Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like! wilt thou float and float to me,Facing winds and sleets and waters, flying glimpses of the sea?Down amongst the hills of tempest, where the elves of tumult roam—Blown wet shadows of the summits, dim sonorous sprites of foam?Here and here my days are wasted, shorn of leaf and stript of fruit:Vexed because of speech half spoken, maiden with the marvellous lute!Vexed because of songs half-shapen, smit with fire and mixed with pain:Part of thee, and part of Sorrow, like a sunset pale with rain.Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like! wilt thou float and float to meFacing winds and sleets and waters, flying glimpses of the sea?All night long, in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, but fine,Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear that voice of thine—All night long, amidst the burden of the lordly storm, that singsHigh above the tumbled forelands, fleet and fierce with thunderings!Then and then, my love, Euterpe, lips of life replete with dreamsMurmur for thy sweet, sharp fragments dying down Lethean streams:Murmur for thy mouth's marred music, splendid hints that burn and break,Heavy with excess of beauty: murmur for thy music's sake.All night long, in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, but fine,Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear that voice of thine.In the yellow flame of evening sound of thee doth come and goThrough the noises of the river, and the drifting of the snow:In the yellow flame of evening—at the setting of the day—Sound that lightens, falls and lightens, flickers, faints and fades away.I am famished of thy silence—broken for the tender noteCaught with its surpassing passion—caught and strangled in thy throat!We have nought to help thy trouble—nought for that which lieth muteOn the harpstring and the lutestring and the spirit of the lute.In the yellow flame of evening sound of thee doth come and goThrough the noises of the river, and the drifting of the snow.Daughter of the dead red summers! Men that laugh and men that weepCall thee Music—shall I follow, choose their name, and turn and sleep?What thou art, behold, I know not; but thy honey slakes and slaysHalf the want which whitens manhood in the stress of alien days!Even as a wondrous woman, struck with love and great desire,Hast thou been to me, Euterpe! half of tears and half of fire.But thy joy is swift and fitful; and a subtle sense of painSighs through thy melodious breathing, takes the rapture from thy strain,Daughter of the dead red summers! Men that laugh and men that weepCall thee Music—shall I follow, choose their name, and turn and sleep?
A quiet song for Ellen—The patient Ellen Ray,A dreamer in the nightfall,A watcher in the day.The wedded of the sailorWho keeps so far away:A shadow on his foreheadFor patient Ellen Ray.When autumn winds were drivingAcross the chafing bay,He said the words of angerThat wasted Ellen Ray:He said the words of angerAnd went his bitter way:Her dower was the darkness—The patient Ellen Ray.Your comfort is a phantom,My patient Ellen Ray;You house it in the night-time,It fronts you in the day;And when the moon is very lowAnd when the lights are grey,You sit and hug a sorry hope,My patient Ellen Ray!You sit and hug a sorry hope—Yet who will dare to say,The sweetness of OctoberIs not for Ellen Ray?The bearer of a burdenMust rest at fall of day;And you have borne a heavy one,My patient Ellen Ray.
At dusk, like flowers that shun the day,Shy thoughts from dim recesses break,And plead for words I dare not sayFor your sweet sake.My early love! my first, my last!Mistakes have been that both must rue;But all the passion of the pastSurvives for you.The tender message Hope might sendSinks fainting at the lips of speech,For, are you lover—are you friend,That I would reach?How much to-night I'd give to winA banished peace—an old repose;But here I sit, and sigh, and sinWhen no one knows.The stern, the steadfast reticence,Which made the dearest phrases halt,And checked a first and finest sense,Was not my fault.I held my words because there grewAbout my life persistent pride;And you were loved, who never knewWhat love could hide!This purpose filled my soul like flame:To win you wealth and take the placeWhere care is not, nor any shameTo vex your face.I said "Till then my heart must keepIts secrets safe and unconfest;"And days and nights unknown to sleepThe vow attest.Yet, oh! my sweet, it seems so longSince you were near; and fates retardThe sequel of a struggle strong,And life is hard—Too hard, when one is left aloneTo wrestle passion, never freeTo turn and say to you, "My own,Come home to me!"
