* * * * *
I follow Beauty; of her train am I:Beauty whose voice is earth and sea and air;Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply;Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere.
* * * * *
Toiling and yearning, 'tis man's doom to seeNo perfect creature fashion'd of his hands.Insulted by a flower's immaculacy,And mock'd at by the flawless stars he stands.
* * * * *
For metaphors of man we search the skies,And find our allegory in all the air.We gaze on Nature with Narcissus-eyes,Enamour'd of our shadow everywhere.
* * * * *
One music maketh its occult abodeIn all things scatter'd from great Beauty's hand;And evermore the deepest words of GodAre yet the easiest to understand.
* * * * *
Enough of mournful melodies, my lute!Be henceforth joyous, or be henceforth mute.Song's breath is wasted when it does but fanThe smouldering infelicity of man.
* * * * *
I pluck'd this flower, O brighter flower, for thee,There where the river dies into the sea.To kiss it the wild west wind hath made free:Kiss it thyself and give it back to me.
* * * * *
To be as this old elm full loth were I,That shakes in the autumn storm its palsied head.Hewn by the weird last woodman let me lieEre the path rustle with my foliage shed.
* * * * *
Ah, vain, thrice vain in the end, thy hate and rage,And the shrill tempest of thy clamorous page.True poets but transcendent lovers be,And one great love-confession poesy.
* * * * *
His rhymes the poet flings at all men's feet,And whoso will may trample on his rhymes.Should Time let die a song that's true and sweet,The singer's loss were more than match'd by Time's.
* * * * *
No puissant singer he, whose silence grievesTo-day the great West's tender heart and strong;No singer vast of voice: yet one who leavesHis native air the sweeter for his song.
* * * * *
Too avid of earth's bliss, he was of thoseWhom Delight flies because they give her chase.Only the odour of her wild hair blowsBack in their faces hungering for her face.
* * * * *
He holds a dubious balance:—yetthatscale,Whose freight the world is, surely shall prevail?No; Cleopatra droppeth intothisOne counterpoising orient sultry kiss.
* * * * *
The thousand painful steps at last are trod,At last the temple's difficult door we win;But perfect on his pedestal, the godFreezes us hopeless when we enter in.
* * * * *
He dwelt with the bright gods of elder time,On earth and in their cloudy haunts above.He loved them: and in recompense sublime,The gods, alas! gave him their fatal love.
* * * * *
Your Marlowe's page I close, my Shakspere's ope.How welcome—after gong and cymbal's din—The continuity, the long slow slopeAnd vast curves of the gradual violin!
* * * * *
A star look'd down from heaven and loved a flowerGrown in earth's garden—loved it for an hour:
Let eyes that trace his orbit in the spheresRefuse not, to a ruin'd rosebud, tears.
* * * * *
Here Love the slain with Love the slayer lies;Deep drown'd are both in the same sunless pool.Up from its depths that mirror thundering skiesBubbles the wan mirth of the mirthless Fool.
* * * *
Time, the extortioner, from richest beautyTakes heavy toll and wrings rapacious duty.Austere of feature if thou carve thy rhyme,Perchance 'twill pay the lesser tax to Time.
* * * * *
Spring, the low prelude of a lordlier song:Summer, a music without hint of death:Autumn, a cadence lingeringly long:Winter, a pause;—the Minstrel-Year takes breath.
* * * * *
Flower fondled, clasp'd in ivy's close caress,It seems allied with Nature, yet apart:—Of wood's and wave's insensate lovelinessThe glad, sad, tranquil, passionate, human heart.
* * * * *
The captain's might, and mystery of the seer—Remoteness of Jehovah's colloquist,Nearness of man's heaven-advocate—are here:Alone Mount Nebo's harsh foreshadow is miss'd.
* * * * *
Adieu, white brows of Europe! sovereign brows,That wear the sunset for a golden tiar.With me in memory shall your phantoms houseFor ever, whiter than yourselves, and higher.
* * * * *
It soars like hearts of hapless men who dareTo sue for gifts the gods refuse to allot;Who climb for ever toward they know not where,Baffled for ever by they know not what.
* * * * *
His friends he loved. His fellest earthly foes—Cats—I believe he did but feign to hate.My hand will miss the insinuated nose,Mine eyes the tail that wagg'd contempt at Fate.
* * * * *
Here were a goodly place wherein to die;—Grown latterly to sudden change averse,All violent contrasts fain avoid would IOn passing from this world into a worse.
* * * * *
Fain would I have thee barter fates with me,—Lone loiterer where the shells like jewels be,Hung on the fringe and frayed hem of the sea.But no,—'twere cruel, wild-wing'd Bliss! to thee.
* * * * *
What holds her fixed far eyes nor lets them range?Not the strange sea, strange earth, or heav'n more strange;But her own phantom dwarfing these great three,More strange than all, more old than heav'n, earth, sea.
* * * * *
He wooes for ever, with foil'd lips of drouth,The wave that wearies not to mock his mouth.'Tis Lethe's; they alone that tide have quaff'dWho never thirsted for the oblivious draught.
* * * * *
She dwelt among us till the flowers, 'tis said,Grew jealous of her: with precipitate feet,As loth to wrong them unawares, she fled.Earth is less fragrant now, and heaven more sweet.
Ere vandal lords with lust of gold accurstDeface each hallowed hillside we revere—Ere cities in their million-throated thirstMenace each sacred mere—Let us give thanks because one nook hath beenUnflooded yet by desecration's wave,The little churchyard in the valley greenThat holds our Wordsworth's grave.
