Men the Angels eyed;And here they were wild waves,And there as marsh descried;Men the Angels eyed,And liked the picture bestWhere they were greenly dressedIn brotherhood of graves.
Man the Angels marked:He led a host through murk,On fearful seas embarked;Man the Angels marked;To think without a nay,That he was good as they,And help him at his work.
Man and Angels, yeA sluggish fen shall drain,Shall quell a warring sea.Man and Angels, ye,Whom stain of strife befouls,A light to kindle soulsBear radiant in the stain.
Young captain of a crazy bark!O tameless heart in battered frame!Thy sailing orders have a mark,And hers is not the name.
For action all thine iron clanksIn cravings for a splendid prize;Again to race or bump thy planksWith any flag that flies.
Consult them; they are eloquentFor senses not inebriate.They trust thee on the star intent,That leads to land their freight.
And they have known thee high peruseThe heavens, and deep the earth, till thouDidst into the flushed circle cruiseWhere reason quits the brow.
Thou animatest ancient tales,To prove our world of linear seed:Thy very virtue now assails,A tempter to mislead.
But thou hast answer I am I;My passion hallows, bids command:And she is gracious, she is nigh:One motion of the hand!
It will suffice; a whirly tuneThese winds will pipe, and thou performThe nodded part of pantaloonIn thy created storm.
Admires thee Nature with much pride;She clasps thee for a gift of morn,Till thou art set against the tide,And then beware her scorn.
Sad issue, should that strife befallBetween thy mortal ship and thee!It writes the melancholy scrawlOf wreckage over sea.
This lady of the luting tongue,The flash in darkness, billow's grace,For thee the worship; for the youngIn muscle the embrace.
Soar on thy manhood clear from thoseWhose toothless Winter claws at May,And take her as the vein of roseAthwart an evening grey.
How died Melissa none dares shape in words.A woman who is wife despotic lordsCount faggot at the question, Shall she live!Her son, because his brows were black of her,Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive,And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur.
There is no Corinth save the whip and curbOf Corinth, high Periander; the superbIn magnanimity, in rule severe.Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits,The city under him: a white yoked steer,That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits.
Bloom of the generous fires of his fair SpringStill coloured him when men forbore to sting;Admiring meekly where the ordered seedsOf his good sovereignty showed gardens trim;And owning that the hoe he struck at weedsWas author of the flowers raised face to him.
His Corinth, to each mood subservientIn homage, made he as an instrumentTo yield him music with scarce touch of stops.He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly:At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops;At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye.
His wisdom men acknowledged; only one,The creature, issue of him, Lycophron,That rebel with his mother in his brows,Contested: such an infamous would foulPirene! Little heed where he might houseThe prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl!
To prove the Gods benignant to his rule,The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool,Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power.A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had:One greyer pointed on the pallid hourTo come: a river dried of waters glad.
For which of his male issue promised gripTo stride yon people, with the curb and whip?This Lycophron! he sole, the father like,Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide,By right of mastery; stern will to strike;Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride!
Himself the prince beheld a failing fount.His line stretched back unto its holy mount:The thirsty onward waved for him no sign.Then stood before his vision that hard son.The seizure of a passion for his lineImpelled him to the path of Lycophron.
The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea;A figure shunned along the busy quay,Perforce of the harsh edict for who daredAddress him outcast. Naming it, he crossedHis father's look with look that proved them pairedFor stiffness, and another pebble tossed.
An exile to the Island ere nightfallHe passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all.It had resemblance to a death: and on,Against a coast where sapphire shattered white,The seasons rolled like troops of billows blownTo spraymist. The prince gazed on capping night.
Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy son!Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done.He heard historic echoes moan his name,As of the prince in whom the race had pause;Till Tyranny paternity became,And him he hated loved he for the cause.
Not Lycophron the exile now appeared,But young Periander, from the shadow cleared,That haunted his rebellious brows. The princeGrew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth,Return: and of pure pardon to convince,Despatched the messenger most dear with both.
His daughter, from the exile's Island home,Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o'er the foam,Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed;Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced.To bring him back a prince the father vowed,Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist.
He waved the fleet to strain its westward wayOn to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay:Soil of those hospitable islandersWhom now his heart, for honour to his blood,Thanked. They should learn what boons a prince confersWhen happiness enjoins him gratitude!
