OSCAR WILDE

MAGDALEN WALKS

The little white clouds are racing over the sky,

And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,

The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch

Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.

 

A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,

The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,

The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth,

Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

 

And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,

And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,

And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire

Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

 

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love

Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,

And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen

Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

 

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,

Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,

And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!

The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.

 

ATHANASIA

To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught

Of all the great things men have saved from Time,

The withered body of a girl was brought

Dead ere the world’s glad youth had touched its prime,

And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid

In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

 

But when they had unloosed the linen band

Which swathed the Egyptian’s body,—lo! was found

Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand

A little seed, which sown in English ground

Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear

And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.

 

With such strange arts this flower did allure

That all forgotten was the asphodel,

And the brown bee, the lily’s paramour,

Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell,

For not a thing of earth it seemed to be,

But stolen from some heavenly Arcady.

 

In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white

At its own beauty, hung across the stream,

The purple dragon-fly had no delight

With its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam,

Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss,

Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis.

 

For love of it the passionate nightingale

Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king,

And the pale dove no longer cared to sail

Through the wet woods at time of blossoming,

But round this flower of Egypt sought to float,

With silvered wing and amethystine throat.

 

While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue

A cooling wind crept from the land of snows,

And the warm south with tender tears of dew

Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose

Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky

On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie.

 

But when o’er wastes of lily-haunted field

The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune,

And broad and glittering like an argent shield

High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon,

Did no strange dream or evil memory make

Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake?

 

Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years

Seemed but the lingering of a summer’s day,

It never knew the tide of cankering fears

Which turn a boy’s gold hair to withered grey,

The dread desire of death it never knew,

Or how all folk that they were born must rue.

 

For we to death with pipe and dancing go,

Nor would we pass the ivory gate again,

As some sad river wearied of its flow

Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men,

Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea!

And counts it gain to die so gloriously.

 

We mar our lordly strength in barren strife

With the world’s legions led by clamorous care,

It never feels decay but gathers life

From the pure sunlight and the supreme air,

We live beneath Time’s wasting sovereignty,

It is the child of all eternity.

 

SERENADE

(FOR MUSIC)

 

The western wind is blowing fair

Across the dark Ægean sea,

And at the secret marble stair

My Tyrian galley waits for thee.

Come down! the purple sail is spread,

The watchman sleeps within the town,

O leave thy lily-flowered bed,

O Lady mine come down, come down!

 

She will not come, I know her well,

Of lover’s vows she hath no care,

And little good a man can tell

Of one so cruel and so fair.

True love is but a woman’s toy,

They never know the lover’s pain,

And I who loved as loves a boy

Must love in vain, must love in vain.

 

O noble pilot, tell me true,

Is that the sheen of golden hair?

Or is it but the tangled dew

That binds the passion-flowers there?

Good sailor come and tell me now

Is that my Lady’s lily hand?

Or is it but the gleaming prow,

Or is it but the silver sand?

 

No! no! ’tis not the tangled dew,

’Tis not the silver-fretted sand,

It is my own dear Lady true

With golden hair and lily hand!

O noble pilot, steer for Troy,

Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,

This is the Queen of life and joy

Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!

 

The waning sky grows faint and blue,

It wants an hour still of day,

Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,

O Lady mine, away! away!

O noble pilot, steer for Troy,

Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,

O loved as only loves a boy!

O loved for ever evermore!

 

ENDYMION

(FOR MUSIC)

 

The apple trees are hung with gold,

And birds are loud in Arcady,

The sheep lie bleating in the fold,

The wild goat runs across the wold,

But yesterday his love he told,

I know he will come back to me.

O rising moon!  O Lady moon!

Be you my lover’s sentinel,

You cannot choose but know him well,

For he is shod with purple shoon,

You cannot choose but know my love,

For he a shepherd’s crook doth bear,

And he is soft as any dove,

And brown and curly is his hair.

 

The turtle now has ceased to call

Upon her crimson-footed groom,

The grey wolf prowls about the stall,

The lily’s singing seneschal

Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all

The violet hills are lost in gloom.

O risen moon!  O holy moon!

Stand on the top of Helice,

And if my own true love you see,

Ah! if you see the purple shoon,

The hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair,

The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,

Tell him that I am waiting where

The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

 

The falling dew is cold and chill,

And no bird sings in Arcady,

The little fauns have left the hill,

Even the tired daffodil

Has closed its gilded doors, and still

My lover comes not back to me.

False moon!  False moon!  O waning moon!

Where is my own true lover gone,

Where are the lips vermilion,

The shepherd’s crook, the purple shoon?

Why spread that silver pavilion,

Why wear that veil of drifting mist?

Ah! thou hast young Endymion,

Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!

 

LA BELLA DONNA DELLA MIA MENTE

My limbs are wasted with a flame,

My feet are sore with travelling,

For, calling on my Lady’s name,

My lips have now forgot to sing.

 

O Linnet in the wild-rose brake

Strain for my Love thy melody,

O Lark sing louder for love’s sake,

My gentle Lady passeth by.

 

She is too fair for any man

To see or hold his heart’s delight,

Fairer than Queen or courtesan

Or moonlit water in the night.

 

Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,

(Green leaves upon her golden hair!)

Green grasses through the yellow sheaves

Of autumn corn are not more fair.

 

Her little lips, more made to kiss

Than to cry bitterly for pain,

Are tremulous as brook-water is,

Or roses after evening rain.

 

Her neck is like white melilote

Flushing for pleasure of the sun,

The throbbing of the linnet’s throat

Is not so sweet to look upon.

 

As a pomegranate, cut in twain,

White-seeded, is her crimson mouth,

Her cheeks are as the fading stain

Where the peach reddens to the south.