'Twas there I plucked these elegiac blooms,There where he rests 'mid comrades fit and few,And thence I bring this growth of classic tombs,An offering, friend, to you—You who have loved like me his simple themes,Loved his sincere large accent nobly plain,And loved the land whose mountains and whose streamsAre lovelier for his strain.
It may be that his manly chant, besideMore dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune;It may be, thought has broadened since he diedUpon the century's noon;It may be that we can no longer shareThe faith which from his fathers he received;It may be that our doom is to despairWhere he with joy believed;—
Enough that there is none since risen who singsA song so gotten of the immediate soul,So instant from the vital fount of thingsWhich is our source and goal;And though at touch of later hands there floatMore artful tones than from his lyre he drew,Ages may pass ere trills another noteSo sweet, so great, so true.
The old rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here;Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows;Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near,And with cool murmur lulling his repose
Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near.His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet.Surely the heart that read her own heart clearNature forgets not soon: 'tis we forget.
We that with vagrant soul his fixityHave slighted; faithless, done his deep faith wrong;Left him for poorer loves, and bowed the kneeTo misbegotten strange new gods of song.
Yet, led by hollow ghost or beckoning elfFar from her homestead to the desert bourn,The vagrant soul returning to herselfWearily wise, must needs to him return.
To him and to the powers that with him dwell:—Inflowings that divulged not whence they came;And that secluded spirit unknowable,The mystery we make darker with a name;
The Somewhat which we name but cannot know,Ev'n as we name a star and only seeHis quenchless flashings forth, which ever showAnd ever hide him, and which are not he.
Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave!When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then?To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave,The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men?
Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine;Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless human view;Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine;Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew.
What hadst thou that could make so large amendsFor all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed,Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends?—Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest.
From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze,From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth,Men turned to thee and found—not blast and blaze,Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth,
Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower,There in white languors to decline and cease;But peace whose names are also rapture, power,Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace.
I hear it vouched the Muse is with us still;—If less divinely frenzied than of yore,In lieu of feelings she has wondrous skillTo simulate emotion felt no more.
Not such the authentic Presence pure, that madeThis valley vocal in the great days gone!—Inhisgreat days, while yet the spring-time playedAbout him, and the mighty morning shone.
No word-mosaic artificer, he sangA lofty song of lowly weal and dole.Right from the heart, right to the heart it sprang,Or from the soul leapt instant to the soul.
He felt the charm of childhood, grace of youth,Grandeur of age, insisting to be sung.The impassioned argument was simple truthHalf-wondering at its own melodious tongue.
Impassioned? ay, to the song's ecstatic core!But far removed were clangour, storm and feud;For plenteous health was his, exceeding storeOf joy, and an impassioned quietude.
A hundred years ere he to manhood came,Song from celestial heights had wandered down,Put off her robe of sunlight, dew and flame,And donned a modish dress to charm the Town.
Thenceforth she but festooned the porch of things;Apt at life's lore, incurious what life meant.Dextrous of hand, she struck her lute's few strings;Ignobly perfect, barrenly content.
Unflushed with ardour and unblanched with awe,Her lips in profitless derision curled,She saw with dull emotion—if she saw—The vision of the glory of the world.
The human masque she watched, with dreamless eyesIn whose clear shallows lurked no trembling shade:The stars, unkenned by her, might set and rise,Unmarked by her, the daisies bloom and fade.
The age grew sated with her sterile wit.Herself waxed weary on her loveless throne.Men felt life's tide, the sweep and surge of it,And craved a living voice, a natural tone.
For none the less, though song was but half true,The world lay common, one abounding theme.Man joyed and wept, and fate was ever new,And love was sweet, life real, death no dream.
In sad stern verse the rugged scholar-sageBemoaned his toil unvalued, youth uncheered.His numbers wore the vesture of the age,But, 'neath it beating, the great heart was heard.
From dewy pastures, uplands sweet with thyme,A virgin breeze freshened the jaded day.It wafted Collins' lonely vesper-chime,It breathed abroad the frugal note of Gray.
It fluttered here and there, nor swept in vainThe dusty haunts where futile echoes dwell,—Then, in a cadence soft as summer rain,And sad from Auburn voiceless, drooped and fell.
It drooped and fell, and one 'neath northern skies,With southern heart, who tilled his father's field,Found Poesy a-dying, bade her riseAnd touch quick nature's hem and go forth healed.
On life's broad plain the ploughman's conquering shareUpturned the fallow lands of truth anew,And o'er the formal garden's trim parterreThe peasant's team a ruthless furrow drew.
Bright was his going forth, but clouds ere longWhelmed him; in gloom his radiance set, and thoseTwin morning stars of the new century's song,Those morning stars that sang together, rose.
In elvish speech theDreamertold his taleOf marvellous oceans swept by fateful wings.—TheSeërstrayed not from earth's human pale,But the mysterious face of common things
He mirrored as the moon in Rydal MereIs mirrored, when the breathless night hangs blue:Strangely remote she seems and wondrous near,And by some nameless difference born anew.
Peace—peace—and rest! Ah, how the lyre is loth,Or powerless now, to give what all men seek!Either it deadens with ignoble slothOr deafens with shrill tumult, loudly weak.
Where is the singer whose large notes and clearCan heal and arm and plenish and sustain?Lo, one with empty music floods the ear,And one, the heart refreshing, tires the brain.
And idly tuneful, the loquacious throngFlutter and twitter, prodigal of time,And little masters make a toy of songTill grave men weary of the sound of rhyme.
And some go prankt in faded antique dress,Abhorring to be hale and glad and free;And some parade a conscious naturalness,The scholar's not the child's simplicity.