In watch upon the offing, worn with hasteTo see his youth revived, and, close embraced,Pardon who had subdued him, who had gainedSurely the stoutest battle between twoSince Titan pierced by young Apollo stainedEarth's breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked through.
Errors aforetime unperceived were bared,To be by his young masterful repaired:Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke;His policy confirmed amid the surgeOf States and people fretting at his yoke.And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge!
Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheerFor welcome shadowed round the heaving bier.They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stressOf numbers the free islanders dismayedAt Tyranny come masking to oppress,Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid.
Who smote the man thrown open to young joy?The image of the mother of his boyCame forth from his unwary breast in wreaths,With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct,Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes?Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked!
Dead was he, and demanding earth. DemandSharper for vengeance of an instant hand,The Tyrant in the father heard him cry,And raged a plague; to prove on free HellenesHow prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye;How black his Gods behind their marble screens.
The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eyeOn the great man of Athens, whom for foeHe knew, than on the sycophantic fryThat broke as waters round a galley's flow,Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake.Solidity the Thunderer could not shake,Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare,His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look,From thought drew, and a countenance could wearNot less at peace than fields in Attic airShorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper's hook.
Most enviable so; yet much insaneTo deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep,By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein;Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap,My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood.For ones and twos and threes thy words are good;For thine own government are pillars: mineStand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst,Rejecting elegiacs, though they shineOn polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine,In showering columns from their fountain burst.
Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed,To his high seat upon the sacred rock:And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumedThe meditation which that passing mockHad buffeted awhile to sallowness.He little loved the man, his office less,Yet owned him for a flower of his kind.Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he!The people grew not in themselves, but, blind,Accepted sight from him, to him resignedTheir hopes of stature, rootless as at sea.
As under sea lay Solon's work, or seemedBy turbid shore-waves beaten day by day;Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed,Or child that fashioned in another clayAppears, by strangers' hands to home returned.But shall the Present tyrannize us? earnedIt was in some way, justly says the sage.One sees not how, while husbanding regrets;While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage,High vision is obscured; for this is ageWhen robbed—more infant than the babe it frets!
Yet see Athenians treading the black pathLaid by a prince's shadow! well contentTo wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath:They bow to their accepted OrientWith offer of the all that renders bright:Forgetful of the growth of men to light,As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow.Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast.But still may they who sowed behind the ploughTrue seed fix in the mind an unborn NOWTo make the plagues afflicting us things past.
Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nodOf palsy doing task of thanks for bread;Upon the stature of a God,He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head.
Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongueDeformed, like his great frame: a broken arc:Once radiant as the javelin flungRight at the centre breastplate of his mark.
Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look,Some undermountain narrative he tells,As gapped by Lykian heat the brookCut from the source that in the upland swells.
The cottagers who dole him fruit and crustWith patient inattention hear him prate:And comes the snow, and comes the dust,Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.
A crazy beggar grateful for a mealHas ever of himself a world to say.For them he is an ancient wheelSpinning a knotted thread the livelong day.
He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect;For never singer in the land had beenWho him for theme did not reject:Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.
Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straightThe snorting white-winged brother of the wave,They hear him as a thing by fateCursed in unholy babble to his grave.
As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort,Their sires have told; and of a martial princeBestriding him; and old reportSpeaks of a monster slain by one long since.
There is that story of the golden bitBy Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:A mortal who could mount, and sitFlying, and up Olympus midway speed.
He rose like the loosed fountain's utmost leap;He played the star at span of heaven right o'erMen's heads: they saw the snowy steep,Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.
He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell:And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins;And in his breast a mouthless wellHeaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.
Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springsOf recollections richer than our skiesTo feed the flow of tuneful strings,Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies.
At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer,Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder toblack;In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge,Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song.Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly,In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is!To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon,Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary,Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage,He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof.Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: 'Rule of day give me; giveit me,Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendinglyI, divine, proclaim my birthright.' Darkened Helios, and hisutteranceChoked prophetic: 'O half mortal!' he exclaimed in an agony,'O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing:Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious!Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculousMighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy?Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently;As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them;Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine originShall be known even as when I strike on the string'd shell withmelody,And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to thecavities,Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the shipsthereon.'Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquenceWas the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocksaway.What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in delirium,Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent,'By the oath! the oath! thine oath!' cried. The effulgent foreseerthen,Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy's beaming countenanceLooked and moaned, and urged him for love's sake, for sweet life'ssake, to yield the claim,To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity.But he, vehement, passionate, called out: 'Let me show I am what Isay,That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with theirwhispering.Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels,How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily,Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial,And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear dew-drinkers:Yea, for this I gaze on life's light; throw for this any sacrifice.'
