The Project Gutenberg eBook ofPoemsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: PoemsAuthor: George SantayanaRelease date: August 17, 2015 [eBook #49721]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marc d'Hooghe*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: PoemsAuthor: George SantayanaRelease date: August 17, 2015 [eBook #49721]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marc d'Hooghe
Title: Poems
Author: George Santayana
Author: George Santayana
Release date: August 17, 2015 [eBook #49721]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marc d'Hooghe
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
CONTENTSSONNETS, 1883—1893—I.-XXSONNETS, 1895—XXI.-LMISCELLANEOUS SONNETS—ON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHYON THE DEATH OF A METAPHYSICIAN.ON A PIECE OF TAPESTRYTo W. P.BEFORE A STATUE OF ACHILLESTHE RUSTIC AT THE PLAYODES—I.-VATHLETIC ODEVARIOUS POEMSCAPE CODA TOASTPREMONITIONSOLIPSISMSYBARISAVILAKING'S COLLEGE CHAPELON AN UNFINISHED STATUEMIDNIGHTIN GRANTCHESTER MEADOWSSPAIN IN AMERICAA MINUETTRANSLATIONS—FROM MICHAEL ANGELOFROM THEOPHILE GAUTIERA SPANIARD IN ENGLANDby EDMUND GOSSE
New editions of books are a venture for publishers rather than authors. The author has committed his rash act once for all at the beginning and he can hardly retract or repeat it. Nevertheless if I had not connived and collaborated at this selection of verses written (almost all of them) in my younger days, they probably would not have reappeared. I therefore owe an apology to my best critics and friends, who have always warned me that I am no poet; all the more since, in the sense in which they mean the word, I heartily agree with them. Of impassioned tenderness or Dionysiac frenzy I have nothing, nor even of that magic and pregnancy of phrasere—ally the creation of a fresh idiom—which marks the high lights of poetry. Even if my temperament had been naturally warmer, the fact that the English language (and I can write no other with assurance) was not my mother-tongue would of itself preclude any inspired use of it on my part; its roots do not quite reach to my centre. I never drank in in childhood the homely cadences and ditties which in pure spontaneous poetry set the essential key. I know no words redolent of the wonder-world, the fairy-tale, or the cradle. Moreover, I am city-bred, and that companionship with nature, those rural notes, which for English poets are almost inseparable from poetic feeling, fail me altogether. Landscape to me is only a background for fable or a symbol for fate, as it was to the ancients; and the human scene itself is but a theme for reflection. Nor have I been tempted into the by-ways even of towns, or fascinated by the aspect and humours of all sorts and conditions of men. My approach to language is literary, my images are only metaphors, and sometimes it seems to me that I resemble my countryman Don Quixote, when in his airy flights he was merely perched on a high horse and a wooden Pegasus; and I ask myself if I ever had anything to say in verse that might not have been said better in prose.
And yet, in reality, there was no such alternative. What I felt when I composed those verses could not have been rendered in any other form. Their sincerity is absolute, not only in respect to the thought which might be abstracted from them and expressed in prose, but also in respect to the aura of literary and religious associations which envelops them. If their prosody is worn and traditional, like a liturgy, it is because they represent the initiation of a mind into a world older and larger than itself; not the chance experiences of a stray individual, but his submission to what is not his chance experience; to the truth of nature and the moral heritage of mankind. Here is the uncertain hand of an apprentice, but of an apprentice in a great school. Verse is one of the traditions of literature. Like the orders of Greek architecture, the sonnet or the couplet or the quatrain are better than anything else that has been devised to serve the same function; and the innate freedom of poets to hazard new forms does not abolish the freedom of all men to adopt the old ones. It is almost inevitable that a man of letters, if his mind is cultivated and capable of moral concentration, should versify occasionally, or should have versified. He need not on that account pose as a poetic genius, and yet his verses (like those of Michael Angelo, for instance) may form a part, even if a subordinate part, of the expression of his mind. Poetry was made for man, not man for poetry, and there are really as many kinds of it as there are poets, or even verses. Is Hamlet's Soliloquy poetry? Would it have conveyed its meaning better if not reined in by the metre, and made to prance and turn to the cadences of blank verse? Whether better or worse, it would certainly not be itself without that movement. Versification is like a pulsing accompaniment, somehow sustaining and exalting the clear logic of the words. The accompaniment may be orchestral, but it is not necessarily worse for being thrummed on a mandolin or a guitar. So the couplets of Pope or Dryden need not be called poetry, but they could not have been prose. They frame in a picture, balanced like the dance. There is an elevation, too, in poetic diction, just because it is consecrated and archaic; a pomp as of a religious procession, without which certain intuitions would lose all their grace and dignity. Borrowed plumes would not even seem an ornament if they were not in themselves beautiful. To say that what was good once is good no longer is to give too much importance to chronology. Æsthetic fashions may change, losing as much beauty at one end as they gain at the other, but innate taste continues to recognise its affinities, however remote, and need never change. Mask and buskin are often requisite in order to transport what is great in human experience out of its embosoming littleness. They are inseparable from finality, from perception of the ultimate. Perhaps it is just this tragic finality that English poets do not have and do not relish: they feel it to be rhetorical. But verse after all is a form of rhetoric, as is all speech and even thought; a means of pouring experience into a mould which fluid experience cannot supply, and of transmuting emotion into ideas, by making it articulate.
In one sense I think that my verses, mental and thin as their texture may be, represent a true inspiration, a true docility. A Muse? not exactly an English Muse—actually visited me in my isolation; the same, or a ghost of the same, that visited Boethius or Alfred de Musset or Leopardi. It was literally impossible for me then not to re-echo her eloquence. When that compulsion ceased, I ceased to write verses. My emotion—for there was genuine emotion—faded into a sense that my lesson was learned and my troth plighted; there was no longer any occasion for this sort of breathlessness and unction. I think the discerning reader will probably prefer the later prose versions of my philosophy; I prefer them myself, as being more broadly based, saner, more humorous. Yet if he is curious in the matter he may find the same thing here nearer to its fountain-head, in its accidental early setting, and with its most authentic personal note.