 

O twining hands!  O delicate

White body made for love and pain!

O House of love!  O desolate

Pale flower beaten by the rain!

 

CHANSON

A ring of gold and a milk-white dove

Are goodly gifts for thee,

And a hempen rope for your own love

To hang upon a tree.

 

For you a House of Ivory,

(Roses are white in the rose-bower)!

A narrow bed for me to lie,

(White, O white, is the hemlock flower)!

 

Myrtle and jessamine for you,

(O the red rose is fair to see)!

For me the cypress and the rue,

(Finest of all is rosemary)!

 

For you three lovers of your hand,

(Green grass where a man lies dead)!

For me three paces on the sand,

(Plant lilies at my head)!

 

CHARMIDES

I.

 

He was a Grecian lad, who coming home

With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily

Stood at his galley’s prow, and let the foam

Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,

And holding wave and wind in boy’s despite

Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night.

 

Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear

Like a thin thread of gold against the sky,

And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking gear,

And bade the pilot head her lustily

Against the nor’west gale, and all day long

Held on his way, and marked the rowers’ time with measured song.

 

And when the faint Corinthian hills were red

Dropped anchor in a little sandy bay,

And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head,

And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray,

And washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold

Brought out his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled,

 

And a rich robe stained with the fishers’ juice

Which of some swarthy trader he had bought

Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse,

And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought,

And by the questioning merchants made his way

Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day

 

Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud,

Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet

Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd

Of busy priests, and from some dark retreat

Watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring

The firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling

 

The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang

His studded crook against the temple wall

To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang

Of the base wolf from homestead and from stall;

And then the clear-voiced maidens ’gan to sing,

And to the altar each man brought some goodly offering,

 

A beechen cup brimming with milky foam,

A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery

Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb

Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee

Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil

Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked spoil

 

Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid

To please Athena, and the dappled hide

Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade

Had met the shaft; and then the herald cried,

And from the pillared precinct one by one

Went the glad Greeks well pleased that they their simple vows had done.

 

And the old priest put out the waning fires

Save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed

For ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres

Came fainter on the wind, as down the road

In joyous dance these country folk did pass,

And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass.

 

Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,

And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,

And the rose-petals falling from the wreath

As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,

And seemed to be in some entrancèd swoon

Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon

 

Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor,

When from his nook up leapt the venturous lad,

And flinging wide the cedar-carven door

Beheld an awful image saffron-clad

And armed for battle! the gaunt Griffin glared

From the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared

 

Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled

The Gorgon’s head its leaden eyeballs rolled,

And writhed its snaky horrors through the shield,

And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold

In passion impotent, while with blind gaze

The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze.

 

The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp

Far out at sea off Sunium, or cast

The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp

Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast

Divide the folded curtains of the night,

And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright.

 

And guilty lovers in their venery

Forgat a little while their stolen sweets,

Deeming they heard dread Dian’s bitter cry;

And the grim watchmen on their lofty seats

Ran to their shields in haste precipitate,

Or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet.

 

For round the temple rolled the clang of arms,

And the twelve Gods leapt up in marble fear,

And the air quaked with dissonant alarums

Till huge Poseidon shook his mighty spear,

And on the frieze the prancing horses neighed,

And the low tread of hurrying feet rang from the cavalcade.

 

Ready for death with parted lips he stood,

And well content at such a price to see

That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood,

The marvel of that pitiless chastity,

Ah! well content indeed, for never wight

Since Troy’s young shepherd prince had seen so wonderful a sight.

 

Ready for death he stood, but lo! the air

Grew silent, and the horses ceased to neigh,

And off his brow he tossed the clustering hair,

And from his limbs he throw the cloak away;

For whom would not such love make desperate?

And nigher came, and touched her throat, and with hands violate

 

Undid the cuirass, and the crocus gown,

And bared the breasts of polished ivory,

Till from the waist the peplos falling down

Left visible the secret mystery

Which to no lover will Athena show,

The grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of snow.

 

Those who have never known a lover’s sin

Let them not read my ditty, it will be

To their dull ears so musicless and thin

That they will have no joy of it, but ye

To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile,

Ye who have learned who Eros is,—O listen yet awhile.

 

A little space he let his greedy eyes

Rest on the burnished image, till mere sight

Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries,

And then his lips in hungering delight

Fed on her lips, and round the towered neck

He flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion’s will to check.

 

Never I ween did lover hold such tryst,

For all night long he murmured honeyed word,

And saw her sweet unravished limbs, and kissed

Her pale and argent body undisturbed,

And paddled with the polished throat, and pressed

His hot and beating heart upon her chill and icy breast.

 

It was as if Numidian javelins

Pierced through and through his wild and whirling brain,

And his nerves thrilled like throbbing violins

In exquisite pulsation, and the pain

Was such sweet anguish that he never drew

His lips from hers till overhead the lark of warning flew.

 

They who have never seen the daylight peer

Into a darkened room, and drawn the curtain,

And with dull eyes and wearied from some dear

And worshipped body risen, they for certain

Will never know of what I try to sing,

How long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering.

 

The moon was girdled with a crystal rim,

The sign which shipmen say is ominous

Of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim,

And the low lightening east was tremulous

With the faint fluttering wings of flying dawn,

Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn.

 

Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast

Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan,

And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed,

And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran

Like a young fawn unto an olive wood

Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood;

 

And sought a little stream, which well he knew,

For oftentimes with boyish careless shout

The green and crested grebe he would pursue,

Or snare in woven net the silver trout,

And down amid the startled reeds he lay

Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day.

 

On the green bank he lay, and let one hand

Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly,

And soon the breath of morning came and fanned

His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly

The tangled curls from off his forehead, while

He on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile.