Enough;—and wisest who from words forbear.The kindly river rails not as it glides;And suave and charitable, the winning airChides not at all, or only him who chides.
Nature! we storm thine ear with choric notes.Thou answerest through the calm great nights and days,"Laud me who will: not tuneless are your throats;Yet if ye paused I should not miss the praise."
We falter, half-rebuked, and sing again.We chant thy desertness and haggard gloom,Or with thy splendid wrath inflate the strain,Or touch it with thy colour and perfume.
One, his melodious blood aflame for thee,Wooed with fierce lust, his hot heart world-defiled.One, with the upward eye of infancy,Looked in thy face, and felt himself thy child.
Thee he approached without distrust or dread—Beheld thee throned, an awful queen, above—Climbed to thy lap and merely laid his headAgainst thy warm wild heart of mother-love.
He heard that vast heart beating—thou didst pressThy child so close, and lov'dst him unaware.Thy beauty gladdened him; yet he scarce lessHad loved thee, had he never found thee fair!
For thou wast not as legendary landsTo which with curious eyes and ears we roam.Nor wast thou as a fane mid solemn sands,Where palmers halt at evening. Thou wast home.
And here, at home, still bides he; but he sleeps;Not to be wakened even at thy word;Though we, vague dreamers, dream he somewhere keepsAn ear still open to thy voice still heard,—
Thy voice, as heretofore, about him blown,For ever blown about his silence now;Thy voice, though deeper, yet so like his ownThat almost, when he sang, we deemed 'twas thou!
Behind Helm Crag and Silver Howe the sheenOf the retreating day is less and less.Soon will the lordlier summits, here unseen,Gather the night about their nakedness.
The half-heard bleat of sheep comes from the hill,Faint sounds of childish play are in the air.The river murmurs past. All else is still.The very graves seem stiller than they were.
Afar though nation be on nation hurled,And life with toil and ancient pain depressed,Here one may scarce believe the whole wide worldIs not at peace, and all man's heart at rest.
Rest! 'twas the gifthegave; and peace! the shadeHespread, for spirits fevered with the sun.To him his bounties are come back—here laidIn rest, in peace, his labour nobly done.
Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head:The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er:Carry the last great bard to his last bed.Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute.Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermoreMeadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore,Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit,Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread,The master's feet shall tread.Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute:The singer of undying songs is dead.
Lo, in this season pensive-hued and grave,While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leafFrom withered Earth's fantastic coronal,With wandering sighs of forest and of waveMingles the murmur of a people's griefFor him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall.He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers.For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame,And soon the winter silence shall be ours:Him the eternal spring of fadeless fameCrowns with no mortal flowers.
Rapt though he be from us,Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus;Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, eachGreets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach;Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach;Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home;Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech;Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam,Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave,His equal friendship crave:And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speechOf Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome.
What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears,To save from visitation of decay?Not in this temporal sunlight, now, that bayBlooms, nor to perishable mundane earsSings he with lips of transitory clay;For he hath joined the chorus of his peersIn habitations of the perfect day:His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears,And more melodious are henceforth the spheres,Enriched with music stol'n from earth away.
He hath returned to regions whence he came.Him doth the spirit divineOf universal loveliness reclaim.All nature is his shrine.Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea,In earth's and air's emotion or repose,In every star's august serenity,And in the rapture of the flaming rose.There seek him if ye would not seek in vain,There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole;Yea, and for ever in the human soulMade stronger and more beauteous by his strain.
For lo! creation's self is one great choir,And what is nature's order but the rhymeWhereto the worlds keep time,And all things move with all things from their prime?Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre?In far retreats of elemental mindObscurely comes and goesThe imperative breath of song, that as the windIs trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.Demand of lilies wherefore they are white,Extort her crimson secret from the rose,But ask not of the Muse that she discloseThe meaning of the riddle of her might:Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite,Save the enigma of herself, she knows.The master could not tell, with all his lore,Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped;Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said;—Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale,That held in trance the ancient Attic shore,And charms the ages with the notes that o'erAll woodland chants immortally prevail!And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled,He with diviner silence dwells instead,And on no earthly sea with transient roar,Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail,But far beyond our vision and our hailIs heard for ever and is seen no more.
No more, O never now,Lord of the lofty and the tranquil browWhereon nor snows of timeHave fall'n, nor wintry rime,Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime.Once, in his youth obscure,The maker of this verse, which shall endureBy splendour of its theme that cannot die,Beheld thee eye to eye,And touched through thee the handOf every hero of thy race divine,Ev'n to the sire of all the laurelled line,The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand,With soul as healthful as the poignant brine,Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas,Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine,Glorious Mæonides.Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet:Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget?The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue,Are they not ever goldenly impressedOn memory's palimpsest?I see the wizard locks like night that hung,I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod;I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung,The eyes that looked through life and gazed on God.
The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer;The grass of yesteryearIs dead; the birds depart, the groves decay:Empires dissolve and peoples disappear:Song passes not away.Captains and conquerors leave a little dust,And kings a dubious legend of their reign;The swords of Cæsars, they are less than rust:The poet doth remain.Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive;And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime,Like Virgil shalt thy race and tongue survive,Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time,Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme,And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive;While to the measure of the cosmic runeFor purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune,And heed no more the hum of idle praiseIn that great calm our tumults cannot reach,Master who crown'st our immelodious daysWith flower of perfect speech.
City that waitest to be sung,—For whom no handTo mighty strains the lyre hath strungIn all this land,Though mightier theme the mightiest onesSang not of old,The thrice three sisters' godlike sonsWith lips of gold,—Till greater voice thy greatness singIn loftier times,Suffer an alien muse to bringHer votive rhymes.