For as to the subject of these poems, it is simply my philosophy in the making. I should not give the title of philosopher to every logician or psychologist who, in his official and studious moments, may weigh argument against argument or may devise expedients for solving theoretical puzzles. I see no reason why a philosopher should be puzzled. What he sees he sees; of the rest he is ignorant; and his sense of this vast ignorance (which is his natural and inevitable condition) is a chief part of his knowledge and of his emotion. Philosophy is not an optional theme that may occupy him on occasion. It is his only possible life, his daily response to everything. He lives by thinking, and his one perpetual emotion is that this world, with himself in it, should be the strange world which it is. Everything he thinks or utters will accordingly be an integral part of his philosophy, whether it be called poetry or science or criticism. The verses of a philosopher will be essentially epigrams, like those which the Greek sages composed; they will moralise the spectacle, whether it be some personal passion or some larger aspect of nature.
My own moral philosophy, especially as expressed in this more sentimental form, may not seem very robust or joyous. Its fortitude and happiness are those of but one type of soul. The owl hooting from his wintry bough cannot be chanticleer crowing in the barnyard, yet he is sacred to Minerva; and the universal poet, who can sing the humours of winter no less lustily than those of spring, may even speak of his "merry note," worthy to mingle with the other pleasant accidents of the somberer season,
When icicles hang by the wall,. . . . . .And coughing drowns the parson's saw.
But whether the note seem merry or sad, musical or uncouth, it is itself a note of nature; and it may at least be commended, seeing it conveys a philosophy, for not conveying it by argument, but frankly making confession of an actual spiritual experience, addressed only to those whose ear it may strike sympathetically and who, crossing the same dark wood on their own errands, may pause for a moment to listen gladly.
G. S.
November1922.
SONNETS
1883-1893II sought on earth a garden of delight,Or island altar to the Sea and Air,Where gentle music were accounted prayer,And reason, veiled, performed the happy rite.My sad youth worshipped at the piteous heightWhere God vouchsafed the death of man to share;His love made mortal sorrow light to bear,But his deep wounds put joy to shamèd flight.And though his arms, outstretched upon the tree,Were beautiful, and pleaded my embrace,My sins were loth to look upon his face.So came I down from Golgotha to thee,Eternal Mother; let the sun and seaHeal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place.IISlow and reluctant was the long descent,With many farewell pious looks behind,And dumb misgivings where the path might wind,And questionings of nature, as I went.The greener branches that above me bent,The broadening valleys, quieted my mind,To the fair reasons of the Spring inclinedAnd to the Summer's tender argument.But sometimes, as revolving night descended,And in my childish heart the new song ended,I lay down, full of longing, on the steep;And, haunting still the lonely way I wended,Into my dreams the ancient sorrow blended,And with these holy echoes charmed my sleep.IIIO world, thou choosest not the better part!It is not wisdom to be only wise,And on the inward vision close the eyes,But it is wisdom to believe the heart.Columbus found a world, and had no chart,Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;To trust the soul's invincible surmiseWas all his science and his only art.Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pineThat lights the pathway but one step aheadAcross a void of mystery and dread.Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shineBy which alone the mortal heart is ledUnto the thinking of the thought divine.IVI would I had been born in nature's day,When man was in the world a wide-eyed boy,And clouds of sorrow crossed his sky of joyTo scatter dewdrops on the buds of May.Then could he work and love and fight and pray,Nor heartsick grow in fortune's long employ.Mighty to build and ruthless to destroyHe lived, while masked death unquestioned lay.Now ponder we the ruins of the years,And groan beneath the weight of boasted gain;No unsung bacchanal can charm our earsAnd lead our dances to the woodland fane,No hope of heaven sweeten our few tearsAnd hush the importunity of pain.VDreamt I to-day the dream of yesternight,Sleep ever feigning one evolving theme,—Of my two lives which should I call the dream?Which action vanity? which vision sight?Some greater waking must pronounce aright,If aught abideth of the things that seem,And with both currents swell the flooded streamInto an ocean infinite of light.Even such a dream I dream, and know full wellMy waking passeth like a midnight spell,But know not if my dreaming breaketh throughInto the deeps of heaven and of hell.I know but this of all I would I knew:Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true.VILove not as do the flesh-imprisoned menWhose dreams are of a bitter bought caress,Or even of a maiden's tendernessWhom they love only that she loves again.For it is but thyself thou lovest then,Or what thy thoughts would glory to possess;But love thou nothing thou wouldst love the lessIf henceforth ever hidden from thy ken.Love but the formless and eternal WholeFrom whose effulgence one unheeded rayBreaks on this prism of dissolving clayInto the flickering colours of thy soul.These flash and vanish; bid them not to stay,For wisdom brightens as they fade away.VIII would I might forget that I am I,And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.What in the body's tomb doth buried lieIs boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,Lord of the future, guardian of the past,And soon must forth, to know his own at last.In his large life to live, I fain would die.Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,But calling not his suffering his own;Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,But knowing not he sits upon a throne;Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,And doomed to know his aching heart alone.VIIIO martyred Spirit of this helpless Whole,Who dost by pain for tyranny atone,And in the star, the atom, and the stone,Purgest the primal guilt, and in the soul;Rich but in grief, thou dost thy wealth unroll,And givest of thy substance to thine own,Mingling the love, the laughter, and the groanIn the large hollow of the heaven's bowl.Fill full my cup; the dregs and honeyed brimI take from thy just hand, more worthy loveFor sweetening not the draught for me or him.What in myself I am, that let me prove;Relent not for my feeble prayer, nor dimThe burning of thine altar for my hymn.IXHave patience; it is fit that in this wiseThe spirit purge away its proper dross.No endless fever doth thy watches toss,For by excess of evil, evil dies.Soon shall the faint world melt before thine eyes,And, all life's losses cancelled by life's loss,Thou shalt lay down all burdens on thy cross,And be that day with God in Paradise.Have patience; for a long eternityNo summons woke thee from thy happy sleep;For love of God one vigil thou canst keepAnd add thy drop of sorrow to the sea.Having known grief, all will be well with thee,Ay, and thy second slumber will be deep.XHave I the heart to wander on the earth,So patient in her everlasting course,Seeking no prize, but bowing to the forceThat gives direction and hath given birth?Rain tears, sweet Pity, to refresh my dearth,And plough my sterile bosom, sharp Remorse,That I grow sick and curse my being's sourceIf haply one day passes lacking mirth.Doth the sun therefore burn, that I may bask?Or do the tired earth and tireless sea,That toil not for their pleasure, toil for me?Amid the world's long striving, wherefore askWhat reasons were, or what rewards shall be?The covenant God gave us is a task.XIDeem not, because you see me in the pressOf this world's children run my fated race,That I blaspheme against a proffered grace,Or leave unlearned the love of holiness.I honour not that sanctity the lessWhose aureole illumines not my face,But dare not tread the secret, holy placeTo which the priest and prophet have access.For some are born to be beatifiedBy anguish, and by grievous penance done;And some, to furnish forth the age's pride,And to be praised of men beneath the sun;And some are born to stand perplexed asideFrom so much sorrow—of whom I am one.XIIMightier storms than this are brewed on earthThat pricks the crystal lake with summer showers.The past hath treasure of sublimer hours,And God is witness to their changeless worth.Big is the future with portentous birthOf battles numberless, and nature's powersOutdo my dreams of beauty in the flowers,And top my revels with the demons' mirth.But thou, glad river that hast reached the plain,Scarce wak'st the rushes to a slumberous sigh.The mountains sleep behind thee, and the mainAwaits thee, lulling an eternal painWith patience; nor doth Phoebe, throned on high,The mirror of thy placid heart disdain.XIIISweet are the days we wander with no hopeAlong life's labyrinthine trodden way,With no impatience at the steep's delay,Nor sorrow at the swift-descended slope.Why this inane curiosity to gropeIn the dim dust for gems' unmeaning ray?Why this proud piety, that dares to prayFor a world wider than the heaven's cope?Farewell, my burden! No more will I bearThe foolish load of my fond faith's despair,But trip the idle race with careless feet.The crown of olive let another wear;It is my crown to mock the runner's heatWith gentle wonder and with laughter sweet.XIVThere may be chaos still around the world,This little world that in my thinking lies;For mine own bosom is the paradiseWhere all my life's fair visions are unfurled.Within my nature's shell I slumber curled,Unmindful of the changing outer skies,Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.I heed them not; or if the subtle nightHaunt me with deities I never saw,I soon mine eyelid's drowsy curtain drawTo hide their myriad faces from my sight.They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot aweA happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.XVA wall, a wall to hem the azure sphere,And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills!Give me but one of all the mountain rills,Enough of ocean in its voice I hear.Come no profane insatiate mortal nearWith the contagion of his passionate ills;The smoke of battle all the valleys fills,Let the eternal sunlight greet me here.This spot is sacred to the deeper soulAnd to the piety that mocks no more.In nature's inmost heart is no uproar,None in this shrine; in peace the heavens roll,In peace the slow tides pulse from shore to shore,And ancient quiet broods from pole to pole.XVIA thousand beauties that have never beenHaunt me with hope and tempt me to pursue;The gods, methinks, dwell just behind the blue;The satyrs at my coming fled the green.The flitting shadows of the grove betweenThe dryads' eyes were winking, and I knewThe wings of sacred Eros as he flewAnd left me to the love of things not seen.'Tis a sad love, like an eternal prayer,And knows no keen delight, no faint surcease.Yet from the seasons hath the earth increase,And heaven shines as if the gods were there.Had Dian passed there could no deeper peaceEmbalm the purple stretches of the air.XVIIThere was a time when in the teeth of fateI flung the challenge of the spirit's right;The child, the dreamer of that visioned night,Woke, and was humbled unto man's estate.A slave I am; on sun and moon I wait,Who heed not that I live upon their light.Me they despise, but are themselves so brightThey flood my heart with love, and quench my hate.O subtle Beauty, sweet persuasive worthThat didst the love of being first inspire,We do thee homage both in death and birth.Thirsting for thee, we die in thy great dearth,Or borrow breath of infinite desireTo chase thine image through the haunted earth.XVIIIBlaspheme not love, ye lovers, nor dispraiseThe wise divinity that makes you blind,Sealing the eyes, but showing to the mindThe high perfection from which nature strays.For love is God, and in unfathomed waysBrings forth the beauty for which fancy pined.I loved, and lost my love among mankind;But I have found it after many days.Oh, trust in God, and banish rash despair,That, feigning evil, is itself the curse!My angel is come back, more sad and fair,And witness to the truth of love I bear,With too much rapture for this sacred verse,At the exceeding answer to my prayer.XIXAbove the battlements of heaven riseThe glittering domes of the gods' golden dwelling,Whence, like a constellation, passion-quelling,The truth of all things feeds immortal eyes.There all forgotten dreams of paradiseFrom the deep caves of memory upwelling,All tender joys beyond our dim foretellingAre ever bright beneath the flooded skies.There we live o'er, amid angelic powers,Our lives without remorse, as if not ours,And others' lives with love, as if our own;For we behold, from those eternal towers,The deathless beauty of all winged hours,And have our being in their truth alone.XXThese strewn thoughts, by the mountain pathway sprung,I conned for comfort, till I ceased to grieve,And with these flowering thorns I dare to weaveThe crown, great Mother, on thine altar hung.Teach thou a larger speech to my loosed tongue,And to mine opened eyes thy secrets give,That in thy perfect love I learn to live,And in thine immortality be young.The soul is not on earth an alien thingThat hath her life's rich sources otherwhere;She is a parcel of the sacred air.She takes her being from the breath of Spring,The glance of Phoebus is her fount of light,And her long sleep a draught of primal night.
