joy of loving; so may these
Make bright with welcome now their southern seas.
O
happy stars, whose mirth
The
saddest soul on earth
That ever soared and sang found strong to bless,
Lightening his life’s harsh load of heaviness
With
comfort sown like seed
In
dream though not in deed
On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine,
Let all your lights now shine
With all as glorious gladness on his eyes
For whom indeed and not in dream they rise.
As
those great twins of air
Hailed
once with oldworld prayer
Of all folk alway faring forth by sea,
So now may these for grace and guidance be,
To
guard his sail and bring
Again
to brighten spring
The face we look for and the hand we lack
Still, till they light him back,
As welcome as to first discovering eyes
Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise.
As
parting now he goes
From
snow-time back to snows,
So back to spring from summer may next year
Restore him, and our hearts receive him here,
The
best good gift that spring
Had
ever grace to bring
At fortune’s happiest hour of star-blest birth
Back to love’s homebright earth,
To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand,
And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land.
Earth
and sea-wind and sea
And
stars and sunlight be
Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours
Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours.
All
things as good as strange
Crown
all the seasons’ change
With changing flower and compensating fruit
From one year’s ripening root;
Till next year bring us, roused at spring’s
recall, A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than
all.
March 26, 1880.
TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS.
’We are what suns and winds and waters make us.’—LANDOR.
Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath
The spirit of man fulfilling—these
create
That joy wherewith man’s life grown
passionate
Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith
To know the secret word our Mother saith
In silence, and to see, though doubt wax
great,
Death as the shadow cast by life on fate,
Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death.
Brother, to whom our Mother as to me
Is dearer than all dreams of days undone,
This song I give you of the sovereign three
That are as life and sleep and death are,
one:
A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea,
Where nought of man’s endures before
the sun._
1.
A land that is lonelier than ruin;
A sea that is stranger than death:
Far fields that a rose never blew in,
Wan waste where the winds lack breath;
Waste endless and boundless and flowerless
But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free:
Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless
To
strive with the sea.
2.
Far flickers the flight of the swallows,
Far flutters the weft of the grass
Spun dense over desolate hollows
More pale than the clouds as they pass:
Thick woven as the weft of a witch is
Round the heart of a thrall that hath
sinned,
Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches
Are
waifs on the wind.
3.
The pastures are herdless and sheepless,
No pasture or shelter for herds:
The wind is relentless and sleepless,
And restless and songless the birds;
Their cries from afar fall breathless,
Their wings are as lightnings that flee;
For the land has two lords that are deathless:
Death’s
self, and the sea.
4.
These twain, as a king with his fellow,
Hold converse of desolate speech:
And her waters are haggard and yellow
And crass with the scurf of the beach:
And his garments are grey as the hoary
Wan sky where the day lies dim;
And his power is to her, and his glory,
As
hers unto him.
5.
In the pride of his power she rejoices,
In her glory he glows and is glad:
In her darkness the sound of his voice is,
With his breath she dilates and is mad:
’If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me,
Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee.’
’Shall I give thee not back if thou give me,
O
sister, O sea?’
6.
And year upon year dawns living,
And age upon age drops dead:
And his hand is not weary of giving,
And the thirst of her heart is not fed:
And the hunger that moans in her passion,
And the rage in her hunger that roars,
As a wolf’s that the winter lays lash on,
Still
calls and implores.
7.
Her walls have no granite for girder,
No fortalice fronting her stands:
But reefs the bloodguiltiest of murder
Are less than the banks of her sands:
These number their slain by the thousand;
For the ship hath no surety to be,
When the bank is abreast of her bows and
Aflush
with the sea.
8.
No surety to stand, and no shelter
To dawn out of darkness but one,
Out of waters that hurtle and welter
No succour to dawn with the sun
But a rest from the wind as it passes,
Where, hardly redeemed from the waves,
Lie thick as the blades of the grasses
The
dead in their graves.
9.
A multitude noteless of numbers,
As wild weeds cast on an heap:
And sounder than sleep are their slumbers,
And softer than song is their sleep;
And sweeter than all things and stranger
The sense, if perchance it may be,
That the wind is divested of danger
And
scatheless the sea.
