First words, where down my woodland walk she led,To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:
- Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,When still I find you in this mire alone.
- The few steps taken at a funeral paceBy men had slain me but for those you trace.
- Look I once back, a broken pinion I:Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!
- Needs must you drink of me while here you live,And make me rich in feeling I can give.
- A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:Yet must I read my sister for the How.My daisy better knows her God of beamsThan doth an eagle that to mount him seems.She hath the secret never fieriest reachOf wing shall master till men hear her teach.
- Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,My semblance when I have you not as now.The quiet creatures who escape mishapBear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:A picture of the settled peace desiredBy cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.I listen at their breasts: is there no jarOf wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,And such a picture as the piercing mindRanks beneath vegetation. Not resignedAre my true pupils while the world is brute.What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,Stronger impels the motion of my heart.I am not Resignation's counterpart.If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word,Content, but how to savour hope deferred.We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;Soon carrion if very earth are we!The coursing veins, the constant breath, the useOf sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat,"Like other corpses, but without death's plea.
- My sister calls for battle; is it she?
- Rather a world of pressing men in arms,Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charmsEach drowsy malady and coiling viceWith dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!No home is here for peace while evil breeds,While error governs, none; and must the seedsYou sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,Lie barren at the doorway of the brain,Let stout contention drive deep furrows, bloodMoisten, and make new channels of its flood!
- My sober little maid, when we meet first,Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.So can I not of her till circumstanceDrugs cravings. Here we see how men advanceA doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the wordPrompting their hungers, and they grandly march,As to band-music under Victory's arch.Thus was it, and thus is it; save that thenThe beauty of frank animals had men.
- Observe them, and down rearward for a term,Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.Thence look this way, across the fields that showMen's early form of speech for Yes and No.My sister a bruised infant's utterance had;And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad.I knew my home where I had choice to feelThe toad beneath a harrow or a heel.
- Speak of this Age.
- When you it shall discernBright as you are, to me the Age will turn.
- For neither of us has it any care;Its learning is through Science to despair.
- Despair lies down and grovels, grapples notWith evil, casts the burden of its lot.This Age climbs earth.
- To challenge heaven.
- Not lessThe lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!That know I, though the echoes of it wail,For one step upward on the crags you scale.Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,Which means our soul asleep or body's lust,Until from warmth of many breasts, that beatA temperate common music, sunlike heatThe happiness not predatory sheds!
- But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads,Now rages to outdo a horny Past.Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vastAre thrown by every novel light upraised.The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazedAnd trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells.Combustibles on hot combustiblesRun piling, for one spark to roll in fireThe mountain-torrent of infernal ireAnd leave the track of devils where men built.Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guiltConfesses in a cry for help shrill loud,If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:None save they but the souls which them contain.No extramural God, the God withinAlone gives aid to city charged with sin.A world that for the spur of fool and knave,Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save?But men who ply their wits in such a school,Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.
- Much have I studied hard Necessity!To know her Wisdom's mother, and that weMay deem the harshness of her later criesIn labour a sure goad to prick the wise,If men among the warnings which convulse,Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse.Long ere the rising of this Age of ours,The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,And are as lasting as the parent thing.Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will.
Behold such army gathering: ours the spur,No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer.Not fool or knave is now the enemyO'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery!A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.Now must the brother soul alive in each,His traitorous individual devildomHold subject lest the grand destruction come.Dimly men see it menacing apaceTo overthrow, perchance uproot the race.Within, without, they are a field of tares:Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,And wherefore warrior service they must yield,Shines visible as life on either field.That is my comfort, following shock on shock,Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,The human and Satanic intellect,Determined for their uses to controlWhat forces on the earth and under roll,Their granite rock runs igneous; now they standPledged to the heavens for safety of their land.They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.
- My sister, as I read them in my glass,Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.How waken them that have not any bentSave browsing - the concrete indifferent!Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:They fear not for the race when full the trough.They have much fear of giving up the ghost;And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.
- If I could see with you, and did not faintIn beating wing, the future I would paint.Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:Now meanwhile is another mass awake,Once denser than the grunters of the sty.If I could see with you! Could I but fly!
