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A Green Cornfield. | Christina Georgina Rossetti | "And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest."
The earth was green, the sky was blue:
I saw and heard one sunny morn
A skylark hang between the two,
A singing speck above the corn;
A stage below, in gay accord,
White butterflies danced on the wing,
And still the singing skylark soared
And silent sank, and soared to sing.
The cornfield stretched a tender green
To right and left beside my walks;
I knew he had a nest unseen
Somewhere among the million stalks:
And as I paused to hear his song
While swift the sunny moments slid,
Perhaps his mate sat listening long,
And listened longer than I did. |
The Dying Stockman | Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton) | (Air: 'The Old Stable Jacket.')
A strapping young stockman lay dying,
His saddle supporting his head;
His two mates around him were crying,
As he rose on his pillow and said:
Chorus
'Wrap me up with my stockwhip and blanket,
And bury me deep down below,
Where the dingoes and crows can't molest me,
In the shade where the coolibahs grow.
'Oh! had I the flight of the bronzewing,
Far o'er the plains would I fly,
Straight to the land of my childhood,
And there would I lay down and die.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'Then cut down a couple of saplings,
Place one at my head and my toe,
Carve on them cross, stockwhip, and saddle,
To show there's a stockman below.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'Hark! there's the wail of a dingo,
Watchful and weird'I must go,
For it tolls the death-knell of the stockman
From the gloom of the scrub down below.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'There's tea in the battered old billy;
Place the pannikins out in a row,
And we'll drink to the next merry meeting,
In the place where all good fellows go.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'And oft in the shades of the twilight,
When the soft winds are whispering low,
And the dark'ning shadows are falling,
Sometimes think of the stockman below.'
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c. |
The Woman I Met | Thomas Hardy | A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor,
Onward she slid
In a shroud that furs half-hid.
"Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
Past being read!"
"Still, it is so," she said.
"These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
To their death;
But you deemed me chaste me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
Could pace this street
Eyeing some man to greet?
"Well; your very simplicity made me love you
Mid such town dross,
Till I set not Heaven itself above you,
Who grew my Cross;
For you'd only nod, despite how I sighed for you;
So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!
What I suffered then
Would have paid for the sins of ten!
"Thus went the days. I feared you despised me
To fling me a nod
Each time, no more: till love chastised me
As with a rod
That a fresh bland boy of no assurance
Should fire me with passion beyond endurance,
While others all
I hated, and loathed their call.
"I said: 'It is his mother's spirit
Hovering around
To shield him, maybe!' I used to fear it,
As still I found
My beauty left no least impression,
And remnants of pride withheld confession
Of my true trade
By speaking; so I delayed.
"I said: 'Perhaps with a costly flower
He'll be beguiled.'
I held it, in passing you one late hour,
To your face: you smiled,
Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there
A single one that rivalled me there! . . .
Well: it's all past.
I died in the Lock at last."
So walked the dead and I together
The quick among,
Elbowing our kind of every feather
Slowly and long;
Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there
With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there
That winter night
By flaming jets of light.
She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,
Guessing their lot;
She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,
And that did not.
Till suddenly murmured she: "Now, tell me,
Why asked you never, ere death befell me,
To have my love,
Much as I dreamt thereof?"
I could not answer. And she, well weeting
All in my heart,
Said: "God your guardian kept our fleeting
Forms apart!"
Sighing and drawing her furs around her
Over the shroud that tightly bound her,
With wafts as from clay
She turned and thinned away.
LONDON, 1918. |
Self. | Madison Julius Cawein | A Sufi debauchee of dreams
Spake this: From Sodomite to Peri
Earth tablets us; we live and are
Man's own long commentary.
Is one begat in Bassora,
One lies in Damietta dying
The plausibilities of God
All possibles o'erlying.
But burns the lust within the flesh?
Hell's but a homily to Heaven,
Put then the individual first,
And of thyself be shriven.
Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it;
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.
Be that it is and thou art all;
And what thou art so thou hast written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.
|
John Walsh | James Whitcomb Riley | A strange life - strangely passed!
We may not read the soul
When God has folded up the scroll
In death at last.
We may not - dare not say of one
Whose task of life as well was done
As he could do it, - "This is lost,
And prayers may never pay the cost."
Who listens to the song
That sings within the breast,
Should ever hear the good expressed
Above the wrong.
And he who leans an eager ear
To catch the discord, he will hear
The echoes of his own weak heart
Beat out the most discordant part.
Whose tender heart could build
Affection's bower above
A heart where baby nests of love
Were ever filled, -
With upward growth may reach and twine
About the children, grown divine,
That once were his a time so brief
His very joy was more than grief.
O Sorrow - "Peace, be still!"
God reads the riddle right;
And we who grope in constant night
But serve His will;
And when sometime the doubt is gone,
And darkness blossoms into dawn, -
"God keeps the good," we then will say:
" 'Tis but the dross He throws away." |
Astrophel | Algernon Charles Swinburne | After reading Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia in the garden of an old English manor house
I
A star in the silence that follows
The song of the death of the sun
Speaks music in heaven, and the hollows
And heights of the world are as one;
One lyre that outsings and outlightens
The rapture of sunset, and thrills
Mute night till the sense of it brightens
The soul that it fills.
The flowers of the sun that is sunken
Hang heavy of heart as of head;
The bees that have eaten and drunken
The soul of their sweetness are fled;
But a sunflower of song, on whose honey
My spirit has fed as a bee,
Makes sunnier than morning was sunny
The twilight for me.
The letters and lines on the pages
That sundered mine eyes and the flowers
Wax faint as the shadows of ages
That sunder their season and ours;
As the ghosts of the centuries that sever
A season of colourless time
From the days whose remembrance is ever,
As they were, sublime.
The season that bred and that cherished
The soul that I commune with yet,
Had it utterly withered and perished
To rise not again as it set,
Shame were it that Englishmen living
Should read as their forefathers read
The books of the praise and thanksgiving
Of Englishmen dead.
O light of the land that adored thee
And kindled thy soul with her breath,
Whose life, such as fate would afford thee,
Was lovelier than aught but thy death,
By what name, could thy lovers but know it,
Might love of thee hail thee afar,
Philisides, Astrophel, poet
Whose love was thy star?
A star in the moondawn of Maytime,
A star in the cloudland of change;
Too splendid and sad for the daytime
To cheer or eclipse or estrange;
Too sweet for tradition or vision
To see but through shadows of tears
Rise deathless across the division
Of measureless years.
The twilight may deepen and harden
As nightward the stream of it runs
Till starshine transfigure a garden
Whose radiance responds to the sun's:
The light of the love of thee darkens
The lights that arise and that set:
The love that forgets thee not hearkens
If England forget.
II
Bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy lifetime shone,
Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave, and again was gone:
Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has conquered as years pass on.
Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and praised and wept,
Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names that her heart's love kept
Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it sank and slept.
Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia resounds and shines,
Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the steadfast signs,
Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth, whose presage the soul divines.
All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sunlight round,
All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit, and held them bound,
Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of its music sound.
Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a dove,
Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough thy soul from afar above
Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the fount of love.
Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys and fears,
Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy peerless peers,
Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the rayless years.
Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of clouded fame,
How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's England, be brought to shame?
How should this be, while England is? What need of answer beyond thy name?
III
From the love that transfigures thy glory,
From the light of the dawn of thy death,
The life of thy song and thy story
Took subtler and fierier breath.
And we, though the day and the morrow
Set fear and thanksgiving at strife,
Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow
The sun of thy life.
Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid thanksgiving and pride be dumb:
Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with toils till her life wax numb,
Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die not and dayrise come.
But England, enmeshed and benetted
With spiritless villainies round,
With counsels of cowardice fretted,
With trammels of treason enwound,
Is yet, though the season be other
Than wept and rejoiced over thee,
Thine England, thy lover, thy mother,
Sublime as the sea.
Hers wast thou: if her face be now less bright, or seem for an hour less brave,
Let but thine on her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit revive and save,
Time shall see, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed in a shameful grave.
If death and not life were the portal
That opens on life at the last,
If the spirit of Sidney were mortal
And the past of it utterly past,
Fear stronger than honour was ever,
Forgetfulness mightier than fame,
Faith knows not if England should never
Subside into shame.
Yea, but yet is thy sun not set, thy sunbright spirit of trust withdrawn:
England's love of thee burns above all hopes that darken or fears that fawn:
Hers thou art: and the faithful heart that hopes begets upon darkness dawn.
The sunset that sunrise will follow
Is less than the dream of a dream:
The starshine on height and on hollow
Sheds promise that dawn shall redeem:
The night, if the daytime would hide it,
Shows lovelier, aflame and afar,
Thy soul and thy Stella's beside it,
A star by a star. |
An Evening | William Allingham | A sunset's mounded cloud;
A diamond evening-star;
Sad blue hills afar;
Love in his shroud.
Scarcely a tear to shed;
Hardly a word to say;
The end of a summer day;
Sweet Love dead. |
Leda And The Swan | William Butler Yeats | A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
|
Symbols | William Butler Yeats | A storm beaten old watch-tower,
A blind hermit rings the hour.
All-destroying sword-blade still
Carried by the wandering fool.
Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,
Beauty and fool together laid. |
Owen Aherne And His Dancers | William Butler Yeats | A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought
Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade,
Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out.
It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad. |
The Old Stone Cross | William Butler Yeats | A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home' and drink your beer
And let the neighbours' vote,
i(Said the man in the golden breastplate)
i(Under the old stone Cross.)
Because this age and the next age
Engender in the ditch,
No man can know a happy man
From any passing wretch;
If Folly link with Elegance
No man knows which is which,
But actors lacking music
Do most excite my spleen,
They say it is more human
To shuffle, grunt and groan,
Not knowing what unearthly stuff
Rounds a mighty scene, |
The Eye Of The Master. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A stag took refuge from the chase
Among the oxen of a stable,
Who counsel'd him, as saith the fable,
To seek at once some safer place.
'My brothers,' said the fugitive,
'Betray me not, and, as I live,
The richest pasture I will show,
That e'er was grazed on, high or low;
Your kindness you will not regret,
For well some day I'll pay the debt.'
The oxen promised secrecy.
Down crouch'd the stag, and breathed more free.
At eventide they brought fresh hay,
As was their custom day by day;
And often came the servants near,
As did indeed the overseer,
But with so little thought or care,
That neither horns, nor hide, nor hair
Reveal'd to them the stag was there.
Already thank'd the wild-wood stranger
The oxen for their treatment kind,
And there to wait made up his mind,
Till he might issue free from danger.
Replied an ox that chew'd the cud,
'Your case looks fairly in the bud;
But then I fear the reason why
Is, that the man of sharpest eye
Hath not yet come his look to take.
I dread his coming, for your sake;
Your boasting may be premature:
Till then, poor stag, you're not secure.'
'Twas but a little while before
The careful master oped the door.
'How's this, my boys?' said he;
'These empty racks will never do.
Go, change this dirty litter too.
More care than this I want to see
Of oxen that belong to me.
Well, Jim, my boy, you're young and stout;
What would it cost to clear these cobwebs out?
And put these yokes, and hames, and traces,
All as they should be, in their places?'
Thus looking round, he came to see
One head he did not usually.
The stag is found; his foes
Deal heavily their blows.
Down sinks he in the strife;
No tears can save his life.
They slay, and dress, and salt the beast,
And cook his flesh in many a feast,
And many a neighbour gets a taste.
As Phaedrus says it, pithily,
The master's is the eye to see: -
I add the lover's, as for me. |
To The Lady E. B. And The Hon. Miss P. | William Wordsworth | A stream, to mingle with your favourite Dee,
Along the vale of meditation flows;
So styled by those fierce Britons, pleased to see
In Nature's face the expression of repose;
Or haply there some pious hermit chose
To live and die, the peace of heaven his aim;
To whom the wild sequestered region owes
At this late day, its sanctifying name.
Glyn Cafaillgaroch, in the Cambrian tongue,
In ours, the vale OF friendship, let 'this' spot
Be named; where, faithful to a low-roofed Cot,
On Deva's banks, ye have abode so long;
Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb,
Even on this earth, above the reach of Time! |
The Tiger-Lily. | Madison Julius Cawein | A sultan proud and tawny
At elegant ease he stands,
With his bare throat brown and scrawny,
And his indolent, leaf-like hands.
And the eunuch tulips that listen
In their gaudy turbans so,
With their scimetar leaves that glisten,
Are guards of his seraglio;
Where sultana roses musky,
Voluptuous in houri charms,
With their bold breasts deep and dusky,
Impatiently wait his arms.
Tall, beautiful, sad, and slender,
His Greek-girl dancing slaves,
For the white-limbed lilies tender
His royal hand he waves.
While he watches them, softly smiling,
His favorite rose that hour
With a butterfly gallant is wiling
In her attar-scented bower.
|
To His Peculiar Friend Within-Doors | John Kendall (Dum-Dum) | After R. H.
A strong discomfort in the dress
Dwindling the clothes to nothingness
Saving, for due decorum placed,
A huckaback about the waist,
Or wanton towel-et, whose touch
Haply may spare to chafe o'ermuch:
A languid frame, from head to feet
Prankt in the arduous prickle-heat:
An erring fly, that here and there
Enwraths the crimsoned suffer'r:
An upward toe, whose skill enjoys
The slipper's curious equipoise:
A punkah wantoning, whereby
Papers do flow confoundedly:
By such comportment, and th' offence
Of thy fantastic eloquence,
Dost thou, my WILLIAM, make it known
That thou art warm, and best alone. |
Silver Tones | Joseph Horatio Chant | A stately church by pious hands erected long ago,
Was found to lack a vesper bell, by which the poor might know
The hour of prayer, the hour of mass, and who had lately died,
The hour when gent and bonny lass, so timid at his side,
Would stand before the surpliced priest, and twain would pledge their troth,
The hour in which the priest would vent on heretic his wrath.
The faithful then were called upon to bring from home and mine
The metal for the holy bell, which must be strong and fine.
In smelting pot of massive size they placed the needed ore;
A molten mass it soon became, but ere in mould they pour,
And thus provide a bell for God to grace His temple fair,
In crowds the people came, to see the metal glowing there.
Then as they passed, with hearts devout, each took a silver coin
And dropped it in the glowing mass--no priest did this enjoin.
They wished to show their grateful love to Him who bore their sin;
A simple form which love took on, not done God's grace to win.
Nor did they hope to win applause from priest and saintly friar;
If God were pleased they asked no more, nor more did they desire;
Nor did they deem their silver lost, though little dreamed they then
The grand result of their small gifts, which now is known to men.
Their coins were for a moment seen, like flakes of snow on sward,
And then they melted out of sight, yet, seen by their blest Lord,
They mingled with the glowing mass, and when in high church tower
The bell was hung and daily rung, all people felt its power.
Its booming tones were soft and sweet, and echoed o'er their hills
In a grand symphony of praise, subduing all their wills,
And calling forth from old and young a burst of rapturous praise.
Their gifts, though small, were not despised; God turned them into lays.
This world is one great smelting pot in which life's ore is cast,
And from it God will some day bring a bell, destined to last
And ring aloud in thunder tones wherever man is found.
Oh, may we, by kind words and deeds, give it a silver sound!
Each word though short, each deed though small, if for the Master's sake
Are said and done, like silver coin, our blessed Lord will take,
And skillfully will blend them with the coarser ore of earth,
And grander music none have heard e'er since time had its birth.
Then from this bell of silver tone will sound o'er hill and vale:
"The work men do in Jesus' name is never known to fail." |
The Cat And The Old Rat. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A story-writer of our sort
Historifies, in short,
Of one that may be reckon'd
A Rodilard the Second, - [2]
The Alexander of the cats,
The Attila,[3] the scourge of rats,
Whose fierce and whisker'd head
Among the latter spread,
A league around, its dread;
Who seem'd, indeed, determined
The world should be unvermined.
The planks with props more false than slim,
The tempting heaps of poison'd meal,
The traps of wire and traps of steel,
Were only play compared with him.
At length, so sadly were they scared.
The rats and mice no longer dared
To show their thievish faces
Outside their hiding-places,
Thus shunning all pursuit; whereat
Our crafty General Cat
Contrived to hang himself, as dead,
Beside the wall with downward head,
Resisting gravitation's laws
By clinging with his hinder claws
To some small bit of string.
The rats esteem'd the thing
A judgment for some naughty deed,
Some thievish snatch,
Or ugly scratch;
And thought their foe had got his meed
By being hung indeed.
With hope elated all
Of laughing at his funeral,
They thrust their noses out in air;
And now to show their heads they dare;
Now dodging back, now venturing more;
At last upon the larder's store
They fall to filching, as of yore.
A scanty feast enjoy'd these shallows;
Down dropp'd the hung one from his gallows,
And of the hindmost caught.
'Some other tricks to me are known,'
Said he, while tearing bone from bone,
'By long experience taught;
The point is settled, free from doubt,
That from your holes you shall come out.'
His threat as good as prophecy
Was proved by Mr. Mildandsly;
For, putting on a mealy robe,
He squatted in an open tub,
And held his purring and his breath; -
Out came the vermin to their death.
On this occasion, one old stager,
A rat as grey as any badger,
Who had in battle lost his tail,
Abstained from smelling at the meal;
And cried, far off, 'Ah! General Cat,
I much suspect a heap like that;
Your meal is not the thing, perhaps,
For one who knows somewhat of traps;
Should you a sack of meal become,
I'd let you be, and stay at home.'
Well said, I think, and prudently,
By one who knew distrust to be
The parent of security. |
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XI - Sacheverel | William Wordsworth | A sudden conflict rises from the swell
Of a proud slavery met by tenets strained
In Liberty's behalf. Fears, true or feigned,
Spread through all ranks; and lo! the Sentinel
Who loudest rang his pulpit 'larum bell,
Stands at the Bar, absolved by female eyes
Mingling their glances with grave flatteries
Lavished on 'Him', that England may rebel
Against her ancient virtue. high and low,
Watchwords of Party, on all tongues are rife;
As if a Church, though sprung from heaven, must owe
To opposites and fierce extremes her life,
Not to the golden mean, and quiet flow
Of truths that soften hatred, temper strife. |
Love And The Seasons | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | SPRING
A sudden softness in the wind;
A glint of song, a-wing;
A fragrant sound that trails behind,
And joy in everything.
A sudden flush upon the cheek,
The teardrop quick to start;
A hope too delicate to speak,
And heaven within the heart.
SUMMER
A riotous dawn and the sea's great wonder;
The red, red heart of a rose uncurled;
And beauty tearing her veil asunder,
In sight of a swooning world.
A call of the soul, and the senses blended;
The Springtime lost in the glow of the sun,
And two lives rushing, as God intended,
To meet and mingle as one.
AUTUMN
The world is out in gala dress;
And yet it is not gay.
Its splendour hides a loneliness
For something gone away.
(Laughter and music on the air;
A shower of rice and bloom.
Smiles for the fond departing pair -
And then the empty room.)
WINTER
Two trees swayed in the winter wind; and dreamed
The snowflakes falling about them were bees
Singing among the leaves. And they were glad,
Knowing the dream would soon come true.
Beside the hearth an aged couple rocked,
And dozed; and dreamed the friends long passed from sight
Were with them once again. They woke and smiled,
Knowing the dream would soon come true.
|
Songs from the play "Zapolya" | Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Song
(Act II, Scene I, lines 65-80)
A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted:
And poised therein a bird so bold
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!
He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled
Within that shaft of sunny mist;
His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
All else of amethyst!
And thus he sang: `Adieu! adieu!
Love's dreams prove seldom true.
The blossoms they make no delay:
The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.
Sweet month of May,
We must away;
Far, far away!
To-day! to-day!'
Hunting Song
(Act IV, Scene II, lines 56-71)
Up, up ! ye dames, ye lasses gay!
To the meadows trip away.
'Tis you must tend the flocks this morn,
And scare the small birds from the corn.
Not a soul at home may stay:
For the shepherds must go
With lance and bow
To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.
Leave the hearth and leave the house
To the cricket and the mouse:
Find grannam out a sunny seat,
With babe and lambkin at her feet.
Not a soul at home must stay:
For the shepherds must go
With lance and bow
To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day. |
Illa Creek | Henry Kendall | A strong sea-wind flies up and sings
Across the blown-wet border,
Whose stormy echo runs and rings
Like bells in wild disorder.
Fierce breath hath vexed the foreland's face,
It glistens, glooms, and glistens;
But deep within this quiet place
Sweet Illa lies and listens.
Sweet Illa of the shining sands,
She sleeps in shady hollows,
Where August flits with flowerful hands,
And silver Summer follows.
Far up the naked hills is heard
A noise of many waters,
But green-haired Illa lies unstirred
Amongst her star-like daughters.
The tempest, pent in moaning ways,
Awakes the shepherd yonder,
But Illa dreams unknown to days
Whose wings are wind and thunder.
Here fairy hands and floral feet
Are brought by bright October;
Here, stained with grapes and smit with heat,
Comes Autumn, sweet and sober.
Here lovers rest, what time the red
And yellow colours mingle,
And daylight droops with dying head
Beyond the western dingle.
And here, from month to month, the time
Is kissed by peace and pleasure,
While Nature sings her woodland rhyme
And hoards her woodland treasure.
Ah, Illa Creek! ere evening spreads
Her wings o'er towns unshaded,
How oft we seek thy mossy beds
To lave our foreheads faded!
For, let me whisper, then we find
The strength that lives, nor falters,
In wood and water, waste and wind,
And hidden mountain altars. |
In The House Of Suddhoo | Rudyard Kipling | A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the powers of Darkness range. |
The Fossicker | Edward Dyson | A straight old fossicker was Lanky Mann,
Who clung to that in spite of friends' advising:
A grim and grizzled worshipper of 'pan,'
All other arts and industries despising.
Bare-boned and hard, with thin long hair and beard,
With horny hands that gripped like iron pliers;
A clear, quick eye, a heart that nothing feared,
A soul full simple in its few desires.
No hot, impatient amateur was Jo,
Sweating to turn the slides up every minute,
He knew beforehand how his stuff would go,
Could tell by instinct almost what was in it.
I've known him stand for hours, and rock, and rock,
A-swinging now the shovel, now the ladle,
So sphinx-like that at Time he seemed to mock,
Resolved to run creation through his cradle.
No sun-shafts pricked him through his seasoned hide,
Nor cold nor damp could bend his form heroic;
Bare-breasted Jo the elements defied,
And met all fortunes like a hoary Stoic.
Where there were tailings, tips, and mangled fields,
And sluggish, sloven creeks meandering slowly,
Where puddlers old and sluice-sites promised yields,
There Lanky might be found, contented wholly.
Even though they'd worked the field, as Chinkies do,
Had 'bulled' each shaft, and scraped out every gutter,
Burnt every stick, and put the ashes through,
Yet Jo contrived to knock out bread and butter,
And something for a dead-broke mate, such men
As he have little love for filthy lucre;
His luxury was a whisky now and then,
And now and then a friendly game of euchre.
They tell me he is dead: 'On top? That's so,
Died at the handle, mate, which is accordin'
As he should die and if you're good, you'll know
Jo pannin' prospects in the River Jordan.' |
Georgine Sand Miner | Edgar Lee Masters | A stepmother drove me from home, embittering me.
A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.
For years I was his mistress - no one knew.
I learned from him the parasite cunning
With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.
All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men.
Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.
His sister called me his mistress;
And Daniel wrote me:
"Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!"
But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs.
My Lesbian friend next took a hand.
She hated Daniel's sister.
And Daniel despised her midget husband.
And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust:
I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit!
But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me.
"Why not stay in the city just as we have?" he asked.
Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse
In the arms of my dilettante friend.
Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me
To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife,
My Lesbian friend and everyone.
If Daniel had only shot me dead!
Instead of stripping me naked of lies
A harlot in body and soul.
|
In Hospital - II - Waiting | William Ernest Henley | A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion),
Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight;
Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware;
Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars.
Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,
Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted:
Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach,
While at their ease two dressers do their chores.
One has a probe - it feels to me a crowbar.
A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.
A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers.
Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame. |
The Song Of Luddy-Dud | Eugene Field | A sunbeam comes a-creeping
Into my dear one's nest,
And sings to our babe a-sleeping
The song that I love the best:
"'T is little Luddy-Dud in the morning -
'T is little Luddy-Dud at night;
And all day long
'T is the same sweet song
Of that waddling, toddling, coddling little mite,
Luddy-Dud."
The bird to the tossing clover,
The bee to the swaying bud,
Keep singing that sweet song over
Of wee little Luddy-Dud.
"'T is little Luddy-Dud in the morning -
'T is little Luddy-Dud at night;
And all day long
'T is the same dear song
Of that growing, crowing, knowing little sprite,
Luddy-Dud."
Luddy-Dud's cradle is swinging
Where softly the night winds blow,
And Luddy-Dud's mother is singing
A song that is sweet and low:
"'T is little Luddy-Dud in the morning -
'T is little Luddy-Dud at night;
And all day long
'T is the same sweet song
Of my nearest and my dearest heart's delight,
Luddy-Dud!" |
The Kavanagh. | Bliss Carman (William) | A stone jug and a pewter mug,
And a table set for three!
A jug and a mug at every place,
And a biscuit or two with Brie!
Three stone jugs of Cruiskeen Lawn,
And a cheese like crusted foam!
The Kavanagh receives to-night!
McMurrough is at home!
We three and the barley-bree!
And a health to the one away,
Who drifts down careless Italy,
God's wanderer and estray!
For friends are more than Arno's store
Of garnered charm, and he
Were blither with us here the night
Than Titian bids him be.
Throw ope the window to the stars,
And let the warm night in!
Who knows what revelry in Mars
May rhyme with rouse akin?
Fill up and drain the loving cup
And leave no drop to waste!
The moon looks in to see what's up--
Begad, she'd like a taste!
What odds if Leinster's kingly roll
Be now an idle thing?
The world is his who takes his toll,
A vagrant or a king.
What though the crown be melted down,
And the heir a gypsy roam?
The Kavanagh receives to-night!
McMurrough is at home!
We three and the barley-bree!
And the moonlight on the floor!
Who were a man to do with less?
What emperor has more?
Three stone jugs of Cruiskeen Lawn,
And three stout hearts to drain
A slanter to the truth in the heart of youth
And the joy of the love of men. |
Nursery Rhyme. XCVIII. Proverbs. | Unknown | A sunshiny shower,
Won't last half an hour. |
Matthew Arnold On hearing him read his Poems in Boston | Katharine Lee Bates | A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
His path into our waiting hearts
Already paved by song.
Full well we knew his choristers,
Whose plaintive voices haunt our rest,
Those sable-vested harbingers
Of melancholy guest.
We smiled on him for love of these,
With eyes that swift grew dim to scan
Beneath the veil of courteous ease
The faith-forsaken man.
To his wan gaze the weary shows
And fashions of our vain estate,
Our shallow pain and false repose,
Our barren love and hate,
Are shadows in a land of graves,
Where creeds, the bubbles of a dream,
Flash each and fade, like melting waves
Upon a moonlight stream.
Yet loyal to his own despair,
Erect beneath a darkened sky,
He deems the austerest truth more fair
Than any gracious lie;
And stands, heroic, patient, sage,
With hopeless hands that bind the sheaf,
Claiming God's work with His wage,
The bard of unbelief. |
The Glutton | Jean de La Fontaine | A STURGEON, once, a glutton famed was led
To have for supper - all, except the head.
With wond'rous glee he feasted on the fish;
And quickly swallowed down the royal dish.
O'ercharged, howe'er, his stomach soon gave way;
And doctors were required without delay.
THE danger imminent, his friends desired
He'd settle ev'ry thing affairs required.
Said he, in that respect I'm quite prepared;
And, since my time so little is declared,
With diligence, I earnestly request,
The sturgeon's head you'll get me nicely dressed. |
The Mantle Of St. John De Matha. A Legend Of "The Red, White, And Blue," A. D. 1154-1864 | John Greenleaf Whittier | A strong and mighty Angel,
Calm, terrible, and bright,
The cross in blended red and blue
Upon his mantle white!
Two captives by him kneeling,
Each on his broken chain,
Sang praise to God who raiseth
The dead to life again!
Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
"Wear this," the Angel said;
"Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign,
The white, the blue, and red."
Then rose up John de Matha
In the strength the Lord Christ gave,
And begged through all the land of France
The ransom of the slave.
The gates of tower and castle
Before him open flew,
The drawbridge at his coming fell,
The door-bolt backward drew.
For all men owned his errand,
And paid his righteous tax;
And the hearts of lord and peasant
Were in his hands as wax.
At last, outbound from Tunis,
His bark her anchor weighed,
Freighted with seven-score Christian souls
Whose ransom he had paid.
But, torn by Paynim hatred,
Her sails in tatters hung;
And on the wild waves, rudderless,
A shattered hulk she swung.
"God save us!" cried the captain,
"For naught can man avail;
Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks
Her rudder and her sail!
"Behind us are the Moormen;
At sea we sink or strand:
There's death upon the water,
There's death upon the land!"
Then up spake John de Matha:
"God's errands never fail!
Take thou the mantle which I wear,
And make of it a sail."
They raised the cross-wrought mantle,
The blue, the white, the red;
And straight before the wind off-shore
The ship of Freedom sped.
"God help us!" cried the seamen,
"For vain is mortal skill:
The good ship on a stormy sea
Is drifting at its will."
Then up spake John de Matha:
"My mariners, never fear!
The Lord whose breath has filled her sail
May well our vessel steer!"
So on through storm and darkness
They drove for weary hours;
And lo! the third gray morning shone
On Ostia's friendly towers.
And on the walls the watchers
The ship of mercy knew,
They knew far off its holy cross,
The red, the white, and blue.
And the bells in all the steeples
Rang out in glad accord,
To welcome home to Christian soil
The ransomed of the Lord.
So runs the ancient legend
By bard and painter told;
And lo! the cycle rounds again,
The new is as the old!
With rudder foully broken,
And sails by traitors torn,
Our country on a midnight sea
Is waiting for the morn.
Before her, nameless terror;
Behind, the pirate foe;
The clouds are black above her,
The sea is white below.
The hope of all who suffer,
The dread of all who wrong,
She drifts in darkness and in storm,
How long, O Lord! how long?
But courage, O my mariners!
Ye shall not suffer wreck,
While up to God the freedman's prayers
Are rising from your deck.
Is not your sail the banner
Which God hath blest anew,
The mantle that De Matha wore,
The red, the white, the blue?
Its hues are all of heaven,
The red of sunset's dye,
The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud,
The blue of morning's sky.
Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,
For daylight and for land;
The breath of God is in your sail,
Your rudder is His hand.
Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted
With blessings and with hopes;
The saints of old with shadowy hands
Are pulling at your ropes.
Behind ye holy martyrs
Uplift the palm and crown;
Before ye unborn ages send
Their benedictions down.
Take heart from John de Matha!
God's errands never fail!
Sweep on through storm and darkness,
The thunder and the hail!
Sail on! The morning cometh,
The port ye yet shall win;
And all the bells of God shall ring
The good ship bravely in |
A Portrait | Oliver Wendell Holmes | A still, sweet, placid, moonlight face,
And slightly nonchalant,
Which seems to claim a middle place
Between one's love and aunt,
Where childhood's star has left a ray
In woman's sunniest sky,
As morning dew and blushing day
On fruit and blossom lie.
And yet, - and yet I cannot love
Those lovely lines on steel;
They beam too much of heaven above,
Earth's darker shades to feel;
Perchance some early weeds of care
Around my heart have grown,
And brows unfurrowed seem not fair,
Because they mock my own.
Alas! when Eden's gates were sealed,
How oft some sheltered flower
Breathed o'er the wanderers of the field,
Like their own bridal bower;
Yet, saddened by its loveliness,
And humbled by its pride,
Earth's fairest child they could not bless,
It mocked them when they sighed. |
A Bird's Anger | William Henry Davies | A summer's morning that has but one voice;
Five hundred stocks, like golden lovers, lean
Their heads together, in their quiet way,
And but one bird sings, of a number seen.
It is the lark, that louder, louder sings,
As though but this one thought possessed his mind:
'You silent robin, blackbird, thrush, and finch,
I'll sing enough for all you lazy kind!'
And when I hear him at this daring task,
'Peace, little bird,' I say, 'and take some rest;
Stop that wild, screaming fire of angry song,
Before it makes a coffin of your nest.'
|
To Lady Eleanor Butler And The Honourable Miss Ponsonby | William Wordsworth | A stream to mingle with your favorite Dee
Along the Vale of Meditation flows;
So styled by those fierce Britons, pleased to see
In Nature's face the expression of repose,
Or, haply there some pious Hermit chose
To live and die, the peace of Heaven his aim,
To whome the wild sequestered region owes
At this late day, its sanctifying name.
Glyn Cafaillgaroch, in the Cambrian tongue,
In ourse the Vale of Friendship, let this spot
Be nam'd, where faithful to a low roof'd Cot
On Deva's banks, ye have abode so long,
Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb
Ev'n on this earth, above the reach of time. |
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LII | Philip Sidney (Sir) | A strife is growne between Vertue and Loue,
While each pretends that Stella must be his:
Her eyes, her lips, her all, saith Loue, do this,
Since they do weare his badge, most firmly proue.
But Virtue thus that title doth disproue,
That Stella (O dear name!) that Stella is
That vertuous soule, sure heire of heau'nly blisse.
Not this faire outside, which our heart doth moue.
And therefore, though her beautie and her grace
Be Loues indeed, in Stellas selfe he may
By no pretence claime any manner place.
Well, Loue, since this demurre our sute doth stay,
Let Vertue haue that Stellaes selfe, yet thus,
That Vertue but that body graunt to vs. |
The Skulls | Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev | A sumptuous, brilliantly lighted hall; a number of ladies and gentlemen.
All the faces are animated, the talk is lively.... A noisy conversation is being carried on about a famous singer. They call her divine, immortal.... O, how finely yesterday she rendered her last trill!
And suddenly - as by the wave of an enchanter's wand - from every head and from every face, slipped off the delicate covering of skin, and instantaneously exposed the deadly whiteness of skulls, with here and there the leaden shimmer of bare jaws and gums.
With horror I beheld the movements of those jaws and gums; the turning, the glistening in the light of the lamps and candles, of those lumpy bony balls, and the rolling in them of other smaller balls, the balls of the meaningless eyes.
I dared not touch my own face, dared not glance at myself in the glass.
And the skulls turned from side to side as before.... And with their former noise, peeping like little red rags out of the grinning teeth, rapid tongues lisped how marvellously, how inimitably the immortal ... yes, immortal ... singer had rendered that last trill!
April 1878.
|
The Stag And The Vine. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A stag, by favour of a vine,
Which grew where suns most genial shine,
And form'd a thick and matted bower
Which might have turn'd a summer shower,
Was saved from ruinous assault.
The hunters thought their dogs at fault,
And call'd them off. In danger now no more
The stag, a thankless wretch and vile,
Began to browse his benefactress o'er.
The hunters, listening the while,
The rustling heard, came back,
With all their yelping pack,
And seized him in that very place.
'This is,' said he, 'but justice, in my case.
Let every black ingrate
Henceforward profit by my fate.'
The dogs fell to - 'twere wasting breath
To pray those hunters at the death.
They left, and we will not revile 'em,
A warning for profaners of asylum. |
Lines From A Letter To A Young Clerical Friend | John Greenleaf Whittier | A strength Thy service cannot tire,
A faith which doubt can never dim,
A heart of love, a lip of fire,
O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
Speak through him words of power and fear,
As through Thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips Thy blessing seek,
And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
And on Thy children, crushed and weak,
The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
Let then, O God! Thy servant dare
Thy truth in all its power to tell,
Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
The Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow span
Of law and sect by Thee released,
Oh, teach him that the Christian man
Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,
Of the dead ages, from his way,
And let his hopeful eyes behold
The dawn of Thy millennial day;
That day when lettered limb and mind
Shall know the truth which maketh free,
And he alone who loves his kind
Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee |
Shadow River | Emily Pauline Johnson | MUSKOKA
A stream of tender gladness,
Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies;
Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies
In mystic rings,
Where softly swings
The music of a thousand wings
That almost tones to sadness.
Midway 'twixt earth and heaven,
A bubble in the pearly air, I seem
To float upon the sapphire floor, a dream
Of clouds of snow,
Above, below,
Drift with my drifting, dim and slow,
As twilight drifts to even.
The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can't define;
So perfect is the blending.
The far, fir trees that cover
The brownish hills with needles green and gold,
The arching elms o'erhead, vinegrown and old,
Repictured are
Beneath me far,
Where not a ripple moves to mar
Shades underneath, or over.
Mine is the undertone;
The beauty, strength, and power of the land
Will never stir or bend at my command;
But all the shade
Is marred or made,
If I but dip my paddle blade;
And it is mine alone.
O! pathless world of seeming!
O! pathless life of mine whose deep ideal
Is more my own than ever was the real.
For others Fame
And Love's red flame,
And yellow gold: I only claim
The shadows and the dreaming. |
The Sick Stag. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A stag, where stags abounded,
Fell sick, and was surrounded
Forthwith by comrades kind,
All pressing to assist,
Or see, their friend, at least,
And ease his anxious mind -
An irksome multitude.
'Ah, sirs!' the sick was fain to cry,
'Pray leave me here to die,
As others do, in solitude.
Pray, let your kind attentions cease,
Till death my spirit shall release.'
But comforters are not so sent:
On duty sad full long intent,
When Heaven pleased, they went:
But not without a friendly glass;
That is to say, they cropp'd the grass
And leaves which in that quarter grew,
From which the sick his pittance drew.
By kindness thus compell'd to fast,
He died for want of food at last.
The men take off no trifling dole
Who heal the body, or the soul.
Alas the times! do what we will,
They have their payment, cure or kill. |
The Bloodfish | Paul Cameron Brown | A story about tears that became minnows and sobs large fishes in their place.
Once, when the sky was young and the spirits were expressing their wishes, peals of light and thunder damaged the heavens until they were swollen and purple. Rain fell like leaves as the victors banished the fallen from the clouds. The vanquished were ordered to supply the empty lakes with forms fitting their previous ways. Swimming in oblivion, they only stopped to rest in reed beds on August days when the Great Spirit smothered his anger.
The evil ones assumed the course of large blood fish scraping the silt bottoms in reminder of their reduced state. All sorts of creatures - the catfish with his whiskers to remind the new creature man of his pre-human state and the eel and lamprey with their sharp eyes to disclose to the world the inherent baseness of their rebellious nature. The giant of the deep - the sturgeon - had a sucker form mouth. Every time man lifted him across the keel of a boat he would see his obsequious face panting to the sky.
In fact, when sturgeon or the spirit commanded to be pike were caught, the thrash of their tails sent small tears as ripples across the lake. These stirred sand people and minnows were born. Each sob from dying pike's tail, doomed to a long toothy snout for her disobedience by Manitou, formed a larger fish. In this way, fish were ever reminded of their punishment and man kept fed.
The Indians enjoyed new food as plenteous as the grains of golden earth on each lake's face.
|
Love And A Question | Robert Lee Frost | A stranger came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
And, for all burden, care.
He asked with the eyes more than the lips
For a shelter for the night,
And he turned and looked at the road afar
Without a window light.
The bridegroom came forth into the porch
With, 'Let us look at the sky,
And question what of the night to be,
Stranger, you and I.'
The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
The woodbine berries were blue,
Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
'Stranger, I wish I knew.'
Within, the bride in the dusk alone
Bent over the open fire,
Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
And the thought of the heart's desire.
The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
Yet saw but her within,
And wished her heart in a case of gold
And pinned with a silver pin.
The bridegroom thought it little to give
A dole of bread, a purse,
A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
Or for the rich a curse;
But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew. |
Transubstantiation. | Madison Julius Cawein | I.
A Sunbeam and a drop of dew
Lay on a red rose in the South:
God took the three and made her mouth,
Her sweet, sweet mouth,
So red of hue,
The burning baptism of His kiss
Still fills my heart with heavenly bliss.
II.
A dream of truth and love come true
Slept on a star in daybreak skies:
God mingled these and made her eyes,
Her dear, dear eyes,
So gray of hue,
The high communion of His gaze
Still fills my soul with deep amaze. |
Constantinople - The Greek Han | Victoria Mary Sackville-West | A sunny court with wooden balconies,
And wool hung out to dry in gaudy skeins,
A fountain, and some pigeons murmuringly
Picking up yellow grains.
Pass through a little tumble-down green door
Into the dark and crowded shop; the Turk
Crouching above the brasier, smiles and nods;
'Tis all his daily work.
Here marble heads and alabaster jars,
Fragments of porphyry and Persian tiles,
Lie heaped in ruin, and at our dismay
The old Turk shrugs and smiles,
And sips his coffee, reaching out a hand
To throw upon the brasier at his feet
A handful of dried herbs, whose sudden smoke
Rises up incense-sweet.
|
For The Wounded (1871) | Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson | (See Note 51)
A still procession goes
Amid the battle's booming,
Its arm the red cross shows;
It prays in many forms of speech,
And, bending o'er the fallen,
Brings peace and home to each.
Not only is it found
Where bleed the wounds of battle,
But all the world around.
It is the love the whole world feels
In noble hearts and tender,
While gentle pity kneels; -
It is all labor's dread
Of war's mad waste and murder,
Praying that peace may spread;
It is all sufferers who heed
The sighing of a brother,
And know his sorrow's need; -
It is each groan of pain
Heard from the sick and wounded,
'T is Christian prayer humane;
It is their cry who lonely grope,
'T is the oppressed man's moaning,
The dying breath of hope; -
This rainbow-bridge of prayers
Up through the world's wild tempest
In light of Christ's faith bears:
That love and loving deeds
May conquer strife and passion;
For thus His promise reads. |
Merlin And Vivien | Alfred Lord Tennyson | A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old
It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,
At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.
For he that always bare in bitter grudge
The slights of Arthur and his Table, Mark
The Cornish King, had heard a wandering voice,
A minstrel of Caerlon by strong storm
Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say
That out of naked knightlike purity
Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl
But the great Queen herself, fought in her name,
Sware by her--vows like theirs, that high in heaven
Love most, but neither marry, nor are given
In marriage, angels of our Lord's report.
He ceased, and then--for Vivien sweetly said
(She sat beside the banquet nearest Mark),
'And is the fair example followed, Sir,
In Arthur's household?'--answered innocently:
'Ay, by some few--ay, truly--youths that hold
It more beseems the perfect virgin knight
To worship woman as true wife beyond
All hopes of gaining, than as maiden girl.
They place their pride in Lancelot and the Queen.
So passionate for an utter purity
Beyond the limit of their bond, are these,
For Arthur bound them not to singleness.
Brave hearts and clean! and yet--God guide them--young.'
Then Mark was half in heart to hurl his cup
Straight at the speaker, but forbore: he rose
To leave the hall, and, Vivien following him,
Turned to her: 'Here are snakes within the grass;
And you methinks, O Vivien, save ye fear
The monkish manhood, and the mask of pure
Worn by this court, can stir them till they sting.'
And Vivien answered, smiling scornfully,
'Why fear? because that fostered at THY court
I savour of thy--virtues? fear them? no.
As Love, if Love is perfect, casts out fear,
So Hate, if Hate is perfect, casts out fear.
My father died in battle against the King,
My mother on his corpse in open field;
She bore me there, for born from death was I
Among the dead and sown upon the wind--
And then on thee! and shown the truth betimes,
That old true filth, and bottom of the well
Where Truth is hidden. Gracious lessons thine
And maxims of the mud! "This Arthur pure!
Great Nature through the flesh herself hath made
Gives him the lie! There is no being pure,
My cherub; saith not Holy Writ the same?"--
If I were Arthur, I would have thy blood.
Thy blessing, stainless King! I bring thee back,
When I have ferreted out their burrowings,
The hearts of all this Order in mine hand--
Ay--so that fate and craft and folly close,
Perchance, one curl of Arthur's golden beard.
To me this narrow grizzled fork of thine
Is cleaner-fashioned--Well, I loved thee first,
That warps the wit.'
Loud laughed the graceless Mark,
But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged
Low in the city, and on a festal day
When Guinevere was crossing the great hall
Cast herself down, knelt to the Queen, and wailed.
'Why kneel ye there? What evil hath ye wrought?
Rise!' and the damsel bidden rise arose
And stood with folded hands and downward eyes
Of glancing corner, and all meekly said,
'None wrought, but suffered much, an orphan maid!
My father died in battle for thy King,
My mother on his corpse--in open field,
The sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyonnesse--
Poor wretch--no friend!--and now by Mark the King
For that small charm of feature mine, pursued--
If any such be mine--I fly to thee.
Save, save me thou--Woman of women--thine
The wreath of beauty, thine the crown of power,
Be thine the balm of pity, O Heaven's own white
Earth-angel, stainless bride of stainless King--
Help, for he follows! take me to thyself!
O yield me shelter for mine innocency
Among thy maidens!
Here her slow sweet eyes
Fear-tremulous, but humbly hopeful, rose
Fixt on her hearer's, while the Queen who stood
All glittering like May sunshine on May leaves
In green and gold, and plumed with green replied,
'Peace, child! of overpraise and overblame
We choose the last. Our noble Arthur, him
Ye scarce can overpraise, will hear and know.
Nay--we believe all evil of thy Mark--
Well, we shall test thee farther; but this hour
We ride a-hawking with Sir Lancelot.
He hath given us a fair falcon which he trained;
We go to prove it. Bide ye here the while.'
She past; and Vivien murmured after 'Go!
I bide the while.' Then through the portal-arch
Peering askance, and muttering broken-wise,
As one that labours with an evil dream,
Beheld the Queen and Lancelot get to horse.
'Is that the Lancelot? goodly--ay, but gaunt:
Courteous--amends for gauntness--takes her hand--
That glance of theirs, but for the street, had been
A clinging kiss--how hand lingers in hand!
Let go at last!--they ride away--to hawk
For waterfowl. Royaller game is mine.
For such a supersensual sensual bond
As that gray cricket chirpt of at our hearth--
Touch flax with flame--a glance will serve--the liars!
Ah little rat that borest in the dyke
Thy hole by night to let the boundless deep
Down upon far-off cities while they dance--
Or dream--of thee they dreamed not--nor of me
These--ay, but each of either: ride, and dream
The mortal dream that never yet was mine--
Ride, ride and dream until ye wake--to me!
Then, narrow court and lubber King, farewell!
For Lancelot will be gracious to the rat,
And our wise Queen, if knowing that I know,
Will hate, loathe, fear--but honour me the more.'
Yet while they rode together down the plain,
Their talk was all of training, terms of art,
Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure.
'She is too noble' he said 'to check at pies,
Nor will she rake: there is no baseness in her.'
Here when the Queen demanded as by chance
'Know ye the stranger woman?' 'Let her be,'
Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off
The goodly falcon free; she towered; her bells,
Tone under tone, shrilled; and they lifted up
Their eager faces, wondering at the strength,
Boldness and royal knighthood of the bird
Who pounced her quarry and slew it. Many a time
As once--of old--among the flowers--they rode.
But Vivien half-forgotten of the Queen
Among her damsels broidering sat, heard, watched
And whispered: through the peaceful court she crept
And whispered: then as Arthur in the highest
Leavened the world, so Vivien in the lowest,
Arriving at a time of golden rest,
And sowing one ill hint from ear to ear,
While all the heathen lay at Arthur's feet,
And no quest came, but all was joust and play,
Leavened his hall. They heard and let her be.