Yes, alien in thy midst am I,Not of thy brood;The nursling of a norland skyOf rougher mood:To me, thy tarrying guest, to me,'Mid thy loud hum,Strayed visions of the moor or seaTormenting come.Above the thunder of the wheelsThat hurry by,From lapping of lone waves there stealsA far-sent sigh;
And many a dream-reared mountain crestMy feet have trod,There where thy Minster in the WestGropes toward God.Yet, from thy presence if I go,By woodlands deepOr ocean-fringes, thou, I know,Wilt haunt my sleep;Thy restless tides of life will foam,Still, in my sight;Thy imperturbable dark domeWill crown my night.
O sea of living waves that rollOn golden sands,Or break on tragic reef and shoal'Mid fatal lands;O forest wrought of living leaves,Some filled with Spring,Where joy life's festal raiment weavesAnd all birds sing,—Some trampled in the miry ways,Or whirled alongBy fury of tempestuous days,—Take thou my song!
For thou hast scorned not heretoforeThe gifts of rhymeI dropped, half faltering, at thy door,City sublime;And though 'tis true I am but guestWithin thy gate,Unto thy hands I owe the bestAwards of fate.Imperial hostess! thanks from meTo thee belong:O living forest, living sea,Take thou my song!
To the eye and the ear of the DreamerThis Dream out of darkness flew,Through the horn or the ivory portal,But he wist not which of the two.
It was the Human Spirit,Of all men's souls the Soul,Man the unwearied climber,That climbed to the unknown goal.And up the steps of the ages,The difficult steep ascent,Man the unwearied climberPauseless and dauntless went.Æons rolled behind himWith thunder of far retreat,And still as he strove he conqueredAnd laid his foes at his feet.Inimical powers of nature,Tempest and flood and fire,The spleen of fickle seasonsThat loved to baulk his desire,The breath of hostile climates,The ravage of blight and dearth,The old unrest that vexesThe heart of the moody earth,The genii swift and radiantSabreing heaven with flame,He, with a keener weapon,The sword of his wit, overcame.Disease and her ravening offspring,Pain with the thousand teeth,He drave into night primeval,The nethermost worlds beneath,Till the Lord of Death, the undying,Ev'n Asraël the King,No more with Furies for heraldsCame armed with scourge and sting,But gentle of voice and of visage,By calm Age ushered and led,A guest, serenely featured,Entering, woke no dread.And, as the rolling æonsRetreated with pomp of sound,Man's spirit, grown too lordlyFor this mean orb to bound,By arts in his youth undreamed ofHis terrene fetters broke,With enterprise etherealSpurning the natal yoke,And, stung with divine ambition,And fired with a glorious greed,He annexed the stars and the planetsAnd peopled them with his seed.
Then said he, "The infinite ScriptureI have read and interpreted clear,And searching all worlds I have found notMy sovereign or my peer.In what room of the palace of natureResides the invisible God?For all her doors I have opened,And all her floors I have trod.If greater than I be her tenant,Let him answer my challenging call:Till then I admit no rival,But crown myself master of all."And forth as that word went bruited,By Man unto Man were raisedFanes of devout self-homage,Where he who praised was the praised;And from vast unto vast of creationThe new evangel ran,And an odour of world-wide incenseWent up from Man unto Man;Until, on a solemn feast-day,When the world's usurping lordAt a million impious altarsHis own proud image adored,God spake as He stept from His ambush:"O great in thine own conceit,I will show thee thy source, how humble,Thy goal, for a god how unmeet."
Thereat, by the word of the MakerThe Spirit of Man was ledTo a mighty peak of vision,Where God to His creature said:"Look eastward toward time's sunrise."And, age upon age untold,The Spirit of Man saw clearlyThe Past as a chart out-rolled,—Beheld his base beginningsIn the depths of time, and his strife,With beasts and crawling horrorsFor leave to live, when lifeMeant but to slay and to procreate,To feed and to sleep, amongMere mouths, voracities boundless,Blind lusts, desires without tongue,And ferocities vast, fulfillingTheir being's malignant law,While nature was one hunger,And one hate, all fangs and maw.
With that, for a single moment,Abashed at his own descent,In humbleness Man's SpiritAt the feet of the Maker bent;But, swifter than light, he recoveredThe stature and pose of his pride,And, "Think not thus to shame meWith my mean birth," he cried."This is my loftiest greatness,To have been born so low;Greater than Thou the ungrowingAm I that for ever grow."And God forbore to rebuke him,But answered brief and stern,Bidding him toward time's sunsetHis vision westward turn;And the Spirit of Man obeyingBeheld as a chart out-rolledThe likeness and form of the Future,Age upon age untold;Beheld his own meridian,And beheld his dark decline,His secular fall to nadirFrom summits of light divine,Till at last, amid worlds exhausted,And bankrupt of force and fire,'Twas his, in a torrent of darkness,Like a sputtering lamp to expire.
Then a war of shame and angerDid the realm of his soul divide;"'Tis false, 'tis a lying vision,"In the face of his God he cried."Thou thinkest to daunt me with shadows;Not such as Thou feign'st is my doom:From glory to rise unto gloryIs mine, who have risen from gloom.I doubt if Thou knew'st at my makingHow near to thy throne I should climb,O'er the mountainous slopes of the agesAnd the conquered peaks of time.Nor shall I look backward nor rest meTill the uttermost heights I have trod,And am equalled with Thee or above Thee,The mate or the master of God."