- The length of days that you with them have housed,An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.
- O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,While still they have a cause too piteous!Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,And quicken in the virtue of their cause,To think me a poor mouther of old saws!I wait the issue of a battling Age;The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage;Instructing them through their acutest sense,How close the dangers of indifference!Already have my people shown their worth,More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.That love to love of labour leads: thence loveOf humankind - earth's incense flung above.
- Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swellsOn Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;And if I bid it face what I observe,Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!
- Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:As little as Time's earliest knew the sky.Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flameAt intervals, in proof of whom they came.To strengthen our foundations is the taskOf this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,Though, lighted by your beams, down mining cavesThe rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.My sister sees no round beyond her mood;To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,It moves: O much for me to say it moves!About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,Though not the stream of the paternal smile:And where his tide of nourishment he drives,An Abyssinian wantonness revives.Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.
To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,He is the vast Insensate who devoursHis golden promise over leagues of seed,Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.The races which on barbarous force begin,Inherit onward of their origin,And cancelled blessings will the current lengthReveal till they know need of shaping strength.'Tis not in men to recognize the needBefore they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,For tens up the safe mountains at his head.Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.
- That rings of truth! More do your people thrive;Your Many are more merrily aliveThan erewhile when I gloried in the pageOf radiant singer and anointed sage.Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!All structures built upon a narrow spaceMust fall, from having not your hosts for base.O thrice must one be you, to see them shiftAlong their desert flats, here dash, there drift;With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!And thrice must one be you, to wait releaseFrom duress in the swamp of their increase.At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed,Philosophers behold; desponding view.Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains.Belated vessels on a rising sea,They seem: they pass!
- But not Philosophy!
- Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despiseNought but the coward in us! That way liesThe wisdom making passage through our slough.Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate.That photosphere of our high fountain One,Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun,Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!Advantage to the Many: that we nameGod's voice; have there the surety in our aim.This thought unto my sister do I owe,And irony and satire off me throw.They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.Who never yet of scattered lamps was bornTo speed a world, a marching world to warn,But sunward from the vivid Many springs,Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.
Fragments of the Iliad in English Hexameter Verse
Poem: The Invective Of Achilles
[Iliad, B. I. V. 149]
"Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans,Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvestsRavaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksomeMountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters.O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justicePluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest.Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me,portionWon with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia.Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when AchaiansGave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage.Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat,Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thingboreOff to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed!So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems meHomeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect,I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store."
Poem: The Invective of Achilles - V. 225.
"Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer,thou!Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict,Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of AchaiaDared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as adeath-stroke.Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted againstthee.Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule overabjects;Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-budsNever again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on themountains,No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metalclipped offLeaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of AchaiaThroughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in ananguish,How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying HectorTumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-strings,Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower ofAchaians."
Poem: Marshalling Of The Achaians
[Iliad, B. II V. 455]
Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did thesplendourGleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault.They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous wingedflocks,Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-swans,Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros;Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about themresoundeth;So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelteringspoured forthOn that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath themEarth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of thehorse-hooves.Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, theirthousandsMany as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse,Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are themilk-pailsAlso, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crushthem.Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks ofgoats, knowEasily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture,So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places foronslaught,Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in histhunder,He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.
Poem: Agamemnon In The Fight
[Iliad, B. XI. V. 148]
These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing thethickest,Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greavedAchaians.Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion,Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud,Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse-hooves)Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord AgamemnonFollowed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives.
Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped wood-land,This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and thescrubwoodStretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing,So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scatteredTrojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they wereoutstretchedFlat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.
Poem: Paris And Diomedes
[Iliad; B. XI V. 378]
So he, with a clear shout of laughter,Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:"Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it hadpierced theeInto the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from theirdirest,They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from alion."Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:"Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons,Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate,noughtworth!Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it theslightest,My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallenslaughtered,Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops,Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women."
Poem: Hypnos On Ida
[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283]
They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of thewoodland.There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on IdaLustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine forconcealment,That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in themountains,Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.
Poem: Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans
[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 394]
Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of theNorthwind;Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing,Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees'Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians',Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict.