Thereafter as an enemy that has left
Death in the living waters, and withdrawn,
The wily Vivien stole from Arthur's court.
She hated all the knights, and heard in thought
Their lavish comment when her name was named.
For once, when Arthur walking all alone,
Vext at a rumour issued from herself
Of some corruption crept among his knights,
Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair,
Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood
With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,
And fluttered adoration, and at last
With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more
Than who should prize him most; at which the King
Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:
But one had watched, and had not held his peace:
It made the laughter of an afternoon
That Vivien should attempt the blameless King.
And after that, she set herself to gain
Him, the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;
The people called him Wizard; whom at first
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,
And vivid smiles, and faintly-venomed points
Of slander, glancing here and grazing there;
And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer
Would watch her at her petulance, and play,
Even when they seemed unloveable, and laugh
As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew
Tolerant of what he half disdained, and she,
Perceiving that she was but half disdained,
Began to break her sports with graver fits,
Turn red or pale, would often when they met
Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him
With such a fixt devotion, that the old man,
Though doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times
Would flatter his own wish in age for love,
And half believe her true: for thus at times
He wavered; but that other clung to him,
Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.
Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy;
He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found
A doom that ever poised itself to fall,
An ever-moaning battle in the mist,
World-war of dying flesh against the life,
Death in all life and lying in all love,
The meanest having power upon the highest,
And the high purpose broken by the worm.
So leaving Arthur's court he gained the beach;
There found a little boat, and stept into it;
And Vivien followed, but he marked her not.
She took the helm and he the sail; the boat
Drave with a sudden wind across the deeps,
And touching Breton sands, they disembarked.
And then she followed Merlin all the way,
Even to the wild woods of Broceliande.
For Merlin once had told her of a charm,
The which if any wrought on anyone
With woven paces and with waving arms,
The man so wrought on ever seemed to lie
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,
From which was no escape for evermore;
And none could find that man for evermore,
Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm
Coming and going, and he lay as dead
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
And Vivien ever sought to work the charm
Upon the great Enchanter of the Time,
As fancying that her glory would be great
According to his greatness whom she quenched.
There lay she all her length and kissed his feet,
As if in deepest reverence and in love.
A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe
Of samite without price, that more exprest
Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,
In colour like the satin-shining palm
On sallows in the windy gleams of March:
And while she kissed them, crying, 'Trample me,
Dear feet, that I have followed through the world,
And I will pay you worship; tread me down
And I will kiss you for it;' he was mute:
So dark a forethought rolled about his brain,
As on a dull day in an Ocean cave
The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall
In silence: wherefore, when she lifted up
A face of sad appeal, and spake and said,
'O Merlin, do ye love me?' and again,
'O Merlin, do ye love me?' and once more,
'Great Master, do ye love me?' he was mute.
And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel,
Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat,
Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet
Together, curved an arm about his neck,
Clung like a snake; and letting her left hand
Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf,
Made with her right a comb of pearl to part
The lists of such a board as youth gone out
Had left in ashes: then he spoke and said,
Not looking at her, 'Who are wise in love
Love most, say least,' and Vivien answered quick,
'I saw the little elf-god eyeless once
In Arthur's arras hall at Camelot:
But neither eyes nor tongue--O stupid child!
Yet you are wise who say it; let me think
Silence is wisdom: I am silent then,
And ask no kiss;' then adding all at once,
'And lo, I clothe myself with wisdom,' drew
The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard
Across her neck and bosom to her knee,
And called herself a gilded summer fly
Caught in a great old tyrant spider's web,
Who meant to eat her up in that wild wood
Without one word. So Vivien called herself,
But rather seemed a lovely baleful star
Veiled in gray vapour; till he sadly smiled:
'To what request for what strange boon,' he said,
'Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries,
O Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks,
For these have broken up my melancholy.'
And Vivien answered smiling saucily,
'What, O my Master, have ye found your voice?
I bid the stranger welcome. Thanks at last!
But yesterday you never opened lip,
Except indeed to drink: no cup had we:
In mine own lady palms I culled the spring
That gathered trickling dropwise from the cleft,
And made a pretty cup of both my hands
And offered you it kneeling: then you drank
And knew no more, nor gave me one poor word;
O no more thanks than might a goat have given
With no more sign of reverence than a beard.
And when we halted at that other well,
And I was faint to swooning, and you lay
Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of those
Deep meadows we had traversed, did you know
That Vivien bathed your feet before her own?
And yet no thanks: and all through this wild wood
And all this morning when I fondled you:
Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not so strange--
How had I wronged you? surely ye are wise,
But such a silence is more wise than kind.'
And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said:
'O did ye never lie upon the shore,
And watch the curled white of the coming wave
Glassed in the slippery sand before it breaks?
Even such a wave, but not so pleasurable,
Dark in the glass of some presageful mood,
Had I for three days seen, ready to fall.
And then I rose and fled from Arthur's court
To break the mood. You followed me unasked;
And when I looked, and saw you following me still,
My mind involved yourself the nearest thing
In that mind-mist: for shall I tell you truth?
You seemed that wave about to break upon me
And sweep me from my hold upon the world,
My use and name and fame. Your pardon, child.
Your pretty sports have brightened all again.
And ask your boon, for boon I owe you thrice,
Once for wrong done you by confusion, next
For thanks it seems till now neglected, last
For these your dainty gambols: wherefore ask;
And take this boon so strange and not so strange.'
And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:
'O not so strange as my long asking it,
Not yet so strange as you yourself are strange,
Nor half so strange as that dark mood of yours.
I ever feared ye were not wholly mine;
And see, yourself have owned ye did me wrong.
The people call you prophet: let it be:
But not of those that can expound themselves.
Take Vivien for expounder; she will call
That three-days-long presageful gloom of yours
No presage, but the same mistrustful mood
That makes you seem less noble than yourself,
Whenever I have asked this very boon,
Now asked again: for see you not, dear love,
That such a mood as that, which lately gloomed
Your fancy when ye saw me following you,
Must make me fear still more you are not mine,
Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine,
And make me wish still more to learn this charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me.
The charm so taught will charm us both to rest.
For, grant me some slight power upon your fate,
I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust,
Should rest and let you rest, knowing you mine.
And therefore be as great as ye are named,
Not muffled round with selfish reticence.
How hard you look and how denyingly!
O, if you think this wickedness in me,
That I should prove it on you unawares,
That makes me passing wrathful; then our bond
Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not,
By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth,
As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk:
O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I,
If these unwitty wandering wits of mine,
Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream,
Have tript on such conjectural treachery--
May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell
Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat,
If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon,
Till which I scarce can yield you all I am;
And grant my re-reiterated wish,
The great proof of your love: because I think,
However wise, ye hardly know me yet.'
And Merlin loosed his hand from hers and said,
'I never was less wise, however wise,
Too curious Vivien, though you talk of trust,
Than when I told you first of such a charm.
Yea, if ye talk of trust I tell you this,
Too much I trusted when I told you that,
And stirred this vice in you which ruined man
Through woman the first hour; for howsoe'er
In children a great curiousness be well,
Who have to learn themselves and all the world,
In you, that are no child, for still I find
Your face is practised when I spell the lines,
I call it,--well, I will not call it vice:
But since you name yourself the summer fly,
I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat,
That settles, beaten back, and beaten back
Settles, till one could yield for weariness:
But since I will not yield to give you power
Upon my life and use and name and fame,
Why will ye never ask some other boon?
Yea, by God's rood, I trusted you too much.'
And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted maid
That ever bided tryst at village stile,
Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears:
'Nay, Master, be not wrathful with your maid;
Caress her: let her feel herself forgiven
Who feels no heart to ask another boon.
I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme
Of "trust me not at all or all in all."
I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it once,
And it shall answer for me. Listen to it.
"In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
"It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
"The little rift within the lover's lute
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.
"It is not worth the keeping: let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all."
O Master, do ye love my tender rhyme?'
And Merlin looked and half believed her true,
So tender was her voice, so fair her face,
So sweetly gleamed her eyes behind her tears
Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower:
And yet he answered half indignantly:
'Far other was the song that once I heard
By this huge oak, sung nearly where we sit:
For here we met, some ten or twelve of us,
To chase a creature that was current then
In these wild woods, the hart with golden horns.
It was the time when first the question rose
About the founding of a Table Round,
That was to be, for love of God and men
And noble deeds, the flower of all the world.
And each incited each to noble deeds.
And while we waited, one, the youngest of us,
We could not keep him silent, out he flashed,
And into such a song, such fire for fame,
Such trumpet-glowings in it, coming down
To such a stern and iron-clashing close,
That when he stopt we longed to hurl together,
And should have done it; but the beauteous beast
Scared by the noise upstarted at our feet,
And like a silver shadow slipt away
Through the dim land; and all day long we rode
Through the dim land against a rushing wind,
That glorious roundel echoing in our ears,
And chased the flashes of his golden horns
Till they vanished by the fairy well
That laughs at iron--as our warriors did--
Where children cast their pins and nails, and cry,
"Laugh, little well!" but touch it with a sword,
It buzzes fiercely round the point; and there
We lost him: such a noble song was that.
But, Vivien, when you sang me that sweet rhyme,
I felt as though you knew this cursd charm,
Were proving it on me, and that I lay
And felt them slowly ebbing, name and fame.'
And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:
'O mine have ebbed away for evermore,
And all through following you to this wild wood,
Because I saw you sad, to comfort you.
Lo now, what hearts have men! they never mount
As high as woman in her selfless mood.
And touching fame, howe'er ye scorn my song,
Take one verse more--the lady speaks it--this:
'"My name, once mine, now thine, is closelier mine,
For fame, could fame be mine, that fame were thine,
And shame, could shame be thine, that shame were mine.
So trust me not at all or all in all."
'Says she not well? and there is more--this rhyme
Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the Queen,
That burst in dancing, and the pearls were spilt;
Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept.
But nevermore the same two sister pearls
Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other
On her white neck--so is it with this rhyme:
It lives dispersedly in many hands,
And every minstrel sings it differently;
Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
"Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love."
Yea! Love, though Love were of the grossest, carves
A portion from the solid present, eats
And uses, careless of the rest; but Fame,
The Fame that follows death is nothing to us;
And what is Fame in life but half-disfame,
And counterchanged with darkness? ye yourself
Know well that Envy calls you Devil's son,
And since ye seem the Master of all Art,
They fain would make you Master of all vice.'
And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said,
'I once was looking for a magic weed,
And found a fair young squire who sat alone,
Had carved himself a knightly shield of wood,
And then was painting on it fancied arms,
Azure, an Eagle rising or, the Sun
In dexter chief; the scroll "I follow fame."
And speaking not, but leaning over him
I took his brush and blotted out the bird,
And made a Gardener putting in a graff,
With this for motto, "Rather use than fame."
You should have seen him blush; but afterwards
He made a stalwart knight. O Vivien,
For you, methinks you think you love me well;
For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
But work as vassal to the larger love,
That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.
Use gave me Fame at first, and Fame again
Increasing gave me use. Lo, there my boon!
What other? for men sought to prove me vile,
Because I fain had given them greater wits:
And then did Envy call me Devil's son:
The sick weak beast seeking to help herself
By striking at her better, missed, and brought
Her own claw back, and wounded her own heart.
Sweet were the days when I was all unknown,
But when my name was lifted up, the storm
Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it.
Right well know I that Fame is half-disfame,
Yet needs must work my work. That other fame,
To one at least, who hath not children, vague,
The cackle of the unborn about the grave,
I cared not for it: a single misty star,
Which is the second in a line of stars
That seem a sword beneath a belt of three,
I never gazed upon it but I dreamt
Of some vast charm concluded in that star
To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if I fear,
Giving you power upon me through this charm,
That you might play me falsely, having power,
However well ye think ye love me now
(As sons of kings loving in pupilage
Have turned to tyrants when they came to power)
I rather dread the loss of use than fame;
If you--and not so much from wickedness,
As some wild turn of anger, or a mood
Of overstrained affection, it may be,
To keep me all to your own self,--or else
A sudden spurt of woman's jealousy,--
Should try this charm on whom ye say ye love.'
And Vivien answered smiling as in wrath:
'Have I not sworn? I am not trusted. Good!
Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out;
And being found take heed of Vivien.
A woman and not trusted, doubtless I
Might feel some sudden turn of anger born
Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet
Is accurate too, for this full love of mine
Without the full heart back may merit well
Your term of overstrained. So used as I,
My daily wonder is, I love at all.
And as to woman's jealousy, O why not?
O to what end, except a jealous one,
And one to make me jealous if I love,
Was this fair charm invented by yourself?
I well believe that all about this world
Ye cage a buxom captive here and there,
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower
From which is no escape for evermore.'
Then the great Master merrily answered her:
'Full many a love in loving youth was mine;
I needed then no charm to keep them mine
But youth and love; and that full heart of yours
Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you mine;
So live uncharmed. For those who wrought it first,
The wrist is parted from the hand that waved,
The feet unmortised from their ankle-bones
Who paced it, ages back: but will ye hear
The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme?
'There lived a king in the most Eastern East,
Less old than I, yet older, for my blood
Hath earnest in it of far springs to be.
A tawny pirate anchored in his port,
Whose bark had plundered twenty nameless isles;
And passing one, at the high peep of dawn,
He saw two cities in a thousand boats
All fighting for a woman on the sea.
And pushing his black craft among them all,
He lightly scattered theirs and brought her off,
With loss of half his people arrow-slain;
A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,
They said a light came from her when she moved:
And since the pirate would not yield her up,
The King impaled him for his piracy;
Then made her Queen: but those isle-nurtured eyes
Waged such unwilling though successful war
On all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned,
And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew
The rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts;
And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt
Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back
That carry kings in castles, bowed black knees
Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,
To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.
What wonder, being jealous, that he sent
His horns of proclamation out through all
The hundred under-kingdoms that he swayed
To find a wizard who might teach the King
Some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen
Might keep her all his own: to such a one
He promised more than ever king has given,
A league of mountain full of golden mines,
A province with a hundred miles of coast,
A palace and a princess, all for him:
But on all those who tried and failed, the King
Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it
To keep the list low and pretenders back,
Or like a king, not to be trifled with--
Their heads should moulder on the city gates.
And many tried and failed, because the charm
Of nature in her overbore their own:
And many a wizard brow bleached on the walls:
And many weeks a troop of carrion crows
Hung like a cloud above the gateway towers.'
And Vivien breaking in upon him, said:
'I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,
Thy tongue has tript a little: ask thyself.
The lady never made UNWILLING war
With those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,
And made her good man jealous with good cause.
And lived there neither dame nor damsel then
Wroth at a lover's loss? were all as tame,
I mean, as noble, as the Queen was fair?
Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,
Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,
Or make her paler with a poisoned rose?
Well, those were not our days: but did they find
A wizard? Tell me, was he like to thee?
She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck
Tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes
Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride's
On her new lord, her own, the first of men.
He answered laughing, 'Nay, not like to me.
At last they found--his foragers for charms--
A little glassy-headed hairless man,
Who lived alone in a great wild on grass;
Read but one book, and ever reading grew
So grated down and filed away with thought,
So lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin
Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine.
And since he kept his mind on one sole aim,
Nor ever touched fierce wine, nor tasted flesh,
Nor owned a sensual wish, to him the wall
That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men
Became a crystal, and he saw them through it,
And heard their voices talk behind the wall,
And learnt their elemental secrets, powers
And forces; often o'er the sun's bright eye
Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud,
And lashed it at the base with slanting storm;
Or in the noon of mist and driving rain,
When the lake whitened and the pinewood roared,
And the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned
The world to peace again: here was the man.
And so by force they dragged him to the King.
And then he taught the King to charm the Queen
In such-wise, that no man could see her more,
Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm,
Coming and going, and she lay as dead,
And lost all use of life: but when the King
Made proffer of the league of golden mines,
The province with a hundred miles of coast,
The palace and the princess, that old man
Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass,
And vanished, and his book came down to me.'
And Vivien answered smiling saucily:
'Ye have the book: the charm is written in it:
Good: take my counsel: let me know it at once:
For keep it like a puzzle chest in chest,
With each chest locked and padlocked thirty-fold,
And whelm all this beneath as vast a mound
As after furious battle turfs the slain
On some wild down above the windy deep,
I yet should strike upon a sudden means
To dig, pick, open, find and read the charm:
Then, if I tried it, who should blame me then?'
And smiling as a master smiles at one
That is not of his school, nor any school
But that where blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long, he answered her:
'Thou read the book, my pretty Vivien!
O ay, it is but twenty pages long,
But every page having an ample marge,
And every marge enclosing in the midst
A square of text that looks a little blot,
The text no larger than the limbs of fleas;
And every square of text an awful charm,
Writ in a language that has long gone by.
So long, that mountains have arisen since
With cities on their flanks--thou read the book!
And ever margin scribbled, crost, and crammed
With comment, densest condensation, hard
To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights
Of my long life have made it easy to me.
And none can read the text, not even I;
And none can read the comment but myself;
And in the comment did I find the charm.
O, the results are simple; a mere child
Might use it to the harm of anyone,
And never could undo it: ask no more:
For though you should not prove it upon me,
But keep that oath ye sware, ye might, perchance,
Assay it on some one of the Table Round,
And all because ye dream they babble of you.'
And Vivien, frowning in true anger, said:
'What dare the full-fed liars say of me?
THEY ride abroad redressing human wrongs!
They sit with knife in meat and wine in horn!
THEY bound to holy vows of chastity!
Were I not woman, I could tell a tale.
But you are man, you well can understand
The shame that cannot be explained for shame.
Not one of all the drove should touch me: swine!'
Then answered Merlin careless of her words:
'You breathe but accusation vast and vague,
Spleen-born, I think, and proofless. If ye know,
Set up the charge ye know, to stand or fall!'
And Vivien answered frowning wrathfully:
'O ay, what say ye to Sir Valence, him
Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er his wife
And two fair babes, and went to distant lands;
Was one year gone, and on returning found
Not two but three? there lay the reckling, one
But one hour old! What said the happy sire?'
A seven-months' babe had been a truer gift.
Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood.'
Then answered Merlin, 'Nay, I know the tale.
Sir Valence wedded with an outland dame:
Some cause had kept him sundered from his wife:
One child they had: it lived with her: she died:
His kinsman travelling on his own affair
Was charged by Valence to bring home the child.
He brought, not found it therefore: take the truth.'
'O ay,' said Vivien, 'overtrue a tale.
What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore,
That ardent man? "to pluck the flower in season,"
So says the song, "I trow it is no treason."
O Master, shall we call him overquick
To crop his own sweet rose before the hour?'
And Merlin answered, 'Overquick art thou
To catch a loathly plume fallen from the wing
Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey
Is man's good name: he never wronged his bride.
I know the tale. An angry gust of wind
Puffed out his torch among the myriad-roomed
And many-corridored complexities
Of Arthur's palace: then he found a door,
And darkling felt the sculptured ornament
That wreathen round it made it seem his own;
And wearied out made for the couch and slept,
A stainless man beside a stainless maid;
And either slept, nor knew of other there;
Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose
In Arthur's casement glimmered chastely down,
Blushing upon them blushing, and at once
He rose without a word and parted from her:
But when the thing was blazed about the court,
The brute world howling forced them into bonds,
And as it chanced they are happy, being pure.'
'O ay,' said Vivien, 'that were likely too.
What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale
And of the horrid foulness that he wrought,
The saintly youth, the spotless lamb of Christ,
Or some black wether of St Satan's fold.
What, in the precincts of the chapel-yard,
Among the knightly brasses of the graves,
And by the cold Hic Jacets of the dead!'
And Merlin answered careless of her charge,
'A sober man is Percivale and pure;
But once in life was flustered with new wine,
Then paced for coolness in the chapel-yard;
Where one of Satan's shepherdesses caught
And meant to stamp him with her master's mark;
And that he sinned is not believable;
For, look upon his face!--but if he sinned,
The sin that practice burns into the blood,
And not the one dark hour which brings remorse,
Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be:
Or else were he, the holy king, whose hymns
Are chanted in the minster, worse than all.
But is your spleen frothed out, or have ye more?'
And Vivien answered frowning yet in wrath:
'O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend
Traitor or true? that commerce with the Queen,
I ask you, is it clamoured by the child,
Or whispered in the corner? do ye know it?'
To which he answered sadly, 'Yea, I know it.
Sir Lancelot went ambassador, at first,
To fetch her, and she watched him from her walls.
A rumour runs, she took him for the King,
So fixt her fancy on him: let them be.
But have ye no one word of loyal praise
For Arthur, blameless King and stainless man?'
She answered with a low and chuckling laugh:
'Man! is he man at all, who knows and winks?
Sees what his fair bride is and does, and winks?
By which the good King means to blind himself,
And blinds himself and all the Table Round
To all the foulness that they work. Myself
Could call him (were it not for womanhood)
The pretty, popular cause such manhood earns,
Could call him the main cause of all their crime;
Yea, were he not crowned King, coward, and fool.'
Then Merlin to his own heart, loathing, said:
'O true and tender! O my liege and King!
O selfless man and stainless gentleman,
Who wouldst against thine own eye-witness fain
Have all men true and leal, all women pure;
How, in the mouths of base interpreters,
From over-fineness not intelligible
To things with every sense as false and foul
As the poached filth that floods the middle street,
Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame!'
But Vivien, deeming Merlin overborne
By instance, recommenced, and let her tongue
Rage like a fire among the noblest names,
Polluting, and imputing her whole self,
Defaming and defacing, till she left
Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.
Her words had issue other than she willed.
He dragged his eyebrow bushes down, and made
A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes,
And muttered in himself, 'Tell HER the charm!
So, if she had it, would she rail on me
To snare the next, and if she have it not
So will she rail. What did the wanton say?
"Not mount as high;" we scarce can sink as low:
For men at most differ as Heaven and earth,
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
I know the Table Round, my friends of old;
All brave, and many generous, and some chaste.
She cloaks the scar of some repulse with lies;
I well believe she tempted them and failed,
Being so bitter: for fine plots may fail,
Though harlots paint their talk as well as face
With colours of the heart that are not theirs.
I will not let her know: nine tithes of times
Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime
Are pronest to it, and impute themselves,
Wanting the mental range; or low desire
Not to feel lowest makes them level all;
Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain,
To leave an equal baseness; and in this
Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
And judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crowned with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds. I am weary of her.'
He spoke in words part heard, in whispers part,
Half-suffocated in the hoary fell
And many-wintered fleece of throat and chin.
But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood,
And hearing 'harlot' muttered twice or thrice,
Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood
Stiff as a viper frozen; loathsome sight,
How from the rosy lips of life and love,
Flashed the bare-grinning skeleton of death!
White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puffed
Her fairy nostril out; her hand half-clenched
Went faltering sideways downward to her belt,
And feeling; had she found a dagger there
(For in a wink the false love turns to hate)
She would have stabbed him; but she found it not:
His eye was calm, and suddenly she took
To bitter weeping like a beaten child,
A long, long weeping, not consolable.
Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs:
'O crueller than was ever told in tale,
Or sung in song! O vainly lavished love!
O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,
Or seeming shameful--for what shame in love,
So love be true, and not as yours is--nothing
Poor Vivien had not done to win his trust
Who called her what he called her--all her crime,
All--all--the wish to prove him wholly hers.'
She mused a little, and then clapt her hands
Together with a wailing shriek, and said:
'Stabbed through the heart's affections to the heart!
Seethed like the kid in its own mother's milk!
Killed with a word worse than a life of blows!
I thought that he was gentle, being great:
O God, that I had loved a smaller man!
I should have found in him a greater heart.
O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw
The knights, the court, the King, dark in your light,
Who loved to make men darker than they are,
Because of that high pleasure which I had
To seat you sole upon my pedestal
Of worship--I am answered, and henceforth
The course of life that seemed so flowery to me
With you for guide and master, only you,
Becomes the sea-cliff pathway broken short,
And ending in a ruin--nothing left,
But into some low cave to crawl, and there,
If the wolf spare me, weep my life away,
Killed with inutterable unkindliness.'