10.
That the roar of the banks they breasted
Is hurtless as bellowing of herds,
And the strength of his wings that invested
The wind, as the strength of a bird’s;
As the sea-mew’s might or the swallow’s
That cry to him back if he cries,
As over the graves and their hollows
Days
darken and rise.
11.
As the souls of the dead men disburdened
And clean of the sins that they sinned,
With a lovelier than man’s life guerdoned
And delight as a wave’s in the wind,
And delight as the wind’s in the billow,
Birds pass, and deride with their glee
The flesh that has dust for its pillow
As
wrecks have the sea.
12.
When the ways of the sun wax dimmer,
Wings flash through the dusk like beams;
As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer,
The bird in the graveyard gleams;
As the cloud at its wing’s edge whitens
When the clarions of sunrise are heard,
The graves that the bird’s note brightens
Grow
bright for the bird.
13.
As the waves of the numberless waters
That the wind cannot number who guides
Are the sons of the shore and the daughters
Here lulled by the chime of the tides:
And here in the press of them standing
We know not if these or if we
Live truliest, or anchored to landing
Or
drifted to sea.
14.
In the valley he named of decision
No denser were multitudes met
When the soul of the seer in her vision
Saw nations for doom of them set;
Saw darkness in dawn, and the splendour
Of judgment, the sword and the rod;
But the doom here of death is more tender
And
gentler the god.
15.
And gentler the wind from the dreary
Sea-banks by the waves overlapped,
Being weary, speaks peace to the weary
From slopes that the tide-stream hath
sapped;
And sweeter than all that we call so
The seal of their slumber shall be
Till the graves that embosom them also
Be
sapped of the sea.
1.
For the heart of the waters is cruel,
And the kisses are dire of their lips,
And their waves are as fire is to fuel
To the strength of the sea-faring ships,
Though the sea’s eye gleam as a jewel
To the sun’s eye back as he dips.
2.
Though the sun’s eye flash to the sea’s
Live light of delight and of laughter,
And her lips breathe back to the breeze
The kiss that the wind’s lips waft
her
From the sun that subsides, and sees
No gleam of the storm’s dawn after.
3.
And the wastes of the wild sea-marches
Where the borderers are matched in their
might—
Bleak fens that the sun’s weight parches,
Dense waves that reject his light—
Change under the change-coloured arches
Of changeless morning and night
4.
The waves are as ranks enrolled
Too close for the storm to sever:
The fens lie naked and cold,
But their heart fails utterly never:
The lists are set from of old,
And the warfare endureth for ever.
1.
Miles, and miles, and miles of desolation!
Leagues on leagues on leagues without
a change!
Sign or token of some eldest nation
Here would make the strange land not so
strange.
Time-forgotten, yea since time’s creation,
Seem these borders where the sea-birds
range.
2.
Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder
Grows his heart who journeys here alone.
Earth and all its thoughts of earth sink under
Deep as deep in water sinks a stone.
Hardly knows it if the rollers thunder,
Hardly whence the lonely wind is blown.
3.
Tall the plumage of the rush-flower tosses,
Sharp and soft in many a curve and line
Gleam and glow the sea-coloured marsh-mosses,
Salt and splendid from the circling brine.
Streak on streak of glimmering seashine crosses
All the land sea-saturate as with wine.
4.
Far, and far between, in divers orders,
Clear grey steeples cleave the low grey
sky;
Fast and firm as time-unshaken warders,
Hearts made sure by faith, by hope made
high.
These alone in all the wild sea-borders
Fear no blast of days and nights that
die.
5.
All the land is like as one man’s face is,
Pale and troubled still with change of
cares.
Doubt and death pervade her clouded spaces:
Strength and length of life and peace
are theirs;
Theirs alone amid these weary places.
Seeing not how the wild world frets and
fares.
6.