Poem: The Horses Of Achilles
[Iliad, B. XVII. V. 426]
So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrownthere,Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, andoft, too,Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespontspacious,Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car,Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamentingincessantRan the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids,Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of theyoke-bow.Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shookPitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in hisbosom;"Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortalMaster; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-grief?'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretchedernowhereAught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and hasmovement."
Poem: The Mares Of The Camargue
[From the MIREIO of Mistral]
A hundred mares, all white! their manesLike mace-reed of the marshy plainsThick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears:And when the fiery squadron rearsBursting at speed, each mane appearsEven as the white scarf of a fayFloating upon their necks along the heavens away.
O race of humankind, take shame!For never yet a hand could tame,Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdueThe mares of the Camargue. I have known,By treason snared, some captives shown;Expatriate from their native Rhone,Led off, their saline pastures far from view:
And on a day, with prompt rebound,They have flung their riders to the ground,And at a single gallop, scouring free,Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice tenOf long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then,Back to the Vacares again,After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea
For of this savage race unbent,The ocean is the element.Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure,Still with the white foam fleck'd are they,And when the sea puffs black from grey,And ships part cables, loudly neighThe stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;
And keen as a whip they lash and crackTheir tails that drag the dust, and backScratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he,The God, drives deep his trident teeth,Who in one horror, above, beneath,Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.
Cant. iv.
Poems by George Meredith—Volume 1
[This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club "SurreyEdition" by David Price]
Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!Where our brothers fought and bled,O thy name is natural musicAnd a dirge above the dead!Though we have not been defeated,Though we can't be overcome,Still, whene'er thou art repeated,I would fain that grief were dumb.
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!'Tis a name so sad and strange,Like a breeze through midnight harpstringsRinging many a mournful change;But the wildness and the sorrowHave a meaning of their own -Oh, whereof no glad to-morrowCan relieve the dismal tone!
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!'Tis a village dark and low,By the bloody Jhelum riverBridged by the foreboding foe;And across the wintry waterHe is ready to retreat,When the carnage and the slaughterShall have paid for his defeat.
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!'Tis a wild and dreary plain,Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,Matted with the gory stain.There the murder-mouthed artillery,In the deadly ambuscade,Wrought the thunder of its treacheryOn the skeleton brigade.
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!When the night set in with rain,Came the savage plundering devilsTo their work among the slain;And the wounded and the dyingIn cold blood did share the doomOf their comrades round them lying,Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!Thou wilt be a doleful chord,And a mystic note of mourningThat will need no chiming word;And that heart will leap with anguishWho may understand thee best;But the hopes of all will languishTill thy memory is at rest.
THE DOE: A FRAGMENT (From 'WANDERING WILLIE')
And—'Yonder look! yoho! yoho!Nancy is off!' the farmer cried,Advancing by the river side,Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;—'So,My girl, who else could leap like that?So neatly! like a lady! 'Zounds!Look at her how she leads the hounds!'And waving his dusty beaver hat,He cheered across the chase-filled water,And clapt his arm about his daughter,And gave to Joan a courteous hug,And kiss that, like a stubborn plugFrom generous vats in vastness rounded,The inner wealth and spirit sounded:Eagerly pointing South, where, lo,The daintiest, fleetest-footed doeLed o'er the fields and thro' the furzeBeyond: her lively delicate earsPrickt up erect, and in her trackA dappled lengthy-striding pack.
Scarce had they cast eyes upon her,When every heart was wagered on her,And half in dread, and half delight,They watched her lovely bounding flight;As now across the flashing green,And now beneath the stately trees,And now far distant in the dene,She headed on with graceful ease:Hanging aloft with doubled knees,At times athwart some hedge or gate;And slackening pace by slow degrees,As for the foremost foe to wait.Renewing her outstripping rateWhene'er the hot pursuers neared,By garden wall and paled estate,Where clambering gazers whooped and cheered.Here winding under elm and oak,And slanting up the sunny hill:Splashing the water here like smokeAmong the mill-holms round the mill.