She paused, she turned away, she hung her head,
The snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid
Slipt and uncoiled itself, she wept afresh,
And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm
In silence, while his anger slowly died
Within him, till he let his wisdom go
For ease of heart, and half believed her true:
Called her to shelter in the hollow oak,
'Come from the storm,' and having no reply,
Gazed at the heaving shoulder, and the face
Hand-hidden, as for utmost grief or shame;
Then thrice essayed, by tenderest-touching terms,
To sleek her ruffled peace of mind, in vain.
At last she let herself be conquered by him,
And as the cageling newly flown returns,
The seeming-injured simple-hearted thing
Came to her old perch back, and settled there.
There while she sat, half-falling from his knees,
Half-nestled at his heart, and since he saw
The slow tear creep from her closed eyelid yet,
About her, more in kindness than in love,
The gentle wizard cast a shielding arm.
But she dislinked herself at once and rose,
Her arms upon her breast across, and stood,
A virtuous gentlewoman deeply wronged,
Upright and flushed before him: then she said:
'There must now be no passages of love
Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore;
Since, if I be what I am grossly called,
What should be granted which your own gross heart
Would reckon worth the taking? I will go.
In truth, but one thing now--better have died
Thrice than have asked it once--could make me stay--
That proof of trust--so often asked in vain!
How justly, after that vile term of yours,
I find with grief! I might believe you then,
Who knows? once more. Lo! what was once to me
Mere matter of the fancy, now hath grown
The vast necessity of heart and life.
Farewell; think gently of me, for I fear
My fate or folly, passing gayer youth
For one so old, must be to love thee still.
But ere I leave thee let me swear once more
That if I schemed against thy peace in this,
May yon just heaven, that darkens o'er me, send
One flash, that, missing all things else, may make
My scheming brain a cinder, if I lie.'
Scarce had she ceased, when out of heaven a bolt
(For now the storm was close above them) struck,
Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining
With darted spikes and splinters of the wood
The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw
The tree that shone white-listed through the gloom.
But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath,
And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork,
And deafened with the stammering cracks and claps
That followed, flying back and crying out,
'O Merlin, though you do not love me, save,
Yet save me!' clung to him and hugged him close;
And called him dear protector in her fright,
Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright,
But wrought upon his mood and hugged him close.
The pale blood of the wizard at her touch
Took gayer colours, like an opal warmed.
She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales:
She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept
Of petulancy; she called him lord and liege,
Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve,
Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love
Of her whole life; and ever overhead
Bellowed the tempest, and the rotten branch
Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain
Above them; and in change of glare and gloom
Her eyes and neck glittering went and came;
Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent,
Moaning and calling out of other lands,
Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more
To peace; and what should not have been had been,
For Merlin, overtalked and overworn,
Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept.
Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
Then crying 'I have made his glory mine,'
And shrieking out 'O fool!' the harlot leapt
Adown the forest, and the thicket closed
Behind her, and the forest echoed 'fool.' |
Nature | Ralph Waldo Emerson | I
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
II
The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery:
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Spirit that lurks each form within
Beckons to spirit of its kin;
Self-kindled every atom glows
And hints the future which it owes. |
Council Of Horses. | John Gay | A steed with mutiny inspired
The stud which grazed the mead, and fired
A colt, whose eyes then blazing fire,
Stood forth and thus expressed his ire:
"How abject is the equine race,
Condemned to slavery's disgrace!
Consider, friends, the deep reproach -
Harnessed to drag the gilded coach,
To drag the plough, to trot the road,
To groan beneath the pack-horse load!
Whom do we serve? - a two-legged man,
Of feeble frame, of visage wan.
What! must our noble jaws submit
To champ and foam their galling bit?
He back and spur me? Let him first
Control the lion - tiger's thirst:
I here avow that I disdain
His might, that I reject his reign.
He freedom claims, and why not we?
The nag that wills it, must be free!"
He paused: the intervening pause
Was followed by some horse-applause.
An ancient Nestor of the race
Advanced, with sober solemn pace;
With age and long experience wise,
He cast around his thoughtful eyes.
He said: "I was with strength endued,
And knew the tasks of servitude;
Now I am old - and now these plains
And grateful man, repay my pains.
I ofttimes marvelled to think, how
He knew the times to reap and plough;
And to his horses gave a share
Of the fair produce of the year.
He built the stable, stored the hay,
And winnowed oats from day to day.
Since every creature is decreed
To aid his brother in his need,
We served each other - horse and man -
And carried out the Eternal plan,
And each performed his part assigned:
Then calm your discontented mind."
The Nestor spoke - the colt submitted -
And, like his ancestry, was bitted.
|
The Summons | Ralph Waldo Emerson | A sterner errand to the silken troop
Has quenched the uneasy blush that warmed my cheek;
I am commissioned in my day of joy
To leave my woods and streams and the sweet sloth
Of prayer and song that were my dear delight,
To leave the rudeness of my woodland life,
Sweet twilight walks and midnight solitude
And kind acquaintance with the morning stars
And the glad hey-day of my household hours,
The innocent mirth which sweetens daily bread,
Railing in love to those who rail again,
By mind's industry sharpening the love of life--
Books, Muses, Study, fireside, friends and love,
I loved ye with true love, so fare ye well!
I was a boy; boyhood slid gayly by
And the impatient years that trod on it
Taught me new lessons in the lore of life.
I've learned the sum of that sad history
All woman-born do know, that hoped-for days,
Days that come dancing on fraught with delights,
Dash our blown hopes as they limp heavily by.
But I, the bantling of a country Muse,
Abandon all those toys with speed to obey
The King whose meek ambassador I go. |
The Two Voices | Alfred Lord Tennyson | A still small voice spake unto me,
'Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?'
Then to the still small voice I said;
'Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.'
To which the voice did urge reply;
'To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
'An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
'He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.'
I said, 'When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.
'She gave him mind, the lordliest
Proportion, and, above the rest,
Dominion in the head and breast.'
Thereto the silent voice replied;
'Self-blinded are you by your pride:
Look up thro' night: the world is wide.
'This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.
'Think you this mould of hopes and fears
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres?'
It spake, moreover, in my mind:
'Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind.'
Then did my response clearer fall:
'No compound of this earthly ball
Is like another, all in all.'
To which he answer'd scoffingly;
'Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?
'Or will one beam be less intense,
When thy peculiar differenee
Is cancell'd in the world of sense?'
I would have said, 'Thou canst not know,'
But my full heart, that work'd below,
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.
Again the voice spake unto me:
'Thou art so steep'd in misery,
Surely 'twere better not to be.
'Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,
Nor any train of reason keep:
Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.'
I said, 'The years with change advance:
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.
'Some turn this sickness yet might take,
Ev'n yet.' But he: 'What drug can make
A wither'd palsy cease to shake?'
I wept, 'Tho' I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;
'And men, thro' novel spheres of thought
Still moving after truth long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not.'
'Yet,' said the secret voice, 'some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime
Make thy grass hoar with early rime.
'Not less swift souls that yearn for light,
Rapt after heaven's starry flight,
Would sweep the tracts of day and night.
'Not less the bee would range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells.'
I said that 'all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.
'Were this not well, to bide mine hour,
Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower
How grows the day of human power?'
'The highest-mounted mind,' he said,
'Still sees the sacred morning spread
The silent summit overhead.
'Will thirty seasons render plain
Those lonely lights that still remain,
Just breaking over land and main?
'Or make that morn, from his cold crown
And crystal silence creeping down,
Flood with full daylight glebe and town?
'Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet.
'Thou hast not gain'd a real height,
Nor art thou nearer to the light,
Because the scale is infinite.
''Twere better not to breathe or speak,
Than cry for strength, remaining weak,
And seem to find, but still to seek.
'Moreover, but to seem to find
Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd,
A healthy frame, a quiet mind.'
I said, 'When I am gone away,
'He dared not tarry,' men will say,
Doing dishonour to my clay.'
'This is more vile,' he made reply,
'To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh,
Than once from dread of pain to die.
'Sick art thou'a divided will
Still heaping on the fear of ill
The fear of men, a coward still.
'Do men love thee? Art thou so bound
To men, that how thy name may sound
Will vex thee lying underground?
'The memory of the wither'd leaf
In endless time is scarce more brief
Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf.
'Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust;
The right ear, that is fill'd with dust,
Hears little of the false or just.'
'Hard task, to pluck resolve,' I cried,
'From emptiness and the waste wide
Of that abyss, or scornful pride!
'Nay'rather yet that I could raise
One hope that warm'd me in the days
While still I yearn'd for human praise.
'When, wide in soul and bold of tongue,
Among the tents I paused and sung,
The distant battle flash'd and rung.
'I sung the joyful P'an clear,
And, sitting, burnish'd without fear
The brand, the buckler, and the spear'
'Waiting to strive a happy strife,
To war with falsehood to the knife,
And not to lose the good of life'
'Some hidden principle to move,
To put together, part and prove,
And mete the bounds of hate and love'
'As far as might be, to carve out
Free space for every human doubt,
That the whole mind might orb about'
'To search thro' all I felt or saw,
The springs of life, the depths of awe,
And reach the law within the law:
'At least, not rotting like a weed,
But, having sown some generous seed,
Fruitful of further thought and deed,
'To pass, when Life her light withdraws,
Not void of righteous self-applause,
Nor in a merely selfish cause'
'In some good cause, not in mine own,
To perish, wept for, honour'd, known,
And like a warrior overthrown;
'Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears,
When, soil'd with noble dust, he hears
His country's war-song thrill his ears:
'Then dying of a mortal stroke,
What time the foeman's line is broke,
And all the war is roll'd in smoke.'
'Yea!' said the voice, 'thy dream was good,
While thou abodest in the bud.
It was the stirring of the blood.
'If Nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?
'Then comes the check, the change, the fall,
Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.
There is one remedy for all.
'Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain,
Link'd month to month with such a chain
Of knitted purport, all were vain.
'Thou hadst not between death and birth
Dissolved the riddle of the earth.
So were thy labour little-worth.
'That men with knowledge merely play'd,
I told thee'hardly nigher made,
Tho' scaling slow from grade to grade;
'Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind,
Named man, may hope some truth to find,
That bears relation to the mind.
'For every worm beneath the moon
Draws different threads, and late and soon
Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.
'Cry, faint not: either Truth is born
Beyond the polar gleam forlorn,
Or in the gateways of the morn.
'Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope
Beyond the furthest flights of hope,
Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope.
'Sometimes a little corner shines,
As over rainy mist inclines
A gleaming crag with belts of pines.
'I will go forward, sayest thou,
I shall not fail to find her now.
Look up, the fold is on her brow.
'If straight thy track, or if oblique,
Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost strike,
Embracing cloud, Ixion-like;
'And owning but a little more
Than beasts, abidest lame and poor,
Calling thyself a little lower
'Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl!
Why inch by inch to darkness crawl?
There is one remedy for all.'
'O dull, one-sided voice,' said I,
'Wilt thou make everything a lie,
To flatter me that I may die?
'I know that age to age succeeds,
Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,
A dust of systems and of creeds.
'I cannot hide that some have striven,
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with Heaven:
'Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream;
'But heard, by secret transport led,
Ev'n in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head'
'Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forebore, and did not tire,
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire.
'He heeded not reviling tones,
Nor sold his heart to idle moans,
Tho' cursed and scorn'd, and bruised with stones:
'But looking upward, full of grace,
He pray'd, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him on the face.'
The sullen answer slid betwixt:
'Not that the grounds of hope were fix'd,
The elements were kindlier mix'd.'
I said, 'I toil beneath the curse,
But, knowing not the universe,
I fear to slide from bad to worse.
'And that, in seeking to undo
One riddle, and to find the true,
I knit a hundred others new:
'Or that this anguish fleeting hence,
Unmanacled from bonds of sense,
Be fix'd and froz'n to permanence:
'For I go, weak from suffering here:
Naked I go, and void of cheer:
What is it that I may not fear?'
'Consider well,' the voice replied,
'His face, that two hours since hath died;
Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride?
'Will he obey when one commands?
Or answer should one press his hands?
He answers not, nor understands.
'His palms are folded on his breast:
There is no other thing express'd
But long disquiet merged in rest.
'His lips are very mild and meek:
Tho' one should smite him on the cheek,
And on the mouth, he will not speak.
'His little daughter, whose sweet face
He kiss'd, taking his last embrace,
Becomes dishonour to her race'
'His sons grow up that bear his name,
Some grow to honour, some to shame,'
But he is chill to praise or blame.
'He will not hear the north-wind rave,
Nor, moaning, household shelter crave
From winter rains that beat his grave.
'High up the vapours fold and swim:
About him broods the twilight dim:
The place he knew forgetteth him.'
'If all he dark, vague voice,' I said,
'These things are wrapt in doubt and dread,
Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.
'The sap dries up: the plant declines.
A deeper tale my heart divines.
Know I not Death? the outward signs?
'I found him when my years were few;
A shadow on the graves I knew,
And darkness in the village yew.
'From grave to grave the shadow crept:
In her still place the morning wept:
Touch'd by his feet the daisy slept.
'The simple senses crown'd his head:
'Omega! thou art Lord,' they said,
'We find no motion in the dead.'
'Why, if man rot in dreamless ease,
Should that plain fact, as taught by these,
Not make him sure that he shall cease?
'Who forged that other influence,
That heat of inward evidence,
By which he doubts against the sense?
'He owns the fatal gift of eyes,
That read his spirit blindly wise,
Not simple as a thing that dies.
'Here sits he shaping wings to fly:
His heart forebodes a mystery:
He names the name Eternity.
'That type of Perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find.
He sows himself on every wind.
'He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And thro' thick veils to apprehend
A labour working to an end.
'The end and the beginning vex
His reason: many things perplex,
With motions, checks, and counterchecks.
'He knows a baseness in his blood
At such strange war with something good,
He may not do the thing he would.
'Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn,
Vast images in glimmering dawn,
Half shown, are broken and withdrawn.
'Ah! sure within him and without,
Could his dark wisdom find it out,
There must be answer to his doubt,
'But thou canst answer not again.
With thine own weapon art thou slain,
Or thou wilt answer but in vain.
'The doubt would rest, I dare not solve.
In the same circle we revolve.
Assurance only breeds resolve.'
As when a billow, blown against,
Falls back, the voice with which I fenced
A little ceased, but recommenced.
'Where wert thou when thy father play'd
In his free field, and pastime made,
A merry boy in sun and shade?
'A merry boy they call'd him then,
He sat upon the knees of men
In days that never come again.
'Before the little ducts began
To feed thy bones with lime, and ran
Their course, till thou wert also man:
'Who took a wife, who rear'd his race,
Whose wrinkles gather'd on his face,
Whose troubles number with his days:
'A life of nothings, nothing-worth,
From that first nothing ere his birth
To that last nothing under earth!'
'These words,' I said, 'are like the rest;
No certain clearness, but at best
A vague suspicion of the breast:
'But if I grant, thou mightst defend
The thesis which thy words intend'
That to begin implies to end;
'Yet how should I for certain hold,
Because my memory is so cold,
That I first was in human mould?
'I cannot make this matter plain,
But I would shoot, howe'er in vain,
A random arrow from the brain.
'It may be that no life is found,
Which only to one engine bound
Falls off, but cycles always round.
'As old mythologies relate,
Some draught of Lethe might await
The slipping thro' from state to state.
'As here we find in trances, men
Forget the dream that happens then,
Until they fall in trance again.
'So might we, if our state were such
As one before, remember much,
For those two likes might meet and touch.
'But, if I lapsed from nobler place,
Some legend of a fallen race
Alone might hint of my disgrace;
'Some vague emotion of delight
In gazing up an Alpine height,
Some yeaming toward the lamps of night;
'Or if thro' lower lives I came'
Tho' all experience past became
Consolidate in mind and frame'
'I might forget my weaker lot;
For is not our first year forgot?
The haunts of memory echo not.
'And men, whose reason long was blind,
From cells of madness unconfined,
Oft lose whole years of darker mind.
'Much more, if first I floated free,
As naked essence, must I be
Incompetent of memory:
'For memory dealing but with time,
And he with matter, could she climb
Beyond her own material prime?
'Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams'
'Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.'
The still voice laugh'd. 'I talk,' said he,
'Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee
Thy pain is a reality.'
'But thou,' said I, 'hast missed thy mark,
Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark,
By making all the horizon dark.
'Why not set forth, if I should do
This rashness, that which might ensue
With this old soul in organs new?
'Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly long'd for death.
''Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.'
I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.
Then said the voice, in quiet scorn,
'Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.'
And I arose, and I released
The casement, and the light increased
With freshness in the dawning east.
Like soften'd airs that blowing steal,
When meres begin to uncongeal,
The sweet church bells began to peal.
On to God's house the people prest:
Passing the place where each must rest,
Each enter'd like a welcome guest.
One walk'd between his wife and child,
With measured footfall firm and mild,
And now and then he gravely smiled.
The prudent partner of his blood
Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood.
And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walk'd demure,
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.
These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.
I blest them, and they wander'd on:
I spoke, but answer came there none:
The dull and bitter voice was gone.
A second voice was at mine ear,
A little whisper silver-clear,
A murmur, 'Be of better cheer.'
As from some blissful neighbourhood,
A notice faintly understood,
'I see the end, and know the good.'
A little hint to solace woe,
A hint, a whisper breathing low,
'I may not speak of what I know.'
Like an 'olian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes:
Such seem'd the whisper at my side:
'What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?' I cried.
'A hidden hope,' the voice replied:
So heavenly-toned, that in that hour
From out my sullen heart a power
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,
To feel, altho' no tongue can prove,
That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.
And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
I wonder'd at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers:
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
I wonder'd, while I paced along:
The woods were fill'd so full with song,
There seem'd no room for sense of wrong;
And all so variously wrought,
I marvell'd how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;
And wherefore rather I made choice
To commune with that barren voice,
Than him that said, 'Rejoice! Rejoice!' |
The Journey Starts Swiftly | Vachel Lindsay | A thousand times ten thousand times
More swift than the sun's swift light
Were the Morning Wings in their flight
On - On -
West of the Universe,
Thro' the West
To Chaos-night. |
Mutilation | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | A thick mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat.
I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up.
Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.
I hold the night in horror;
I dare not turn round.
To-night I have left her alone.
They would have it I have left her for ever.
Oh my God, how it aches
Where she is cut off from me!
Perhaps she will go back to England.
Perhaps she will go back,
Perhaps we are parted for ever.
If I go on walking through the whole breadth of Germany
I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.
Over there is Russia - Austria, Switzerland, France, in a circle!
I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.
It aches in me.
What is England or France, far off,
But a name she might take?
I don't mind this continent stretching, the sea far away;
It aches in me for her
Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching;
Not even longing,
It is only agony.
A cripple!
Oh God, to be mutilated!
To be a cripple!
And if I never see her again?
I think, if they told me so
I could convulse the heavens with my horror.
I think I could alter the frame of things in my agony.
I think I could break the System with my heart.
I think, in my convulsion, the skies would break.
She too suffers.
But who could compel her, if she chose me against them all?
She has not chosen me finally, she suspends her choice.
Night folk, Tuatha De Danaan, dark Gods, govern her sleep,
Magnificent ghosts of the darkness, carry off her decision in sleep,
Leave her no choice, make her lapse me-ward, make her,
Oh Gods of the living Darkness, powers of Night.
WOLFRATSHAUSEN |
Beauty | Unknown | A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. |
The Raven, The Gazelle, The Tortoise, And The Rat. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
To Madame De La Sabli're.[2]
A temple I reserved you in my rhyme:
It might not be completed but with time.
Already its endurance I had grounded
Upon this charming art, divinely founded;
And on the name of that divinity
For whom its adoration was to be.
These words I should have written o'er its gate -
TO IRIS IS THIS PALACE CONSECRATE;
Not her who served the queen divine;
For Juno's self, and he who crown'd her bliss,
Had thought it for their dignity, I wis,
To bear the messages of mine.
Within the dome the apotheosis
Should greet th' enraptured sight -
All heaven, in pomp and order meet,
Conducting Iris to her seat
Beneath a canopy of light!
The walls would amply serve to paint her life, -
A matter sweet, indeed, but little rife
In those events, which, order'd by the Fates,
Cause birth, or change, or overthrow of states.
The innermost should hold her image, -
Her features, smiles, attractions there, -
Her art of pleasing without care, -
Her loveliness, that's sure of homage.
Some mortals, kneeling at her feet,[3] -
Earth's noblest heroes, - should be seen;
Ay, demigods, and even gods, I ween:
(The worshipp'd of the world thinks meet,
Sometimes her altar to perfume.)
Her eyes, so far as that might be,
Her soul's rich jewel should illume;
Alas! but how imperfectly!
For could a heart that throbb'd to bless
Its friends with boundless tenderness, -
Or could that heaven-descended mind
Which, in its matchless beauty, join'd
The strength of man with woman's grace, -
Be given to sculptor to express?
O Iris, who canst charm the soul -
Nay, bind it with supreme control, -
Whom as myself I can but love, -
(Nay, not that word: as I'm a man,
Your court has placed it under ban,
And we'll dismiss it,) pray approve
My filling up this hasty plan!
This sketch has here received a place,
A simple anecdote to grace,
Where friendship shows so sweet a face,
That in its features you may find
Somewhat accordant to your mind.
Not that the tale may kings beseem;
But he who winneth your esteem
Is not a monarch placed above
The need and influence of love,
But simple mortal, void of crown,
That would for friends his life lay down -
Than which I know no friendlier act.
Four animals, in league compact,
Are now to give our noble race
A useful lesson in the case.
Rat, raven, tortoise, and gazelle,
Once into firmest friendship fell.
'Twas in a home unknown to man
That they their happiness began.
But safe from man there's no retreat:
Pierce you the loneliest wood,
Or dive beneath the deepest flood,
Or mount you where the eagles brood, -
His secret ambuscade you meet.
The light gazelle, in harmless play,
Amused herself abroad one day,
When, by mischance, her track was found
And follow'd by the baying hound -
That barbarous tool of barbarous man -
From which far, far away she ran.
At meal-time to the others
The rat observed, - 'My brothers,
How happens it that we
Are met to-day but three?
Is Miss Gazelle so little steady?
Hath she forgotten us already?'
Out cried the tortoise at the word, -
'Were I, as Raven is, a bird,
I'd fly this instant from my seat,
And learn what accident, and where,
Hath kept away our sister fair, -
Our sister of the flying feet;
For of her heart, dear rat,
It were a shame to doubt of that.'
The raven flew;
He spied afar, - the face he knew, -
The poor gazelle entangled in a snare,
In anguish vainly floundering there.
Straight back he turn'd, and gave the alarm;
For to have ask'd the sufferer now,
The why and wherefore, when and how,
She had incurr'd so great a harm, -
And lose in vain debate
The turning-point of fate,
As would the master of a school, -
He was by no means such a fool.[4]
On tidings of so sad a pith,
The three their council held forthwith.
By two it was the vote
To hasten to the spot
Where lay the poor gazelle.
'Our friend here in his shell,
I think, will do as well
To guard the house,' the raven said;
'For, with his creeping pace,
When would he reach the place?
Not till the deer were dead.'
Eschewing more debate,
They flew to aid their mate,
That luckless mountain roe.
The tortoise, too, resolved to go.
Behold him plodding on behind,
And plainly cursing in his mind,
The fate that left his legs to lack,
And glued his dwelling to his back.
The snare was cut by Rongemail,
(For so the rat they rightly hail).
Conceive their joy yourself you may.
Just then the hunter came that way,
And, 'Who hath filch'd my prey?'
Cried he, upon the spot
Where now his prey was not. -
A hole hid Rongemail;
A tree the bird as well;
The woods, the free gazelle.
The hunter, well nigh mad,
To find no inkling could be had,
Espied the tortoise in his path,
And straightway check'd his wrath.