Firm and fast where all is cloud that changes
Cloud-clogged sunlight, cloud by sunlight
thinned,
Stern and sweet, above the sand-hill ranges
Watch the towers and tombs of men that
sinned
Once, now calm as earth whose only change is
Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud,
and wind.
7.
Out and in and out the sharp straits wander,
In and out and in the wild way strives,
Starred and paved and lined with flowers that squander
Gold as golden as the gold of hives,
Salt and moist and multiform: but yonder,
See, what sign of life or death survives?
8.
Seen then only when the songs of olden
Harps were young whose echoes yet endure,
Hymned of Homer when his years were golden,
Known of only when the world was pure,
Here is Hades, manifest, beholden,
Surely, surely here, if aught be sure!
9.
Where the border-line was crossed, that, sundering
Death from life, keeps weariness from
rest,
None can tell, who fares here forward wondering;
None may doubt but here might end his
quest.
Here life’s lightning joys and woes once thundering
Sea-like round him cease like storm suppressed.
10.
Here the wise wave-wandering steadfast-hearted
Guest of many a lord of many a land
Saw the shape or shade of years departed,
Saw the semblance risen and hard at hand,
Saw the mother long from love’s reach parted,
Anticleia, like a statue stand.
11.
Statue? nay, nor tissued image woven
Fair on hangings in his father’s
hall;
Nay, too fast her faith of heart was proven,
Far too firm her loveliest love of all;
Love wherethrough the loving heart was cloven,
Love that hears not when the loud Fates
call.
12.
Love that lives and stands up re-created
Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled;
Love more strong than death or all things fated,
Child’s and mother’s, lit
by love and led;
Love that found what life so long awaited
Here, when life came down among the dead.
13.
Here, where never came alive another,
Came her son across the sundering tide
Crossed before by many a warrior brother
Once that warred on Ilion at his side;
Here spread forth vain hands to clasp the mother
Dead, that sorrowing for his love’s
sake died.
14.
Parted, though by narrowest of divisions,
Clasp he might not, only might implore,
Sundered yet by bitterest of derisions,
Son, and mother from the son she bore—
Here? But all dispeopled here of visions
Lies, forlorn of shadows even, the shore.
15.
All too sweet such men’s Hellenic speech is,
All too fain they lived of light to see,
Once to see the darkness of these beaches,
Once to sing this Hades found of me
Ghostless, all its gulfs and creeks and reaches,
Sky, and shore, and cloud, and waste,
and sea.
1.
But aloft and afront of me faring
Far forward as folk in a dream
That strive, between doubting and daring
Right on till the goal for them gleam,
Full forth till their goal on them lighten,
The harbour where fain they would be,
What headlands there darken and brighten?
What change in the sea?
2.
What houses and woodlands that nestle
Safe inland to lee of the hill
As it slopes from the headlands that wrestle
And succumb to the strong sea’s
will?
Truce is not, nor respite, nor pity,
For the battle is waged not of hands
Where over the grave of a city
The ghost of it stands.
3.
Where the wings of the sea-wind slacken,
Green lawns to the landward thrive,
Fields brighten and pine-woods blacken,
And the heat in their heart is alive;
They blossom and warble and murmur,
For the sense of their spirit is free:
But harder to shoreward and firmer
The grasp of the sea.
4.
Like ashes the low cliffs crumble,
The banks drop down into dust,
The heights of the hills are made humble,
As a reed’s is the strength of their
trust:
As a city’s that armies environ,
The strength of their stay is of sand:
But the grasp of the sea is as iron,
Laid hard on the land.
5.
A land that is thirstier than ruin;
A sea that is hungrier than death;
Heaped hills that a tree never grew in;
Wide sands where the wave draws breath;
All solace is here for the spirit
That ever for ever may be
For the soul of thy son to inherit,
My mother, my sea.
6.
O delight of the headlands and beaches!
O desire of the wind on the wold,
More glad than a man’s when it reaches
That end which it sought from of old
And the palm of possession is dreary
To the sense that in search of it sinned;
But nor satisfied ever nor weary
Is ever the wind.
7.