Strong pinions bore Safi, the dreamer,Through the dazzle and whirl of a race,And the earth, raying up in confusion,Like a sea thundered under his face!And the earth, raying up in confusion,Passed flying and flying afar,Till it dropped like a moon into silence,And waned from a moon to a star.Was it light, was it shadow he followed,That he swept through those desperate tracts,With his hair beating back on his shouldersLike the tops of the wind-hackled flax?"I come," murmured Safi, the dreamer,"I come, but thou fliest before:But thy way hath the breath of the honey,And the scent of the myrrh evermore!"His eyes were the eyes of a watcherHeld on by luxurious faith,And his lips were the lips of a longerAmazed with the beauty of Death."For ever and ever," he murmured,"My love, for the sweetness with thee,Do I follow thy footsteps," said Safi,"Like the wind on a measureless sea."And, fronting the furthermost spaces,He kept through the distances dim,Till the days, and the years, and the cyclesWere lost and forgotten by him.When he came to the silver star-portals,The Queen of that wonderful placeLooked forth from her towers resplendent,And started, and dreamed in his face.And one said, "This is Safi the Only,Who lived in a planet below,And housed him apart from his fellows,A million of ages ago."He erred, if he suffers, to clutch atHigh lights from the wood and the street;Not caring to see how his brothersWere content with the things at their feet."But she whispered, "Ah, turn to the stranger!He looks like a lord of the land;For his eyes are the eyes of an angel,And the thought on his forehead is grand!"Is there never a peace for the sinnerWhose sin is in this, that he marsThe light of his worship of Beauty,Forgetting the flower for the stars?""Behold him, my Sister immortal,And doubt that he knoweth his shame,Who raves in the shadow for sweetness,And gloats on the ghost of a flame!"His sin is his sin, if he suffers,Who wilfully straitened the truth;And his doom is his doom, if he followsA lie without sorrow or ruth."And another from uttermost vergesRan out with a terrible voice—"Let him go—it is well that he goeth,Though he break with the lot of his choice!""I come," murmured Safi, the dreamer,"I come, but thou fliest before:But thy way hath the breath of the honey,And the scent of the myrrh evermore.""My Queen," said the first of the Voices,"He hunteth a perilous wraith,Arrayed with voluptuous fanciesAnd ringed with tyrannical faith."Wound up in the heart of his errorHe must sweep through the silences dire,Like one in the dark of a desertAllured by fallacious fire."And she faltered, and asked, like a doubter,"When he hangs on those Spaces sublimeWith the Terror that knoweth no limit,And holdeth no record of Time—"Forgotten of God and the demons—Will he keep to his fancy amain?Can he live for that horrible chaosOf flame and perpetual rain?"But an answer as soft as a prayerFell down from a high, hidden land,And the words were the words of a languageWhich none but the gods understand.
Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so oldThrough the hours we would not hear of—nights we would not fain behold!Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year by year,Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit and marvel here:Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,Gold about her forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.Yet, my harp—and oh, my fathers! never look for Sorrow's lay,Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these fleeting seas,Blowing clouds and restless regions paved with old perplexities,In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:Home of far-forgotten phantoms—genii of our peaceful prime,Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forgetfulness of things.His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,With the lone creek falling past it—falling ever to the sea.His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet, shining moon.There the elves of many forests—wandering winds and flying lights—Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt and then might go,Finding fathers of the people to their children speaking low—Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet's pain,Dying with the dead leaves round him—hopes which never grow again.