'Why let my courage flag,
Because my snare has chanced to miss?
I'll have a supper out of this.'
He said, and put it in his bag.
And it had paid the forfeit so,
Had not the raven told the roe,
Who from her covert came,
Pretending to be lame.
The man, right eager to pursue,
Aside his wallet threw,
Which Rongemail took care
To serve as he had done the snare;
Thus putting to an end
The hunter's supper on his friend.
'Tis thus sage Pilpay's tale I follow.
Were I the ward of golden-hair'd Apollo,
It were, by favour of that god, easy -
And surely for your sake -
As long a tale to make
As is the Iliad or Odyssey.
Grey Rongemail the hero's part should play,
Though each would be as needful in his way.
He of the mansion portable awoke
Sir Raven by the words he spoke,
To act the spy, and then the swift express.
The light gazelle alone had had th' address
The hunter to engage, and furnish time
For Rongemail to do his deed sublime.
Thus each his part perform'd. Which wins the prize?
The heart, so far as in my judgment lies.[5] |
Prehlad. | Toru Dutt | A terror both of gods and men
Was Heerun Kasyapu, the king;
No bear more sullen in its den,
No tiger quicker at the spring.
In strength of limb he had not met,
Since first his black flag he unfurled,
Nor in audacious courage, yet,
His equal in the wide, wide world.
The holy Veds he tore in shreds;
Libations, sacrifices, rites,
He made all penal; and the heads
Of Bramins slain, he flung to kites,
"I hold the sceptre in my hand,
I sit upon the ivory throne,
Bow down to me--'tis my command,
And worship me, and me alone.
"No god has ever me withstood,
Why raise ye altars?--cease your pains!
I shall protect you, give you food,
If ye obey,--or else the chains."
Fled at such edicts, self-exiled,
The Bramins and the pundits wise,
To live thenceforth in forests wild,
Or caves in hills that touch the skies.
In secret there, they altars raised,
And made oblations due by fire,
Their gods, their wonted gods, they praised,
Lest these should earth destroy in ire;
They read the Veds, they prayed and mused,
Full well they knew that Time would bring
For favours scorned, and gifts misused,
Undreamt of changes on his wing.
Time changes deserts bare to meads,
And fertile meads to deserts bare,
Cities to pools, and pools with reeds
To towns and cities large and fair.
Time changes purple into rags,
And rags to purple. Chime by chime,
Whether it flies, or runs, or drags--
The wise wait patiently on Time.
Time brought the tyrant children four,
Rahd, Onoorahd, Prehlad, Sunghrad,
Who made his castle gray and hoar,
Once full of gloom, with sunshine glad.
No boys were e'er more beautiful,
No brothers e'er loved more each other,
No sons were e'er more dutiful,
Nor ever kissed a fonder mother.
Nor less beloved were they of him
Who gave them birth, Kasyapu proud,
But made by nature stern and grim,
His love was covered by a cloud
From which it rarely e'er emerged,
To gladden these sweet human flowers.
They grew apace, and now Time urged
The education of their powers.
Who should their teacher be? A man
Among the flatterers in the court
Was found, well-suited to the plan
The tyrant had devised. Report
Gave him a wisdom owned by few,
And certainly to trim his sail,
And veer his bark, none better knew,
Before a changing adverse gale.
And Sonda Marco,--such his name,--
Took home the four fair boys to teach
All knowledge that their years became,
Science, and war, and modes of speech,
But he was told, if death he feared,
Never to tell them of the soul,
Of vows, and prayers, and rites revered,
And of the gods who all control.
The sciences the boys were taught
They mastered with a quickness strange,
But Prehlad was the one for thought,
He soared above the lesson's range.
One day the tutor unseen heard
The boy discuss forbidden themes,
As if his inmost heart were stirred,
And he of truth from heaven had gleams.
"O Prince, what mean'st thou?" In his fright
The teacher thus in private said--
"Talk on such subjects is not right,
Wouldst thou bring ruin on my head?
There are no gods except the king,
The ruler of the world is he!
Look up to him, and do not bring
Destruction by a speech too free.
"Be wary for thy own sake, child,
If he should hear thee talking so,
Thou shalt for ever be exiled,
And I shall die, full well I know.
Worthy of worship, honour, praise,
Is thy great father. Things unseen,
What are they?--Themes of poets' lays!
They are not and have never been."
Smiling, the boy, with folded hands,
As sign of a submission meek,
Answered his tutor. "Thy commands
Are ever precious. Do not seek
To lay upon me what I feel
Would be unrighteous. Let me hear
Those inner voices that reveal
Long vistas in another sphere.
"The gods that rule the earth and sea,
Shall I abjure them and adore
A man? It may not, may not be;
Though I should lie in pools of gore
My conscience I would hurt no more;
But I shall follow what my heart
Tells me is right, so I implore
My purpose fixed no longer thwart.
"The coward calls black white, white black,
At bidding, or in fear of death;
Such suppleness, thank God, I lack,
To die is but to lose my breath.
Is death annihilation? No.
New worlds will open on my view,
When persecuted hence I go,
The right is right,--the true is true."
All's over now, the teacher thought,
Now let this reach the monarch's ear!
And instant death shall be my lot.
They parted, he in abject fear.
And soon he heard a choral song
Sung by young voices in the praise
Of gods unseen, who right all wrong,
And rule the worlds from primal days.
"What progress have thy charges made?
Let them be called, that I may see."
And Sonda Marco brought as bade
His pupils to the royal knee.
Three passed the monarch's test severe,
The fourth remained: then spake the king,
"Now, Prehlad, with attention hear,
I know thou hast the strongest wing!
"What is the cream of knowledge, child,
Which men take such great pains to learn?"
With folded hands he answered mild:
"Listen, O Sire! To speak I yearn.
All sciences are nothing worth,--
Astronomy that tracks the star,
Geography that maps the earth,
Logic, and Politics, and War,--
"And Medicine, that strives to heal
But only aggravates disease,
All, all are futile,--so I feel,
For me, O father, none of these.
That is true knowledge which can show
The glory of the living gods,--
Divest of pride, make men below
Humble and happy, though but clods.
"That is true knowledge which can make
Us mortals, saintlike, holy, pure,
The strange thirst of the spirit slake
And strengthen suffering to endure.
That is true knowledge which can change
Our very natures, with its glow;
The sciences whate'er their range
Feed but the flesh, and make a show."
"Where hast thou learnt this nonsense, boy?
Where live these gods believed so great?
Can they like me thy life destroy?
Have they such troops and royal state?
Above all gods is he who rules
The wide, wide earth, from sea to sea,
Men, devils, gods,--yea, all but fools
Bow down in fear and worship me!
"And dares an atom from my loins
Against my kingly power rebel?
Though heaven itself to aid him joins,
His end is death--the infidel!
I warn thee yet,--bow down, thou slave,
And worship me, or thou shalt die!
We'll see what gods descend to save--
What gods with me their strength will try!"
Thus spake the monarch in his ire,
One hand outstretched, in menace rude,
And eyes like blazing coals of fire.
And Prehlad, in unruffled mood
Straight answered him; his head bent low,
His palms joined meekly on his breast
As ever, and his cheeks aglow
His rock-firm purpose to attest.
"Let not my words, Sire, give offence,
To thee, and to my mother, both
I give as due all reverence,
And to obey thee am not loth.
But higher duties sometimes clash
With lower,--then these last must go,--
Or there will come a fearful crash
In lamentation, fear, and woe!
"The gods who made us are the life
Of living creatures, small and great;
We see them not, but space is rife
With their bright presence and their state.
They are the parents of us all,
'Tis they create, sustain, redeem,
Heaven, earth and hell, they hold in thrall,
And shall we these high gods blaspheme?
"Blest is the man whose heart obeys
And makes their law of life his guide,
He shall be led in all his ways,
His footsteps shall not ever slide;
In forests dim, on raging seas,
In certain peace shall he abide,
What though he all the world displease,
His gods shall all his wants provide!"
"Cease, babbler! 'tis enough! I know
Thy proud, rebellious nature well.
Ho! Captain of our lifeguards, ho!
Take down this lad to dungeon-cell,
And bid the executioner wait
Our orders." All unmoved and calm,
He went, as reckless of his fate,
Erect and stately as a palm.
Hushed was the hall, as down he past,
No breath, no whisper, not a sign,
Through ranks of courtiers, all aghast
Like beaten hounds that dare not whine.
Outside the door, the Captain spoke,
"Recant," he said beneath his breath;
"The lion's anger to provoke
Is death, O prince, is certain death."
"Thanks," said the prince,--"I have revolved
The question in my mind with care,
Do what you will,--I am resolved,
To do the right, all deaths I dare.
The gods, perhaps, may please to spare
My tender years; if not,--why, still
I never shall my faith forswear,
I can but say, be done their will."
Whether in pity for the youth,
The headsman would not rightly ply
The weapon, or the gods in truth
Had ordered that he should not die,
Soon to the king there came report
The sword would not destroy his son,
The council held thereon was short,
The king's look frightened every one.
"There is a spell against cold steel
Which known, the steel can work no harm,
Some sycophant with baneful zeal
Hath taught this foolish boy the charm.
It would be wise, O king, to deal
Some other way, or else I fear
Much damage to the common weal."
Thus spake the wily-tongued vizier.
Dark frowned the king.--"Enough of this,--
Death, instant death, is my command!
Go throw him down some precipice,
Or bury him alive in sand."
With terror dumb, from that wide hall
Departed all the courtier band,
But not one man amongst them all
Dared raise against the prince his hand.
And now vague rumours ran around,
Men talked of them with bated breath:
The river has a depth profound,
The elephants trample down to death,
The poisons kill, the firebrands burn.
Had every means in turn been tried?
Some said they had,--but soon they learn
The brave young prince had not yet died.
For once more in the Council-Hall
He had been cited to appear,
'Twas open to the public all,
And all the people came in fear.
Banners were hung along the wall,
The King sat on his peacock throne,
And now the hoary Marechal
Brings in the youth,--bare skin and bone.
"Who shall protect thee, Prehlad, now?
Against steel, poison, water, fire,
Thou art protected, men avow
Who treason, if but bold, admire.
In our own presence thou art brought
That we and all may know the truth--
Where are thy gods?--I long have sought
But never found them, hapless youth.
"Will they come down, to prove their strength?
Will they come down, to rescue thee?
Let them come down, for once, at length,
Come one, or all, to fight with me.
Where are thy gods? Or are they dead,
Or do they hide in craven fear?
There lies my gage. None ever said
I hide from any,--far or near."
"My gracious Liege, my Sire, my King!
If thou indeed wouldst deign to hear,
In humble mood, my words would spring
Like a pellucid fountain clear,
For I have in my dungeon dark
Learnt more of truth than e'er I knew,
There is one God--One only,--mark!
To Him is all our service due.
"Hath He a shape, or hath He none?
I know not this, nor care to know,
Dwelling in light, to which the sun
Is darkness,--He sees all below,
Himself unseen! In Him I trust,
He can protect me if He will,
And if this body turn to dust,
He can new life again instil.
"I fear not fire, I fear not sword,
All dangers, father, I can dare;
Alone, I can confront a horde,
For oh! my God is everywhere!"
"What! everywhere? Then in this hall,
And in this crystal pillar bright?
Now tell me plain, before us all,
Is He herein, thy God of light?"
The monarch placed his steel-gloved hand
Upon a crystal pillar near,
In mockful jest was his demand,
The answer came, low, serious, clear:
"Yes, father, God is even here,
And if He choose this very hour
Can strike us dead, with ghastly fear,
And vindicate His name and power."
"Where is this God? Now let us see."
He spumed the pillar with his foot,
Down, down it tumbled, like a tree
Severed by axes from the root,
And from within, with horrid clang
That froze the blood in every vein,
A stately sable warrior sprang,
Like some phantasma of the brain.
He had a lion head and eyes,
A human body, feet and hands,
Colossal,--such strange shapes arise
In clouds, when Autumn rules the lands!
He gave a shout;--the boldest quailed,
Then struck the tyrant on the helm,
And ripped him down; and last, he hailed
Prehlad as king of all the realm!
A thunder clap--the shape was gone!
One king lay stiff, and stark, and dead,
Another on the peacock throne
Bowed reverently his youthful head.
Loud rang the trumpets; louder still
A sovereign people's wild acclaim.
The echoes ran from hill to hill,
"Kings rule for us and in our name."
Tyrants of every age and clime
Remember this,--that awful shape
Shall startle you when comes the time,
And send its voice from cape to cape.
As human, peoples suffer pain,
But oh, the lion strength is theirs,
Woe to the king when galls the chain!
Woe, woe, their fury when he dares! |
The Light That Is Felt | John Greenleaf Whittier | A tender child of summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly.
"Oh, mother! Take my hand," said she,
"And then the dark will all be light."
We older children grope our way
From dark behind to dark before;
And only when our hands we lay,
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days
Wherein our guides are blind as we,
And faith is small and hope delays;
Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,
And let us feel the light of Thee |
Calais Sands | Matthew Arnold | A thousand knights have rein'd their steeds
To watch this line of sand-hills run,
Along the never silent Strait,
To Calais glittering in the sun:
To look toward Ardres' Golden Field
Across this wide a'rial plain,
Which glows as if the Middle Age
Were gorgeous upon earth again.
Oh, that to share this famous scene
I saw, upon the open sand,
Thy lovely presence at my side,
Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand!
How exquisite thy voice would come,
My darling, on this lonely air!
How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze
Shake loose some lock of soft brown hair!
But now my glance but once hath roved
O'er Calais and its famous plain;
To England's cliffs my gaze is turn'd,
O'er the blue Strait mine eyes I strain.
Thou comest! Yes, the vessel's cloud
Hangs dark upon the rolling sea!
Oh that yon seabird's wings were mine
To win one instant's glimpse of thee!
I must not spring to grasp thy hand,
To woo thy smile, to seek thine eye;
But I may stand far off, and gaze,
And watch thee pass unconscious by,
And spell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts,
Mixt with the idlers on the pier.
Ah, might I always rest unseen,
So I might have thee always near!
To-morrow hurry through the fields
Of Flanders to the storied Rhine!
To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close
Beneath one roof, my queen! with mine. |
The Cat And The Thrush. | Jean de La Fontaine | A thrush that sang one rustic ode
Once made a garden his abode,
And gave the owner such delight,
He grew a special favourite.
Indeed, his landlord did his best
To make him safe from every foe;
The ground about his lowly nest
Was undisturb'd by spade or hoe.
And yet his song was still the same;
It even grew somewhat more tame.
At length Grimalkin spied the pet,
Resolved that he should suffer yet,
And laid his plan of devastation
So as to save his reputation;
For, in the house, from looks demure,
He pass'd for honest, kind, and pure.
Professing search of mice and moles,
He through the garden daily strolls,
And never seeks our thrush to catch;
But when his consort comes to hatch,
Just eats the young ones in a batch.
The sadness of the pair bereaved
Their generous guardian sorely grieved.
But yet it could not be believed
His faithful cat was in the wrong,
Though so the thrush said in his song.
The cat was therefore favour'd still
To walk the garden at his will;
And hence the birds, to shun the pest,
Upon a pear-tree built their nest.
Though there it cost them vastly more,
'Twas vastly better than before.
And Gaffer Thrush directly found
His throat, when raised above the ground,
Gave forth a softer, sweeter sound.
New tunes, moreover, he had caught,
By perils and afflictions taught,
And found new things to sing about:
New scenes had brought new talents out.
So, while, improved beyond a doubt,
His own old song more clearly rang,
Far better than themselves he sang
The chants and trills of other birds;
He even mock'd Grimalkin's words
With such delightful humour that
He gain'd the Christian name of Cat.
Let Genius tell in verse and prose.
How much to praise and friends it owes.
Good sense may be, as I suppose,
As much indebted to its foes. |
On The Arms Of The Town Of Waterford[1] | Jonathan Swift | - URBS INTACTA MANET - semper intacta manebit,
Tangere crabrones quis bene sanus amat?
TRANSLATION
A thistle is the Scottish arms,
Which to the toucher threatens harms,
What are the arms of Waterford,
That no man touches - but a - - ? |
The Libertine | Aphra Behn | A thousand martyrs I have made,
All sacrificed to my desire,
A thousand beauties have betray'd
That languish in resistless fire:
The untamed heart to hand I brought,
And fix'd the wild and wand'ring thought.
I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain,
But both, tho' false, were well received;
The fair are pleased to give us pain,
And what they wish is soon believed:
And tho' I talk'd of wounds and smart,
Love's pleasures only touch'd my heart.
Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs without pain or toil,
Without the hell the heaven of joy;
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the fools that whine for love. |
The Disconcerted Tenor | William Schwenck Gilbert | A tenor, all singers above
(This doesn't admit of a question),
Should keep himself quiet,
Attend to his diet,
And carefully nurse his digestion.
But when he is madly in love,
It's certain to tell on his singing -
You can't do chromatics
With proper emphatics
When anguish your bosom is wringing!
When distracted with worries in plenty,
And his pulse is a hundred and twenty,
And his fluttering bosom the slave of mistrust is,
A tenor can't do himself justice.
Now observe - (SINGS A HIGH NOTE) -
You see, I can't do myself justice!
I could sing, if my fervour were mock,
It's easy enough if you're acting,
But when one's emotion
Is born of devotion,
You mustn't be over-exacting.
One ought to be firm as a rock
To venture a shake in VIBRATO;
When fervour's expected,
Keep cool and collected,
Or never attempt AGITATO.
But, of course, when his tongue is of leather,
And his lips appear pasted together,
And his sensitive palate as dry as a crust is,
A tenor can't do himself justice.
Now observe - (SINGS A CADENCE) -
It's no use - I can't do myself justice! |
St. Gregory's Guest | John Greenleaf Whittier | A tale for Roman guides to tell
To careless, sight-worn travellers still,
Who pause beside the narrow cell
Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill.
One day before the monk's door came
A beggar, stretching empty palms,
Fainting and fast-sick, in the name
Of the Most Holy asking alms.
And the monk answered, "All I have
In this poor cell of mine I give,
The silver cup my mother gave;
In Christ's name take thou it, and live."
Years passed; and, called at last to bear
The pastoral crook and keys of Rome,
The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair,
Sat the crowned lord of Christendom.
"Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried,
"And let twelve beggars sit thereat."
The beggars came, and one beside,
An unknown stranger, with them sat.
"I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake,
"O stranger; but if need be thine,
I bid thee welcome, for the sake
Of Him who is thy Lord and mine."
A grave, calm face the stranger raised,
Like His who on Gennesaret trod,
Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed,
Whose form was as the Son of God.
"Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?"
And in the hand he lifted up
The Pontiff marvelled to behold
Once more his mother's silver cup.
"Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom
Sweetly among the flowers of heaven.
I am The Wonderful, through whom
Whate'er thou askest shall be given."
He spake and vanished. Gregory fell
With his twelve guests in mute accord
Prone on their faces, knowing well
Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord.
The old-time legend is not vain;
Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul,
Telling it o'er and o'er again
On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall.
Still wheresoever pity shares
Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin,
And love the beggar's feast prepares,
The uninvited Guest comes in.
Unheard, because our ears are dull,
Unseen, because our eyes are dim,
He walks our earth, The Wonderful,
And all good deeds are done to Him |
Before Life And After | Thomas Hardy | A time there was - as one may guess
And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell -
Before the birth of consciousness,
When all went well.
None suffered sickness, love, or loss,
None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;
None cared whatever crash or cross
Brought wrack to things.
If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,
If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,
No sense was stung.
But the disease of feeling germed,
And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
How long, how long? |
The Death Of Euclid | R. C. Lehmann | "Euclid, we are told, is at last dead, after two thousand years of an immortality that he never much deserved." - The Times Literary Supplement.
A THRENODY for EUCLID! This is he
Who with his learning made our youth a waste,
Holding our souls in fee;
A god whose high-set crystal throne was based
Beyond the reach of tears,
Deeper than time and his relentless years!
Come then, ye Angle-Nymphs, and make lament;
Ye little Postulates, and all the throng
Of Definitions, with your heads besprent
In funeral ashes, ye who long
Worshipped the King and followed in his train;
For he is dead and cannot rise again.
Then from the shapes that beat their breasts and wept,
Soft to the light a gentle Problem stepped,
And, lo, her clinging robe she swiftly loosed
And with majestic hands her side produced:
"Sweet Theorem," she said, and called her mate,
"Sweet Theorem, be with me at this hour.
How oft together in a dear debate
We two bore witness to our Sovereign's power.
But he is dead and henceforth all our days
Are wrapped in gloom,
And we who never ceased to sing his praise
May weep our lord, but cannot call him from his tomb."
And, as they bowed their heads and to and fro
Wove in a mournful gait their web of woe,
Two sentinels forth came,
Their hearts aflame,
And moved behind the pair:
"Warders we are," they cried,
"Of these two sisters who were once so fair,
So joyous in their pride."
And now their massy shields they lifted high,
Embossed with letters three,
And, though a mist of tears bedimmed each eye,
The sorrowing Nymphs could see
Q., E. and F. on one, and on the other Q. E. D.
But on a sudden, with a hideous noise
Of joy and laughter rushed a rout of boys;
And all the mourners in affright
Scattered to left and right.
Problems and Theorems and Angles too,
Postulates, Definitions, Circles, Planes,
A jibbering crew,
With all their hoary gains
Of knowledge, from their monarch dead
Into the outer darkness shrieking fled.
And now with festal dance and laughter loud
Broke in the boyish and intruding crowd;
Nor did they fail,
Seeing that all the painful throng was sped,
To let high mirth prevail,
And raise the song of joy for EUCLID dead. |
The Ancient Sage | Alfred Lord Tennyson | A thousand summers ere the time of Christ
From out his ancient city came a Seer
Whom one that loved, and honour'd him, and yet
Was no disciple, richly garb'd, but worn
From wasteful living, follow'd'in his hand
A scroll of verse'till that old man before
A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour'd
From darkness into daylight, turn'd and spoke.
This wealth of waters might but seem to draw
From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher,
Yon summit half-a-league in air'and higher,
The cloud that hides it'higher still, the heavens
Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout
The cloud descended. Force is from the heights.
I am wearied of our city, son, and go
To spend my one last year among the hills.
What hast thou there? Some deathsong for the Ghouls
To make their banquet relish? let me read.
'How far thro' all the bloom and brake
That nightingale is heard!
What power but the bird's could make
This music in the bird?
How summer-bright are yonder skies,
And earth as fair in lute!
And yet what sign of aught that lies
Behind the green and blue?
But man to-day is fancy's fool
As man hath ever been.
The nameless Power, or Powers, that rule
Were never heard or seen.'
If thou would'st hear the Nameless, and wilt dive
Into the Temple-cave of thine own self,
There, brooding by the central altar, thou
May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice,
By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise,
As if thou knewest, tho' thou canst not know;
For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm,
The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within
The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth,
And in the million-millionth of a grain
Which cleft and cleft again for evermore,
And ever vanishing, never vanishes,
To me, my son, more mystic than myself,
Or even than the Nameless is to me.
And when thou sendest thy free soul thro' heaven,
Nor understandest bound nor boundlessness,
Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred names.
And if the Nameless should withdraw from all
Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world
Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark.
'And since'from when this earth began'
The Nameless never came
Among us, never spake with man,
And never named the Name''
Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal'nay my son,
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No,'
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'!
'What Power? aught akin to Mind,
The mind in me and you?
Or power as of the Gods gone blind
Who see not what they do?'
But some in yonder city hold, my son,
That none but Gods could build this house of ours,
So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond
All work of man, yet, like all work of man,
A beauty with defect''till That which knows,
And is not known, but felt thro' what we feel
Within ourselves is highest, shall descend
On this half-deed, and shape it at the last
According to the Highest in the Highest.