 

And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak

With his long crook undid the wattled cotes,

And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke

Curled through the air across the ripening oats,

And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed

As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed.

 

And when the light-foot mower went afield

Across the meadows laced with threaded dew,

And the sheep bleated on the misty weald,

And from its nest the waking corncrake flew,

Some woodmen saw him lying by the stream

And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem,

 

Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said,

‘It is young Hylas, that false runaway

Who with a Naiad now would make his bed

Forgetting Herakles,’ but others, ‘Nay,

It is Narcissus, his own paramour,

Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure.’

 

And when they nearer came a third one cried,

‘It is young Dionysos who has hid

His spear and fawnskin by the river side

Weary of hunting with the Bassarid,

And wise indeed were we away to fly:

They live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy.’

 

So turned they back, and feared to look behind,

And told the timid swain how they had seen

Amid the reeds some woodland god reclined,

And no man dared to cross the open green,

And on that day no olive-tree was slain,

Nor rushes cut, but all deserted was the fair domain,

 

Save when the neat-herd’s lad, his empty pail

Well slung upon his back, with leap and bound

Raced on the other side, and stopped to hail,

Hoping that he some comrade new had found,

And gat no answer, and then half afraid

Passed on his simple way, or down the still and silent glade

 

A little girl ran laughing from the farm,

Not thinking of love’s secret mysteries,

And when she saw the white and gleaming arm

And all his manlihood, with longing eyes

Whose passion mocked her sweet virginity

Watched him awhile, and then stole back sadly and wearily.

 

Far off he heard the city’s hum and noise,

And now and then the shriller laughter where

The passionate purity of brown-limbed boys

Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air,

And now and then a little tinkling bell

As the shorn wether led the sheep down to the mossy well.

 

Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat,

The grasshopper chirped idly from the tree,

In sleek and oily coat the water-rat

Breasting the little ripples manfully

Made for the wild-duck’s nest, from bough to bough

Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the slough.

 

On the faint wind floated the silky seeds

As the bright scythe swept through the waving grass,

The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds

And flecked with silver whorls the forest’s glass,

Which scarce had caught again its imagery

Ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly.

 

But little care had he for any thing

Though up and down the beech the squirrel played,

And from the copse the linnet ’gan to sing

To its brown mate its sweetest serenade;

Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen

The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the Queen.

 

But when the herdsman called his straggling goats

With whistling pipe across the rocky road,

And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes

Boomed through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode

Of coming storm, and the belated crane

Passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain

 

Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose,

And from the gloomy forest went his way

Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close,

And came at last unto a little quay,

And called his mates aboard, and took his seat

On the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed the dripping sheet,

 

And steered across the bay, and when nine suns

Passed down the long and laddered way of gold,

And nine pale moons had breathed their orisons

To the chaste stars their confessors, or told

Their dearest secret to the downy moth

That will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth

 

Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes

And lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked

As though the lading of three argosies

Were in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked,

And darkness straightway stole across the deep,

Sheathed was Orion’s sword, dread Mars himself fled down the steep,

 

And the moon hid behind a tawny mask

Of drifting cloud, and from the ocean’s marge

Rose the red plume, the huge and hornèd casque,

The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe!

And clad in bright and burnished panoply

Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea!

 

To the dull sailors’ sight her loosened looks

Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet

Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,

And, marking how the rising waters beat

Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried

To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side

 

But he, the overbold adulterer,

A dear profaner of great mysteries,

An ardent amorous idolater,

When he beheld those grand relentless eyes

Laughed loud for joy, and crying out ‘I come’

Leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam.

 

Then fell from the high heaven one bright star,

One dancer left the circling galaxy,

And back to Athens on her clattering car

In all the pride of venged divinity

Pale Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank,

And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy lover sank.

 

And the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew

With mocking hoots after the wrathful Queen,

And the old pilot bade the trembling crew

Hoist the big sail, and told how he had seen

Close to the stern a dim and giant form,

And like a dipping swallow the stout ship dashed through the storm.

 

And no man dared to speak of Charmides

Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought,

And when they reached the strait Symplegades

They beached their galley on the shore, and sought

The toll-gate of the city hastily,

And in the market showed their brown and pictured pottery.

 

II.

But some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare

The boy’s drowned body back to Grecian land,

And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair

And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching hand;

Some brought sweet spices from far Araby,

And others bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby.

 

And when he neared his old Athenian home,

A mighty billow rose up suddenly

Upon whose oily back the clotted foam

Lay diapered in some strange fantasy,

And clasping him unto its glassy breast

Swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest!

 

Now where Colonos leans unto the sea

There lies a long and level stretch of lawn;

The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee

For it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun

Is not afraid, for never through the day

Comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play.

 

But often from the thorny labyrinth

And tangled branches of the circling wood

The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth

Hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood

Over his guilty gaze, and creeps away,

Nor dares to wind his horn, or—else at the first break of day

 

The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball

Along the reedy shore, and circumvent

Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal

For fear of bold Poseidon’s ravishment,

And loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes,

Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise.

 

On this side and on that a rocky cave,

Hung with the yellow-belled laburnum, stands

Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave

Leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands,

As though it feared to be too soon forgot

By the green rush, its playfellow,—and yet, it is a spot

 

So small, that the inconstant butterfly

Could steal the hoarded money from each flower

Ere it was noon, and still not satisfy

Its over-greedy love,—within an hour

A sailor boy, were he but rude enow

To land and pluck a garland for his galley’s painted prow,

 

Would almost leave the little meadow bare,

For it knows nothing of great pageantry,

Only a few narcissi here and there

Stand separate in sweet austerity,

Dotting the unmown grass with silver stars,

And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars.