SONNETSXXIAmong the myriad voices of the SpringWhat were the voice of my supreme desire,What were my cry amid the vernal choir,Or my complaint before the gods that sing?O too late love, O flight on wounded wing,Infinite hope my lips should not suspire,Why, when the world is thine, my grief require,Or mock my dear-bought patience with thy sting?Though I be mute, the birds will in the boughsSing as in every April they have sung,And, though I die, the incense of heart-vowsWill float to heaven, as when I was young.But, O ye beauties I must never see,How great a lover have you lost in me!XXII'Tis love that moveth the celestial spheresIn endless yearning for the Changeless One,And the stars sing together, as they runTo number the innumerable years.'Tis love that lifteth through their dewy tearsThe roses' beauty to the heedless sun,And with no hope, nor any guerdon won,Love leads me on, nor end of love appears.For the same breath that did awake the flowers,Making them happy with a joy unknown,Kindled my light and fixed my spirit's goal;And the same hand that reined the flying hoursAnd chained the whirling earth to Phoebus' throne,In love's eternal orbit keeps the soul.XXIIIBut is this love, that in my hollow breastGnaws like a silent poison, till I faint?Is this the vision that the haggard saintFed with his vigils, till he found his rest?Is this the hope that piloted thy quest,Knight of the Grail, and kept thy heart from taint?Is this the heaven, poets, that ye paint?Oh, then, how like damnation to be blest!This is not love: it is that worser thing—Hunger for love, while love is yet to learn.Thy peace is gone, my soul; thou long must yearn.Long is thy winter's pilgrimage, till springAnd late home-coming; long ere thou returnTo where the seraphs covet not, and burn.XXIVAlthough I decked a chamber for my bride,And found a moonlit garden for the trystWherein all flowers looked happy as we kissed,Hath the deep heart of me been satisfied?The chasm 'twixt our spirits yawns as wideThough our lips meet, and clasp thee as I list,The something perfect that I love is missed,And my warm worship freezes into pride.But why—O waywardness of nature!—whySeek farther in the world? I had my choice,And we said we were happy, you and I.Why in the forest should I hear a cry,Or in the sea an unavailing voice,Or feel a pang to look upon the sky?XXVAs in the midst of battle there is roomFor thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth;As gossips whisper of a trinket's worthSpied by the death-bed's flickering candle-gloom;As in the crevices of Caesar's tombThe sweet herbs flourish on a little earth:So in this great disaster of our birthWe can be happy, and forget our doom.For morning, with a ray of tenderest joyGilding the iron heaven, hides the truth,And evening gently woos us to employOur grief in idle catches. Such is youth;Till from that summer's trance we wake, to findDespair before us, vanity behind.XXVIOh, if the heavy last unuttered groanThat lieth here could issue to the air,Then might God's peace descend on my despairAnd seal this heart as with a mighty stone.For what sin, Heaven, must I thus atone?Was it a sin to love what seemed so fair?If thou deny me hope, why give me care?I have not lived, and die alone, alone.This is not new. Many have perished so.Long years of nothing, with some days of grief,Made their sad life. Their own hand sought reliefToo late to find it, impotently slow.I know, strong Fate, the trodden way I go.Joy lies behind me. Be the journey brief.XXVIISleep hath composed the anguish of my brain,And ere the dawn I will arise and pray.Strengthen me, Heaven, and attune my layUnto my better angel's clear refrain.For I can hear him in the night again,The breathless night, snow-smothered, happy, grey,With premonition of the jocund day,Singing a quiet carol to my pain.Slowly, saith he, the April buds are growingIn the chill core of twigs all leafless now;Gently, beneath the weight of last night's snowing,Patient of winter's hand, the branches bow.Each buried seed lacks light as much as thou.Wait for the spring, brave heart; there is no knowing.XXVIIIOut of the dust the queen of roses springs;The brackish depths of the blown waters bearBlossoms of foam; the common mist and airWeave Vesper's holy, pity-laden wings.So from sad, mortal, and unhallowed thingsBud stars that in their crowns the angels wear;And worship of the infinitely fairFlows from thine eyes, as wise Petrarca sings:"Hence comes the understanding of love's scope,That, seeking thee, to perfect good aspires,Accounting little what all flesh desires;And hence the spirit's happy pinions opeIn flight impetuous to the heaven's choirs:Wherefore I walk already proud in hope."XXIXWhat riches have you that you deem me poor,Or what large comfort that you call me sad?Tell me what makes you so exceeding glad:Is your earth happy or your heaven sure?I hope for heaven, since the stars endureAnd bring such tidings as our fathers had.I know no deeper doubt to make me mad,I need no brighter love to keep me pure.To me the faiths of old are daily bread;I bless their hope, I bless their will to save,And my deep heart still meaneth what they said.It makes me happy that the soul is brave,And, being so much kinsman to the dead,I walk contented to the peopled grave.XXXLet my lips touch thy lips, and my desireContagious fever be, to set a-glowThe blood beneath thy whiter breast than snow—Wonderful snow, that so can kindle fire!Abandon to what gods in us conspireThy little wisdom, sweetest; for they know.Is it not something that I love thee so?Take that from life, ere death thine all require.But no! Then would a mortal warmth disperseThat beauteous snow to water-drops, which, turnedTo marble, had escaped the primal curse.Be still a goddess, till my heart have burnedIts sacrifice before thee, and my verseTold this late world the love that I have learned.XXXIA brother's love, but that I chose thee outFrom all the world, not by the chance of birth,But in the risen splendour of thy worth,Which, like the sun, put all my stars to rout.A lover's love, but that it bred no doubtOf love returned, no heats of flood and dearth,But, asking nothing, found in all the earthThe consolation of a heart devout.A votary's love, though with no pale and wildImaginations did I stretch the mightOf a sweet friendship and a mortal light.Thus in my love all loves are reconciledThat purest be, and in my prayer the rightOf brother, lover, friend, and eremite.XXXIILet not thy bosom, to my foes allied,Insult my sorrow with this coat of mail,When for thy strong defence, if love assail,Thou hast the world, thy virtue, and my pride.But if thine own dear eyes I see besideSharpened against me, then my strength will fail,Abandoning sail and rudder to the galeFor thy sweet sake alone so long defied.If I am poor, in death how rich and braveWill seem my spirit with the love it gave;If I am sad, I shall seem happy then.Be mine, be mine in God and in the grave,Since naught but chance and the insensate waveDivides us, and the wagging tongue of men.XXXIIIA perfect love is nourished by despair.I am thy pupil in the school of pain;Mine eyes will not reproach thee for disdain,But thank thy rich disdain for being fair.Aye! the proud sorrow, the eternal prayerThy beauty taught, what shall unteach again?Hid from my sight, thou livest in my brain;Fled from my bosom, thou abidest there.And though they buried thee, and called thee dead,And told me I should never see thee more,The violets that grew above thy headWould waft thy breath and tell thy sweetness o'er,And every rose thy scattered ashes bredWould to my sense thy loveliness restore.XXXIVThough destiny half broke her cruel bars,Herself contriving we should meet on earth,And with thy beauty fed my spirit's dearthAnd tuned to love the ages' many jars,Yet there is potency in natal stars;And we were far divided in our birthBy nature's gifts and half the planet's girth,And speech, and faith, and blood, and ancient wars.Alas! thy very radiance made division,Thy youth, thy friends, and all men's eyes that wooedThy simple kindness came as in derisionOf so much love and so much solitude;Or did the good gods order all to showHow far the single strength of love can go?XXXVWe needs must be divided in the tomb,For I would die among the hills of Spain,And o'er the treeless melancholy plainAwait the coming of the final gloom.But thou—O pitiful!