'What Power but the Years that make
And break the vase of clay,
And stir the sleeping earth, and wake
The bloom that fades away?
What rulers but the Days and Hours
That cancel weal with woe,
And wind the front of youth with flowers,
And cap our age with snow?'
The days and hours are ever glancing by,
And seem to flicker past thro' sun and shade,
Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain;
But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour;
Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought,
Break into 'Thens' and 'Whens' the Eternal Now
This double seeming of the single world!'
My words are like the babblings in a dream
Of nightmare, when the habblings break the dream.
But thou be wise in this dream-world of ours,
Nor take thy dial for thy deity,
But make the passing shadow serve thy will.
'The years that made the stripling wise
Undo their work again,
And leave him, blind of heart and eyes,
The last and least of men;
Who clings to earth, and once would dare
Hell-heat or Arctic cold,
And now one breath of cooler air
Would loose him from his hold;
His winter chills him to the root,
He withers marrow and mind;
The kernel of the shrivell'd fruit
Is jutting thro' the rind;
The tiger spasms tear his chest,
The palsy wags his head;
The wife, the sons, who love him best
Would fain that he were dead;
The griefs by which he once was wrung
Were never worth the while''
Who knows? or whether this earth-narrow life
Be yet but yolk, and forming in the shell
'The shaft of scorn that once had stung
But wakes a dotard smile.'
The placid gleams of sunset after storm!
'The statesman's brain that sway'd the past
Is feebler than his knees;
The passive sailor wrecks at last
In ever-silent seas;
The warrior hath forgot his arms,
The Learned all his lore;
The changing market frets or charms
The merchant's hope no more;
The prophet's beacon burn'd in vain,
And now is lost in cloud;
The plowman passes, bent with pain,
To mix with what he plow'd;
The poet whom his Age would quote
As heir of endless fame'
He knows not ev'n the book he wrote,
Not even his own name.
For man has overlived his day,
And, darkening in the light,
Scarce feels the senses break away
To mix with ancient Night.'
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
'The years that when my Youth began
Had set the lily and rose
By all my ways where'er they ran,
Have ended mortal foes;
My rose of love for ever gone,
My lily of truth and trust'
They made her lily and rose in one,
And changed her into dust.
O rosetree planted in my grief,
And growing, on her tomb,
Her dust is greening in your leaf,
Her blood is in your bloom.
O slender lily waving there,
And laughing back the light,
In vain you tell me 'Earth is fair'
When all is dark as night.'
My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves,
So dark that men cry out against the Heavens.
Who knows but that the darkness is in man?
The doors of Night may be the gates of Light;
For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then
Suddenly heal'd, how would'st thou glory in all
The splendours and the voices of the world!
And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet
No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore
Await the last and largest sense to make
The phantom walls of this illusion fade,
And show us that the world is wholly fair.
'But vain the tears for darken'd years
As laughter over wine,
And vain the laughter as the tears,
O brother, mine or thine,
For all that laugh, and all that weep
And all that breathe are one
Slight ripple on the boundless deep
That moves, and all is gone.'
But that one ripple on the boundless deep
Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself
For ever changing form, but evermore
One with the boundless motion of the deep.
'Yet wine and laughter friends! and set
The lamps alight, and call
For golden music, and forget
The darkness of the pall.'
If utter darkness closed the day, my son''
But earth's dark forehead flings athwart the heavens
Her shadow crown'd with stars'and yonder'out
To northward'some that never set, but pass
From sight and night to lose themselves in day.
I hate the black negation of the bier,
And wish the dead, as happier than ourselves
And higher, having climb'd one step beyond
Our village miseries, might be borne in white
To burial or to burning, hymn'd from hence
With songs in praise of death, and crown'd with flowers!
'O worms and maggots of to-day
Without their hope of wings!'
But louder than thy rhyme the silent Word
Of that world-prophet in the heart of man.
'Tho' some have gleams or so they say
Of more than mortal things.'
To-day? but what of yesterday? for oft
On me, when boy, there came what then I call'd,
Who knew no books and no philosophies,
In my boy-phrase 'The Passion of the Past.'
The first gray streak of earliest summer-dawn,
The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom,
As if the late and early were but one'
A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower
Had murmurs 'Lost and gone and lost and gone!'
A breath, a whisper'some divine farewell'
Desolate sweetness'far and far away'
What had he loved, what had he lost, the boy?
I know not and I speak of what has been.
And more, my son! for more than once when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And past into the Nameless, as a cloud
Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs
Were strange not mine'and yet no shade of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self
The gain of such large life as match'd with ours
Were Sun to spark'unshadowable in words,
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.
'And idle gleams will come and go,
But still the clouds remain;'
The clouds themselves are children of the Sun.
'And Night and Shadow rule below
When only Day should reign.'
And Day and Night are children of the Sun,
And idle gleams to thee are light to me.
Some say, the Light was father of the Night,
And some, the Night was father of the Light,
No night no day!'I touch thy world again'
No ill no good! such counter-terms, my son,
Are border-races, holding, each its own
By endless war: but night enough is there
In yon dark city: get thee back: and since
The key to that weird casket, which for thee
But holds a skull, is neither thine nor mine,
But in the hand of what is more than man,
Or in man's hand when man is more than man,
Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men,
And make thy gold thy vassal not thy king,
And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl,
And send the day into the darken'd heart;
Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men,
A dying echo from a falling wall;
Nor care'for Hunger hath the Evil eye'
To vex the noon with fiery gems, or fold
Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous looms;
Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue,
Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine;
Nor thou he rageful, like a handled bee,
And lose thy life by usage of thy sting;
Nor harm an adder thro' the lust for harm,
Nor make a snail's horn shrink for wantonness;
And more'think well! Do-well will follow thought,
And in the fatal sequence of this world
An evil thought may soil thy children's blood;
But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire,
And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness
A cloud between the Nameless and thyself,
And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel,
And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou
Look higher, then'perchance'thou mayest'beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,
And past the range of Night and Shadow'see
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day
Strike on the Mount of Vision!
So, farewell. |
Endymion: Book I | John Keats | A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.
Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own vallies: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.
Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots
Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,
Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep
A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every nightfall went.
Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever,
That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
From the white flock, but pass'd unworried
By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,
Until it came to some unfooted plains
Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains
Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
To a wide lawn, whence one could only see
Stems thronging all around between the swell
Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,
Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.
Full in the middle of this pleasantness
There stood a marble altar, with a tress
Of flowers budded newly; and the dew
Had taken fairy phantasies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.
Now while the silent workings of the dawn
Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
A troop of little children garlanded;
Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy
Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were sated
With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then
Fill'd out its voice, and died away again.
Within a little space again it gave
Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,
To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking
Through copse-clad vallies, ere their death, oer-taking
The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.
And now, as deep into the wood as we
Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light
Fair faces and a rush of garments white,
Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last
Into the widest alley they all past,
Making directly for the woodland altar.
O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter
In telling of this goodly company,
Of their old piety, and of their glee:
But let a portion of ethereal dew
Fall on my head, and presently unmew
My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,
To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.
Leading the way, young damsels danced along,
Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;
Each having a white wicker over brimm'd
With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd,
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'er-flowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly:
Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound
With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,
Now coming from beneath the forest trees,
A venerable priest full soberly,
Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye
Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,
And after him his sacred vestments swept.
From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,
Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;
And in his left he held a basket full
Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:
Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still
Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill.
His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,
Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth
Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud
Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,
Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd
Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar
The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:
Who stood therein did seem of great renown
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown;
And, for those simple times, his garments were
A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare,
Was hung a silver bugle, and between
His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.
A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd,
To common lookers on, like one who dream'd
Of idleness in groves Elysian:
But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,
And see that oftentimes the reins would slip
Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,
And think of yellow leaves, of owlets cry,
Of logs piled solemnly. Ah, well-a-day,
Why should our young Endymion pine away!
Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd,
Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd
To sudden veneration: women meek
Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek
Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear.
Endymion too, without a forest peer,
Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,
Among his brothers of the mountain chase.
In midst of all, the venerable priest
Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least,
And, after lifting up his aged hands,
Thus spake he: "Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!
Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:
Whether descended from beneath the rocks
That overtop your mountains; whether come
From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;
Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs
Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge
Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge,
Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn
By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn:
Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare
The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;
And all ye gentle girls who foster up
Udderless lambs, and in a little cup
Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:
Yea, every one attend! for in good truth
Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.
Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than
Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains
Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains
Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad
Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had
Great bounty from Endymion our lord.
The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd
His early song against yon breezy sky,
That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity."
Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod
With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light
Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:
"O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds
In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx do thou now,
By thy love's milky brow!
By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan!
"O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,
What time thou wanderest at eventide
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom
Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees
Their golden honeycombs; our village leas
Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn;
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries
Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies
Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year
All its completions be quickly near,
By every wind that nods the mountain pine,
O forester divine!
"Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the crown
With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown
By all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, O satyr king!
"O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,
While ever and anon to his shorn peers
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn
Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge see,
Great son of Dryope,
The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!
Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal a new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between;
An unknown but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,
Upon thy Mount Lycean!
Even while they brought the burden to a close,
A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That lingered in the air like dying rolls
Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals
Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.
Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,
Young companies nimbly began dancing
To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.
Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly
To tunes forgotten out of memory:
Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred
Thermopyl' its heroes not yet dead,
But in old marbles ever beautiful.
High genitors, unconscious did they cull
Time's sweet first-fruits they danc'd to weariness,
And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
Of some strange history, potent to send
A young mind from its bodily tenement.
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him, Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
The archers too, upon a wider plain,
Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,
And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft
Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,
Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope
Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee
And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,
Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young
Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue
Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,
And very, very deadliness did nip
Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood
By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd,
Uplifting his strong bow into the air,
Many might after brighter visions stare:
After the Argonauts, in blind amaze
Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways,
Until, from the horizon's vaulted side,
There shot a golden splendour far and wide,
Spangling those million poutings of the brine
With quivering ore: 'twas even an awful shine
From the exaltation of Apollo's bow;
A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.
Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,
Might turn their steps towards the sober ring
Where sat Endymion and the aged priest
'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd
The silvery setting of their mortal star.
There they discours'd upon the fragile bar
That keeps us from our homes ethereal;
And what our duties there: to nightly call
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;
To summon all the downiest clouds together
For the sun's purple couch; to emulate
In ministring the potent rule of fate
With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;
To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
A world of other unguess'd offices.
Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,
Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse
Each one his own anticipated bliss.
One felt heart-certain that he could not miss
His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs,
Where every zephyr-sigh pouts and endows
Her lips with music for the welcoming.
Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring,
To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,
Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:
Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,
And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;
And, ever after, through those regions be
His messenger, his little Mercury.
Some were athirst in soul to see again
Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign
In times long past; to sit with them, and talk
Of all the chances in their earthly walk;
Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores
Of happiness, to when upon the moors,
Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,
And shar'd their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told
Their fond imaginations, saving him
Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim,
Endymion: yet hourly had he striven
To hide the cankering venom, that had riven
His fainting recollections. Now indeed
His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed
The sudden silence, or the whispers low,
Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,
Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,
Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms:
But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,
Like one who on the earth had never stept.
Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,
Frozen in that old tale Arabian.
Who whispers him so pantingly and close?
Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,
His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,
And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade
A yielding up, a cradling on her care.
Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
Along a path between two little streams,
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow
From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;
Until they came to where these streamlets fall,
With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
A little shallop, floating there hard by,
Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;
And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,
And dipt again, with the young couple's weight,
Peona guiding, through the water straight,
Towards a bowery island opposite;
Which gaining presently, she steered light
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,
Where nested was an arbour, overwove
By many a summer's silent fingering;
To whose cool bosom she was used to bring
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
And minstrel memories of times gone by.
So she was gently glad to see him laid
Under her favourite bower's quiet shade,
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves
When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,
And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took.
Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:
But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest
Peona's busy hand against his lips,
And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips
In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps
A patient watch over the stream that creeps
Windingly by it, so the quiet maid
Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade
Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling
Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling
Among seer leaves and twigs, might all be heard.
O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfin'd
Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key
To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantment! who, upfurl'd
Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,
But renovates and lives? Thus, in the bower,
Endymion was calm'd to life again.
Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,
He said: "I feel this thine endearing love
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
Such morning incense from the fields of May,
As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray
From those kind eyes, the very home and haunt
Of sisterly affection. Can I want
Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears?
Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears
That, any longer, I will pass my days
Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise
My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more
Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:
Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll
Around the breathed boar: again I'll poll
The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow:
And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,
Again I'll linger in a sloping mead
To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed
Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet,
And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat
My soul to keep in its resolved course."
Hereat Peona, in their silver source,
Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim,
And took a lute, from which there pulsing came
A lively prelude, fashioning the way
In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay
More subtle cadenced, more forest wild
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;
And nothing since has floated in the air
So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare
Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand;
For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd
The quick invisible strings, even though she saw
Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw
Before the deep intoxication.
But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon
Her self-possession swung the lute aside,
And earnestly said: "Brother, 'tis vain to hide
That thou dost know of things mysterious,
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?
Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,
Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen
Her naked limbs among the alders green;
And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace
Something more high perplexing in thy face!"
Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand,
And said, "Art thou so pale, who wast so bland
And merry in our meadows? How is this?
Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!
Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change
Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange?
Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?
Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize,
That toiling years would put within my grasp,
That I have sigh'd for: with so deadly gasp
No man e'er panted for a mortal love.
So all have set my heavier grief above
These things which happen. Rightly have they done:
I, who still saw the horizontal sun
Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world,
Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd
My spear aloft, as signal for the chace
I, who, for very sport of heart, would race
With my own steed from Araby; pluck down
A vulture from his towery perching; frown
A lion into growling, loth retire
To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,
And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast
Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.
"This river does not see the naked sky,
Till it begins to progress silverly
Around the western border of the wood,
Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood
Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:
And in that nook, the very pride of June,
Had I been used to pass my weary eves;
The rather for the sun unwilling leaves
So dear a picture of his sovereign power,
And I could witness his most kingly hour,
When he doth lighten up the golden reins,
And paces leisurely down amber plains
His snorting four. Now when his chariot last
Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,
There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed
Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:
At which I wondered greatly, knowing well
That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;
And, sitting down close by, began to muse
What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,
In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;
Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook
Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,
Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth
Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,
Until my head was dizzy and distraught.
Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole
A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;
And shaping visions all about my sight
Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;
The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,
And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim:
And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell
The enchantment that afterwards befel?
Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream
That never tongue, although it overteem
With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,
Could figure out and to conception bring
All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay
Watching the zenith, where the milky way
Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;
And travelling my eye, until the doors
Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight,
I became loth and fearful to alight
From such high soaring by a downward glance:
So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,
Spreading imaginary pinions wide.
When, presently, the stars began to glide,
And faint away, before my eager view:
At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue,
And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge;
And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge
The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er
A shell for Neptune's goblet: she did soar
So passionately bright, my dazzled soul
Commingling with her argent spheres did roll
Through clear and cloudy, even when she went
At last into a dark and vapoury tent
Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train
Of planets all were in the blue again.
To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd
My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed
By a bright something, sailing down apace,
Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:
Again I look'd, and, O ye deities,
Who from Olympus watch our destinies!
Whence that completed form of all completeness?
Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?
Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O Where
Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?
Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;
Not thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun
Such follying before thee yet she had,
Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;
And they were simply gordian'd up and braided,
Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;
The which were blended in, I know not how,
With such a paradise of lips and eyes,
Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,
That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings
And plays about its fancy, till the stings
Of human neighbourhood envenom all.
Unto what awful power shall I call?
To what high fane? Ah! see her hovering feet,
More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose
From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;
'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million
Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,
Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,
Handfuls of daisies." "Endymion, how strange!
Dream within dream!" "She took an airy range,
And then, towards me, like a very maid,
Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,
And press'd me by the hand: Ah! 'twas too much;
Methought I fainted at the charmed touch,
Yet held my recollection, even as one
Who dives three fathoms where the waters run
Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,
I felt upmounted in that region
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,
And eagles struggle with the buffeting north
That balances the heavy meteor-stone;
Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,
But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky.
Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high,
And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd;
Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd
Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side:
There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd
To faint once more by looking on my bliss
I was distracted; madly did I kiss
The wooing arms which held me, and did give
My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to live,
To take in draughts of life from the gold fount
Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count
The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd
A second self, that each might be redeem'd
And plunder'd of its load of blessedness.
Ah, desperate mortal! I ev'n dar'd to press
Her very cheek against my crowned lip,
And, at that moment, felt my body dip
Into a warmer air: a moment more,
Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store
Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes
A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,
Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells,
Made delicate from all white-flower bells;
And once, above the edges of our nest,
An arch face peep'd, an Oread as I guess'd.
"Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me
In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,
Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,
And stare them from me? But no, like a spark
That needs must die, although its little beam
Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream
Fell into nothing into stupid sleep.
And so it was, until a gentle creep,
A careful moving caught my waking ears,
And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,
My clenched hands; for lo! the poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
Had chidden herald Hesperus away,
With leaden looks: the solitary breeze
Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did teaze
With wayward melancholy; and r thought,
Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought
Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!
Away I wander'd all the pleasant hues
Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades
Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades
Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills
Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills
Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown
In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown
Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird
Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd
In little journeys, I beheld in it
A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit
My soul with under darkness; to entice
My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:
Therefore I eager followed, and did curse
The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,
Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!
These things, with all their comfortings, are given
To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,
Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea
Of weary life."
Thus ended he, and both
Sat silent: for the maid was very loth
To answer; feeling well that breathed words
Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords
Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps
Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,
And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;
To put on such a look as would say, Shame
On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,
She could as soon have crush'd away the life
From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause,
She said with trembling chance: "Is this the cause?
This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!
That one who through this middle earth should pass
Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave
His name upon the harp-string, should achieve
No higher bard than simple maidenhood,
Singing alone, and fearfully, how the blood
Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray
He knew not where; and how he would say, nay,
If any said 'twas love: and yet 'twas love;
What could it be but love? How a ring-dove
Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;
And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe,
The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;
And then the ballad of his sad life closes
With sighs, and an alas! Endymion!
Be rather in the trumpet's mouth, anon
Among the winds at large that all may hearken!
Although, before the crystal heavens darken,
I watch and dote upon the silver lakes
Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes
The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,
Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands
With horses prancing o'er them, palaces
And towers of amethyst, would I so tease
My pleasant days, because I could not mount
Into those regions? The Morphean fount
Of that fine element that visions, dreams,
And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams
Into its airy channels with so subtle,
So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle,
Circled a million times within the space
Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace,
A tinting of its quality: how light
Must dreams themselves be; seeing they're more slight
Than the mere nothing that engenders them!
Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem
Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?
Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick
For nothing but a dream?" Hereat the youth
Look'd up: a conflicting of shame and ruth
Was in his plaited brow: yet his eyelids
Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids
A little breeze to creep between the fans
Of careless butterflies: amid his pains
He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew,
Full palatable; and a colour grew
Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.
"Peona! ever have I long'd to slake
My thirst for the world's praises: nothing base,
No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace
The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar'd
Though now 'tis tatter'd; leaving my bark bar'd
And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope
Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,
To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven! Fold
A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness,
And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress
Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds,
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds
Eolian magic from their lucid wombs:
Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;
Old ditties sigh above their father's grave;
Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago a giant battle was;
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
Feel we these things? that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity: the crown of these
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.
All its more ponderous and bulky worth
Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth
A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,
There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop
Of light, and that is love: its influence,
Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,
At which we start and fret; till in the end,
Melting into its radiance, we blend,
Mingle, and so become a part of it,
Nor with aught else can our souls interknit
So wingedly: when we combine therewith,
Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith,
And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.
Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,
That men, who might have tower'd in the van
Of all the congregated world, to fan
And winnow from the coming step of time
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
Have been content to let occasion die,
Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium.
And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,
Than speak against this ardent listlessness:
For I have ever thought that it might bless
The world with benefits unknowingly;
As does the nightingale, upperched high,
And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves
She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives
How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.
Just so may love, although 'tis understood
The mere commingling of passionate breath,
Produce more than our searching witnesseth:
What I know not: but who, of men, can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
If human souls did never kiss and greet?
"Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambition from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content; what merest whim,
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,
To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim
A love immortal, an immortal too.
Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true,
And never can be born of atomies
That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,
Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
My sayings will the less obscured seem,
When I have told thee how my waking sight
Has made me scruple whether that same night
Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!
Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,
Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,
Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows
Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,
And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,
And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide
Past them, but he must brush on every side.
Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell,
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.
Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set
Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet
Edges them round, and they have golden pits:
'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits
In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,
When all above was faint with mid-day heat.
And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,
I'd bubble up the water through a reed;
So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships
Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,
With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be
Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,
When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,
I sat contemplating the figures wild
Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through.
Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew
A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;
So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver
The happy chance: so happy, I was fain
To follow it upon the open plain,
And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!
A wonder, fair as any I have told
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
Through the cool depth. It moved as if to flee
I started up, when lo! refreshfully,
There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,
Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,
Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,
Bathing my spirit in a new delight.
Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss
Alone preserved me from the drear abyss
Of death, for the fair form had gone again.
Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth
On the deer's tender haunches: late, and loth,
'Tis scar'd away by slow returning pleasure.
How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure
Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,
By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!
Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,
Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill:
And a whole age of lingering moments crept
Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept
Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.
Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;
Once more been tortured with renewed life.
When last the wintry gusts gave over strife
With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies
Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes
In pity of the shatter'd infant buds,
That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,
My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smil'd,
Chatted with thee, and many days exil'd
All torment from my breast; 'twas even then,
Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den
Of helpless discontent, hurling my lance
From place to place, and following at chance,
At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,
And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck
In the middle of a brook, whose silver ramble
Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,
Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,
Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave
The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,
'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock
Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,
Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread
Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home.
"Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?"
Said I, low voic'd: "Ah whither! 'Tis the grot
Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,
Doth her resign; and where her tender hands
She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:
Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,
And babbles thorough silence, till her wits
Are gone in tender madness, and anon,
Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone
Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,
And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,
To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,
Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,
And weave them dyingly send honey-whispers
Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers
May sigh my love unto her pitying!
O charitable echo! hear, and sing
This ditty to her! tell her" so I stay'd
My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,
Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,
And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.
Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name
Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came:
'Endymion! the cave is secreter
Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."
At that oppress'd I hurried in. Ah! where
Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled?
I'll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed
Sorrow the way to death, but patiently
Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh;
And come instead demurest meditation,
To occupy me wholly, and to fashion
My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink.
No more will I count over, link by link,
My chain of grief: no longer strive to find
A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind
Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,
Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;
What a calm round of hours shall make my days.
There is a paly flame of hope that plays
Where'er I look: but yet, I'll say 'tis naught
And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,
Already, a more healthy countenance?
By this the sun is setting; we may chance
Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car."
This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star
Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand:
They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land. |
Modest Wit, A | Selleck Osborn | A supercilious nabob of the East,
Haughty, being great, purse-proud, being rich,
A governor, or general, at the least,
I have forgotten which,
Had in his family a humble youth,
Who went from England in his patron's suite,
An unassuming boy, in truth
A lad of decent parts, and good repute.
This youth had sense and spirit;
But yet with all his sense,
Excessive diffidence
Obscured his merit.
One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine,
His honor, proudly free, severely merry,
Conceived it would be vastly fine
To crack a joke upon his secretary.
"Young man," he said, "by what art, craft, or trade
Did your good father gain a livelihood?"
"He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said,
"And in his time was reckoned good."
"A saddler, eh? and taught you Greek,
Instead of teaching you to sew!
Pray, why did not your father make
A saddler, sir, of you?"
Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,
The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
At length Modestus, bowing low,
Said (craving pardon, if too free he made),
"Sir, by your leave, I fain would know
Your father's trade!"
"My father's trade! by Heaven, that's too bad!
My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad?
My father, sir, did never stoop so low,
He was a gentleman, I'd have you know."
"Excuse the liberty I take,"
Modestus said, with archness on his brow,
"Pray, why did not your father make
A gentleman of you?" |
Marzipan | Paul Cameron Brown | 1
A thick hole in the dark
from which
stars pour silver
as in pails
their runny divide
ink-strewn scalps
torn from the roof of the sky.