 

Hither the billow brought him, and was glad

Of such dear servitude, and where the land

Was virgin of all waters laid the lad

Upon the golden margent of the strand,

And like a lingering lover oft returned

To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned,

 

Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust,

That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead,

Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost

Had withered up those lilies white and red

Which, while the boy would through the forest range,

Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change.

 

And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand,

Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied

The boy’s pale body stretched upon the sand,

And feared Poseidon’s treachery, and cried,

And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade

Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade.

 

Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be

So dread a thing to feel a sea-god’s arms

Crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny,

And longed to listen to those subtle charms

Insidious lovers weave when they would win

Some fencèd fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin

 

To yield her treasure unto one so fair,

And lay beside him, thirsty with love’s drouth,

Called him soft names, played with his tangled hair,

And with hot lips made havoc of his mouth

Afraid he might not wake, and then afraid

Lest he might wake too soon, fled back, and then, fond renegade,

 

Returned to fresh assault, and all day long

Sat at his side, and laughed at her new toy,

And held his hand, and sang her sweetest song,

Then frowned to see how froward was the boy

Who would not with her maidenhood entwine,

Nor knew that three days since his eyes had looked on Proserpine;

 

Nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done,

But said, ‘He will awake, I know him well,

He will awake at evening when the sun

Hangs his red shield on Corinth’s citadel;

This sleep is but a cruel treachery

To make me love him more, and in some cavern of the sea

 

Deeper than ever falls the fisher’s line

Already a huge Triton blows his horn,

And weaves a garland from the crystalline

And drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn

The emerald pillars of our bridal bed,

For sphered in foaming silver, and with coral crownèd head,

 

We two will sit upon a throne of pearl,

And a blue wave will be our canopy,

And at our feet the water-snakes will curl

In all their amethystine panoply

Of diamonded mail, and we will mark

The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark,

 

Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold

Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep

His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold,

And we will see the painted dolphins sleep

Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks

Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous flocks.

 

And tremulous opal-hued anemones

Will wave their purple fringes where we tread

Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies

Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread

The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck,

And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.’

 

But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun

With gaudy pennon flying passed away

Into his brazen House, and one by one

The little yellow stars began to stray

Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed

She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed,

 

And cried, ‘Awake, already the pale moon

Washes the trees with silver, and the wave

Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune,

The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave

The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass,

And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky grass.

 

Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy,

For in yon stream there is a little reed

That often whispers how a lovely boy

Lay with her once upon a grassy mead,

Who when his cruel pleasure he had done

Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the sun.

 

Be not so coy, the laurel trembles still

With great Apollo’s kisses, and the fir

Whose clustering sisters fringe the seaward hill

Hath many a tale of that bold ravisher

Whom men call Boreas, and I have seen

The mocking eyes of Hermes through the poplar’s silvery sheen.

 

Even the jealous Naiads call me fair,

And every morn a young and ruddy swain

Woos me with apples and with locks of hair,

And seeks to soothe my virginal disdain

By all the gifts the gentle wood-nymphs love;

But yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged dove

 

With little crimson feet, which with its store

Of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad

Had stolen from the lofty sycamore

At daybreak, when her amorous comrade had

Flown off in search of berried juniper

Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager

 

Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency

So constant as this simple shepherd-boy

For my poor lips, his joyous purity

And laughing sunny eyes might well decoy

A Dryad from her oath to Artemis;

For very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss;

 

His argent forehead, like a rising moon

Over the dusky hills of meeting brows,

Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon

Leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse

For Cytheræa, the first silky down

Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and brown;

 

And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds

Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie,

And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds

Is in his homestead for the thievish fly

To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead

Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed.

 

And yet I love him not; it was for thee

I kept my love; I knew that thou would’st come

To rid me of this pallid chastity,

Thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam

Of all the wide Ægean, brightest star

Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets are!

 

I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first

The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring

Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst

To myriad multitudinous blossoming

Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons

That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous tunes

 

Startled the squirrel from its granary,

And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane,

Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy

Crept like new wine, and every mossy vein

Throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood,

And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s maidenhood.

 

The trooping fawns at evening came and laid

Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs,

And on my topmost branch the blackbird made

A little nest of grasses for his spouse,

And now and then a twittering wren would light

On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight.

 

I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place,

Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay,

And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase

The timorous girl, till tired out with play

She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair,

And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful snare.

 

Then come away unto my ambuscade

Where clustering woodbine weaves a canopy

For amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade

Of Paphian myrtles seems to sanctify

The dearest rites of love; there in the cool

And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool,

 

The ouzel’s haunt, the wild bee’s pasturage,

For round its rim great creamy lilies float

Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage,

Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat

Steered by a dragon-fly,—be not afraid

To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made

 

For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,

One arm around her boyish paramour,

Strays often there at eve, and I have seen

The moon strip off her misty vestiture

For young Endymion’s eyes; be not afraid,

The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret glade.

 

Nay if thou will’st, back to the beating brine,

Back to the boisterous billow let us go,

And walk all day beneath the hyaline

Huge vault of Neptune’s watery portico,

And watch the purple monsters of the deep

Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias leap.

 

For if my mistress find me lying here

She will not ruth or gentle pity show,

But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere

Relentless fingers string the cornel bow,

And draw the feathered notch against her breast,

And loose the archèd cord; aye, even now upon the quest

 

I hear her hurrying feet,—awake, awake,

Thou laggard in love’s battle! once at least

Let me drink deep of passion’s wine, and slake

My parchèd being with the nectarous feast

Which even gods affect!  O come, Love, come,

Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.’