All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocableBowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless.Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was sodecreed.They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries.Swift the ripple ripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon,Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of thedistances,And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight!Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air!Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory!Chafed the youth with their spirit surcharged, as when blossom isshaken by winds,Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quickOn the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morningrose:Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvestfields,When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it:Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate(If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil),Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate:Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution'd urgently betweenwhiles:Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness,That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice ofGods;None but Gods can curb. He spake: vain were the words: scarcelylistening,Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, 'Behold me, companions,It is I here, I!' he shouted, glancing down with supremacy;'Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men;I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!'Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenlyBeat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that;-At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand,Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and yon;Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled East:-Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer,Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his arid wits;The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the mastery,Till a thunder off the tense chords thro' his ears dinned horrible.Panic seized him: fled his vision of inviolability;Fled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances predominant;And he cried, 'Had I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite,My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I goWith the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate.Oh, my sisters! Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was enviable,From whose arms I rushed befrenzied, what a wreck will this body be,That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thymysteriesCelebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged!Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering;Not again hear thy half-murmurs—I am lost!—never, never more.I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel offlame!Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!'
Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the ThundererSaw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright carsuperimpendingOver Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales;Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately;Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow moveWith voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable,The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of thefirmament.For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon-fire,And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's apparition forth.Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering:Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimatehours:Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot-wheels:Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets!Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo,Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, penetratethem,Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame cracklingbusily.He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe,Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft:Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him.Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions undertheir paws.White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind:Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate shock.To the bolt he launched, 'Strike dead, thou,' uttered Zeus, veryterrible;'Perish folly, else 'tis man's fate'; and the bolt flew unerringly.Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measurelessaltitudesLeaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not acry.Like the flower on the river's surface when expanding it vanishes,Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched: and so fell heprecipitate,Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it comes:So he showered above them, shadowed o'er the blue archipelagoes,O'er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles;So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth.
Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep,By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria,Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to thetremulousEver-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen.
Flowers of the willow-herb are wool;Flowers of the briar berries red;Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule,Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread.Flowers of the clematis drip in beard,Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed;Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared;Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.
Where were skies of the mantle stainedOrange and scarlet, a coat of friezeTravels from North till day has waned,Tattered, soaked in the ditch's dyes;Tumbles the rook under grey or slate;Else enfolding us, damps to the bone;Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate;Paints me Life as a wheezy crone.
Now seems none but the spider lord;Star in circle his web waits prey,Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward;Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray.Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh,Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed,He who frolicked the jewelled fly;All is adroop on the down and the weald.
Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrapNights that tardily let slip a mornPaler than moons, and on noontide's lapFlame dies cold, like the rose late born.Rose born late, born withered in bud! -I, even I, for a zenith of sunCry, to fulfil me, nourish my blood:O for a day of the long light, one!
Master the blood, nor read by chills,Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed,Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills,Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud.Steadily eyeing, before that wailAnimal-infant, thy mind began,Momently nearer me: should sight fail,Plod in the track of the husbandman.
Verily now is our season of seed,Now in our Autumn; and Earth discernsThem that have served her in them that can read,Glassing, where under the surface she burns,Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay,Brightens the fire of renewal: and we?Death is the word of a bovine day,Know you the breast of the springing To-be.
Bursts from a rending East in flawsThe young green leaflet's harrier, swornTo strew the garden, strip the shaws,And show our Spring with banner torn.Was ever such virago morn?The wind has teeth, the wind has claws.All the wind's wolves through woods are loose,The wild wind's falconry aloft.Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews,At gallop, clumped, and down the croftBestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed;It seems a scythe, it seems a rod.The howl is up at the howl's accost;The shivers greet and the shivers nod.