Ev'n thus Man turned from the Maker,With thundered defiance wild,And God with a terrible silenceReproved the speech of His child.And man returned to his labours,And stiffened the neck of his will;And the æons still went rolling,And his power was crescent still.But yet there remained to conquerOne foe, and the greatest—althoughDespoiled of his ancient terrors,At heart, as of old, a foe—Unmaker of all, and renewer,Who winnows the world with his wing,The Lord of Death, the undying,Ev'n Asraël the King.
And lo, Man mustered his forcesThe war of wars to wage,And with storm and thunder of onsetDid the foe of foes engage,And the Lord of Death, the undying,Was beset and harried sore,In his immemorial fastnessAt night's aboriginal core.And during years a thousandMan leaguered his enemy's hold,While nature was one deep tremor,And the heart of the world waxed cold,Till the phantom battlements wavered,And the ghostly fortress fell,And Man with shadowy fettersBound fast great Asraël.
So, to each star in the heavens,The exultant word was blown,The annunciation tremendous,Death is overthrown!And Space in her ultimate bordersProlonging the jubilant tone,With hollow ingeminations,Sighed,Death is overthrown!And God in His house of silence,Where He dwelleth aloof, alone,Paused in His tasks to hearken:Death is overthrown!
Then a solemn and high thanksgivingBy Man unto Man was sung,In his temples of self-adoration,With his own multitudinous tongue;And he said to his Soul: "Rejoice thouFor thy last great foe lies bound,Ev'n Asraël the Unmaker,Unmade, disarmed, discrowned."
And behold, his Soul rejoiced not,The breath of whose being was strife,For life with nothing to vanquishSeemed but the shadow of life.No goal invited and promisedAnd divinely provocative shone;And Fear having fled, her sister,Blest Hope, in her train was gone;And the coping and crown of achievementWas hell than defeat more dire—The torment of all-things-compassed,The plague of nought-to-desire;And Man the invincible queller,Man with his foot on his foes,In boundless satiety hungred,Restless from utter repose,Victor of nature, victorOf the prince of the powers of the air,By mighty weariness vanquished,And crowned with august despair.
Then, at his dreadful zenith,He cried unto God: "O ThouWhom of old in my days of strivingMethought I needed not,—now,In this my abject glory,My hopeless and helpless might,Hearken and cheer and succour!"And God from His lonely height,From eternity's passionless summits,On suppliant Man looked down,And His brow waxed human with pity,Belying its awful crown."Thy richest possession," He answered,"Blest Hope, will I restore,And the infinite wealth of weaknessWhich was thy strength of yore;And I will arouse from slumber,In his hold where bound he lies,Thine enemy most benefic;—O Asraël, hear and rise!"
And a sound like the heart of natureRiven and cloven and torn,Announced, to the ear universal,Undying Death new-born.Sublime he rose in his fetters,And shook the chains asideEv'n as some mortal sleeper'Mid forests in autumntideRises and shakes off lightlyThe leaves that lightly fellOn his limbs and his hair unheededWhile as yet he slumbered well.
And Deity paused and hearkened,Then turned to the undivine,Saying, "O Man, My creature,Thy lot was more blest than Mine.I taste not delight of seeking,Nor the boon of longing know.There is but one joy transcendent,And I hoard it not but bestow.I hoard it not nor have tasted,But freely I gave it to thee—The joy of most glorious striving,Which dieth in victory."Thus, to the Soul of the Dreamer,This Dream out of darkness flew,Through the horn or the ivory portal,But he wist not which of the two.
Within a narrow span of time,Three princes of the realm of rhyme,At height of youth or manhood's prime,From earth took wing,To join the fellowship sublimeWho, dead, yet sing.
He, first, his earliest wreath who woveOf laurel grown in Latmian grove,Conquered by pain and hapless loveFound calmer home,Roofed by the heaven that glows aboveEternal Rome.
A fierier soul, its own fierce prey,And cumbered with more mortal clay,At Missolonghi flamed away,And left the airReverberating to this dayIts loud despair.
Alike remote from Byron's scorn,And Keats's magic as of mornBursting for ever newly-bornOn forests old,Waking a hoary world forlornWith touch of gold,
Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grewNourished on air and sun and dew,Into that Essence whence he drewHis life and lyreWas fittingly resolved anewThrough wave and fire.
'Twas like his rapid soul! 'Twas meetThat he, who brooked not Time's slow feet,With passage thus abrupt and fleetShould hurry hence,Eager the Great Perhaps to greetWith Why? and Whence?
Impatient of the world's fixed way,He ne'er could suffer God's delay,But all the future in a dayWould build divine,And the whole past in ruins lay,An emptied shrine.
Vain vision! but the glow, the fire,The passion of benign desire,The glorious yearning, lift him higherThan many a soulThat mounts a million paces nigherIts meaner goal.
And power is his, if naught besides,In that thin ether where he rides,Above the roar of human tidesTo ascend afar,Lost in a storm of light that hidesHis dizzy car.
Below, the unhastening world toils on,And here and there are victories won,Some dragon slain, some justice done,While, through the skies,A meteor rushing on the sun,He flares and dies.
But, as he cleaves yon ether clearNotes from the unattempted SphereHe scatters to the enchanted earOf earth's dim throng,Whose dissonance doth more endearThe showering song.
In other shapes than he forecastThe world is moulded: his fierce blast,—His wild assault upon the Past,—These things are vain;Revolt is transient: whatmustlastIs that pure strain,
Which seems the wandering voices blentOf every virgin element,—A sound from ocean caverns sent,—An airy callFrom the pavilioned firmamentO'erdoming all.