Far in the ways of the hyaline wastes—in the face of the splendidSix of the sisters—the star-dowered sisters ineffably bright,Merope sitteth, the shadow-like wife of a monarch unfriendedOf Ades—of Orcus, the fierce, the implacable god of the night.Merope—fugitive Merope! lost to thyself and thy lover,Cast, like a dream, out of thought,with the moons which have passed into sleep,What shall avail thee? Alcyone's tears, or the sight to discoverOf Sisyphus pallid for thee by the blue, bitter lights of the deep—Pallid, but patient for sorrow? Oh, thou of the fire and the water,Half with the flame of the sunset, and kin to the streams of the sea,Hast thou the songs of old times for desire of thy dark-featured daughter,Sweet with the lips of thy yearning, O Aethra! with tokens of thee—Songs that would lull her, like kisses forgotten of silence where speech wasLess than the silence that bound it as passion is bound by a ban;Seeing we know of thee, Mother, we turning and hearing how each wasWrapt in the other ere Merope faltered and fell for a man?Mortal she clave to, forgetting her birthright, forgetting the lordlikeSons of the many-winged Father, and chiefs of the plume and the star,Therefore, because that her sin was the grief of the grand and the godlike,Sitteth thy child than a morning-moon bleaker, the faded, and far.Ringed with the flower-like Six of the Seven, arrayed and anointedEver with beautiful pity, she watches, she weeps, and she wanes,Blind as a flame on the hills of the Winter in hours appointedFor the life of the foam and the thunder—the strength of the imminent rains.Who hath a portion, Alcyone, like her? Asterope, fairerThan sunset on snow, and beloved of all brightness, say what is there leftSadder and paler than Pleione's daughter, disconsolate bearerOf trouble that smites like a sword of the gods to the break of the heft?Demeter, and Dryope, known to the forests, the falls, and the fountains,Yearly, because of their walking and wailing and wringing of hands,Arethey as one with this woman?—of Hyrie, wild in the mountains,Breaking her heart in the frosts and the fires of the uttermost lands?Thesehave their bitterness. This, for Persephone, that for OechalianHomes, and the lights of a kindness blown out with the stress of her shame:One for her child, and one for her sin; but thou above all art an alien,Girt with the halos that vex thee, and wrapt in a grief beyond name.Yet sayeth Sisyphus—Sisyphus, stricken and chained of the minionedKings of great darkness, and trodden in dust by the feet of the Fates—"Sweet are the ways of thy watching, and pallid and perished and pinioned,Moon amongst maidens, I leap for thy love like a god at the gates—Leap for the dreams of a rose of the heavens, and beat at the portalsPaved with the pain of unsatisfied pleadings for thee and for thine!But Zeus is immutable Master, and these are the walls the immortalsBuild for our sighing, and who may set lips at the lords and repine?Therefore," he saith, "I am sick for thee, Merope, faint for the tenderTouch of thy mouth, and the eyes like the lights of an altar to me;But, lo, thou art far; and thy face is a still and a sorrowful splendour!And the storm is abroad with the rain on the perilous straits of the sea."
Underneath the windy mountain wallsForth we rode, an eager band,By the surges and the verges and the gorges,Till the night was on the land—On the hazy, mazy land!Far away the bounding preyLeapt across the ruts and logs,But we galloped, galloped, galloped on,Till we heard the yapping of the dogs—The yapping and the yelping of the dogs.Oh, it was a madly merry dayWe shall not so soon forget,And the edges and the ledges and the ridgesHaunt us with their echoes yet—Echoes, echoes, echoes yet!While the moon is on the hillGleaming through the streaming fogs,Don't you hear the yapping of the dogs—The yapping and the yelping of the dogs?