Is the land ship? we are rolled, we driveTritonly, cleaving hiss and hum;Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive,Or down in dregs, or on in scum.And drums the distant, pipes the near,And vale and hill are grey in grey,As when the surge is crumbling sheer,And sea-mews wing the haze of spray.Clouds—are they bony witches?—swarms,Darting swift on the robber's flight,Hurry an infant sky in arms:It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night.Black while over the loop of blueThe swathe is closed, like shroud on corse.Lo, as if swift the Furies flew,The Fates at heel at a cry to horse!
Interpret me the savage whirr:And is it Nature scourged, or she,Her offspring's executioner,Reducing land to barren sea?But is there meaning in a dayWhen this fierce angel of the air,Intent to throw, and haply slay,Can for what breath of life we bear,Exact the wrestle?—Call to mindThe many meanings glistening upWhen Nature to her nurslings kind,Hands them the fruitage and the cup!And seek we rich significanceNot otherwhere than with those tidesOf pleasure on the sunned expanse,Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides?
Look in the face of men who fareLock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thewsFor this fierce angel of the air,To twist with him and take his bruise.That is the face beloved of oldOf Earth, young mother of her brood:Nor broken for us shows the mouldWhen muscle is in mind renewed:Though farther from her nature rude,Yet nearer to her spirit's hold:And though of gentler mood serene,Still forceful of her fountain-jet.So shall her blows be shrewdly met,Be luminously read the sceneWhere Life is at her grindstone set,That she may give us edgeing keen,String us for battle, till as playThe common strokes of fortune shower.Such meaning in a dagger-dayOur wits may clasp to wax in power.Yea, feel us warmer at her breast,By spin of blood in lusty drill,Than when her honeyed hands caressed,And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill.
Behold the life at ease; it drifts.The sharpened life commands its course.She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts,To dip her chosen in her source:Contention is the vital force,Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts,Sky of the senses! on which height,Not disconnected, yet released,They see how spirit comes to light,Through conquest of the inner beast,Which Measure tames to movement sane,In harmony with what is fair.Never is Earth misread by brain:That is the welling of her, thereThe mirror: with one step beyond,For likewise is it voice; and more,Benignest kinship bids respond,When wail the weak, and them restoreWhom days as fell as this may rive,While Earth sits ebon in her gloom,Us atomies of life aliveUnheeding, bent on life to come.Her children of the labouring brain,These are the champions of the race,True parents, and the sole humane,With understanding for their base.Earth yields the milk, but all her mindIs vowed to thresh for stouter stock.Her passion for old giantkind,That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock,Devolves on them who read arightHer meaning and devoutly serve;Nor in her starlessness of nightPeruse her with the craven nerve:But even as she from grass to corn,To eagle high from grubbing mole,Prove in strong brain her noblest born,The station for the flight of soul.
Day of the cloud in fleets! O dayOf wedded white and blue, that sailImmingled, with a footing rayIn shadow-sandals down our vale! -And swift to ravish golden meads,Swift up the run of turf it speeds,Thy bright of head and dark of heel,To where the hilltop flings on sky,As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel,The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:-Thee the last thunder's caverned pealDelivered from a wailful night:All dusky round thy cradled light,Those brine-born issues, now in bloomTransfigured, wreathed as raven's plumeAnd briony-leaf to watch thee lie:Dark eyebrows o'er a dreamful eyeNigh opening: till in the braidOf purpled vapours thou wert rosed:Till that new babe a Goddess maidAppeared and vividly disclosedHer beat of life: then crimson playedOn edges of the plume and leaf:Shape had they and fair feature brief,The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast,Earth's milk. But what imperial marchTheir standards led for earth, none guessedEre upward of a coloured arch,An arrow straining eager headLightened, and high for zenith sped.Fierier followed; followed Fire.Name the young lord of Earth's desire,Whose look her wine is, and whose mouthHer music! Beauteous was she seenBeneath her midway West of South;And sister was her quivered greenTo sapphire of the Nereid eyesOn sea when sun is breeze; she winkedAs they, and waved, heaved waterwiseHer flood of leaves and grasses linked:A myriad lustrous butterfliesA moment in the fluttering sheen;Becapped with the slate air that throwsThe reindeer's antlers black betweenLow-frowning and wide-fallen snows,A minute after; hooded, stoledTo suit a graveside Season's dirge.Lo, but the breaking of a surge,And she is in her lover's fold,Illumined o'er a boundless rangeAnew: and through quick morning hoursThe Tropic-Arctic counterchargeDid seem to pant in beams and showers.