And in this world of worldlings, whereSouls rust in apathy, and ne'erA great emotion shakes the air,And life flags tame,And rare is noble impulse, rareThe impassioned aim,
'Tis no mean fortune to have heardA singer who, if errors blurredHis sight, had yet a spirit stirredBy vast desire,And ardour fledging the swift wordWith plumes of fire.
A creature of impetuous breath,Our torpor deadlier than deathHe knew not; whatsoe'er he saithFlashes with life:He spurreth men, he quickenethTo splendid strife.
And in his gusts of song he bringsWild odours shaken from strange wings,And unfamiliar whisperingsFrom far lips blown,While all the rapturous heart of thingsThrobs through his own,—
His own that from the burning pyreOne who had loved his wind-swept lyreOut of the sharp teeth of the fireUnmolten drew,Beside the sea that in her ireSmote him and slew.
A beckoning spirit of gladness seemed afloat,That lightly danced in laughing air before us:The earth was all in tune, and you a noteOf Nature's happy chorus.
'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overheadThe leafless boughs across the lane were knitting:The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said,O'er Winter's world comes flitting.
Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray,Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry?Or but some bold outrider of the May,Some April-emissary?
The apparition faded on the air,Capricious and incalculable comer.—Wilt thou too pass, and leave my chill days bare,And fall'n my phantom Summer?
Not here, O teeming City, was it meetThy lover, thy most faithful, should repose,But where the multitudinous life-tide flowsWhose ocean-murmur was to him more sweetThan melody of birds at morn, or bleatOf flocks in Spring-time,thereshould Earth encloseHis earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes,There, 'neath the music of thy million feet.In love of thee this lover knew no peer.Thine eastern or thy western fane had madeFit habitation for his noble shade.Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear,Not here, in rustic exile, O not here,Thy Elia like an alien should be laid!
Inhospitably hast thou entertained,O Poet, us the bidden to thy board,Whom in mid-feast, and while our thousand mouthsAre one laudation of the festal cheer,Thou from thy table dost dismiss, unfilled.Yet loudlier thee than many a lavish hostWe praise, and oftener thy repast half-servedThan many a stintless banquet, prodigallyThrough satiate hours prolonged; nor praise less wellBecause with tongues thou hast not cloyed, and lipsThat mourn the parsimony of affluent souls,And mix the lamentation with the laud.
[Mr. Oscar Wilde, having discovered that England is unworthy of him, has announced his resolve to become a naturalised Frenchman.]
And wilt thou, Oscar, from us flee,And must we, henceforth, wholly sever?Shall thy laboriousjeux-d'espritSadden our lives no more for ever?
And all thy future wilt thou linkWith that brave land to which thou goest?Unhappy France! weusedto thinkShe touched, at Sedan, fortune's lowest.
And you're made French as easilyAs you might change the clothes you're wearing?Fancy!—and 'tis so hard to beA man of sense and modest bearing.
May fortitude beneath this blowFail not the gallant Gallic nation!By past experience, well we knowHer genius for recuperation.
And as for us—to our disgrace,Your stricture's truth must be conceded:Would any but a stupid raceHave made the fuss about youwedid?
Reluctant Summer! once, a maidFull easy of access,In many a bee-frequented shadeThou didst thy lover bless.Divinely unreproved I played,Then, with each liberal tress—And art thou grown at last afraidOf some too close caress?
Or deem'st that if thou shouldst abideMy passion might decay?Thou leav'st me pining and denied,Coyly thou say'st me nay.Ev'n as I woo thee to my side,Thou, importuned to stay,Like Orpheus' half-recovered brideEbb'st from my arms away.
"Not ours," say some, "the thought of death to dread;Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell:Life is a feast, and we have banqueted—Shall not the worms as well?
"The after-silence, when the feast is o'er,And void the places where the minstrels stood,Differs in nought from what hath been before,And is nor ill nor good."
Ah, but the Apparition—the dumb sign—The beckoning finger bidding me foregoThe fellowship, the converse, and the wine,The songs, the festal glow!
And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit,And while the purple joy is passed about,Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier litOr homeless night without;
And whether, stepping forth, my soul shall seeNew prospects, or fall sheer—a blinded thing!Thereis, O grave, thy hourly victory,And there, O death, thy sting.
As we wax older on this earth,Till many a toy that charmed us seemsEmptied of beauty, stripped of worth,And mean as dust and dead as dreams,—For gauds that perished, shows that passed,Some recompense the Fates have sent:Thrice lovelier shine the things that last,The things that are more excellent.
Tired of the Senate's barren brawl,An hour with silence we prefer,Where statelier rise the woods than allYon towers of talk at Westminster.Let this man prate and that man plot,On fame or place or title bent:The votes of veering crowds are notThe things that are more excellent.
Shall we perturb and vex our soulFor "wrongs" which no true freedom mar,Which no man's upright walk control,And from no guiltless deed debar?What odds though tonguesters heal, or leaveUnhealed, the grievance they invent?To things, not phantoms, let us cleave—The things that are more excellent.
Nought nobler is, than to be free:The stars of heaven are free becauseIn amplitude of libertyTheir joy is to obey the laws.From servitude to freedom'snameFree thou thy mind in bondage pent;Depose the fetich, and proclaimThe things that are more excellent.
And in appropriate dust be hurledThat dull, punctilious god, whom theyThat call their tiny clan the world,Serve and obsequiously obey:Who con their ritual of Routine,With minds to one dead likeness blent,And never ev'n in dreams have seenThe things that are more excellent.