 

Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees

Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air

Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas

Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare

Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed,

And like a flame a barbèd reed flew whizzing down the glade.

 

And where the little flowers of her breast

Just brake into their milky blossoming,

This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest,

Pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering,

And ploughed a bloody furrow with its dart,

And dug a long red road, and cleft with wingèd death her heart.

 

Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry

On the boy’s body fell the Dryad maid,

Sobbing for incomplete virginity,

And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,

And all the pain of things unsatisfied,

And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing side.

 

Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan,

And very pitiful to see her die

Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known

The joy of passion, that dread mystery

Which not to know is not to live at all,

And yet to know is to be held in death’s most deadly thrall.

 

But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,

Who with Adonis all night long had lain

Within some shepherd’s hut in Arcady,

On team of silver doves and gilded wain

Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar

From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,

 

And when low down she spied the hapless pair,

And heard the Oread’s faint despairing cry,

Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air

As though it were a viol, hastily

She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume,

And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous doom.

 

For as a gardener turning back his head

To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows

With careless scythe too near some flower bed,

And cuts the thorny pillar of the rose,

And with the flower’s loosened loneliness

Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd lad in wantonness

 

Driving his little flock along the mead

Treads down two daffodils, which side by aide

Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede

And made the gaudy moth forget its pride,

Treads down their brimming golden chalices

Under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages;

 

Or as a schoolboy tired of his book

Flings himself down upon the reedy grass

And plucks two water-lilies from the brook,

And for a time forgets the hour glass,

Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way,

And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these lovers lay.

 

And Venus cried, ‘It is dread Artemis

Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty,

Or else that mightier maid whose care it is

To guard her strong and stainless majesty

Upon the hill Athenian,—alas!

That they who loved so well unloved into Death’s house should pass.’

 

So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl

In the great golden waggon tenderly

(Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl

Just threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry

Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast

Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest)

 

And then each pigeon spread its milky van,

The bright car soared into the dawning sky,

And like a cloud the aerial caravan

Passed over the Ægean silently,

Till the faint air was troubled with the song

From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.

 

But when the doves had reached their wonted goal

Where the wide stair of orbèd marble dips

Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul

Just shook the trembling petals of her lips

And passed into the void, and Venus knew

That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue,

 

And bade her servants carve a cedar chest

With all the wonder of this history,

Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest

Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky

On the low hills of Paphos, and the Faun

Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn.

 

Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere

The morning bee had stung the daffodil

With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair

The waking stag had leapt across the rill

And roused the ouzel, or the lizard crept

Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept.

 

And when day brake, within that silver shrine

Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous,

Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine

That she whose beauty made Death amorous

Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord,

And let Desire pass across dread Charon’s icy ford.

 

III

In melancholy moonless Acheron,

Farm for the goodly earth and joyous day

Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun

Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May

Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor,

Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more,

 

There by a dim and dark Lethæan well

Young Charmides was lying; wearily

He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel,

And with its little rifled treasury

Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream,

And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream,

 

When as he gazed into the watery glass

And through his brown hair’s curly tangles scanned

His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass

Across the mirror, and a little hand

Stole into his, and warm lips timidly

Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh.

 

Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw,

And ever nigher still their faces came,

And nigher ever did their young mouths draw

Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame,

And longing arms around her neck he cast,

And felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast,

 

And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss,

And all her maidenhood was his to slay,

And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss

Their passion waxed and waned,—O why essay

To pipe again of love, too venturous reed!

Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead.

 

Too venturous poesy, O why essay

To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings

O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay

Sleep hidden in the lyre’s silent strings

Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill,

Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s golden quid!

 

Enough, enough that he whose life had been

A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame,

Could in the loveless land of Hades glean

One scorching harvest from those fields of flame

Where passion walks with naked unshod feet

And is not wounded,—ah! enough that once their lips could meet

 

In that wild throb when all existences

Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy

Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress

Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone

Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne

Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone.

 

FLOWERS OF GOLD

IMPRESSIONS

I

LES SILHOUETTES

The sea is flecked with bars of grey,

The dull dead wind is out of tune,

And like a withered leaf the moon

Is blown across the stormy bay.

 

Etched clear upon the pallid sand

Lies the black boat: a sailor boy

Clambers aboard in careless joy

With laughing face and gleaming hand.

 

And overhead the curlews cry,

Where through the dusky upland grass

The young brown-throated reapers pass,

Like silhouettes against the sky.

 

II

LA FUITE DE LA LUNE

To outer senses there is peace,

A dreamy peace on either hand

Deep silence in the shadowy land,

Deep silence where the shadows cease.

 

Save for a cry that echoes shrill

From some lone bird disconsolate;

A corncrake calling to its mate;

The answer from the misty hill.

 

And suddenly the moon withdraws

Her sickle from the lightening skies,

And to her sombre cavern flies,

Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.

 

THE GRAVE OF KEATS

Rid of the world’s injustice, and his pain,

He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue:

Taken from life when life and love were new

The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,

Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.

No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,

But gentle violets weeping with the dew

Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.

O proudest heart that broke for misery!

O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!

O poet-painter of our English Land!

Thy name was writ in water—it shall stand:

And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,

As Isabella did her Basil-tree.

 

Rome.

 

THEOCRITUS

A VILLANELLE

 

O singer of Persephone!

In the dim meadows desolate

Dost thou remember Sicily?

 

Still through the ivy flits the bee

Where Amaryllis lies in state;

O Singer of Persephone!

 

Simætha calls on Hecate

And hears the wild dogs at the gate;

Dost thou remember Sicily?

 

Still by the light and laughing sea

Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;

O Singer of Persephone!