—wilt find scant roomAmong thy kindred by the northern main,And fade into the drifting mist again,The hemlocks' shadow, or the pines' perfume.Let gallants lie beside their ladies' dust,In one cold grave, with mortal love inurned;Let the sea part our ashes, if it must.The souls fled thence which love immortal burned,For they were wedded without bond of lust,And nothing of our heart to earth returned.XXXVIWe were together, and I longed to tellHow drop by silent drop my bosom bled.I took some verses full of you, and read,Waiting for God to work some miracle.They told how love had plunged in burning hellOne half my soul, while the other half had fledUpon love's wings to heaven; and you said:"I like the verses; they are written well."If I had knelt confessing "It is you,You are my torment and my rapture too,"I should have seen you rise in flushed disdain:"For shame to say so, be it false or true!"And the sharp sword that ran me through and through,On your white bosom too had left a stain.XXXVIIAnd I was silent. Now you do not know,But read these very words with vacant eyes,And, as you turn the page, peruse the skies,And I go by you as a cloud might go.You are not cruel, though you dealt the blow,And I am happy, though I miss the prize;For, when God tells you, you will not despiseThe love I bore you. It is better so.My soul is just, and thine without a stain.Why should not life divide us, whose divisionIs frail and passing, as its union vain?All things 'neath other planets will grow plainWhen, as we wander through the fields Elysian,Eternal echoes haunt us of this pain.XXXVIIIOh, not for me, for thee, dear God, her headShines with this perfect golden aureole,For thee this sweetness doth possess her soul,And to thy chambers are her footsteps led.The light will live that on my path she shed,While any pilgrim yet hath any goal,And heavenly musicians from their scrollWill sing all her sweet words, when I am dead.In her unspotted heart is steadfast faithFed on high thoughts, and in her beauteous faceThe fountain of the love that conquers death;And as I see her in her kneeling-place,A Gabriel comes, and with inaudible breathWhispers within me: Hail, thou full of grace.XXXIXThe world will say, "What mystic love is this?What ghostly mistress? What angelic friend?"Read, masters, your own passion to the end,And tell me then if I have writ amiss.When all loves die that hang upon a kiss,And must with cavil and with chance contend,Their risen selves with the eternal blendWhere perfect dying is their perfect bliss.And might I kiss her once, asleep or dead,Upon the forehead or the globed eyes,Or where the gold is parted on her head,That kiss would help me on to paradiseAs if I kissed the consecrated breadIn which the buried soul of Jesus lies.XLIf, when the story of my love is old,This book should live and lover's leisure feed,Fair charactered, for bluest eye to read,—And richly bound, for whitest hand to hold,—O limn me then this lovely head in gold,And, limner, the soft lips and lashes heed,And set her in the midst, my love indeed,The sweet eyes tender, and the broad brow cold.And never let thy colours think to castA brighter splendour on her beauties past,Or venture to disguise a fancied flaw;Let not thy painting falsify my rhyme,But perfect keep the mould for after time,And let the whole world see her as I saw.XLIYet why, of one who loved thee not, commandThy counterfeit, for other men to see,When God himself did on my heart for meThy face, like Christ's upon the napkin, brand?O how much subtler than a painter's handIs love to render back the truth of thee!My soul should be thy glass in time to be,And in my thought thine effigy should stand.Yet, lest the churlish critics of that ageShould flout my praise, and deem a lover's rageCould gild a virtue and a grace exceed,I bid thine image here confront my page,That men may look upon thee as they read,And cry: Such eyes a better poet need.XLIIAs when the sceptre dangles from the handOf some king doting, faction runneth wild,Thieves shake their chains and traitors, long exiled,Hover about the confines of the land,Till the young Prince, anointed, takes command,Full of high purpose, simple, trustful, mild,And, smitten by his radiance undefiled,The ruffians are abashed, the cowards stand:—So in my kingdom riot and despairLived by thy lack, and called for thy control,But at thy coming all the world grew fair;Away before thy face the villains stole,And panoplied I rose to do and bear,When love his clarion sounded in my soul.XLIIIThe candour of the gods is in thy gaze,The strength of Dian in thy virgin hand,Commanding as the goddess might command,And lead her lovers into higher ways.Aye, the gods walk among us in these days,Had we the docile soul to understand;And me they visit in this joyless land,To cheer mine exile and receive my praise.For once, methinks, before the angels fell,Thou, too, didst follow the celestial sevenThreading in file the meads of asphodel.And when thou comest, lady, where I dwell,The place is flooded with the light of heavenAnd a lost music I remember well.XLIVFor thee the sun doth daily rise, and setBehind the curtain of the hills of sleep,And my soul, passing through the nether deepBroods on thy love, and never can forget.For thee the garlands of the wood are wet,For thee the daisies up the meadow's sweepStir in the sidelong light, and for thee weepThe drooping ferns above the violet.For thee the labour of my studious easeI ply with hope, for thee all pleasures please,Thy sweetness doth the bread of sorrow leaven;And from thy noble lips and heart of goldI drink the comfort of the faiths of old,And thy perfection is my proof of heaven.XLVFlower of the world, bright angel, single friend!I never asked of Heaven thou shouldst love me;As well ask Heaven's self that spreads above meWith all his stars about my head to bendIt is enough my spirit may ascendAnd clasp the good whence nothing can remove me;Enough, if faith and hope and love approve me,And make me worthy of the blessed end.And as a pilgrim from the path withdraws,Seeing Christ carven on the holy rood,And breathes an AVE in the solitude,So will I stop and pray—for I have cause—And in all crossways of my thinking pauseBefore thine image, saying: God is good.XLVIWhen I survey the harvest of the yearAnd from time's threshing garner up the grain,What profit have I of forgotten pain,What comfort, heart-locked, for the winter's cheer?The season's yield is this, that thou art dear,And that I love thee, that is all my gain;The rest was chaff, blown from the weary brainWhere now thy treasured image lieth clear.How liberal is beauty that, but seen,Makes rich the bosom of her silent lover!How excellent is truth, on which I lean!Yet my religion were a charmed despair,Did I not in thy perfect heart discoverHow beauty can be true and virtue fair.XLVIIThou hast no name, or, if a name thou bearest,To none it meaneth what it means to me:Thy form, the loveliness the world can see,Makes not the glory that to me thou wearest.Nor thine unuttered thoughts, though they be fairestAnd shaming all that in rude bosoms be:All they are but the thousandth part of thee,Which thou with blessed spirits haply sharest.But incommunicable, peerless, dim,Flooding my heart with anguish of despair,Thou walkest, love, before me, shade of HimWho only liveth, giveth, and is fair.And constant ever, though inconstant known,In all my loves I worshipped thee alone.XLVIIIOf Helen's brothers, one was born to dieAnd one immortal, who, the fable saith,Gave to the other that was nigh to deathOne half his widowed immortality.They would have lived and died alternately,Breathing each other's warm transmuted breath,Had not high Zeus, who justly ordereth,Made them twin stars to shine eternally.My heart was dying when thy flame of youthFlooded its chambers