To dress, to call, to dine, to breakNo canon of the social code,The little laws that lacqueys make,The futile decalogue of Mode,—How many a soul for these things lives,With pious passion, grave intent!While Nature careless-handed givesThe things that are more excellent.
To hug the wealth ye cannot use,And lack the riches all may gain,—O blind and wanting wit to choose,Who house the chaff and burn the grain!And still doth life with starry towersLure to the bright, divine ascent!—Be yours the things ye would: be oursThe things that are more excellent.
The grace of friendship—mind and heartLinked with their fellow heart and mind;The gains of science, gifts of art;The sense of oneness with our kind;The thirst to know and understand—A large and liberal discontent:These are the goods in life's rich hand,The things that are more excellent.
In faultless rhythm the ocean rolls,A rapturous silence thrills the skies;And on this earth are lovely souls,That softly look with aidful eyes.Though dark, O God, Thy course and track,I think Thou must at least have meantThat nought which lives should wholly lackThe things that are more excellent.
That beauty such as thineCan die indeed,Were ordinance too wantonly malign:No wit may reconcile so cold a creedWith beauty such as thine.
From wave and star and flowerSome effluence rareWas lent thee, a divine but transient dower:Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hairTo wave and star and flower.
Shouldst thou to-morrow die,Thou still shalt beFound in the rose and met in all the sky:And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me,Shouldst thou to-morrow die.
England my mother,Wardress of waters.Builder of peoples,Maker of men,—
Hast thou yet leisureLeft for the muses?Heed'st thou the songsmithForging the rhyme?
Deafened with tumults,How canst thou hearken?Strident is faction,Demos is loud.
Lazarus, hungry,Menaces Dives;Labour the giantChafes in his hold.
Yet do the songsmithsQuit not their forges;Still on life's anvilForge they the rhyme.
Still the rapt facesGlow from the furnace:Breath of the smithyScorches their brows.
Yea, and thou hear'st them?So shall the hammersFashion not vainlyVerses of gold.
Lo, with the ancientRoots of man's nature,Twines the eternalPassion of song.
Ever Love fans it,Ever Life feeds it,Time cannot age it;Death cannot slay.
Deep in the world-heartStand its foundations,Tangled with all things,Twin-made with all.
Nay, what is Nature'sSelf, but an endlessStrife toward music,Euphony, rhyme?
Trees in their blooming,Tides in their flowing,Stars in their circling,Tremble with song.
God on His throne isEldest of poets:Unto His measuresMoveth the Whole.
Therefore deride notSpeech of the muses,England my mother,Maker of men.
Nations are mortal,Fragile is greatness;Fortune may fly thee,Song shall not fly.
Song the all-girdling,Song cannot perish:Men shall make music,Man shall give ear.
Not while the choricChant of creationFloweth from all things,Poured without pause,
Cease we to echoFaintly the descantWhereto for everDances the world.
So let the songsmithProffer his rhyme-gift,England my mother,Maker of men.
Gray grows thy count'nance,Full of the ages;Time on thy foreheadSits like a dream:
Song is the potionAll things renewing,Youth's one elixir,Fountain of morn.
Thou, at the world-loomWeaving thy future,Fitly may'st temperToil with delight.
Deemest thou, labourOnly is earnest?Grave is all beauty,Solemn is joy.
Song is no bauble—Slight not the songsmith,England my mother,Maker of men.
In the night, in the night,When thou liest alone,Ah, the sounds that are blownIn the freaks of the breeze,By the spirit that sendsThe voice of far friendsWith the sigh of the seasIn the night!
In the night, in the night,When thou liest alone,Ah, the ghosts that make moanFrom the days that are sped:The old dreams, the old deeds,The old wound that still bleeds,And the face of the deadIn the night!
In the night, in the night,When thou liest alone,With the grass and the stoneO'er thy chamber so deep,Ah, the silence at last,Life's dissonance past,And only pure sleepIn the night!
As some most pure and noble face,Seen in the thronged and hurrying street,Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace,A flying odour sweet,Then, passing, leaves the cheated senseBaulked with a phantom excellence;
So, on our soul the visions riseOf that fair life we never led:They flash a splendour past our eyes,We start, and they are fled:They pass, and leave us with blank gaze,Resigned to our ignoble days.
(Lines written on the appearance of Lord Tennyson's drama.)
Clear as of old the great voice rings to-day,While Sherwood's oak-leaves twine with Aldworth's bay:The voice of him the master and the sireOf one whole age and legion of the lyre,Who sang his morning-song when Coleridge stillUttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill,And with new-launchèd argosies of rhymeGilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time.Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wearThe laurel glorious from that wintry hair—When he, the sovereign of our lyric day,In Charon's shallop must be rowed away,And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar,Theave atque valefrom the shore!
To him nor tender nor heroic museDid her divine confederacy refuse:To all its moods the lyre of life he strung,And notes of death fell deathless from his tongue.Himself the Merlin of his magic strain,He bade old glories break in gloom again;And so exempted from oblivious doom,Through him these days shall fadeless break in bloom.
Lightly we met in the morn,Lightly we parted at eve.There was never a thought of the thornThe rose of a day might leave.
Fate's finger we did not perceive,So lightly we met in the morn!So lightly we parted at eveWe knew not that Love was born.
I rose on the morrow forlorn,To pine and remember and grieve.Too lightly we met in the morn!Too lightly we parted at eve!
From his adventurous primeHe dreamed the dream sublime:Over his wandering youthIt hung, a beckoning star.At last the vision fled,And left him in its steadThe scarce sublimer truth,The world he found afar.