Sweet water-moons, blown into lightsOf flying gold on pool and creek,And many sounds and many sightsOf younger days are back this week.I cannot say I sought to faceOr greatly cared to cross againThe subtle spirit of the placeWhose life is mixed with Rose Lorraine.What though her voice rings clearly throughA nightly dream I gladly keep,No wish have I to start anewHeart fountains that have ceased to leap.Here, face to face with different days,And later things that plead for love,It would be worse than wrong to raiseA phantom far too fain to move.But, Rose Lorraine—ah! Rose Lorraine,I'll whisper now, where no one hears—If you should chance to meet againThe man you kissed in soft, dead years,Just say for once "He suffered much,"And add to this "His fate was worstBecause of me, my voice, my touch."There is no passion like the first!If I that breathe your slow sweet name,As one breathes low notes on a flute,Have vext your peace with word of blame,The phrase is dead—the lips are mute.Yet when I turn towards the wall,In stormy nights, in times of rain,I often wish you could recallYour tender speeches, Rose Lorraine.Because, you see, I thought them true,And did not count you self-deceived,And gave myself in all to you,And looked on Love as Life achieved.Then came the bitter, sudden change,The fastened lips, the dumb despair.The first few weeks were very strange,And long, and sad, and hard to bear.No woman lives with power to burstMy passion's bonds, and set me free;For Rose is last where Rose was first,And only Rose is fair to me.The faintest memory of her face,The wilful face that hurt me so,Is followed by a fiery traceThat Rose Lorraine must never know.I keep a faded ribbon stringYou used to wear about your throat;And of this pale, this perished thing,I think I know the threads by rote.God help such love! To touch your hand,To loiter where your feet might fall,You marvellous girl, my soul would standThe worst of hell—its fires and all!
[End of Leaves from Australian Forests.]
To thee, O father of the stately peaks,Above me in the loftier light—to thee,Imperial brother of those awful hillsWhose feet are set in splendid spheres of flame,Whose heads are where the gods are, and whose sidesOf strength are belted round with all the zonesOf all the world, I dedicate these songs.And if, within the compass of this book,There lives and glowsoneverse in which there beatsThe pulse of wind and torrent—ifonelineIs here that like a running water sounds,And seems an echo from the lands of leaf,Be sure that line is thine. Here, in this home,Away from men and books and all the schools,I take thee for my Teacher. In thy voiceOf deathless majesty, I, kneeling, hearGod's grand authentic Gospel! Year by year,The great sublime cantata of thy stormStrikes through my spirit—fills it with a lifeOf startling beauty! Thou my Bible art,With holy leaves of rock, and flower, and tree,And moss, and shining runnel. From each pageThat helps to make thy awful volume, IHave learned a noble lesson. In the psalmOf thy grave winds, and in the liturgyOf singing waters, lo! my soul has heardThe higher worship; and from thee, indeed,The broad foundations of a finer hopeWere gathered in; and thou hast lifted upThe blind horizon for a larger faith!Moreover, walking in exalted woodsOf naked glory, in the green and goldOf forest sunshine, I have paused like oneWith all the life transfigured; and a floodOf light ineffable has made me feelAs felt the grand old prophets caught awayBy flames of inspiration; but the wordsSufficient for the story of my DreamAre far too splendid for poor human lips.But thou, to whom I turn with reverent eyes—O stately Father, whose majestic faceShines far above the zone of wind and cloud,Where high dominion of the morning is—Thou hast the Song complete of which my songsAre pallid adumbrations! Certain soundsOf strong authentic sorrow in this bookMay have the sob of upland torrents—these,And only these, may touch the great World's heart;For, lo! they are the issues of that griefWhich makes a man more human, and his lifeMore like that frank, exalted life of thine.But in these pages there are other tonesIn which thy large, superior voice is not—Through which no beauty that resembles thineHas ever shone.Theseare the broken wordsOf blind occasions, when the World has comeBetween me and my Dream. No song is hereOf mighty compass; for my singing robesI've worn in stolen moments. All my daysHave been the days of a laborious life,And ever on my struggling soul has burnedThe fierce heat of this hurried sphere. But thou,To whose fair majesty I dedicateMy book of rhymes—thou hast the perfect restWhich makes the heaven of the highest gods!To thee the noises of this violent timeAre far, faint whispers; and, from age to age,Within the world and yet apart from it,Thou standest! Round thy lordly capes the seaRolls on with a superb indifferenceFor ever; in thy deep, green, gracious glensThe silver fountains sing for ever. FarAbove dim ghosts of waters in the caves,The royal robe of morning on thy headAbides for ever. Evermore the windIs thy august companion; and thy peersAre cloud, and thunder, and the face sublimeOf blue mid-heaven! On thy awful browIs Deity; and in that voice of thineThere is the great imperial utteranceOf God for ever; and thy feet are setWhere evermore, through all the days and years,There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave.