 

And still in boyish rivalry

Young Daphnis challenges his mate;

Dost thou remember Sicily?

 

Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,

For thee the jocund shepherds wait;

O Singer of Persephone!

Dost thou remember Sicily?

 

IN THE GOLD ROOM

A HARMONY

 

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys

Strayed in a fitful fantasy,

Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees

Rustle their pale-leaves listlessly,

Or the drifting foam of a restless sea

When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.

 

Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold

Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun

On the burnished disk of the marigold,

Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun

When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,

And the spear of the lily is aureoled.

 

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine

Burned like the ruby fire set

In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,

Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,

Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet

With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

 

BALLADE DE MARGUERITE

(NORMANDE)

 

I am weary of lying within the chase

When the knights are meeting in market-place.

 

Nay, go not thou to the red-roofed town

Lest the hoofs of the war-horse tread thee down.

 

But I would not go where the Squires ride,

I would only walk by my Lady’s side.

 

Alack! and alack! thou art overbold,

A Forester’s son may not eat off gold.

 

Will she love me the less that my Father is seen

Each Martinmas day in a doublet green?

 

Perchance she is sewing at tapestrie,

Spindle and loom are not meet for thee.

 

Ah, if she is working the arras bright

I might ravel the threads by the fire-light.

 

Perchance she is hunting of the deer,

How could you follow o’er hill and mere?

 

Ah, if she is riding with the court,

I might run beside her and wind the morte.

 

Perchance she is kneeling in St. Denys,

(On her soul may our Lady have gramercy!)

 

Ah, if she is praying in lone chapelle,

I might swing the censer and ring the bell.

 

Come in, my son, for you look sae pale,

The father shall fill thee a stoup of ale.

 

But who are these knights in bright array?

Is it a pageant the rich folks play?

 

’T is the King of England from over sea,

Who has come unto visit our fair countrie.

 

But why does the curfew toll sae low?

And why do the mourners walk a-row?

 

O ’t is Hugh of Amiens my sister’s son

Who is lying stark, for his day is done.

 

Nay, nay, for I see white lilies clear,

It is no strong man who lies on the bier.

 

O ’t is old Dame Jeannette that kept the hall,

I knew she would die at the autumn fall.

 

Dame Jeannette had not that gold-brown hair,

Old Jeannette was not a maiden fair.

 

O ’t is none of our kith and none of our kin,

(Her soul may our Lady assoil from sin!)

 

But I hear the boy’s voice chaunting sweet,

‘Elle est morte, la Marguerite.’

 

Come in, my son, and lie on the bed,

And let the dead folk bury their dead.

 

O mother, you know I loved her true:

O mother, hath one grave room for two?

 

THE DOLE OF THE KING’S DAUGHTER

(BRETON)

 

Seven stars in the still water,

And seven in the sky;

Seven sins on the King’s daughter,

Deep in her soul to lie.

 

Red roses are at her feet,

(Roses are red in her red-gold hair)

And O where her bosom and girdle meet

Red roses are hidden there.

 

Fair is the knight who lieth slain

Amid the rush and reed,

See the lean fishes that are fain

Upon dead men to feed.

 

Sweet is the page that lieth there,

(Cloth of gold is goodly prey,)

See the black ravens in the air,

Black, O black as the night are they.

 

What do they there so stark and dead?

(There is blood upon her hand)

Why are the lilies flecked with red?

(There is blood on the river sand.)

 

There are two that ride from the south and east,

And two from the north and west,

For the black raven a goodly feast,

For the King’s daughter rest.

 

There is one man who loves her true,

(Red, O red, is the stain of gore!)

He hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew,

(One grave will do for four.)

 

No moon in the still heaven,

In the black water none,

The sins on her soul are seven,

The sin upon his is one.

 

AMOR INTELLECTUALIS

Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly

And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown

From antique reeds to common folk unknown:

And often launched our bark upon that sea

Which the nine Muses hold in empery,

And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,

Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home

Till we had freighted well our argosy.

Of which despoilèd treasures these remain,

Sordello’s passion, and the honeyed line

Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine

Driving his pampered jades, and more than these,

The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,

And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies.

 

SANTA DECCA

The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring

To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves!

Demeter’s child no more hath tithe of sheaves,

And in the noon the careless shepherds sing,

For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning

By secret glade and devious haunt is o’er:

Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;

Great Pan is dead, and Mary’s son is King.

 

And yet—perchance in this sea-trancèd isle,

Chewing the bitter fruit of memory,

Some God lies hidden in the asphodel.

Ah Love! if such there be, then it were well

For us to fly his anger: nay, but see,

The leaves are stirring: let us watch awhile.

 

Corfu.

 

A VISION

Two crownèd Kings, and One that stood alone

With no green weight of laurels round his head,

But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,

And wearied with man’s never-ceasing moan

For sins no bleating victim can atone,

And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed.

Girt was he in a garment black and red,

And at his feet I marked a broken stone

Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees.

Now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame,

I cried to Beatricé, ‘Who are these?’

And she made answer, knowing well each name,

‘Æschylos first, the second Sophokles,

And last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.’

 

IMPRESSION DE VOYAGE

The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky

Burned like a heated opal through the air;

We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair

For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.

From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye

Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,

Ithaca’s cliff, Lycaon’s snowy peak,

And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady.

The flapping of the sail against the mast,

The ripple of the water on the side,

The ripple of girls’ laughter at the stern,

The only sounds:—when ’gan the West to burn,

And a red sun upon the seas to ride,

I stood upon the soil of Greece at last!

 

Katakolo.

 

THE GRAVE OF SHELLEY

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed

Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;

Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,

And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.