But noon beheld a larger heaven;Beheld on our reflecting fieldThe Sower to the Bearer given,And both their inner sweetest yield,Fresh as when dews were grey or firstReceived the flush of hues athirst.Heard we the woodland, eyeing sun,As harp and harper were they one.A murky cloud a fair pursued,Assailed, and felt the limbs elude:He sat him down to pipe his woe,And some strange beast of sky became:A giant's club withheld the blow;A milky cloud went all to flame.And there were groups where silvery springsThe ethereal forest showed begirtBy companies in choric rings,Whom but to see made ear alert.For music did each movement rouse,And motion was a minstrel's rageTo have our spirits out of house,And bathe them on the open page.This was a day that knew not age.Since flew the vapoury twos and threesFrom western pile to eastern rack;As on from peaks of PyreneesTo Graians; youngness ruled the track.When songful beams were shut in caves,And rainy drapery swept across;When the ranked clouds were downy waves,Breast of swan, eagle, albatross,In ordered lines to screen the blue,Youngest of light was nigh, we knew.The silver finger of it laughedAlong the narrow rift: it shot,Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft,Then haled on high the volumed blot,To build the hurling palace, cleaveThe dazzling chasm; the flying nests,The many glory-garlands weave,Whose presence not our sight attestsTill wonder with the splendour blent,And passion for the beauty flown,Make evanescence permanent,The thing at heart our endless own.
Only at gathered eve knew weThe marvels of the day: for thenMount upon mountain out of seaArose, and to our spacious kenTrebled sublime Olympus roundIn towering amphitheatre.Colossal on enormous mound,Majestic gods we saw confer.They wafted the Dream-messengerFrom off the loftiest, the crowned:That Lady of the hues of foamIn sun-rays: who, close under dome,A figure on the foot's descent,Irradiate to vapour went,As one whose mission was resigned,Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads;Melting she passed into the mind,Where immortal with mortal weds.
Whereby was known that we had viewedThe union of our earth and skiesRenewed: nor less alive renewedThan when old bards, in nature wise,Conceived pure beauty given to eyes,And with undyingness imbued.Pageant of man's poetic brain,His grand procession of the song,It was; the Muses and their train;Their God to lead the glittering throng:At whiles a beat of forest gong;At whiles a glimpse of Python slain.Mostly divinest harmony,The lyre, the dance. We could believeA life in orb and brook and tree,And cloud; and still holds MemoryA morning in the eyes of eve.
I know him, February's thrush,And loud at eve he valentinesOn sprays that paw the naked bushWhere soon will sprout the thorns and bines.
Now ere the foreign singer thrillsOur vale his plain-song pipe he pours,A herald of the million bills;And heed him not, the loss is yours.
My study, flanked with ivied firAnd budded beech with dry leaves curled,Perched over yew and juniper,He neighbours, piping to his world:-
The wooded pathways dank on brown,The branches on grey cloud a web,The long green roller of the down,An image of the deluge-ebb:-
And farther, they may hear alongThe stream beneath the poplar row.By fits, like welling rocks, the songSpouts of a blushful Spring in flow.
But most he loves to front the valeWhen waves of warm South-western rainsHave left our heavens clear in pale,With faintest beck of moist red veins:
Vermilion wings, by distance heldTo pause aflight while fleeting swift:And high aloft the pearl inshelledHer lucid glow in glow will lift;
A little south of coloured sky;Directing, gravely amorous,The human of a tender eyeThrough pure celestial on us:
Remote, not alien; still, not cold;Unraying yet, more pearl than star;She seems a while the vale to holdIn trance, and homelier makes the far.
Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes,An orb of lustre quits the height;And like blue iris-flags, in wreathsThe sky takes darkness, long ere quite.
His Island voice then shall you hear,Nor ever after separateFrom such a twilight of the yearAdvancing to the vernal gate.
He sings me, out of Winter's throat,The young time with the life ahead;And my young time his leaping noteRecalls to spirit-mirth from dead.
Imbedded in a land of greed,Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's,My care was but to soothe my need;At peace among the littleworths.