Path beside the silver waters, flashing in October's sun—Walk, by green and golden margins where the sister streamlets run—Twenty shining springs have vanished, full of flower, and leaf, and bird,Since the step of Mary Rivers in your lawny dell was heard!Twenty white-haired Junes have left us—grey with frost and bleak with gale—Since the hand of her we loved so plucked the blossoms in your dale.Twenty summers, twenty autumns, from the grand old hills have passed,With their robes of royal colour, since we saw the darling last.Morning comes—the blessed morning! and the slow song of the sea,Like a psalm from radiant altars, floats across a rose-red lea;Then the fair, strong noonday blossoms, and the reaper seeks the coolValley of the moss and myrtle, and the glimmering water-pool.Noonday flames and evening follows; and the lordly mountains restHeads arrayed with tenfold splendour on the rich heart of the West.Evening walks with moon and music where the higher life has been;But the face of Mary Riverstherewill nevermore be seen.Ah! when autumn dells are dewy, and the wave is very still,And that grey ghost called the Twilight passes from the distant hill—Even in the hallowed nightfall, when the fathers sit and dream,And the splendid rose of heaven sees a sister in the stream—Often do I watch the waters gleaming in a starry bay,Thinking of a bygone beauty, and a season far away;Musing on the grace that left us in a time of singing rain,On the lady who will never walk amongst these heaths again.Four there were, but two were taken; and this darling we deplore,She was sweetest of the circle—she was dearest of the four!In the daytime and the dewtime comes the phantom of her face:None will ever sit where she did—none will ever fill her place.With the passing of our Mary, like a sunset out of sight,Passed away our pure first passion—all its life and all its light!All that made the world a dreamland—all the glory and the glowOf the fine, fresh, morning feeling vanished twenty years ago.Girl, whose strange, unearthly beauty haunts us ever in our sleep,Many griefs have worn our hearts out—we are now too tired to weep!Time has tried us, years have changed us; but the sweetness shed by youFalls upon our spirits daily, like divine, immortal dew.Shining are our thoughts about you—of the blossoms past recall,You are still the rose of lustre—still the fairest of them all;In the sleep that brings the garland gathered from the bygone hours,You are still our Mary Rivers—still the queen of all the flowers.Let me ask, where none can hear me—When you passed into the shine,And you heard a great love calling, did you know that it was mine?In your life of light and music, tell me did you ever see,Shining in a holy silence, what was as a flame in me?Ah, my darling! no one saw it. Purer than untrodden dewWas that first unhappy passion buried in the grave with you.Bird and leaf will keep the secret—wind and wood will never tellMen the thing that I have whispered. Mary Rivers, fare you well!