And—'Let her go; she shows her game,My Nancy girl, my pet and treasure!'The farmer sighed: his eyes with pleasureBrimming: ''Tis my daughter's name,My second daughter lying yonder.'And Willie's eye in search did wander,And caught at once, with moist regard,The white gleams of a grey churchyard.'Three weeks before my girl had gone,And while upon her pillows propped,She lay at eve; the weakling fawn -For still it seems a fawn just droptA se'nnight—to my Nancy's bedI brought to make my girl a gift:The mothers of them both were dead:And both to bless it was my drift,By giving each a friend; not thinkingHow rapidly my girl was sinking.And I remember how, to patIts neck, she stretched her hand so weak,And its cold nose against her cheekPressed fondly: and I fetched the matTo make it up a couch just by her,Where in the lone dark hours to lie:For neither dear old nurse nor IWould any single wish deny her.And there unto the last it lay;And in the pastures cared to playLittle or nothing: there its mealsAnd milk I brought: and even nowThe creature such affection feelsFor that old room that, when and how,'Tis strange to mark, it slinks and stealsTo get there, and all day conceals.And once when nurse who, since that time,Keeps house for me, was very sick,Waking upon the midnight chime,And listening to the stair-clock's click,I heard a rustling, half uncertain,Close against the dark bed-curtain:And while I thrust my leg to kick,And feel the phantom with my feet,A loving tongue began to lickMy left hand lying on the sheet;And warm sweet breath upon me blew,And that 'twas Nancy then I knew.So, for her love, I had good causeTo have the creature "Nancy" christened.'
He paused, and in the moment's pause,His eyes and Willie's strangely glistened.Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hungWith face averted, near enoughTo hear, and sob unheard; the youngAnd careless ones had scampered offMeantime, and sought the loftiest placeTo beacon the approaching chase.
'Daily upon the meads to browse,Goes Nancy with those dairy cowsYou see behind the clematis:And such a favourite she is,That when fatigued, and helter skelter,Among them from her foes to shelter,She dashes when the chase is over,They'll close her in and give her cover,And bend their horns against the hounds,And low, and keep them out of bounds!From the house dogs she dreads no harm,And is good friends with all the farm,Man, and bird, and beast, howbeitTheir natures seem so opposite.And she is known for many a mile,And noted for her splendid style,For her clear leap and quick slight hoof;Welcome she is in many a roof.And if I say, I love her, man!I say but little: her fine eyes fullOf memories of my girl, at YuleAnd May-time, make her dearer thanDumb brute to men has been, I think.So dear I do not find her dumb.I know her ways, her slightest wink,So well; and to my hand she'll come,Sidelong, for food or a caress,Just like a loving human thing.Nor can I help, I do confess,Some touch of human sorrowingTo think there may be such a doubtThat from the next world she'll be shut out,And parted from me! And well I mindHow, when my girl's last moments came,Her soft eyes very soft and kind,She joined her hands and prayed the same,That she "might meet her father, mother,Sister Bess, and each dear brother,And with them, if it might be, oneWho was her last companion."Meaning the fawn—the doe you mark -For my bay mare was then a foal,And time has passed since then:- but hark!'
For like the shrieking of a soulShut in a tomb, a darkened cryOf inward-wailing agonySurprised them, and all eyes on eachFixed in the mute-appealing speechOf self-reproachful apprehension:Knowing not what to think or do:But Joan, recovering first, broke throughThe instantaneous suspension,And knelt upon the ground, and guessedThe bitterness at a glance, and pressedInto the comfort of her breastThe deep-throed quaking shape that droopedIn misery's wilful aggravation,Before the farmer as he stooped,Touched with accusing consternation:Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:-'Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!Not me! God will not take me in!Nothing can wipe away my sin!I shall not see her: you will go;You and all that she loves so:Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!'Colourless, her long black hair,Like seaweed in a tempest tossedTangling astray, to Joan's careShe yielded like a creature lost:Yielded, drooping toward the ground,As doth a shape one half-hour drowned,And heaved from sea with mast and spar,All dark of its immortal star.And on that tender heart, inuredTo flatter basest grief, and fightDespair upon the brink of night,She suffered herself to sink, assuredOf refuge; and her ear inclinedTo comfort; and her thoughts resignedTo counsel; her wild hair let brushFrom off her weeping brows; and shookWith many little sobs that tookDeeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs,Long sighs, they sank; and to the 'hush!'Of Joan's gentle chide, she soughtChildlike to check them as she ought,Looking up at her infantwise.And Willie, gazing on them both,Shivered with bliss through blood and brain,To see the darling of his trothLike a maternal angel strainThe sinful and the sinless childAt once on either breast, and thereIn peace and promise reconciledUnite them: nor could Nature's careWith subtler sweet beneficenceHave fed the springs of penitence,Still keeping true, though harshly tried,The vital prop of human pride.