2
Padded footprints
giant ferns blooming
constellation prints,
the wind an athlete
pacing about a track
drying thru fingerprints
thin, nectarine light.
3
Sand down whitest skin
moving past your hand
a gown, mauve to green,
iceberg lettuce,
the black festering
across a ribcage;
while night arranges
moths to dusting powder
pucker-lipped
fronds from afar
4
Afar, the word a gypsy
tangled in the waves,
foam from a medicine bottle
agitated and strewn,
bubbles calculated in gasps
light into the distance
forlorn
tree-frogs, the cricket
sound round deep
- movement of night as
a rumbling in the ground,
|
A New John Bull | Henry Lawson | A tall, slight, English gentleman,
With an eyeglass to his eye;
He mostly says 'Good-Bai' to you,
When he means to say 'Good-bye';
He shakes hands like a ladies' man,
For all the world to see,
But they know, in Corners of the World.
No ladies' man is he.
A tall, slight English gentleman,
Who hates to soil his hands;
He takes his mother's drawing-room
To the most outlandish lands;
And when, through Hells we dream not of,
His battery prevails,
He cleans the grime of gunpowder
And blue blood from his nails.
He's what our blokes in Egypt call
'A decent kinder cove.'
And if the Pyramids should fall?
He'd merely say 'Bai Jove!'
And if the stones should block his path
For a twelve-month, or a day,
He'd call on Sergeant Whatsisname
To clear those things away!
A quiet English gentleman,
Who dots the Empire's rim,
Where sweating sons of ebony
Would go to Hell for him.
And if he chances to get 'winged,'
Or smashed up rather worse,
He's quite apologetic to
The doctor and the nurse.
A silent English gentleman,
Though sometimes he says 'Haw.'
But if a baboon in its cage
Appealed to British Law
And Justice, to be understood,
He'd listen all polite,
And do his very best to set
The monkey grievance right.
A thoroughbred whose ancestry
Goes back to ages dim;
Yet no one on his wide estates
Need fear to speak to him.
Although he never showed a sign
Of aught save sympathy,
He was the only gentleman
That shamed the cad in me. |
Nursery Rhyme. XCIV. Proverbs. | Unknown | [The following is quoted in Miege's 'Great French Dictionary,' fol. Lond. 1687, 2d part.]
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly. |
A Thought Went Up My Mind To-Day | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A thought went up my mind to-day
That I have had before,
But did not finish, -- some way back,
I could not fix the year,
Nor where it went, nor why it came
The second time to me,
Nor definitely what it was,
Have I the art to say.
But somewhere in my soul, I know
I 've met the thing before;
It just reminded me -- 't was all --
And came my way no more. |
Sweet Disorder | Robert Herrick | A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part. |
Fogarty's Gin | Barcroft Boake | A sweat-dripping horse and a half-naked myall,
And a message: 'Come out to the back of the run
Be out at the stake-yards by rising of sun!
Ride hard and fail not! there's the devil to pay:
For the men from Monkyra have mustered the run
Cows and calves, calves of ours, without ever a brand,
Fifty head, if there's one, on the camp there they stand.
Come out to the stake-yards, nor fail me, or by all
The saints they'll be drafted and driven away!'
Boot and saddle it was to the rolling of curses:
Snatching whip, snatching spurs, where they hung on the nail.
In his wrath old McIvor, head stockman, turned pale,
Spitting oaths with his head 'neath the flap of his saddle;
Taking up the last hole in the girth with his teeth;
Then a hand on the pommel, a quick catch of breath,
A lift of the body, a swing to the right
And, ten half-broken nags with ten riders astraddle,
We sped, arrow-swift, for the heart of the night.
Thud of hoofs! thud of hearts! breath of man! breath of beast!
With M'Ivor in front, and the rest heel to flank,
So we rode in a bunch down the steep river bank,
Churning up the black tide in the shallows like yeast.
Through the coolabahs, out on the plain, it increased
Till we swung with the stride of the dingo-pack, swooping
On scent of weak mother with puny calf drooping.
Staring eyes, swaying forms o'er the saddle-bow stooping,
With the wind in our shirts, grip of knee, grip of rein,
Losing ground, falling back, creeping forward again.
Behind us the low line of dark coolabah;
Overhead a sky spangled by planet and star;
And to left, on our shoulder, the mighty Cross flaring,
While afoot the quick pulsing of hoof-beats disturbs
Moist silence of grasses and salty-leaved herbs.
Steering on by the stars, over hollow and crest;
Tingling eyes looking out through a curtain of tears
From the slap of the wind over forward-pricked ears,
Over forehead and nose stretching out for the west,
And into the face of the sombre night staring.
Threading in, threading out, through a maze of sand rises
That spring either side, loom a moment, then flee:
Dim hillocks of herbage and sun-blasted tree,
Till again a dark streak of far timber arises;
And anon, through the thick of a lignum swamp tearing,
Bare tendrils, back-springing, switch sharp on the knee.
Plain again! and again, with the speed of the wind,
The long miles in front join their comrades behind;
Then a sound in our ears like to far summer thunder
Or the booming of surf in a southerly gale;
And we shouted aloud each to each in our wonder,
For we knew that those beasts must have come fast and far,
That they moaned as the breaking of waves on a bar.
But behold! overhead the dark sky had grown pale,
With the azure-tinged paleness of newly-skimmed milk,
And the dawn-spiders floated on threads of floss-silk
As the guards of the sun drew aside the thick veil
And made ready to fling the dawn-portals asunder.
Still that sound swelled and rolled, thrilling deep on the air,
Calling long, calling loud in the ear of each steed,
Bringing courage and strength in the moment of need,
And light'ning the weight of the burdens they bare.
But that moment behind us upshot a red glare
As the sun swept the sky with a roseate sponge;
And McIvor's blue roan gave a rear and a plunge,
A half-sob, and so fell, like an over-ripe pear.
Not a rein did we pull, not a stride did we stay,
Speeding onward and speeding! For long we could hear
Old Mac.'s maledictions ring loud in our rear
As we rode in hot haste from the incoming day.
Then all sudden and strangely we came face to face
With the lead of the cattle, and lo! our long race
Was run out; and we drew up the horses, all panting
In stress of the chase, and yet ready for more;
And our eager ears drank in that thunderous roar,
While we watched the red squadrons come over the levels
As if view-holloa'd by a pack of night-devils
Cow and calf chasing heifer and lumbering steer,
With their grey, dripping nostrils, and eyes wide with fear,
As if Burgess's cob followed hard on their rear.
So we blocked them, and lo! the new sun laid a slanting
Red finger on one who rode over the plain,
Steed treading full slowly, head drooping, slack rein,
Turning often aside through the dew-laden grasses
To crop a sweet mouthful. We needed no glasses
To see it was Fogarty. Once and again,
And again did we hail yet he never looked round,
Neither made the least motion of hearing the sound.
Riding on like a man who should ride in his sleep,
Or as one in the web of some deep-woven charm,
So he came through the grass his horse striding breast-deep
With a woman held close in the crook of his arm;
And her hair, all unbound, rippled over his shoulder,
Dead black; and her brow, where the sweat of fierce pain
Had dried, was brown-tinged as bronze is, but colder
Ah, many times colder! and as he pulled rein,
He unwrapped saddle-blanket in which he had rolled her,
And lo! the gay sunlight lit ominous stain,
Where a murderous bullet had torn a blue vein
And let out her life in a warm crimson rain.
Then gently he laid his sad load on the ground,
And with sorrowing glances we gathered around.
Then he turned to the west, with his eyes all aflame,
With his brawny fists raised, calling witness from Heaven
On his shoulder and flank the dark blood of the slain
And he hurled his curse back on the place whence he came:
A loud curse, and a threat that he yet would stand even
With those of Monkyra who wrought this foul shame
Though, to tell the God's truth, we'd have done just the same
In their place, and have reckoned it nothing but right:
For the black girl and Fogarty quietly crept
On the Monkyra men in the dead of the night;
And it happened the watchman was weary and slept,
So the gin, who no doubt was a game little pullet,
Slipped in, and brought both their night horses away,
While Fogarty started the cattle that lay
On the camp; and the trick was so bold it succeeded;
For the Monkyra men, when their cattle stampeded,
Had nothing to send in pursuit but a bullet.
Yet that was as much as the little gin needed:
She made no great fuss, though, nor murmured nor cried;
Only rode on the right of her lord till she died.
Her life ended well nothing scamped or by halves:
Where she went who can tell? But we branded the calves. |
Marshlands | Emily Pauline Johnson | A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim.
The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.
Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,
In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.
The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,
Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.
Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,
Sail up the silence with the nearing night.
And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,
Steals twilight and its shadows o'er the swale.
Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,
Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep. |
Home From The Wars | George MacDonald | A tattered soldier, gone the glow and gloss,
With wounds half healed, and sorely trembling knee,
Homeward I come, to claim no victory-cross:
I only faced the foe, and did not flee. |
Joe Golightly Or, The First Lord's Daughter | William Schwenck Gilbert | A tar, but poorly prized,
Long, shambling, and unsightly,
Thrashed, bullied, and despised,
Was wretched JOE GOLIGHTLY.
He bore a workhouse brand;
No Pa or Ma had claimed him,
The Beadle found him, and
The Board of Guardians named him.
P'r'aps some Princess's son
A beggar p'r'aps his mother.
HE rather thought the one,
I rather think the other.
He liked his ship at sea,
He loved the salt sea-water,
He worshipped junk, and he
Adored the First Lord's daughter.
The First Lord's daughter, proud,
Snubbed Earls and Viscounts nightly;
She sneered at Barts. aloud,
And spurned poor Joe Golightly.
Whene'er he sailed afar
Upon a Channel cruise, he
Unpacked his light guitar
And sang this ballad (Boosey):
Ballad
The moon is on the sea,
Willow!
The wind blows towards the lee,
Willow!
But though I sigh and sob and cry,
No Lady Jane for me,
Willow!
She says, "'Twere folly quite,
Willow!
For me to wed a wight,
Willow!
Whose lot is cast before the mast";
And possibly she's right,
Willow!
His skipper (CAPTAIN JOYCE),
He gave him many a rating,
And almost lost his voice
From thus expostulating:
"Lay aft, you lubber, do!
What's come to that young man, JOE?
Belay! 'vast heaving! you!
Do kindly stop that banjo!
"I wish, I do O lor'!
You'd shipped aboard a trader:
ARE you a sailor or
A negro serenader?"
But still the stricken lad,
Aloft or on his pillow,
Howled forth in accents sad
His aggravating "Willow!"
Stern love of duty bad
Been JOYCE'S chiefest beauty;
Says he, "I love that lad,
But duty, damme! duty!
"Twelve months' black-hole, I say,
Where daylight never flashes;
And always twice a day
A good six dozen lashes!"
But JOSEPH had a mate,
A sailor stout and lusty,
A man of low estate,
But singularly trusty.
Says he, "Cheer hup, young JOE!
I'll tell you what I'm arter
To that Fust Lord I'll go
And ax him for his darter.
"To that Fust Lord I'll go
And say you love her dearly."
And JOE said (weeping low),
"I wish you would, sincerely!"
That sailor to that Lord
Went, soon as he had landed,
And of his own accord
An interview demanded.
Says he, with seaman's roll,
"My Captain (wot's a Tartar)
Guv JOE twelve months' black-hole,
For lovering your darter.
"He loves MISS LADY JANE
(I own she is his betters),
But if you'll jine them twain,
They'll free him from his fetters.
"And if so be as how
You'll let her come aboard ship,
I'll take her with me now."
"Get out!" remarked his Lordship.
That honest tar repaired
To JOE upon the billow,
And told him how he'd fared.
JOE only whispered, "Willow!"
And for that dreadful crime
(Young sailors, learn to shun it)
He's working out his time;
In six months he'll have done it. |
Sea Longing | Sara Teasdale | A thousand miles beyond this sun-steeped wall
Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,
The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land
With the old murmur, long and musical;
The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,
And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,
Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,
For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.
I would that I were there and over me
The cold insistence of the tide would roll,
Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,
Then with the ebbing I should drift and be
Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,
Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea. |
Epilogue To A Mother, On Seeing Her Smile Repeated In Her Daughter's Eyes | Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch | A thousand songs I might have made
Of You, and only You;
A thousand thousand tongues of fire
That trembled down a golden wire
To lamp the night with stars, to braid
The morning bough with dew.
Within the greenwood girl and boy
Had loiter'd to their lure,
And men in cities closed their books
To dream of Spring and running brooks
And all that ever was of joy
For manhood to abjure.
And I'd have made them strong, so strong
Outlasting towers and towns--
Millennial shepherds 'neath the thorn
Had piped them to a world reborn,
And danced Delight the dale along
And up the daisied downs.
A thousand songs I might have made...
But you required them not;
Content to reign your little while
Ere, abdicating with a smile,
You pass'd into a shade, a shade
Immortal--and forgot! |
The Sylph's Ball. | Thomas Moore | A sylph, as bright as ever sported
Her figure thro' the fields of air,
By an old swarthy Gnome was courted.
And, strange to say, he won the fair.
The annals of the oldest witch
A pair so sorted could not show,
But how refuse?--the Gnome was rich,
The Rothschild of the world below;
And Sylphs, like other pretty creatures,
Are told, betimes, they must consider
Love as an auctioneer of features,
Who knocks them down to the best bidder.
Home she was taken to his Mine--
A Palace paved with diamonds all--
And, proud as Lady Gnome to shine,
Sent out her tickets for a ball.
The lower world of course was there,
And all the best; but of the upper
The sprinkling was but shy and rare,--
A few old Sylphids who loved supper.
As none yet knew the wondrous Lamp
Of DAVY, that renowned Aladdin,
And the Gnome's Halls exhaled a damp
Which accidents from fire were had in;
The chambers were supplied with light
By many strange but safe devices;
Large fire-flies, such as shine at night
Among the Orient's flowers and spices;--
Musical flint-mills--swiftly played
By elfin hands--that, flashing round,
Like certain fire-eyed minstrel maids,
Gave out at once both light and sound.
Bologna stones that drink the sun;
And water from that Indian sea,
Whose waves at night like wildfire run--
Corked up in crystal carefully.
Glow-worms that round the tiny dishes
Like little light-houses, were set up;
And pretty phosphorescent fishes
That by their own gay light were eat up.
'Mong the few guests from Ether came
That wicked Sylph whom Love we call--
My Lady knew him but by name,
My Lord, her husband, not at all.
Some prudent Gnomes, 'tis said, apprised
That he was coming, and, no doubt
Alarmed about his torch, advised
He should by all means be kept out.
But others disapproved this plan,
And by his flame tho' somewhat frighted,
Thought Love too much a gentleman
In such a dangerous place to light it.
However, there he was--and dancing
With the fair Sylph, light as a feather;
They looked like two fresh sunbeams glancing
At daybreak down to earth together.
And all had gone off safe and well,
But for that plaguy torch whose light,
Though not yet kindled--who could tell
How soon, how devilishly, it might?
And so it chanced--which, in those dark
And fireless halls was quite amazing;
Did we not know how small a spark
Can set the torch of Love a-blazing.
Whether it came (when close entangled
In the gay waltz) from her bright eyes,
Or from the lucciole, that spangled
Her locks of jet--is all surmise;
But certain 'tis the ethereal girl
Did drop a spark at some odd turning,
Which by the waltz's windy whirl
Was fanned up into actual burning.
Oh for that Lamp's metallic gauze,
That curtain of protecting wire,
Which DAVY delicately draws
Around illicit, dangerous fire!--
The wall he sets 'twixt Flame and Air,
(Like that which barred young Thisbe's bliss,)
Thro' whose small holes this dangerous pair
May see each other but not kiss.
At first the torch looked rather bluely,--
A sign, they say, that no good boded--
Then quick the gas became unruly.
And, crack! the ball-room all exploded.
Sylphs, gnomes, and fiddlers mixt together,
With all their aunts, sons, cousins, nieces,
Like butterflies in stormy weather,
Were blown--legs, wings, and tails--to pieces!
While, mid these victims of the torch,
The Sylph, alas, too, bore her part--
Found lying with a livid scorch
As if from lightning o'er her heart!
* * * * *
"Well done"--a laughing Goblin said--
Escaping from this gaseous strife--
"'Tis not the first time Love has made
"A blow-up in connubial life!" |
When The Hearse Comes Back | James Whitcomb Riley | A thing 'at's 'bout as tryin' as a healthy man kin meet
Is some poor feller's funeral a-joggin' 'long the street:
The slow hearse and the hosses - slow enough, to say at least,
Fer to even tax the patience of gentleman deceased!
The low scrunch of the gravel - and the slow grind of the wheels,
The slow, slow go of ev'ry woe 'at ev'rybody feels!
So I ruther like the contrast when I hear the whip-lash crack
A quickstep fer the hosses,
When the
Hearse
Comes
Back!
Meet it goin' to'rds the cimet'ry, you'll want to drap yer eyes -
But ef the plumes don't fetch you, it'll ketch you otherwise -
You'll haf to see the caskit, though you'd ort to look away
And 'conomize and save yer sighs fer any other day!
Yer sympathizin' won't wake up the sleeper from his rest -
Yer tears won't thaw them hands o' his 'at's froze acrost his breast!
And this is why - when airth and sky's a gittin blurred and black -
I like the flash and hurry
When the
Hearse
Comes
Back!
It's not 'cause I don't 'preciate it ain't no time fer jokes,
Ner 'cause I' got no common human feelin' fer the folks;
I've went to funerals myse'f, and tuk on some, perhaps -
Fer my hearth's 'bout as mal'able as any other chap's,
I've buried father, mother - But I'll haf to jes' git you
To "excuse me," as the feller says. The p'int I'm drivin' to
Is simply when we're plum broke down and all knocked out o' whack,
It he'ps to shape us up like,
When the
Hearse
Comes
Back!
The idy! Wadin round here over shoe-mouth deep in woe,
When they's a graded 'pike o' joy and sunshine don't you know!
When evening strikes the pastur', cows'll pull out fer the bars,
And skittish-like from out the night'll prance the happy stars.
And so when my time comes to die, and I've got ary friend
'At wants expressed my last request - I'll mebby, rickommend
To drive slow, ef they haf to, goin' 'long the out'ard track,
But I'll smile and say, "You speed 'em
When the
Hearse
Comes
Back!" |
Delight In Disorder. | Robert Herrick | A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly:
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part. |
Hallowe'en. | James McIntyre | A tale we'll tell of what hath been
When maids and youths kept Hallowe'en,
It is a tale of old world lore
What happened in the days of yore,
When fairies danced upon the green
So merrily on Hallowe'en,
And witches did play many a trick
Assisted by their auld friend Nick,
And lovers meet around the fire
Near to the one their hearts desire,
For to burn nuts for to discover
The truthfulness of their lover.
They first did give each nut a name,
This was Sandy, that was Jane.
If they did blaze side by side,
She knew her husband, he his bride,
But if one up the chimney flew,
One knew the other was not true.
And one sure test did never fail,
Blindfold to find good stock of kale,
To pull the first comes to the hand
With heavy roots of earth and sand,
For the very weight of mould
Does denote weight of lovers gold.
In tubs children love to splatter,
Ducking for apples in the water,
For such were the delights of yore,
Which soon will cease for evermore;
At Balmoral Castle Britain's Queen
Oft' celebrated Hallowe'en,
But Highland landlords now do clear
Land of men to make room for deer,
But here upon Canadian soil
A man may own where he doth toil.
|
Necessitas - Vis - Libertas! A Bas-Relief | Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev | A tall, bony old woman, with iron face and dull, fixed look, moves with long strides, and, with an arm dry as a stick, pushes before her another woman.
This woman - of huge stature, powerful, thick-set, with the muscles of a Hercules, with a tiny head set on a bull neck, and blind - in her turn pushes before her a small, thin girl.
This girl alone has eyes that see; she resists, turns round, lifts fair, delicate hands; her face, full of life, shows impatience and daring.... She wants not to obey, she wants not to go, where they are driving her ... but, still, she has to yield and go.
Necessitas - Vis - Libertas!
Who will, may translate.
May 1878.
|
A Throe Upon The Features | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A throe upon the features
A hurry in the breath,
An ecstasy of parting
Denominated "Death," --
An anguish at the mention,
Which, when to patience grown,
I 've known permission given
To rejoin its own. |
The Court Of Reason | James Williams | A thousand doubts and pleadings in a day
Are filed in Empress Reason's court supreme
By angry Love--his eyes with anger gleam.
"Which of us twain hath been more faithful, say.
'Tis all through me that Cino can display
The sail of fame on life's unhappy stream."
"Thee," quoth I, "root of all my woe I deem,
I found what gall beneath thy sweetness lay."
Then he: "Ah, traitorous and truant slave!
Are these the thanks thou renderest, ingrate,
For giving thee a maid without a peer?"
"Thy left," cried I, "slew what thy right hand gave."
"Not so," said he. The judge, "Your wrath abate.
I must have time to give true judgment here."
Cino da Pistoia.
[Imitated by Petrarch in the conclusion of the Canzone, Quell' antico mio dolce empio signore.] |
A Stage-Figure. | Margaret Steele Anderson | (A painting by Whistler.)
A thing of flesh and blood? Not so!
Yet what you are I do not know.
A paper sword? A pasteboard flame?
Ah no, I cannot find the name!
Whate'er you are, 'tis not of earth,
Nor did high Heaven give you birth;
A marionette your mother? Well
But you were sired by Ariel! |
Nursery Rhyme. CCXLIII. Charms. | Unknown | A Thatcher of Thatchwood went to Thatchet a thatching;
Did a thatcher of Thatchwood go to Thatchet a thatching?
If a thatcher of Thatchwood went to Thatchet a thatching,
Where's the thatching the thatcher of Thatchwood has thatch'd? |
Offerings | Walt Whitman | A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings. |
Sonnet V | Alan Seeger | A tide of beauty with returning May
Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume
Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom
The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.
Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe;
The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound;
And through the streets, like veins when they abound,
The lust for pleasure throbs itself away.
Here let me live, here let me still pursue
Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -
Thy strange allurements, City that I love,
Maze of romance, where I have followed too
The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need
And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of. |
Love's Defeat. (Moods Of Love.) | George Parsons Lathrop | A thousand times I would have hoped,
A thousand times protested;
But still, as through the night I groped,
My torch from me was wrested,
and wrested.
How often with a succoring cup
Unto the hurt I hasted!
The wounded died ere I came up;
My cup was still untasted, -
Untasted.
Of darkness, wounds, and harsh disdain
Endured, I ne'er repented.
'T is not of these I would complain:
With these I were contented, -
Contented.
Here lies the misery, to feel
No work of love completed;
In prayerless passion still to kneel,
And mourn, and cry: "Defeated
Defeated!" |
Delight In Disorder | Robert Herrick | A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility;--
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part. |
Collusion | Paul Cameron Brown | A surtax on the ecosystem;
so many raindrops, mists
and bud breakings
record spring days,
that the movement of sap
fluids and other vital
juices involves all life on a colossal
scale; beyond puny human understanding
why green shoots shed restrictions
at the parochial level. |
A Thousand Martyrs I Have Made | Aphra Behn | A thousand Martyrs I have made,
All sacrific'd to my desire;
A thousand Beauties have betray'd,
That languish in resistless Fire.
The untam'd Heart to hand I brought,
And fixt the wild and wandring Thought.
I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain
But both, th false, were well receiv'd.
The Fair are pleas'd to give us pain,
And what they wish is soon believ'd.
And th I talked of Wounds and Smart,
Loves Pleasures only toucht my Heart.
Alone the Glory and the Spoil
I always Laughing bore away;
The Triumphs, without Pain or Toil,
Without the Hell, the Heav'n of Joy.