A waving of hats and of hands,The voices of thousands in one,A shout from the ring and the stands,And a glitter of heads in the sun!"They are off—they are off!" is the roar,As the cracks settle down to the race,With the "yellow and black" to the fore,And the Panic blood forcing the pace.At the back of the course, and awayWhere the running-ground home again wheels,Grubb travels in front on the bay,With a feather-weight hard at his heels.But Yeomans, you see, is about,And the wily New Zealander waits,Though the high-blooded flyer is out,Whose rider and colours are Tait's.Look! Ashworth comes on with a runTo the head of the Levity colt;And the fleet—the magnificent sonOf Panic is shooting his bolt.Hurrah for the Weatherbit strain!A Fireworks is first in the straight;And "A Kelpie will win it again!"Is the roar from the ring to the gate.The leader must have it—but no!For see, full of running, behindA beautiful, wonderful foeWith the speed of the thunder and wind!A flashing of whips, and a cry,And Ashworth sits down on his horse,With Kingsborough's head at his thighAnd the "field" scattered over the course!In a clamour of calls and acclaimThe pair race away from the ruck:The horse to the last of it game—A marvel of muscle and pluck!But the foot of the Sappho is there,And Kingston's invincible strength;And the numbers go up in the air—The colt is the first by a length!The first, and the favourite too!The terror that came from his stall,With the spirit of fire and of dew,To show the road home to them all;From the back of the field to the straightHe has come, as is ever his wont,And carried his welter-like weight,Like a tradesman, right through to the front.Nor wonder at cheering a wit,For this is the popular horse,That never was beaten when "fit"By any four hoofs on the course;To starter for Leger or Cup,Has he ever shown feather of fearWhen saddle and rider were upAnd the case to be argued was clear?No! rather the questionless pluckOf the blood unaccustomed to yield,Preferred to spread-eagle the ruck,And make a long tail of the "field".Bear witness, ye lovers of sport,To races of which he can boast,When flyer by flyer was caught,And beaten by lengths on the post!Lo! this is the beautiful bay—Of many, the marvellous oneWho showed us last season the wayThat a Leger should always be won.There was something to look at and learn,Ye shrewd irreproachable "touts",When the Panic colt tired at the turn,And the thing was all over—but shouts!Aye, that was the spin, when the twainCame locked by the bend of the course,The Zealander pulling his rein,And the veteran hard on his horse!When Ashworth was "riding" 'twas lateFor his friends to applaud on the stands,And the Sappho colt entered the straightWith the race of the year in his hands.Just look at his withers, his thighs!And the way that he carries his head!Has Richmond more wonderful eyes,Or Melbourne that spring in his tread?The grand, the intelligent glanceFrom a spirit that fathoms and feels,Makes the heart of a horse-lover danceTill the warm-blooded life in him reels.What care have I ever to knowHis owner by sight or by name?The horse that I glory in soIs still the magnificent same.I own I am proud of the pluckOf the sportsman that never was bought;But the nag that spread-eagled the ruckIs bound to be first in my thought.For who that has masculine flame,Or who that is thorough at all,Can help feeling joy in the fameOf this king of the kings of the stall?What odds if assumption has sealedHis soulless hereafter abode,So long as he shows to his "field"The gleam of his hoofs, and the road?
Down in the South, by the waste without sail on it,Far from the zone of the blossom and tree,Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it,Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it;Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey;Phantom of life is the light on the face of it—Never is night on it, never is day!Here is the shore without flower or bird on it;Here is no litany sweet of the springs—Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it,Only the storm, with the roar in its wings!Shadow of moon is the moon in the sky of it—Wan as the face of a wizard, and far!Never there shines from the firmament high of itGrace of the planet or glory of star.All the year round, in the place of white days on it—All the year round where there never is night—Lies a great sinister, bitter, blind haze on it:Growth that is neither of darkness nor light!Wild is the cry of the sea in the caves by it—Sea that is smitten