BEAUTY ROHTRAUT (From Moricke)
What is the name of King Ringang's daughter?Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!And what does she do the livelong day,Since she dare not knit and spin alway?O hunting and fishing is ever her play!And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!I'd hunt and fish right merrily!Be silent, heart!
And it chanced that, after this some time, -Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut, -The boy in the Castle has gained access,And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress,To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;And, O! that a king's son I might be!Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.Hush! hush! my heart.
Under a grey old oak they sat,Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!She laughs: 'Why look you so slyly at me?If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.'Cried the breathless boy, 'kiss thee?'But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth.Down! down! mad heart.
Then slowly and silently they rode home, -Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!The boy was lost in his delight:'And, wert thou Empress this very night,I would not heed or feel the blight;Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wistHow Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd.Hush! hush! wild heart.'
A dove flew with an Olive Branch;It crossed the sea and reached the shore,And on a ship about to launchDropped down the happy sign it bore.
'An omen' rang the glad acclaim!The Captain stooped and picked it up,'Be then the Olive Branch her name,'Cried she who flung the christening cup.
The vessel took the laughing tides;It was a joyous revelryTo see her dashing from her sidesThe rough, salt kisses of the sea.
And forth into the bursting foamShe spread her sail and sped away,The rolling surge her restless home,Her incense wreaths the showering spray.
Far out, and where the riot wavesRun mingling in tumultuous throngs,She danced above a thousand graves,And heard a thousand briny songs.
Her mission with her manly crew,Her flag unfurl'd, her title told,She took the Old World to the New,And brought the New World to the Old.
Secure of friendliest welcomings,She swam the havens sheening fair;Secure upon her glad white wings,She fluttered on the ocean air.
To her no more the bastioned fortShot out its swarthy tongue of fire;From bay to bay, from port to port,Her coming was the world's desire.
And tho' the tempest lashed her oft,And tho' the rocks had hungry teeth,And lightnings split the masts aloft,And thunders shook the planks beneath,
And tho' the storm, self-willed and blind,Made tatters of her dauntless sail,And all the wildness of the windWas loosed on her, she did not fail;
But gallantly she ploughed the main,And gloriously her welcome pealed,And grandly shone to sky and plainThe goodly bales her decks revealed;
Brought from the fruitful eastern glebesWhere blow the gusts of balm and spice,Or where the black blockaded ribsAre jammed 'mongst ghostly fleets of ice,
Or where upon the curling hillsGlow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,Or where the hand of labour drillsThe stubbornness of earth to shape;
Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,And handicrafts and shapely wares,And spinnings of the hermit worms,And fruits that bloom by lions' lairs.
Come, read the meaning of the deep!The use of winds and waters learn!'Tis not to make the mother weepFor sons that never will return;
'Tis not to make the nations showContempt for all whom seas divide;'Tis not to pamper war and woe,Nor feed traditionary pride;
'Tis not to make the floating bulkMask death upon its slippery deck,Itself in turn a shattered hulk,A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.
It is to knit with loving lipThe interests of land to land;To join in far-seen fellowshipThe tropic and the polar strand.
It is to make that foaming StrengthWhose rebel forces wrestle stillThro' all his boundaried breadth and lengthBecome a vassal to our will.
It is to make the various skies,And all the various fruits they vaunt,And all the dowers of earth we prize,Subservient to our household want.
And more, for knowledge crowns the gainOf intercourse with other souls,And Wisdom travels not in vainThe plunging spaces of the poles.