To light and song my yearning aimed;To that deep breast of song and lightWhich men have barrenest proclaimed;As 'tis to senses pricked with fright.
So mine are these new fruitings richThe simple to the common brings;I keep the youth of souls who pitchTheir joy in this old heart of things:
Who feel the Coming young as aye,Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough;Alive for life, awake to die;One voice to cheer the seedling Now.
Full lasting is the song, though he,The singer, passes: lasting too,For souls not lent in usury,The rapture of the forward view.
With that I bear my senses fraughtTill what I am fast shoreward drives.They are the vessel of the Thought.The vessel splits, the Thought survives.
Nought else are we when sailing brave,Save husks to raise and bid it burn.Glimpse of its livingness will waveA light the senses can discern
Across the river of the death,Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight birdOf promise! bird of happy breath!I hear, I would the City heard.
The City of the smoky fray;A prodded ox, it drags and moans:Its Morrow no man's child; its DayA vulture's morsel beaked to bones.
It strives without a mark for strife;It feasts beside a famished host:The loose restraint of wanton life,That threatened penance in the ghost!
Yet there our battle urges; thereSpring heroes many: issuing thence,Names that should leave no vacant airFor fresh delight in confidence.
Life was to them the bag of grain,And Death the weedy harrow's tooth.Those warriors of the sighting brainGive worn Humanity new youth.
Our song and star are they to leadThe tidal multitude and blindFrom bestial to the higher breedBy fighting souls of love divined,
They scorned the ventral dream of peace,Unknown in nature. This they knew:That life begets with fair increaseBeyond the flesh, if life be true.
Just reason based on valiant blood,The instinct bred afield would matchTo pipe thereof a swelling flood,Were men of Earth made wise in watch.
Though now the numbers count as dropsAn urn might bear, they father Time.She shapes anew her dusty crops;Her quick in their own likeness climb.
Of their own force do they create;They climb to light, in her their root.Your brutish cry at muffled fateShe smites with pangs of worse than brute.
She, judged of shrinking nerves, appearsA Mother whom no cry can melt;But read her past desires and fears,The letters on her breast are spelt.
A slayer, yea, as when she pressedHer savage to the slaughter-heaps,To sacrifice she prompts her best:She reaps them as the sower reaps.
But read her thought to speed the race,And stars rush forth of blackest night:You chill not at a cold embraceTo come, nor dread a dubious might.
Her double visage, double voice,In oneness rise to quench the doubt.This breath, her gift, has only choiceOf service, breathe we in or out.
Since Pain and Pleasure on each handLed our wild steps from slimy rockTo yonder sweeps of gardenland,We breathe but to be sword or block.
The sighting brain her good decreeAccepts; obeys those guides, in faith,By reason hourly fed, that she,To some the clod, to some the wraith,
Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.Flame, stream, are we, in mid careerFrom torrent source, delirious dream,To heaven-reflecting currents clear.
And why the sons of Strength have beenHer cherished offspring ever; howThe Spirit served by her is seenThrough Law; perusing love will show.
Love born of knowledge, love that gainsVitality as Earth it mates,The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,The Life, the Death, illuminates.
For love we Earth, then serve we all;Her mystic secret then is ours:We fall, or view our treasures fall,Unclouded, as beholds her flowers
Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,Enrobed in morning's mounted fire,When lowly, with a broken neck,The crocus lays her cheek to mire.
Demeter devastated our good land,In blackness for her daughter snatched below.Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand,Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throwThe wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray.Now whether night advancing, whether day,Scarce did the baldness show:The hand of man was a defeated hand.
Necessity, the primal goad to growth,Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one;Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth;Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun,Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain,Idly the flax-wheel spunUnridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.
Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags,Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-beesPursued the flowers that were not with dry bags;Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees,More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world,Careless to lure or please.A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.
No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw,Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom,In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw,Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom,And whose pale place of habitation mute,She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruitAnciently, gaped for bloom:Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.
The wrathful Queen descended on a vale,That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.Iambe, maiden of the merry tale,Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.More than for her who grieved,She could for this waste home have piped the wail.
Iambe, her dear mountain-rivuletTo waken laughter from cold stones, beheldA riven wheatfield cracking for the wet,And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled,Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.Teeth of the giants marked she where thin groundRocky in spikes rebelledAgainst the hand here slack as rotted net.