by spears of the snow;Desolate songs are the songs of the waves by it—Down in the south, where the ships never go.Storm from the Pole is the singer that sings to itHymns of the land at the planet's grey verge.Thunder discloses dark, wonderful things to it—Thunder and rain, and the dolorous surge.Hills with no hope of a wing or a leaf on them,Scarred with the chronicles written by flame,Stare, through the gloom of inscrutable grief on them,Down on the horns of the gulfs without name.Cliffs, with the records of fierce flying fires on them—Loom over perilous pits of eclipse;Alps, with anathema stamped in the spires on them—Out by the wave with a curse on its lips.Never is sign of soft, beautiful green on it—Never the colour, the glory of rose!Neither the fountain nor river is seen on it,Naked its crags are, and barren its snows!Blue as the face of the drowned is the shore of it—Shore, with the capes of indefinite cave.Strange is the voice of its wind, and the roar of itStartles the mountain and hushes the wave.Out to the south and away to the north of it,Spectral and sad are the spaces untold!All the year round a great cry goeth forth of it—Sob of this leper of lands in the cold.No man hath stood, all its bleak, bitter years on it—Fall of a foot on its wastes is unknown:Only the sound of the hurricane's spears on itBreaks with the shout from the uttermost zone.Blind are its bays with the shadow of bale on them;Storms of the nadir their rocks have uphurled;Earthquake hath registered deeply its tale on them—Tale of distress from the dawn of the world!Thereare the gaps, with the surges that seethe in them—Gaps in whose jaws is a menace that glares!Therethe wan reefs, with the merciless teeth in them,Gleam on a chaos that startles and scares!Back in the dawn of this beautiful sphere, on it—Land of the dolorous, desolate face—Beamed the blue day; and the bountiful year on itFostered the leaf and the blossom of grace.Grand were the lights of its midsummer noon on it—Mornings of majesty shone on its seas;Glitter of star and the glory of moon on itFell, in the march of the musical breeze.Valleys and hills, with the whisper of wing in them,Dells of the daffodil—spaces impearled,Flowered and flashed with the splendour of Spring in them—Back in the morn of this wonderful world.Soft were the words that the thunder then said to it—Said to this lustre of emerald plain;Sun brought the yellow, the green, and the red to it—Sweet were the songs of its silvery rain.Voices of water and wind in the bays of itLingered, and lulled like the psalm of a dream.Fair were the nights and effulgent the days of it—Moon was in shadow and shade in the beam.Summer's chief throne was the marvellous coast of it,Home of the Spring was its luminous lea:Garden of glitter! But only the ghost of itMoans in the south by the ghost of a sea.
The gloved and jewelled bards who singOf Pippa, Maud, and Dorothea,Have hardly done the handsome thingFor you, my inky Cytherea.Flower of a land whose sunny skiesAre like the dome of Dante's clime,Theymighthave praised your lips, your eyes,And, eke, your ankles in their rhyme!But let them pass! To right your wrong,Aspasia of the ardent South,Your poet means to sing a songWith some prolixity of mouth.I'll even sketch you as you areIn Herrick's style of carelessness,Not overstocked with things that barAn ample view—to wit, with dress.You have your blanket, it is true;But then, if I am right at all,What best would suit a dame like youWas worn by Eve before the Fall.Indeed, the "fashion" is a thingThat never cramped your cornless toes:Your single jewel is a ringSlung in your penetrated nose.I can't detect the flowing linesOf Grecian features in your face,Nor are there patent any signsThat link you with the Roman race.In short, I do not think your mouldResembles, with its knobs of bone,The fair Hellenic shapes of oldWhose perfect forms survive in stone.Still, if the charm called Beauty liesIn ampleness of ear and lip,And nostrils of exceeding size,You are a gem, my ladyship!Here, squatting by the doubtful flameOf three poor sticks, without a roofAbove your head, impassive dameYou live on—somewhat hunger-proof.The current scandals of the dayDon't trouble you—you seem to takeThings in the coolest sort of way—Andwisest—for you have no ache.You smoke a pipe—of course, you do!About an inch in length or less,Which, from a sexual point of view,Mars somehow your attractiveness.But, rather than resign the weed,You'd shock us, whites, by chewing it;For etiquette is not indeedA thing