The wild Atlantic's weltering gloom,Earth-clasping seas of North and South,The Baltic with its amber spume,The Caspian with its frozen mouth;
The broad Pacific, basking bright,And girdling lands of lustrous growth,Vast continents and isles of light,Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;
She visits these, traversing each;They ripen to the common sun;Thro' diverse forms and different speech,The world's humanity is one.
O may her voice have power to sayHow soon the wrecking discords cease,When every wandering wave is gayWith golden argosies of peace!
Now when the ark of human fate,Long baffled by the wayward wind,Is drifting with its peopled freight,Safe haven on the heights to find;
Safe haven from the drowning slimeOf evil deeds and Deluge wrath; -To plant again the foot of TimeUpon a purer, firmer path;
'Tis now the hour to probe the ground,To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,The fathoms of the deep to sound,And send abroad the missioned bird,
On strengthened wing for evermore,Let Science, swiftly as she can,Fly seaward on from shore to shore,And bind the links of man to man;
And like that fair propitious DoveBless future fleets about to launch;Make every freight a freight of love,And every ship an Olive Branch.
Love within the lover's breastBurns like Hesper in the west,O'er the ashes of the sun,Till the day and night are done;Then when dawn drives up her car -Lo! it is the morning star.
Love! thy love pours down on mineAs the sunlight on the vine,As the snow-rill on the vale,As the salt breeze in the sail;As the song unto the bird,On my lips thy name is heard.
As a dewdrop on the roseIn thy heart my passion glows,As a skylark to the skyUp into thy breast I fly;As a sea-shell of the seaEver shall I sing of thee.
The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.The sun's betrothing kiss it never knows,Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;But ever in a placid, pure repose,More like a spirit with its look serene,Droops its pale cheek veined thro' with infant green.
Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;The year's own darling and the Summer's Queen!Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.Much of that early prophet look she shows,Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;Like a soft evening over sunset snows,Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.
Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fairIn all that glads the eye and charms the air;In all that wakes emotions in the mindAnd sows sweet sympathies for human kind.Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!
For each, fulfilling nature's law, fulfilsItself and its own aspirations pure;Living and dying; letting faith ensureNew life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.Each perfect in its place; and each contentWith that perfection which its being meant:Divided not by months that intervene,But linked by all the flowers that bud between.Forever smiling thro' its season brief,The one in glory and the one in grief:Forever painting to our museful sight,How lowlihead and loveliness unite.
Born from the first blind yearning of the earthTo be a mother and give happy birth,Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;And ere the snows have melted from the grass,And not a strip of greensward doth appear,Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass!While in the ripe enthronement of the year,Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich airWith her so sweet, delicious bridal breath, -Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,And starr'd with dews upon her forehead clear,Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should beWho takes the land's devotion as her fee, -The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,Nature's most beautiful and perfect flower.
When April with her wild blue eyeComes dancing over the grass,And all the crimson buds so shyPeep out to see her pass;As lightly she loosens her showery locksAnd flutters her rainy wings;Laughingly stoopsTo the glass of the stream,And loosens and loopsHer hair by the gleam,While all the young villagers blithe as the flocksGo frolicking round in rings; -Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,Turns on his back and prepares to die,For he cannot live longer under the sky.
Down the valleys glittering green,Down from the hills in snowy rills,He melts between the border sheenAnd leaps the flowery verges!He cannot choose but brighten their hues,And tho' he would creep, he fain must leap,For the quick Spring spirit urges.Down the vale and down the daleHe leaps and lights, till his moments fail,Buried in blossoms red and pale,While the sweet birds sing his dirges!
O Winter! I'd live that life of thine,With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,And never a song my whole life long, -Were such delicious burial mine!To die and be buried, and so remainA wandering brook in April's train,Fixing my dying eyes for ayeOn the dawning brows of maiden May.
The moon is alone in the skyAs thou in my soul;The sea takes her image to lieWhere the white ripples rollAll night in a dream,With the light of her beam,Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.The pebbles speak lowIn the ebb and the flow,As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:Nought other stirredSave my heart all unheardBeating to bliss that is past evermore.