The scattered isles that standWarding the mightier landYielded their maidenhoodTo his imperious prow.The mainland within callLay vast and virginal:In its blue porch he stood:No more did fate allow.
No more! but ah, how much,To be the first to touchThe veriest azure hemOf that majestic robe!Lord of the lordly sea,Earth's mightiest sailor he:Great Captain among them,The captors of the globe.
When shall the world forgetThy glory and our debt,Indomitable soul,Immortal Genoese?Not while the shrewd salt galeWhines amid shroud and sail,Above the rhythmic rollAnd thunder of the seas.
There was a time, it passeth me to sayHow long ago, but sure 'twas many a dayBefore the world had gotten her such storeOf foolish wisdom as she hath,—beforeShe fell to waxing gray with weight of yearsAnd knowledge, bitter knowledge, bought with tears,—When it did seem as if the feet of timeMoved to the music of a golden rhyme,And never one false thread might woven beAthwart that web of worldwide melody.'Twas then there lived a certain queen and king,Unvext of wars or other evil thing,Within a spacious palace builded high,Whence they might see their chiefest city lieAbout them, and half hear from their tall towersIts populous murmur through the daylight hours,And see beyond its walls the pleasant plain.One child they had, these blissful royal twain:Of whom 'tis told—so more than fair was he—There lurked at whiles a something shadowyDeep down within the fairness of his face;As 'twere a hint of some not-earthly grace,Making the royal stripling rather seemThe very dreaming offspring of a dreamThan human child of human ancestry:And something strange-fantastical was he,I doubt not. Howsoever he upgrew,And after certain years to manhood drewNigh, so that all about his father's court,Seeing his graciousness of princely port,Rejoiced thereat; and many maidens' eyesLook'd pleased upon his beauty, and the sighsOf many told I know not what sweet tales.
So, like to some fair ship with sunlit sails,Glided his youth amid a stormless sea,Till once by night there came mysteriouslyA fateful wind, and o'er an unknown deepBore him perforce. It chanced that while in sleepHe lay, there came to him a strange dim dream.'Twas like as he did float adown a stream,In a lone boat that had nor sail nor oarYet seemed as it would glide for evermore,Deep in the bosom of a sultry landFair with all fairness. Upon either handWere hills green-browed and mist-engarlanded,And all about their feet were woods bespread,Hoarding the cool and leafy silentnessIn many an unsunned hollow and hid recess.Nought of unbeauteous might be there espied;But in the heart of the deep woods and wide,And in the heart of all, was Mystery—A something more than outer eye might see,A something more than ever ear might hear.The very birds that came and sang anearDid seem to syllable some faery tongue,And, singing much, to hold yet more unsung.And heard at whiles, with hollow wandering tone,Far off, as by some aery huntsmen blown,Faint-echoing horns, among the mountains wound,Made all the live air tremulous with sound.
So hour by hour (thus ran the Prince's dream)Glided the boat along the broadening stream;Till, being widowed of the sun her lord,The purblind day went groping evenward:Whereafter Sleep compelled to his mild yokeThe bubbling clear souls of the feathered folk,Sealing the vital fountains of their song.Howbeit the Prince went onward all night longAnd never shade of languor came on him,Nor any weariness his eyes made dim.And so in season due he heard the breathOf the brief winds that wake ere darkness' deathSigh through the woods and all the valley wide:The rushes by the water answering sighed:Sighed all the river from its reedy throat.And like a wingèd creature went the boat,Over the errant water wandering free,As some lone seabird over a lone sea.
And Morn pale-haired with watery wide eyesLook'd up. And starting with a swift surprise,Sprang to his feet the Prince, and forward leant,His gaze on something right before him bentThat like a towered and templed city showed,Afar off, dim with very light, and glowedAs burnished seas at sundawn when the wavesMake amber lightnings all in dim-roof'd cavesThat fling mock-thunder back. Long leagues away,Down by the river's green right bank it lay,Set like a jewel in the golden morn:But ever as the Prince was onward borne,Nearer and nearer danced the dizzy firesOf domes innumerable and sun-tipt spiresAnd many a sky-acquainted pinnacle,Splendid beyond what mortal tongue may tell;And ere the middle heat of day was spent,He saw, by nearness thrice-magnificent,Hardly a furlong's space before him lieThe City, sloping to the stream thereby.
And therewithal the boat of its own willClose to the shore began to glide, until,All of a sudden passing nigh to whereThe glistering white feet of a marble stairRan to the rippled brink, the Prince outsprangUpon the gleamy steps, and wellnigh sangFor joy, to be once more upon his feet,Amid the green grass and the flowers sweet.So on he paced along the river-marge,And saw full many a fair and stately barge,Adorned with strange device and imagery,At anchor in the quiet waters lie.And presently he came unto a gateOf massy gold, that shone with splendid stateOf mystic hieroglyphs, and storied friezeAll overwrought with carven phantasies.And in the shadow of the golden gate,One in the habit of a porter sate,And on the Prince with wondering eye looked he,And greeted him with reverent courtesy,Saying, "Fair sir, thou art of mortal race,The first hath ever journeyed to this place,—For well I know thou art a stranger here,As by the garb thou wearest doth appear;And if thy raiment do belie thee not,Thou should'st be some king's son. And well I wot,If that be true was prophesied of yore,A wondrous fortune is for thee in store;For though I be not read in Doomful Writ,Oft have I heard the wise expounding it,And, of a truth, the fatal rolls declareThat the first mortal who shall hither fareShall surely have our Maiden-Queen to wife,And while the world lives shall they twain have life."