through my gazing eyes.My life is now thy beauty and thy truth.Thou wouldst come down, forsaking paradiseTo be my comfort, but by Heaven's ruthI go to burn beside thee in the skies.XLIXAfter grey vigils, sunshine in the heart;After long fasting on the journey, food;After sharp thirst, a draught of perfect goodTo flood the soul, and heal her ancient smart.Joy of my sorrow, never can we part;Thou broodest o'er me in the haunted wood,And with new music fill'st the solitudeBy but so sweetly being what thou art.He who hath made thee perfect, makes me blest.O fiery minister, on mighty wingsBear me, great love, to mine eternal rest.Heaven it is to be at peace with things;Come chaos now, and in a whirlwind's ringsEngulf the planets. I have seen the best.LThough utter death should swallow up my hopeAnd choke with dust the mouth of my desire,Though no dawn burst, and no aurorean choirSingGLORIA DEOwhen the heavens ope,Yet have I light of love, nor need to gropeLost, wholly lost, without an inward fire;The flame that quickeneth the world entireLeaps in my breast, with cruel death to cope.Hath not the night-environed earth her flowers?Hath not my grief the blessed joy of thee?Is not the comfort of these singing hours,Full of thy perfectness, enough for me?They are not evil, then, those hidden powers:One love sufficeth an eternity.
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETSON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHYWhat chilly cloister or what lattice dimCast painted light upon this careful page?What thought compulsive held the patient sageTill sound of matin bell or evening hymn?Did visions of the Heavenly Lover swimBefore his eyes in youth, or did stern rageAgainst rash heresy keep green his age?Had he seen God, to write so much of Him?Gone is that irrecoverable mindWith all its phantoms, senseless to mankindAs a dream's trouble or the speech of birds.The breath that stirred his lips he soon resignedTo windy chaos, and we only findThe garnered husks of his disused words.ON THE DEATH OF A METAPHYSICIANUnhappy dreamer, who outwinged in flightThe pleasant region of the things I love,And soared beyond the sunshine, and aboveThe golden cornfields and the dear and brightWarmth of the hearth,—blasphemer of delight,Was your proud bosom not at peace with Jove,That you sought, thankless for his guarded grove,The empty horror of abysmal night?Ah, the thin air is cold above the moon!I stood and saw you fall, befooled in death,As, in your numbed spirit's fatal swoon,You cried you were a god, or were to be;I heard with feeble moan your boastful breathBubble from depths of the Icarian sea.ON A PIECE OF TAPESTRYHold high the woof, dear friends, that we may seeThe cunning mixture of its colours rare.Nothing in nature purposely is fair,—Her beauties in their freedom disagree;But here all vivid dyes that garish be,To that tint mellowed which the sense will bear,Glow, and not wound the eye that, resting there,Lingers to feed its gentle ecstasy.Crimson and purple and all hues of wine,Saffron and russet, brown and sober greenAre rich the shadowy depths of blue between;While silver threads with golden intertwine,To catch the glimmer of a fickle sheen,—All the long labour of some captive queen.TO W. P.ICalm was the sea to which your course you kept,Oh, how much calmer than all southern seas!Many your nameless mates, whom the keen breezeWafted from mothers that of old have wept.All souls of children taken as they sleptAre your companions, partners of your ease,And the green souls of all these autumn treesAre with you through the silent spaces swept.Your virgin body gave its gentle breathUntainted to the gods. Why should we grieve,But that we merit not your holy death?We shall not loiter long, your friends and I;Living you made it goodlier to live,Dead you will make it easier to die.IIWith you a part of me hath passed away;For in the peopled forest of my mindA tree made leafless by this wintry windShall never don again its green array.Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,Have something of their friendliness resigned;Another, if I would, I could not find,And I am grown much older in a day.But yet I treasure in my memoryYour gift of charity, and young heart's ease,And the dear honour of your amity;For these once mine, my life is rich with these.And I scarce know which part may greater be,—What I keep of you, or you rob from me.IIIYour ship lies anchored in the peaceful bightUntil a kinder wind unfurl her sail;Your docile spirit, winged by this gale,Hath at the dawning fled into the light.And I half know why heaven deemed it rightYour youth, and this my joy in youth, should failGod hath them still, for ever they avail,Eternity hath borrowed that delight.For long ago I taught my thoughts to runWhere all the great things live that lived of yore,And in eternal quiet float and soar;There all my loves are gathered into one,Where change is not, nor parting any more,Nor revolution of the moon and sun.IVIn my deep heart these chimes would still have rungTo toll your passing, had you not been dead;For time a sadder mask than death may spreadOver the face that ever should be young.The bough that falls with all its trophies hungFalls not too soon, but lays its flower-crowned headMost royal in the dust, with no leaf shedUnhallowed or unchiselled or unsung.And though the after world will never hearThe happy name of one so gently true,Nor chronicles write large this fatal year,Yet we who loved you, though we be but few,Keep you in whatsoe'er is good, and rearIn our weak virtues monuments to you.BEFORE A STATUE OF ACHILLESIBehold Pelides with his yellow hair,Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove;Above the frowning of his brows it woveA crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care.Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair,As with the wrongful world he proudly strove,And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove,Mastering love, resentment, and despair.He knew his end, and Phoebus' arrow sureHe braved for fame immortal and a friend,Despising life; and we, who know our end,Know that in our decay he shall endureAnd all our children's hearts to grief inure,With whose first bitter battles his shall blend.IIWho brought thee forth, immortal vision, whoIn Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth?Out of the sunlight and the sapful earthWhat god the simples of thy spirit drew?A goddess rose from the green waves, and threwHer arms about a king, to give thee birth;A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth,Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew.Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deepThy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer;But far away new generations keepThy laurels fresh, where branching Isis hemsThe lawns of Oxford round about, or whereEnchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames.IIII gaze on thee as Phidias of oldOr Polyclitus gazed, when first he sawThese hard and shining limbs, without a flaw,And cast his wonder in heroic mould.Unhappy me who only may behold,Nor make immutable and fix in aweA fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw,A tempered mind whose faith was never told!The godlike mien, the lion's lock and eye,The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heartBetter than many words that part by partSpell in strange symbols what serene and wholeIn nature lives, nor can in marble die.The perfect body is itself the soul.THE RUSTIC AT THE PLAYOur youth is like a rustic at the playThat cries aloud in simple-hearted fear,Curses the villain, shudders at the fray,And weeps before the maiden's wreathed bier.Yet once familiar with the changeful show,He starts no longer at a brandished knife,But, his heart chastened at the sight of woe,Ponders the mirrored sorrows of his life.So tutored too, I watch the moving artOf all this magic and impassioned painThat tells the story of the human heartIn a false instance, such as poets feign;I smile, and keep within the parchment furledThat prompts the passions of this strutting world.