The valley people up the ashen scoopShe beckoned, aiming hopelessly to winHer Mistress in compassion of yon groupSo pinched and wizened; with their aged grin,For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe,White as in chalk outlining little O,Dumb, from a falling chin;Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.
Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as whenDark underwaters the recesses choke;With cluck and upper quiver of a henIn grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fountBountiful of old days, heard them recountThis and that cruel stroke:Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.
A figure of black rock by sunbeams crownedThrough stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfoldAn earth in awe before the claps resoundAnd woods and dwellings are as billows rolled,The barren Nourisher unmelted shedDeath from the looks that wandered with the deadOut of the realms of gold,In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.
Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raisedThe cattle-call above the moan of prayer;And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed,Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare:The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as viewSeas that have struck brave ships ashore, while throughShoots the swift foamspit: bareThey nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.
Howbeit the season of the dancing blood,Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse:Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood.Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse,Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked.Neighing within, at either's flank they licked;Played on a moment's forceAt courtship, withering to the crazy nod.
The nod was that we gather for consent;And mournfully amid the group a dame,Interpreting the thing in nature meant,Her hands held out like bearers of the flame,And nodded for the negative sideways.Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: raysFrom the Great Mother came:Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.
She laughed: since our first harvesting heard noneLike thunder of the song of heart: her face,The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun,And peal on peal across the hills held chase.She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire;Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sireFull of the marrowy race.Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.
The valley people huddled, broke, afraid,Assured, and taking lightning in the veins,They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed,Unwitting happiness till golden rainsOf tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smoteKnowledge of milky mercy from that throatPouring to heal their pains:And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.
Iambe clapped to see the kindly lustsInspire the valley people, still on seas,Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts,With rapture in their wonderment; but these,Low homage being rendered, ran to plough,Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cowCalves at the teats they tease:Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.
Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red,The tree of water and the tree of wood:And soon among the branches overheadGave beauty juicy issue sweet for food.O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth.Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth!Good for the spirit, goodFor body, thou! to both art wine and bread!
The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South,Has told of rain upon the fall of day.But promise is there none for Susan's drouth,That he will come, who keeps in dry delay.The freshest of the village three years gone,She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived;And she and Earth are oneIn withering unrevived.Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!
Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid,When she who wedded with the soldier hidesAt home as good as widowed in the shade,A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides:Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, norTo dream of dancing, but must hang and moan,Her husband in the war,And she to lie alone.Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!
They have not known; they are not in the stream;Light as the flying seed-ball is their play,The silly maids! and happy souls they seem;Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they.They have not struck the roots which meet the firesBeneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to knowThe strength of her desires,The sternness of her woe.Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!
Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without showerA borderless low blotting Westward spreads.The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour;Across an inner chamber thunder treads:The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floorOf dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks,And drives the dames to door,Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks.Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain!
Through night, with bedroom window wide for air,Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend:And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare,Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life's end,From her heaved breast of sacred common mould;Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feelUnworded things and oldTo her pained heart appeal.Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!And down in deluges of blessed rain!
At morn she stood to live for ear and sight,Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched.A lureful devil, that in glow-worm lightSet languor writhing all its folds, she quenched.But she would muse when neighbours praised her face,Her services, and staunchness to her mate:Knowing by some dim trace,The change might bear a date.Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain!
Fleck of sky you are,Dropped through branches dark,O my little one, mine!Promise of the star,Outpour of the lark;Beam and song divine.
See this precious gift,Steeping in new birthAll my being, for signEarth to heaven can lift,Heaven descend on earth,Both in one be mine!
Life in light you glassWhen you peep and coo,You, my little one, mine!Brooklet chirps to grass,Daisy looks in dewUp to dear sunshine.
Sweet as Eden is the air,And Eden-sweet the ray.No Paradise is lost for themWho foot by branching root and stem,And lightly with the woodland shareThe change of night and day.
Here all say,We serve her, even as I:We brood, we strive to sky,We gaze upon decay,We wot of life through death,How each feeds each we spy;And is a tangle round,Are patient; what is dumbWe question not, nor askThe silent to give sound,The hidden to unmask,The distant to draw near.
And this the woodland saith:I know not hope or fear;I take whate'er may come;I raise my head to aspects fair,From foul I turn away.
Sweet as Eden is the air,And Eden-sweet the ray.