A wicked man is bad enough on earth;But O the baleful lustre of a chiefOnce pledged in tyranny! O star of dearthDarkly illumining a nation's grief!How many men have worn thee on their brows!Alas for them and us! God's precious giftOf gracious dispensation got by theft -The damning form of false unholy vows!The thief of God and man must have his fee:And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince -Basest of England's banes before or since!Thrice traitor, coward, thief! O thou shalt beThe historic warning, trampled and abhorr'dWho dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!
A Princess in the eastern talePaced thro' a marble city pale,And saw in ghastly shapes of stoneThe sculptured life she breathed alone;
Saw, where'er her eye might range,Herself the only child of change;And heard her echoed footfall chimeBetween Oblivion and Time;
And in the squares where fountains played,And up the spiral balustrade,Along the drowsy corridors,Even to the inmost sleeping floors,
Surveyed in wonder chilled with dreadThe seemingness of Death, not dead;Life's semblance but without its storm,And silence frosting every form;
Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves,Like suddenly arrested wavesAbout to sink, about to rise, -Strange meaning in their stricken eyes;
And cloths and couches live with flameOf leopards fierce and lions tame,And hunters in the jungle reed,Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;
Dumb chambers hushed with fold on fold,And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold;White casements o'er embroidered seats,Looking on solitudes of streets, -
On palaces and column'd towers,Unconscious of the stony hours;Harsh gateways startled at a sound,With burning lamps all burnish'd round; -
Surveyed in awe this wealth and state,Touched by the finger of a Fate,And drew with slow-awakening fearThe sternness of the atmosphere; -
And gradually, with stealthier foot,Became herself a thing as mute,And listened,—while with swift alarmHer alien heart shrank from the charm;
Yet as her thoughts dilating rose,Took glory in the great repose,And over every postured formSpread lava-like and brooded warm, -
And fixed on every frozen faceBeheld the record of its race,And in each chiselled feature knewThe stormy life that once blushed thro'; -
The ever-present of the pastThere written; all that lightened last,Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair,Beauty and rage, all written there; -
Enchanted Passions! whose pale doomIs never flushed by blight or bloom,But sentinelled by silent orbs,Whose light the pallid scene absorbs. -
Like such a one I pace alongThis City with its sleeping throng;Like her with dread and awe, that turnsTo rapture, and sublimely yearns; -
For now the quiet stars look downOn lights as quiet as their own;The streets that groaned with traffic showAs if with silence paved below;
The latest revellers are at peace,The signs of in-door tumult cease,From gay saloon and low resort,Comes not one murmur or report:
The clattering chariot rolls not by,The windows show no waking eye,The houses smoke not, and the airIs clear, and all the midnight fair.
The centre of the striving world,Round which the human fate is curled,To which the future crieth wild, -Is pillowed like a cradled child.
The palace roof that guards a crown,The mansion swathed in dreamy down,Hovel, court, and alley-shed,Sleep in the calmness of the dead.
Now while the many-motived heartLies hushed—fireside and busy mart,And mortal pulses beat the tuneThat charms the calm cold ear o' the moon
Whose yellowing crescent down the WestLeans listening, now when every breastIts basest or its purest heaves,The soul that joys, the soul that grieves; -
While Fame is crowning happy browsThat day will blindly scorn, while vowsOf anguished love, long hidden, speakFrom faltering tongue and flushing cheek
The language only known to dreams,Rich eloquence of rosy themes!While on the Beauty's folded mouthDisdain just wrinkles baby youth;
While Poverty dispenses almsTo outcasts, bread, and healing balms;While old Mammon knows himselfThe greatest beggar for his pelf;
While noble things in darkness grope,The Statesman's aim, the Poet's hope;The Patriot's impulse gathers fire,And germs of future fruits aspire; -
Now while dumb nature owns its links,And from one common fountain drinks,Methinks in all around I seeThis Picture in Eternity; -
A marbled City planted thereWith all its pageants and despair;A peopled hush, a Death not dead,But stricken with Medusa's head; -
And in the Gorgon's glance for ayeThe lifeless immortalityReveals in sculptured calmness allIts latest life beyond recall.
Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddyAs dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.Tender to tearfulness—childlike, and manly, and motherly;Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet Englishground.
Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst ladies andknights.
Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; -Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one greathuman heart.
Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthenThe mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the brightspheres.