that bothers you a bit.Your people—take them as a whole—Are careless on the score of grace;And hence you needn't comb your pollOr decorate your unctuous face.Still, seeing that a little soapWould soften an excess of tint,You'll pardon my advance, I hope,In giving you a gentle hint.You have your lovers—dusky beauxNot made of the poetic stuffThat sports an Apollonian nose,And wears a sleek Byronic cuff.But rather of a rougher clayUnmixed with overmuch romance,Far better at the wildwood frayThan spinning in a ballroom dance.Thesescarcely are the sonneteersThat sing their loves in faultless clothes:Yourfriends have more decided earsAnd more capaciousness of nose.No doubt they suit you best—althoughThey woo you roughly it is said:Their way of courtship is a blowStruck with a nullah on the head.It doesn't hurt you much—the thingIs hardly novel to your life;And,sansthe feast and marriage ring,You make a good impromptu wife.This hasty sort of wedding might,In other cases, bring distress;But then, your draper's bills are light—You're frugal in regard to dress.You have no passion for the play,Or park, or other showy scenes;And, hence, you have no scores to pay,And live within your husband's means.Of course, his income isn't large,—And not too certain—still you thriveBy steering well inside the marge,And keep your little ones alive.In short, in some respects you setA fine example; and a fewOf those white matrons I have metWould show some sense by copying you.Here let us part! I will not say,O lady free from scents and starch,That you are like, in any way,The authoress of "Middlemarch".One cannot match her perfect phraseWith commonplaces from your lip;And yet there are some sexual traitsThat show your dim relationship.Indeed, in spite of all the mistsThat grow from social codes, I seeThe liberal likeness which existsThroughout our whole humanity.And though I've laughed at your expense,O Dryad of the dusky race,No man who has a heart and senseWould bring displeasure to your face.
"Daughter," said the ancient father, pausing by the evening sea,"Turn thy face towards the sunset—turn thy face and kneel with me!Prayer and praise and holy fasting, lips of love and life of light,These and these have made thee perfect—shining saint with seraph's sight!Look towards that flaming crescent—look beyond that glowing space—Tell me, sister of the angels, what is beaming in thy face?"And the daughter, who had fasted, who had spent her days in prayer,Till the glory of the Saviour touched her head and rested there,Turned her eyes towards the sea-line—saw beyond the fiery crest,Floating over waves of jasper, far Hy-Brasil in the west.All the calmness and the colour—all the splendour and repose,Flowing where the sunset flowered, like a silver-hearted rose!There indeed was singing Eden, where the great gold river runsPast the porch and gates of crystal, ringed by strong and shining ones!There indeed was God's own garden, sailing down the sapphire sea—Lawny dells and slopes of summer, dazzling stream and radiant tree!Out against the hushed horizon—out beneath the reverent day,Flamed the Wonder on the waters—flamed and flashed and passed away.And the maiden who had seen it felt a hand within her own,And an angel that we know not led her to the lands unknown.Never since hath eye beheld it—never since hath mortal, dazedBy its strange, unearthly splendour, on the floating Eden gazed!Only once since Eve went weeping through a throng of glittering wings,Hath the holy seen Hy-Brasil where the great gold river sings!Only once by quiet waters, under still, resplendent skies,Did the sister of the seraphs kneel in sight of Paradise!She, the pure, the perfect woman, sanctified by patient prayer,Had the eyes of saints of Heaven, all their glory in her hair:Therefore God the Father whispered to a radiant spirit near—"Show Our daughter fair Hy-Brasil—show her this, and lead her here."But beyond the halls of sunset, but within the wondrous west,On the rose-red seas of evening, sails the Garden of the Blest.Still the gates of glassy beauty, still the walls of glowing light,Shine on waves that no man knows of, out of sound and out of sight.Yet the slopes and lawns of lustre, yet the dells of sparkling streams,Dip to tranquil shores of jasper, where the watching angel beams.But, behold, our eyes are human, and our way is paved with pain,We can never find Hy-Brasil, never see its hills again;Never look on bays of crystal, never bend the reverent kneeIn the sight of Eden floating—floating on the sapphire sea!