And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,

In the still chamber of yon pyramid

Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,

Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

 

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb

Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,

But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb

In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,

Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom

Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

 

Rome.

 

BY THE ARNO

The oleander on the wall

Grows crimson in the dawning light,

Though the grey shadows of the night

Lie yet on Florence like a pall.

 

The dew is bright upon the hill,

And bright the blossoms overhead,

But ah! the grasshoppers have fled,

The little Attic song is still.

 

Only the leaves are gently stirred

By the soft breathing of the gale,

And in the almond-scented vale

The lonely nightingale is heard.

 

The day will make thee silent soon,

O nightingale sing on for love!

While yet upon the shadowy grove

Splinter the arrows of the moon.

 

Before across the silent lawn

In sea-green vest the morning steals,

And to love’s frightened eyes reveals

The long white fingers of the dawn

 

Fast climbing up the eastern sky

To grasp and slay the shuddering night,

All careless of my heart’s delight,

Or if the nightingale should die.

 

IMPRESSIONS DE THÉÂTRE

FABIEN DEI FRANCHI

To my Friend Henry Irving

 

The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,

The dead that travel fast, the opening door,

The murdered brother rising through the floor,

The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid,

And then the lonely duel in the glade,

The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore,

Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er,—

These things are well enough,—but thou wert made

For more august creation! frenzied Lear

Should at thy bidding wander on the heath

With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo

For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear

Pluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its sheath—

Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to blow!

 

PHÈDRE

To Sarah Bernhardt

 

How vain and dull this common world must seem

To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked

At Florence with Mirandola, or walked

Through the cool olives of the Academe:

Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream

For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played

With the white girls in that Phæacian glade

Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.

 

Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay

Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again

Back to this common world so dull and vain,

For thou wert weary of the sunless day,

The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,

The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.

 

WRITTEN AT THE LYCEUM THEATRE

I

PORTIA

To Ellen Terry

 

I marvel not Bassanio was so bold

To peril all he had upon the lead,

Or that proud Aragon bent low his head

Or that Morocco’s fiery heart grew cold:

For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold

Which is more golden than the golden sun

No woman Veronesé looked upon

Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.

Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield

The sober-suited lawyer’s gown you donned,

And would not let the laws of Venice yield

Antonio’s heart to that accursèd Jew—

O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due:

I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

 

II

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA

To Ellen Terry

 

In the lone tent, waiting for victory,

She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,

Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain:

The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,

War’s ruin, and the wreck of chivalry

To her proud soul no common fear can bring:

Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King,

Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy.

O Hair of Gold!  O Crimson Lips!  O Face

Made for the luring and the love of man!

With thee I do forget the toil and stress,

The loveless road that knows no resting place,

Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s dread weariness,

My freedom, and my life republican!

 

III

CAMMA

To Ellen Terry

 

As one who poring on a Grecian urn

Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made,

God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,

And for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn

And face the obvious day, must I not yearn

For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,

When in midmost shrine of Artemis

I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

 

And yet—methinks I’d rather see thee play

That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery

Made Emperors drunken,—come, great Egypt, shake

Our stage with all thy mimic pageants!  Nay,

I am grown sick of unreal passions, make

The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony!

 

PANTHEA

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,

From passionate pain to deadlier delight,—

I am too young to live without desire,

Too young art thou to waste this summer night

Asking those idle questions which of old

Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

 

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,

And wisdom is a childless heritage,

One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow,—

Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:

Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,

Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!

 

Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale,

Like water bubbling from a silver jar,

So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,

That high in heaven she is hung so far

She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,—

Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring moon.

 

White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,

The fallen snow of petals where the breeze

Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam

Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these

Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?

Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

 

For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown

Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour

For wasted days of youth to make atone

By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,

Hearken they now to either good or ill,

But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

 

They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,

Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,

They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees

Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,

Mourning the old glad days before they knew

What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

 

And far beneath the brazen floor they see

Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,

The bustle of small lives, then wearily

Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again

Kissing each others’ mouths, and mix more deep

The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

 

There all day long the golden-vestured sun,

Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze,

And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun

By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze

Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon,

And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

 

There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead,

Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust

Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede

Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,

His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare

The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

 

There in the green heart of some garden close

Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,

Her warm soft body like the briar rose

Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,

Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis

Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

 

There never does that dreary north-wind blow

Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,

Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,

Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare

To wake them in the silver-fretted night

When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

 

Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring,

The violet-hidden waters well they know,

Where one whose feet with tired wandering

Are faint and broken may take heart and go,

And from those dark depths cool and crystalline

Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

 

But we oppress our natures, God or Fate

Is our enemy, we starve and feed

On vain repentance—O we are born too late!

What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed

Who crowd into one finite pulse of time

The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

 

O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,

Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair,

Wearied of every temple we have built,

Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,

For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:

One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

 

Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole

Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,

No little coin of bronze can bring the soul

Over Death’s river to the sunless land,

Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,

The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

 

We are resolved into the supreme air,

We are made one with what we touch and see,

With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair,

With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree

Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range

The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

 

With beat of systole and of diastole

One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart,

And mighty waves of single Being roll

From nerveless germ to man, for we are part

Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,

One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

 

From lower cells of waking life we pass

To full perfection; thus the world grows old:

We who are godlike now were once a mass

Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,

Unsentient or of joy or misery,

And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

 

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn

Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,

Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn

To water-lilies; the brown fields men till

Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,

Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite.

 

The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell,

The man’s last passion, and the last red spear

That from the lily leaps, the asphodel

Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear

Of too much beauty, and the timid shame

Of the young bridegroom at his lover’s eyes,—these with the same

 

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth

Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,

The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth

At daybreak know a pleasure not less real

Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood,

We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.