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the Fools that whine for Love. |
The Silent Tide | George Parsons Lathrop | A tangled orchard round the farm-house spreads,
Wherein it stands home-like, but desolate,
'Midst crowded and uneven-statured sheds,
Alike by rain and sunshine sadly stained.
A quiet country-road before the door
Runs, gathering close its ruts to scale the hill -
A sudden bluff on the New Hampshire coast,
That rises rough against the sea, and hangs
Crested above the bowlder-sprinkled beach.
And on the road white houses small are strung
Like threaded beads, with intervals. The church
Tops the rough hill; then comes the wheelwright's shop.
From orchard, church, and shop you hear the sea,
And from the farm-house windows see it strike
Sharp gleams through slender arching apple-boughs.
Sea-like, too, echoing round me here there rolls
A surging sorrow; and even so there breaks
A smitten light of woe upon me, now,
Seeing this place, and telling o'er again
The tale of those who dwelt here once. Long since
It was, and they were two - two brothers, bound
By early orphanage and solitude
The closer, cleaving strongly each to each,
Till love, that held them many years in gage,
Itself swept them asunder. I have heard
The story from old Deacon Snow, their friend,
He who was boy and man with them. A boy!
What, he? How strange it seems! who now is stiff
And warped with life's fierce heat and cold: his brows
Are hoary white, and on his head the hairs
Stand sparse as wheat-stalks on the bare field's edge!
Reuben and Jerry they were named; but two
Of common blood and nurture scarce were found
More sharply different. For the first was bold,
Breeze-like and bold to come or go; not rash,
But shrewdly generous, popular, and boon:
And Jerry, dark and sad-faced. Whether least
He loved himself or neighbor none could tell,
So cold he seemed in wonted sympathy.
Yet he would ponder an hour at a time
Upon a bird found dead; and much he loved
To brood i' th' shade of yon wind-wavered pines.
Often at night, too, he would wander forth,
Lured by the hollow rumbling of the sea
In moonlight breaking, there to learn wild things,
Such as these dreamers pluck out of the dusk
While other men lie sleeping. But a star,
Rose on his sight, at last, with power to rule
Majestically mild that deep-domed sky,
High as youth's hopes, that stood above his soul;
And, ruling, led him dayward. That was Grace,
I mean Grace Brierly, daughter of the squire,
Rivaling the wheelwright Hungerford's shy Ruth
For beauty. Therefore, in the sunny field,
Mowing the clover-purpled grass, or, waked
In keen December dawns, - while creeping light
And winter-tides beneath the pallid stars
Stole o'er the marsh together, - a thought of her
Would turn him cool or warm, like the south breeze,
And make him blithe or bitter. Alas for him!
Eagerly storing golden thoughts of her,
He locked a phantom treasure in his breast.
He sought to chain the breezes, and to lift
A perfume as a pearl before his eyes -
Intangible delight! A time drew on
When from these twilight musings on his hopes
He woke, and found the morning of his love
Blasted, and all its rays shorn suddenly.
For Reuben, too, had turned his eye on Grace,
And she with favoring face the suit had met,
Known in the village; this dream-fettered youth
Perceiving not what passed, until too late.
One holiday the young folks all had gone
Strawberrying, with the village Sabbath-school;
Reuben and Grace and Jerry, Ruth, Rob Snow,
And all their friends, youth-mates that buoyantly
Bore out 'gainst Time's armadas, like a fleet
Of fair ships, sunlit, braced by buffeting winds,
Indomitably brave; but, soon or late,
Battle and hurricane or whirl them deep
Below to death, or send them homeward, seared
By shot and storm: so went they forth, that day.
Two wagons full of rosy children rolled
Along the rutty track, 'twixt swamp and slope,
Through deep, green-glimmering woods, and out at last
On grassy table-land, warm with the sun
And yielding tributary odors wild
Of strawberry, late June-rose, juniper,
Where sea and land breeze mingled. There a brook
Through a bare hollow flashing, spurted, purled,
And shot away, yet stayed - a light and grace
Unconscious and unceasing. And thick pines,
Hard by, drew darkly far away their dim
And sheltering, cool arcades. So all dismount,
And fields and forest gladden with their shout;
Ball, swing, and see-saw sending the light hearts
Of the children high o'er earth and everything.
While some staid, kindly women draw and spread
In pine-shade the long whiteness of a cloth,
The rest, a busy legion, o'er the grass
Kneeling, must rifle the meadow of its fruit.
O laughing Fate! O treachery of truth
To royal hopes youth bows before! That day,
Ev'n there where life in such glad measure beat
Its round, with winds and waters, tunefully,
And birds made music in the matted wood,
The shaft of death reached Jerry's heart: he saw
The sweet conspiracy of those two lives,
In looks and gestures read his doom, and heard
Their laughter ring to the grave all mirth of his.
So Reuben's life in full leaf stood, its fruit
Hidden in a green expectancy; but all
His days were rounded with ripe consciousness:
While Jerry felt the winter's whitening blight,
As when that frosty fern-work and those palms
Of visionary leaf, and trailing vines,
Quaint-chased by night-winds on the pane, melt off,
And naked earth, stone-stiff, with bristling trees,
Stares in the winter sunlight coldly through.
But yet he rose, and clothed himself amain
With misery, and once more put on life
As a stained garment. Highly he resolved
To make his deedless days henceforward strike
Pure harmony - a psalm of silences.
But on the Sunday, coming from the church,
He saw those happy, plighted lovers walk
Before proud Grace's father, and of friends
Heard comment and congratulation given.
Then with Rob Snow he hurried to the beach,
To a rough heap of stones they two had reared
In boyhood. There the two held sad debate
Of life's swift losses, Bob inspiriting still,
Jerry rejecting hope, ev'n though his friend,
Self-wounding (for he loved Ruth Hungerford),
Told how the wheelwright's daughter longed for him,
And yet might make him glad, though Grace was lost.
The season deepened, and in Jerry's heart
Ripened a thought charged with grave consequence.
His grief he would have stifled at its birth,
Sad child of frustrate longing! But anon -
Knowledge of Ruth's affection being revealed,
Which, if he stayed to let it feed on him,
Vine-like might wreathe and wind about his life,
Lifting all shade and sweetness out of reach
Of Robert, so long his friend - honor, and hopes
He would not name, kindled a torch for war
Of various impulse in him. Reuben wedded;
Yet Jerry lingered. Then, swift whisperings
Along reverberant walls of gossips' ears
Hummed loud and louder a love for Ruth. Grace, too,
Involved him in a web of soft surmise
With Ruth; and Reuben questioned him thereof.
But a white, sudden anger struck like a bolt
O'er Jerry's face, that blackened under it:
He strode away, and left his brother dazed,
With red rush of offended self-conceit
Staining his forehead to the hair. This flash
Of anger - first since boyhood's wholesome strifes -
On Jerry's path gleamed lurid; by its light
He shaped a life's course out.
There came a storm
One night. He bade farewell to Ruth; and when
Above the seas the bare-browed dawn arose,
While the last laggard drops ran off the eaves,
He dressed, but took some customary garb
On his arm; stole swiftly to the sands; and there
Cast clown his garments by the ancient heap
Of stones. At first brief pause he made, and thought:
"And thus I play, to win perchance a tear
From her whom, first, to save the smallest care,
I thought I could have died!" But then at once
Within the sweep of swirling water-planes
That from the great waves circled up and slid
Instantly back, passing far down the shore,
Southward he made his way. Next day he shipped
Upon a whaler outward bound. She spread
Her mighty wings, and bore him far away -
So far, Death seemed across her wake to stalk,
Withering her swift shape from the empty air,
Until her memory grew a faded dream.
Ah, what a desolate brightness that young day
Flung o'er the impassive strand and dull green marsh
And green-arched orchard, ere it struck the farm!
Storm-strengthened, clear, and cool the morning rose
To gaze down on that frighted home, where dawned
Pale Ruth's discovery of her loss, who late,
Guessing some ill in Jerry's last-night words
Of vague farewell, woke now to certainty
Of strange disaster. So, when Reuben and Rob,
Hither and thither searching, with locked lips
And eyes grown suddenly cold in eager dread,
On those still sands beside the untamed sea,
Came to the garments Jerry had thrown there, dumb
They stood, and knew he'd perished. If by chance
Borne out with undertow and rolled beneath
The gaping surge, or rushing on his death
Free-willed, they would not guess; but straight they set
Themselves to watch the changes of the sea -
The watchful sea that would not be betrayed,
The surly flood that echoed their suspense
With hollow-sounding horror. Thus three tides
Hurled on the beach their empty spray, and brought
Nor doubt-dispelling death, nor new-born hope.
But with the fourth slow turn at length there came
A naked, drifting body impelled to shore,
An unknown sailor by the late storm swept
Out of the rigging of some laboring ship.
And him, disfigured by the water's wear,
The watching friends supposed their dead; and so,
Mourning, took up this outcast of the deep,
And buried him, with church-rite and with pall
Trailing, and train of sad-eyed mourners, there
In the old orchard-lot by Reuben's door.
Observed among the mourners walked slight Ruth.
Her grief had dropped a veil of finer light
Around her, hedging her with sanctity
Peculiar; all stood shy about her save
Rob Snow, he venturing from time to time
Some small, uncertain act of kindliness.
Long seemed she vowed from joy, but when the birds
Began to mate, and quiet violets blow
Along the brook-side, lo! she smiled again;
Again the wind-flower color in her cheeks
Blanch'd in a breath, and bloomed once more; then stayed;
Till, like the breeze that rumors ripening buds,
A delicate sense crept through the air that soon
These two would scale the church-crowned hill, and wed.
The seasons faced the world, and fled, and came.
In summer nights, the soft roll of the sea
Was shattered, resonant, beneath a moon
That, silent, seemed to hearken. And every hour
In autumn, night or day, large apples fell
Without rebound to earth, upon the sod
There mounded greenly by the large slate slab
In the old orchard-lot near Reuben's door.
But there were changes: after some long years
Reuben and Grace beheld a brave young boy
Bearing their double life abroad in one -
Beginning new the world, and bringing hopes
That in their path fell flower-like. Not at ease
They dwelt, though; for a slow discordancy
Of temper - weak-willed waste of life in bursts
Of petulance - had marred their happiness.
And so the boy, young Reuben, as he grew,
Was chafed and vexed by this ill-fitting mode
Of life forced on him, and rebelled. Too oft
Brooding alone, he shaped loose schemes of flight
Into the joyous outer world, to break
From the unwholesome wranglings of his home.
Then once, when at some slight demur he made,
Dispute ensued between the man and wife,
He burst forth, goaded, "Some day I will leave -
Leave you forever!" And his father stared,
Lifted and clenched his hand, but let it unloose,
Nerveless. The blow, unstruck, yet quivered through
The boy's whole body.
Waiting for the night,
Reuben made ready, lifted latch, went forth;
Then, with his little bundle in his hand,
Took the bleak road that led him to the world.
When Jerry eighteen years had sailed, had bared
His hurt soul to the pitiless sun and drunk
The rainy brew of storms on all seas, tired
Of wreck and fever and renewed mischance
That would not end in death, a longing stirred
Within him to revisit that gray coast
Where he was born. He landed at the port
Whence first he sailed; and, as in fervid youth,
Set forth upon the highway, to walk home.
Some hoarding he had made, wherewith to enrich
His brother's brood for spendthrift purposes;
And as he walked he wondered how they looked,
How tall they were, how many there might be.
At noon he set himself beside the way,
Under a clump of willows sprouting dense
O'er the weed-woven margin of a brook;
While in the fine green branches overhead
Song-sparrows lightly perched, for whom he threw
From his scant bread some crumbs, remembering well
Old days when he had played with birds like these -
The same, perhaps, or grandfathers of theirs,
Or earlier still progenitors: whereat
They chirped and chattered louder than before.
But, as he sat, a boy came down the road,
Stirring the noontide dust with laggard feet.
Young Reuben 't was, who seaward made his way.
And Jerry hailed him, carelessly, his mood
Moving to salutation, and the boy,
From under his torn hat-brim looking, answered.
Then, seeing that he eyed his scrap of bread,
The sailor bade him come and share it. So
They fell to talk; and Jerry, with a rough,
Quick-touching kindness, the boy's heart so moved
That unto him he all his wrong confessed.
Gravely the sailor looked at him, and told
His own tale of mad flight and wandering; how,
Wasted he had come back, his life a husk
Of withered seeds, a raveled purse, though once
With golden years well stocked, all squandered now.
At ending, he prevailed, and Reub was won
To turn and follow. Jerry, though he knew
Not yet the father's name, said he that way
Was going, too, and he would intercede
Between the truant and his father. Back
Together then they went. But on the way,
As now they passed from pines to farming-land,
The boy asked more. "'T is queer you should have come
From these same parts, and run away like me!
You did not tell me how it happened."
JERRY.
Foolish,
All of it! But I thought it weightier
Than the world's history, once. I could not stay
And see my brother married to the girl
I loved; and so I went.
THE BOY.
I had an uncle
That was in love. But he - he drowned himself.
Why do men do so?
JERRY.
Drowned himself? And when?
THE BOY.
I don't know. Long ago; it's like a dream
To me. I was not born then. Deacon Snow
Has told me something of it. Mother cries
Even now, beside his grave. Poor uncle!
JERRY.
His grave!
(That could not be, then.) Yet if it should be,
How can I think Grace cried -
THE BOY.
How did you know
My mother's name was Grace?
JERRY.
I am confused
By what you say. But is your mother's name
Grace? How! Grace, too?
A strange uneasiness
In Jerry's breast had waked. They walked awhile
In silence. This he could not well believe,
That Grace and Reuben unhappy were, nor that
One son alone was theirs. Therefore aside
He thrust that hidden, sharp foreboding: still
He trusted, still sustained a calm suspense,
And ranged among his memories. "Tell me, son,"
He said, "about this Deacon Snow - Rob Snow
It must be, I suppose."
THE BOY.
Oh, do you know him?
JERRY.
A deacon now! Ay, once I knew Rob Snow -
A jolly blade, if ever any was,
And merry as the full moon.
THE BOY.
He has failed
A good deal now, though, since his wife died.
JERRY.
What!
(Of course; of course; all's changed.) He married!
THE BOY.
Why,
How long you must have been away! For since
I can remember he has had a wife
And children. She was Gran'ther Hungerford's -
JERRY.
Her name was Ruth?
THE BOY.
Yes, Ruth! 'T is after her
The deacon's nicest daughter's named; she's Ruth.
Then sadly Jerry pondered, and no more
Found speech. They tramped on sternly. To the brow
Of a long hill they came, whence they could see
The village and blue ocean; then they sank
Into a region of low-lying fields
Half-naked from the scythe, and others veined
With vines that 'midst dismantled, fallen corn
Dragged all athwart a weight of tawny gourds,
Sun-mellowed, sound. And now the level way
Stretched forward eagerly, for hard ahead
It made the turn that rounded Reuben's house.
Between the still road and the tossing sea
Lay the wide swamp, with all its hundred pools
Reflecting leaden light; anon they passed
A farm-yard where the noisy chanticleer
Strutted and ruled, as one long since had done;
And then the wayside trough with jutting spout
Of ancient, mossy wood, that still poured forth
Its liquid largess to all comers. Soon
A slow cart met them, filled with gathered kelp:
The salt scent seemed a breath of younger days.
They reached the road-bend, and the evening shone
Upon them, calmly. Jerry paused, o'erwhelmed.
Reuben, surprised, glanced at him, and then said,
"Yonder's the house." Old Jerry gazed on him,
And trembled; for before him slowly grew
Through the boy's face the mingled features there
Of father and of mother - Grace's mouth,
Ripe, pouting lips, and Reuben's square-framed eyes.
But, mastering well his voice, he bade the boy
Wait by the wall, till he a little while
Went forward, and prepared. So Reuben stayed;
And Jerry with uncertain step advanced,
As dreaming of his youth and this his home.
Slowly he passed between the gateless posts
Before the unused front door, slowly too
Beyond the side porch with its woodbine thick
Draping autumnal splendor. Thus he came
Before the kitchen window, where he saw
A gray-haired woman bent o'er needle-work
In gathering twilight. And without a voice,
Rooted, he stood. He stirred not, but his glance
Burned through the pane; uneasily she turned,
And seeing that shaggy stranger standing there
Expectant, shook her head, as though to warn
Some chance, wayfaring beggar. He, though, stood
And looked at her immovably. Then, quick
The sash upthrowing, she made as if to speak
Harshly; but still he held his quiet eyes
Upon her. Now she paused; her throat throbbed full;
Her lips paled suddenly, her wan face flamed,
A fertile stir of memory strove to work
Renewal in those features wintry cold.
And so she hung, while Jerry by a step
Drawn nearer, coming just beneath her, said,
"Grace!" And she murmured, "Jerry!" Then she bent
Over him, clasping his great matted head
With those worn arms, all joyless; and the tears
Fell hot upon his forehead from her eyes.
For now in this dim gloaming their two souls
Unfruited, by an instant insight wild,
Delicious, found the full, mysterious clew
Of individual being, each in each.
But, tremulously, soon they drew themselves
Away from that so sweet, so sad embrace,
The first, the last that could be theirs. Then he,
Summing his story in a word, a glance,
Added, "But though you see me broken down
And poor enough, not empty-handed quite
I come. For God set in my way a gift,
The best I could have sought. I bring it you
In memory of the love I bore. Not now
Must that again be thought of! Waste and black
My life's fields lie behind me, and a frost
Has stilled the music of my hopes, but here
If I may dwell, nor trouble you, such a joy
Were mine, I dare not ask it. Oh forgive
The weakness! Come and see my gift!"
Ah, tears
Flowed fast, that night, from springs of love unsealed
Once more within the ancient house - rare tears
Of reconciliation, grief, and joy!
A miracle, it seemed, had here been wrought,
The dead brought back to life. And with him came
The prodigal, repenting.
So, thenceforth,
A spirit of peace within the household dwelt.
In Jerry a swift-sent age these years had brought,
To soften him, wrought with all the woe at home
Such open, gracious dignity, that all
For cheer and guidance learned to look to him.
But chiefly th' younger Reuben sought his aid,
And he with homely wisdom shaped the lad
To a life's loving duty. Yet not long,
Alas! the kind sea-farer with them stayed.
After some years his storm-racked body drooped.
The season came when crickets cease to sing
And flame-curled leaves fly fast; and Jerry sank
Softly toward death. Then, on a boisterous morn
That beat the wrecked woods with incessant gusts
To wrest some last leaf from them, he arose
And passed away. But those who loved him watched
His fading, half in doubt, and half afraid,
As if he must return again; for now
Entering the past he seemed, and not a life
Beyond; and some who thought of that old grave
In the orchard, dreamed a breath's space that the man
Long buried had come back, and could not die.
But so he died, and, ceasing, made request
Beside that outcast of the deep to lie.
None other mark desired he but the stone
Set there long since, though at a stranger's grave,
In heavy memory of him thought dead.
They marked the earth with one more mound beside
The other, near a gap in the low wall
That looked out seaward. There you ever hear
The deep, remorseful requiem of the sea;
And there, in autumn, windfalls, showering thick
Upon the grave, score the slow, voiceless hours
With unrebounding stroke. All round about
Green milkweed rankly thrives, and golden-rod
Sprouts from his prostrate heart in fine-poised grace
Of haughty curve, with every crest in flower. |
The Growth Of Song. | Freeman Edwin Miller | A tender song in shadows grew,
And humble hearts were homes it knew.
But through its wondrous music stole
The longings of the human soul;
The hopes of hosts unsatisfied
Within its numbers wandered wide;
And strangely wet with toilsome tears
It held the yearnings of the years;
Till millions with their woes oppressed,
Proclaimed the song of peace and rest;
Till nations in their troubled ways
Found comfort in the joyous lays,
And all the halting race of wrong
Exalts the loving might of song!
Ah, song that soothes our many cries
With fondness of thy lullabies,
We love, we bless, we scepter thee
Proud empress of the hearts that be! |
Sir Nigel's Song | Arthur Conan Doyle | A sword! A sword! Ah, give me a sword!
For the world is all to win.
Though the way be hard and the door be barred,
The strong man enters in.
If Chance or Fate still hold the gate,
Give me the iron key,
And turret high, my plume shall fly,
Or you may weep for me!
A horse! A horse! Ah, give me a horse,
To bear me out afar,
Where blackest need and grimmest deed,
And sweetest perils are.
Hold thou my ways from glutted days,
Where poisoned leisure lies,
And point the path of tears and wrath
Which mounts to high emprise.
A heart! A heart! Ah, give me a heart,
To rise to circumstance!
Serene and high, and bold to try
The hazard of a chance.
With strength to wait, but fixed as fate,
To plan and dare and do;
The peer of all and only thrall,
Sweet lady mine, to you! |
Sonnet XIX. | Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) | Mille fiate, o dolce mia guerrera.
HIS HEART, REJECTED BY LAURA, WILL PERISH, UNLESS SHE RELENT.
A thousand times, sweet warrior, have I tried,
Proffering my heart to thee, some peace to gain
From those bright eyes, but still, alas! in vain,
To such low level stoops not thy chaste pride.
If others seek the love thus thrown aside,
Vain were their hopes and labours to obtain;
The heart thou spurnest I alike disdain,
To thee displeasing, 'tis by me denied.
But if, discarded thus, it find not thee
Its joyless exile willing to befriend,
Alone, untaught at others' will to wend,
Soon from life's weary burden will it flee.
How heavy then the guilt to both, but more
To thee, for thee it did the most adore.
MACGREGOR.
A thousand times, sweet warrior, to obtain
Peace with those beauteous eyes I've vainly tried,
Proffering my heart; but with that lofty pride
To bend your looks so lowly you refrain:
Expects a stranger fair that heart to gain,
In frail, fallacious hopes will she confide:
It never more to me can be allied;
Since what you scorn, dear lady, I disdain.
In its sad exile if no aid you lend
Banish'd by me; and it can neither stay
Alone, nor yet another's call obey;
Its vital course must hasten to its end:
Ah me, how guilty then we both should prove,
But guilty you the most, for you it most doth love.
NOTT. |
Pain In Pleasure | Elizabeth Barrett Browning | A thought ay like a flower upon mine heart,
And drew around it other thoughts like bees
For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses;
Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art
Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart
Could lure those insect swarms from orange-trees
That I might hive with me such thoughts and please
My soul so, always. foolish counterpart
Of a weak man's vain wishes! While I spoke,
The thought I called a flower grew nettle-rough
The thoughts, called bees, stung me to festering:
Oh, entertain (cried Reason as she woke)
Your best and gladdest thoughts but long enough,
And they will all prove sad enough to sting! |
Victoria Regina | Henry John Newbolt, Sir | (June 21st, 1897*)
A thousand years by sea and land
Our race hath served the island kings,
But not by custom's dull command
To-day with song her Empire rings:
Not all the glories of her birth,
Her armed renown and ancient throne,
Could make her less the child of earth
Or give her hopes beyond our own:
But stayed on faith more sternly proved
And pride than ours more pure and deep,
She loves the land our fathers loved
And keeps the fame our sons shall keep. |
A Temple To Friendship. (Spanish Air.) | Thomas Moore | "A Temple to Friendship;" said Laura, enchanted,
"I'll build in this garden,--the thought is divine!"
Her temple was built and she now only wanted
An image of Friendship to place on the shrine.
She flew to a sculptor, who set down before her
A Friendship, the fairest his art could invent;
But so cold and so dull, that the youthful adorer
Saw plainly this was not the idol she meant.
"Oh! never," she cried, "could I think of enshrining
"An image whose looks are so joyless and dim;--
"But yon little god, upon roses reclining,
"We'll make, if you please, Sir, a Friendship of him."
So the bargain was struck; with the little god laden
She joyfully flew to her shrine in the grove:
"Farewell," said the sculptor, "you're not the first maiden
"Who came but for Friendship and took away Love." |