ODESIWhat god will choose me from this labouring nationTo worship him afar, with inward gladness,At sunset and at sunrise, in some PersianGarden of roses;Or under the full moon, in rapturous silence,Charmed by the trickling fountain, and the moaningOf the death-hallowed cypress, and the myrtleHallowed by Venus?O for a chamber in an eastern tower,Spacious and empty, roofed in odorous cedar,A silken soft divan, a woven carpetRich, many-coloured;A jug that, poised on her firm head, a negressFetched from the well; a window to the ocean,Lest of the stormy world too deep seclusionMake me forgetful!Thence I might watch the vessel-bearing watersBeat the slow pulses of the life eternal,Bringing of nature's universal travailInfinite echoes;And there at even I might stand and listenTo thrum of distant lutes and dying voicesChanting the ditty an Arabian captiveSang to Darius.So would I dream awhile, and ease a littleThe soul long stifled and the straitened spirit,Tasting new pleasures in a far-off countrySacred to beauty.IIMy heart rebels against my generation,That talks of freedom and is slave to riches,And, toiling 'neath each day's ignoble burden,Boasts of the morrow.No space for noonday rest or midnight watches,No purest joy of breathing under heaven!Wretched themselves, they heap, to make them happy,Many possessions.But thou, O silent Mother, wise, immortal,To whom our toil is laughter,—take, divine one,This vanity away, and to thy loverGive what is needful:—A staunch heart, nobly calm, averse to evil,The windy sky for breath, the sea, the mountain,A well-born, gentle friend, his spirit's brother,Ever beside him.What would you gain, ye seekers, with your striving,Or what vast Babel raise you on your shoulders?You multiply distresses, and your childrenSurely will curse you.O leave them rather friendlier gods, and fairerOrchards and temples, and a freer bosom!What better comfort have we, or what otherProfit in living,Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature,Awhile upon her bounty and her beauty,And hand her torch of gladness to the agesFollowing after?She hath not made us, like her other children,Merely for peopling of her spacious kingdoms,Beasts of the wild, or insects of the summer,Breeding and dying,But also that we might, half knowing, worshipThe deathless beauty of her guiding vision,And learn to love, in all things mortal, onlyWhat is eternal.IIIGathering the echoes of forgotten wisdom,And mastered by a proud, adventurous purpose,Columbus sought the golden shores of IndiaOpposite Europe.He gave the world another world, and ruinBrought upon blameless, river-loving nations,Cursed Spain with barren gold, and made the AndesFiefs of Saint Peter;While in the cheerless North the thrifty SaxonPlanted his corn, and, narrowing his bosom,Made covenant with God, and by keen virtueTrebled his riches.What venture hast thou left us, bold Columbus?What honour left thy brothers, brave Magellan?Daily the children of the rich for pastimeCircle the planet.And what good comes to us of all your dangers?A smaller earth and smaller hope of heaven.Ye have but cheapened gold, and, measuring ocean,Counted the islands.No Ponce de Leon shall drink in fountains,On any flowering Easter, youth eternal;No Cortes look upon another ocean;No AlexanderFound in the Orient dim a boundless kingdom,And, clothing his Greek strength in barbarous splendour,Build by the sea his throne, while sacred EgyptHonours his godhead.The earth, the mother once of godlike TheseusAnd mighty Heracles, at length is weary,And now brings forth a spawn of antlike creatures,Blackening her valleys,Inglorious in their birth and in their living,Curious and querulous, afraid of battle,Rummaging earth for coals, in camps of hovelsCrouching from winter,As if grim fate, amid our boastful prating,Made us the image of our brutish fathers,When from their caves they issued, crazed with terror,Howling and hungry.For all things come about in sacred cycles,And life brings death, and light eternal darkness,And now the world grows old apace; its gloryPasses for ever.Perchance the earth will yet for many agesBear her dead child, her moon, around her orbit;Strange craft may tempt the ocean streams, new forestsCover the mountains.If in those latter days men still rememberOur wisdom and our travail and our sorrow,They never can be happy, with that burdenHeavy upon them,Knowing the hideous past, the blood, the famine,The ancestral hate, the eager faith's disaster,All ending in their little lives, and vulgarCircle of troubles.But if they have forgot us, and the shiftingOf sands has buried deep our thousand cities,Fell superstition then will seize upon them;Protean error,Will fill their panting heart with sickly phantomsOf sudden blinding good and monstrous evil;There will be miracles again, and torment,Dungeon, and fagot,—Until the patient earth, made dry and barren,Sheds all her herbage in a final winter,And the gods turn their eyes to some far distantBright constellation.IVSlowly the black earth gains upon the yellow,And the caked hill-side is ribbed soft with furrows.Turn now again, with voice and staff, my ploughman,Guiding thy oxen.Lift the great ploughshare, clear the stones and brambles,Plant it the deeper, with thy foot upon it,Uprooting all the flowering weeds that bring notFood to thy children.Patience is good for man and beast, and labourHardens to sorrow and the frost of winter.Turn then again, in the brave hope of harvest,Singing to heaven.VOf thee the Northman by his beached galleyDreamt, as he watched the never-setting UrsaAnd longed for summer and thy light, O sacredMediterranean.Unseen he loved thee; for the heart within himKnew earth had gardens where he might be blessed,Putting away long dreams and aimless, barbarousHunger for battle.The foretaste of thy languors thawed his bosom;A great need drove him to thy