The delight that he takes but in living
Is more than of all things that live:
For the world that has all things for giving
Has nothing so goodly to give:
But more than delight his desire is,
For the goal where his pinions would be
Is immortal as air or as fire is,
Immense as the sea.
8.
Though hence come the moan that he borrows
From darkness and depth of the night,
Though hence be the spring of his sorrows,
Hence too is the joy of his might;
The delight that his doom is for ever
To seek and desire and rejoice,
And the sense that eternity never
Shall silence his voice.
9.
That satiety never may stifle
Nor weariness ever estrange
Nor time be so strong as to rifle
Nor change be so great as to change
His gift that renews in the giving.
The joy that exalts him to be
Alone of all elements living
The lord of the sea.
10.
What is fire, that its flame should consume her?
More fierce than all fires are her waves:
What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her?
More deep are her own than their graves.
Life shrinks from his pinions that cover
The darkness by thunders bedinned:
But she knows him, her lord and her lover,
The godhead of wind.
11.
For a season his wings are about her,
His breath on her lips for a space;
Such rapture he wins not without her
In the width of his worldwide race.
Though the forests bow down, and the mountains
Wax dark, and the tribes of them flee,
His delight is more deep in the fountains
And springs of
the sea.
12.
There are those too of mortals that love him,
There are souls that desire and require,
Be the glories of midnight above him
Or beneath him the daysprings of fire:
And their hearts are as harps that approve him
And praise him as chords of a lyre
That were fain with their music to move him
To meet their
desire.
13.
To descend through the darkness to grace them,
Till darkness were lovelier than light:
To encompass and grasp and embrace them,
Till their weakness were one with his
might:
With the strength of his wings to caress them,
With the blast of his breath to set free;
With the mouths of his thunders to bless them
For sons of the
sea.
14.
For these have the toil and the guerdon
That the wind has eternally: these
Have part in the boon and the burden
Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze,
That finds not, but seeking rejoices
That possession can work him no wrong:
And the voice at the heart of their voice is
The sense of his
song.
15.
For the wind’s is their doom and their blessing;
To desire, and have always above
A possession beyond their possessing,
A love beyond reach of their love.
Green earth has her sons and her daughters,
And these have their guerdons; but we
Are the wind’s and the sun’s and the water’s,
Elect of the sea.
1.
For the sea too seeks and rejoices,
Gains and loses and gains,
And the joy of her heart’s own choice is
As ours, and as ours are her pains:
As the thoughts of our hearts are her voices,
And as hers is the pulse of our veins.
2.
Her fields that know not of dearth
Nor lie for their fruit’s sake fallow
Laugh large in the depth of their mirth
But inshore here in the shallow,
Embroiled with encumbrance of earth,
Their skirts are turbid and yellow.
3.
The grime of her greed is upon her,
The sign of her deed is her soil;
As the earth’s is her own dishonour,
And corruption the crown of her toil:
She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour
Is this, to be shamed by her spoil.
4.
But afar where pollution is none,
Nor ensign of strife nor endeavour,
Where her heart and the sun’s are one,
And the soil of her sin comes never,
She is pure as the wind and the sun,
And her sweetness endureth for ever.
1.
Death, and change, and darkness everlasting,
Deaf, that hears not what the daystar
saith,
Blind, past all remembrance and forecasting,
Dead, past memory that it once drew breath;
These, above the washing tides and wasting,
Reign, and rule this land of utter death.
2.
Change of change, darkness of darkness, hidden,
Very death of very death, begun
When none knows,—the knowledge is forbidden—
Self-begotten, self-proceeding, one,
Born, not made—abhorred, unchained, unchidden,
Night stands here defiant of the sun.
3.
Change of change, and death of death begotten,
Darkness born of darkness, one and three,
Ghostly godhead of a world forgotten,
Crowned with heaven, enthroned on land
and sea,
Here, where earth with dead men’s bones is rotten,
God of Time, thy likeness worships thee.
4.
Lo, thy likeness of thy desolation,
Shape and figure of thy might, O Lord,
Formless form, incarnate miscreation,
Served of all things living and abhorred;
Earth herself is here thine incarnation,
Time, of all things born on earth adored.