caverned islandsFrom the gray, endless reaches of the outerDesert of ocean.He saw thy pillars, saw thy sudden mountainsWrinkled and stark, and in their crooked gorges,'Neath peeping pine and cypress, guessed the torrentSmothered in flowers.Thine incense to the sun, thy gathered vapours,He saw suspended on the flanks of Taurus,Or veiling the snowed bosom of the virginSister of Atlas.He saw the luminous top of wide Olympus,Fit for the happy gods; he saw the pilgrimRiver, with rains of Ethiopia floodingPopulous Egypt.And having seen, he loved thee. His racked spirit,By thy breath tempered and the light that clothes thee,Forgot the monstrous gods, and made of NatureMistress and mother.The more should I, O fatal sea, before theeOf alien words make echoes to thy music;For I was born where first the rills of TagusTurn to the westward,And wandering long, alas! have need of drinkingDeep of the patience of thy perfect sadness,O thou that constant through the change of ages,Beautiful ever,Never wast wholly young and void of sorrows,Nor ever canst be old, while yet the morningKindles thy ripples, or the golden eveningDyes thee in purple.Thee, willing to be tamed but still untamable,The Roman called his own until he perished,As now the busy English hover o'er thee,Stalwart and noble;But all is naught to thee, while no harsh winterCongeals thy fountains, and the blown SaharaChokes not with dreadful sand thy deep and placidRock-guarded havens.Thou carest not what men may tread thy margin;Nor I, while from some heather-scented headlandI may behold thy beauty, the eternalSolace of mortals.ATHLETIC ODEI hear a rumour and a shout,A louder heart-throb pulses in the air.Fling, Muse, thy lattice open, and bewareTo keep the morning out.Beckon into the chamber of thy careThe bird of healing wingThat trilleth there,Blithe happy passion of the strong and fair.Their wild heart singeth. Do thou also sing.How vain, how vainThe feeble croaking of a reasoning tongueThat heals no painAnd prompts no bright deed worthy to be sungToo soon cold earthRefuses flowers. Oh, greet their lovely birth!Too soon dull deathQuiets the heaving of our doubtful breath.Deem not its worthToo high for honouring mirth;Sing while the lyre is strung,And let the heart beat, while the heart is young.When the dank earth begins to thaw and yieldThe early clover, didst thou never passSome balmy noon from field to sunny fieldAnd press thy feet against the tufted grass?So hadst thou seenA spring palaestra on the tender green.Here a tall stripling, with a woman's face,Draws the spiked sandal on his upturned heel,Sure-footed for the race;Another hurls the quoit of heavy steelAnd glories to be strong;While yet another, lightest of the throng,Crouching on tiptoe for the sudden bound,Flies o'er the level race-course, like the hound,And soon is lost afar;Another jumps the bar,For some god taught him easily to spring,The legs drawn under, as a bird takes wing,Till, tempting fortune farther than is meet,At last he fails, and fails, and vainly tries,And blushing, and ashamed to lift his eyes,Shakes the light earth from his feet.Him friendly plaudits greetAnd pleasing to the unaccustomed ear.Come then afield, come with the sporting yearAnd watch the youth at play,For gentle is the strengthening sun, and sweetThe soul of boyhood and the breath of May.And with the milder rayOf the declining sun, when sky and shore,In purple drest and misty silver-grey,Hang curtains round the day,Come list the beating of the plashing oar,For grief in rhythmic labour glides away.The glancing blades make circles where they dip,—Now flash and dripCool wind-blown drops into the glassy river,Now sink and cleave,While the lithe rowers heaveAnd feel the boat beneath them leap and quiver.The supple oars in time,Shattering the mirror of the rippled water,Fly, fly as poets climb,Borne by the pliant promise of their rhyme,Or as bewitched by Nereus' loveliest daughterThe painted dolphins, following along,Leap to the measure of her liquid song.But the blasts of late October,Tempering summer's paling griefWith a russet glow and sober,Bring of these sports the latest and the chief.Then bursts the flame from many a smouldering ember,And many an ardent boyWoos harsher pleasures sweeter to remember,Hugged with a sterner and a tenser joy.Look where the rivals come:Each little phalanx on its chosen groundStrains for the sudden shock, and all aroundThe multitude is dumb.Come, watch the stubborn fightAnd doubtful, in the sightOf wide-eyed beauty and unstinted love,Ay, the wise gods above,Attentive to this hot and generous fray,Smile on its fortunes and its end prepare,For play is also life, and far from careTheir own glad life is play.Ye nymphs and fauns, to Bacchus dear,That woke Cithaeron with your midnight rout,Arise, arise and shout!Your day returns, your haunt is here.Shake off dull sleep and long despair;There is intoxication in this air,And frenzy in this yelping cheer.How oft of old the enraptured Muses sungOlympian victors' praise.Lo! even in these daysThe world is young.Life like a torrent flungFor ever downFor ever wears a rainbow for a crown.O idle sigh for loveliness outworn,When the red flush of each unfailing mornFloods every field and grove,And no moon wanes but some one is in love.O wasted tear,A new soul wakes with each awakened year.Beneath these rags, these blood-clots on the face,The valiant soul is still the same, the sameThe strength, the art, the inevitable grace,The thirst unquenched for fameQuenching base passion, the high will severe,The long obedience, and the knightly flameOf loyalty to honour and a name.Give o'er, ye chords, your music ere ye tire,Be sweetly mute, O lyre.Words soon are cold, and life is warm for ever.One half of honour is the strong endeavour,Success the other, but when both conspireYouth has her perfect crown, and age her old desire.