5.
All that worship thee are fearful of thee;
No man may not worship thee for fear:
Prayers nor curses prove not nor disprove thee,
Move nor change thee with our change of
cheer:
All at last, though all abhorred thee, love thee,
God, the sceptre of whose throne is here.
6.
Here thy throne and sceptre of thy station,
Here the palace paven for thy feet;
Here thy sign from nation unto nation
Passed as watchword for thy guards to
greet,
Guards that go before thine exaltation,
Ages, clothed with bitter years and sweet.
7.
Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty,
Flickering flame-wise through the clear
live calm,
Rose triumphal, crowning all a city,
Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm,
Built of holy hands for holy pity,
Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm.
8.
Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion,
Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime,
Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion,
Filled and thrilled with force of choral
chime,
Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion
Hailed a God more merciful than Time.
9.
Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing,
Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his
nod,
Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing,
Lies he, stricken by his master’s
rod.
‘Where is man?’ the cloister murmurs wailing;
Back the mute shrine thunders—’Where
is God?’
10.
Here is all the end of all his glory—
Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones.
Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary
Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans,
Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story:
Here, where earth is dense with dead men’s
bones.
11.
Low and loud and long, a voice for ever,
Sounds the wind’s clear story like
a song.
Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever,
Dust from dust as years relapse along;
Graves where men made sure to rest, and never
Lie dismantled by the seasons’ wrong.
12.
Now displaced, devoured and desecrated,
Now by Time’s hands darkly disinterred,
These poor dead that sleeping here awaited
Long the archangel’s re-creating
word,
Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated
Till the blast of judgment should be heard,
13.
Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration,
Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves,
Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station,
Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like
slaves,
Desolate beyond man’s desolation,
Shrink and sink into the waste of waves.
14.
Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded,
Shroudless, down the loose collapsing
banks,
Crumble, from their constant place detruded,
That the sea devours and gives not thanks.
Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded
Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks.
15.
Rows on rows and line by line they crumble,
They that thought for all time through
to be.
Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble
Breaks the grim field paced alone of me.
Earth, and man, and all their gods wax humble
Here, where Time brings pasture to the
sea.
1.
But afar on the headland exalted,
But beyond in the curl of the bay,
From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted
Our father is lord of the day.
Our father and lord that we follow,
For deathless and ageless is he;
And his robe is the whole sky’s hollow,
His sandal the sea.
2.
Where the horn of the headland is sharper,
And her green floor glitters with fire,
The sea has the sun for a harper,
The sun has the sea for a lyre.
The waves are a pavement of amber,
By the feet of the sea-winds trod
To receive in a god’s presence-chamber
Our father, the God.
3.
Time, haggard and changeful and hoary,
Is master and God of the land:
But the air is fulfilled of the glory
That is shed from our lord’s right
hand.
O father of all of us ever,
All glory be only to thee
From heaven, that is void of thee never,
And earth, and the sea.
4.
O Sun, whereof all is beholden,
Behold now the shadow of this death,
This place of the sepulchres, olden
And emptied and vain as a breath.
The bloom of the bountiful heather
Laughs broadly beyond in thy light
As dawn, with her glories to gather,
At darkness and night.
5.
Though the Gods of the night lie rotten
And their honour be taken away
And the noise of their names forgotten,
Thou, Lord, art God of the day.
Thou art father and saviour and spirit,
O Sun, of the soul that is free
And hath grace of thy grace to inherit
Thine earth and thy sea.
6.
The hills and the sands and the beaches,
The waters adrift and afar,
The banks and the creeks and the reaches,
How glad of thee all these are!
The flowers, overflowing, overcrowded,
Are drunk with the mad wind’s mirth:
The delight of thy coming unclouded
Makes music of earth.
7.
I, last least voice of her voices,
Give thanks that were mute in me long
To the soul in my soul that rejoices
For the song that is over my song.
Time gives what he gains for the giving
Or takes for his tribute of me;
My dreams to the wind everliving,
My song to the sea.
Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.