 

So when men bury us beneath the yew

Thy crimson-stainèd mouth a rose will be,

And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew,

And when the white narcissus wantonly

Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy

Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

 

And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain

In some sweet flower we will feel the sun,

And from the linnet’s throat will sing again,

And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes will run

Over our graves, or as two tigers creep

Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

 

And give them battle!  How my heart leaps up

To think of that grand living after death

In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,

Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,

And with the pale leaves of some autumn day

The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey.

 

O think of it!  We shall inform ourselves

Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun,

The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves

That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn

Upon the meadows, shall not be more near

Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear

 

The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow,

And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun

On sunless days in winter, we shall know

By whom the silver gossamer is spun,

Who paints the diapered fritillaries,

On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

 

Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows

If yonder daffodil had lured the bee

Into its gilded womb, or any rose

Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!

Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,

But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing.

 

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,

Or is this dædal-fashioned earth less fair,

That we are nature’s heritors, and one

With every pulse of life that beats the air?

Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,

New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

 

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,

Critics of nature, but the joyous sea

Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star

Shoot arrows at our pleasure!  We shall be

Part of the mighty universal whole,

And through all æons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

 

We shall be notes in that great Symphony

Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,

And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be

One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years

Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,

The Universe itself shall be our Immortality.

 

THE FOURTH MOVEMENT

IMPRESSION

LE RÉVEILLON

 

The sky is laced with fitful red,

The circling mists and shadows flee,

The dawn is rising from the sea,

Like a white lady from her bed.

 

And jagged brazen arrows fall

Athwart the feathers of the night,

And a long wave of yellow light

Breaks silently on tower and hall,

 

And spreading wide across the wold

Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,

And all the chestnut tops are stirred,

And all the branches streaked with gold.

 

AT VERONA

How steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are

For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,

And O how salt and bitter is the bread

Which falls from this Hound’s table,—better far

That I had died in the red ways of war,

Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,

Than to live thus, by all things comraded

Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.

 

‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this?

He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss

Of his gold city, and eternal day’—

Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars

I do possess what none can take away

My love, and all the glory of the stars.

 

APOLOGIA

Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,

Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,

And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain

Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

 

Is it thy will—Love that I love so well—

That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot

Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell

The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

 

Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,

And sell ambition at the common mart,

And let dull failure be my vestiture,

And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

 

Perchance it may be better so—at least

I have not made my heart a heart of stone,

Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,

Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

 

Many a man hath done so; sought to fence

In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,

Trodden the dusty road of common sense,

While all the forest sang of liberty,

 

Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight

Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,

To where some steep untrodden mountain height

Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.

 

Or how the little flower he trod upon,

The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,

Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun

Content if once its leaves were aureoled.

 

But surely it is something to have been

The best belovèd for a little while,

To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen

His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

 

Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed

On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,

Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed

The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!

 

QUIA MULTUM AMAVI

Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priest

When first he takes from out the hidden shrine

His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,

And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,

 

Feels not such awful wonder as I felt

When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,

And all night long before thy feet I knelt

Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.

 

Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,

Through all those summer days of joy and rain,

I had not now been sorrow’s heritor,

Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.

 

Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal,

Tread on my heels with all his retinue,

I am most glad I loved thee—think of all

The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

 

SILENTIUM AMORIS

As often-times the too resplendent sun

Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon

Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won

A single ballad from the nightingale,

So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,

And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

 

And as at dawn across the level mead

On wings impetuous some wind will come,

And with its too harsh kisses break the reed

Which was its only instrument of song,

So my too stormy passions work me wrong,

And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

 

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show

Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;

Else it were better we should part, and go,

Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,

And I to nurse the barren memory

Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

 

HER VOICE

The wild bee reels from bough to bough

With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,

Now in a lily-cup, and now

Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,

In his wandering;

Sit closer love: it was here I trow

I made that vow,

 

Swore that two lives should be like one

As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,

As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—

It shall be, I said, for eternity

’Twixt you and me!

Dear friend, those times are over and done;

Love’s web is spun.

 

Look upward where the poplar trees

Sway and sway in the summer air,

Here in the valley never a breeze

Scatters the thistledown, but there

Great winds blow fair

From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,

And the wave-lashed leas.

 

Look upward where the white gull screams,

What does it see that we do not see?

Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams

On some outward voyaging argosy,—

Ah! can it be

We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!

How sad it seems.

 

Sweet, there is nothing left to say

But this, that love is never lost,

Keen winter stabs the breasts of May

Whose crimson roses burst his frost,

Ships tempest-tossed

Will find a harbour in some bay,

And so we may.

 

And there is nothing left to do

But to kiss once again, and part,

Nay, there is nothing we should rue,

I have my beauty,—you your Art,

Nay, do not start,

One world was not enough for two

Like me and you.

 

MY VOICE

Within this restless, hurried, modern world

We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,

And now the white sails of our ship are furled,

And spent the lading of our argosy.

 

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,

For very weeping is my gladness fled,

Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion,

And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

 

But all this crowded life has been to thee

No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell

Of viols, or the music of the sea

That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

 

TÆDIUM VITÆ

To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear

This paltry age’s gaudy livery,

To let each base hand filch my treasury,

To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,

And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom,—I swear

I love it not! these things are less to me

Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,

Less than the thistledown of summer air

Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof

Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life

Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof

Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,

Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife

Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

 

HUMANITAD

It is full winter now: the trees are bare,

Save where the cattle huddle from the cold

Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear

The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold

Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true

To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

 

From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay

Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain

Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day

From the low meadows up the narrow lane;

Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep

Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

 

From the shut stable to the frozen stream

And back again disconsolate, and miss

The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;

And overhead in circling listlessness

The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,

Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

 

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds

And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,

And hoots to see the moon; across the meads

Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;

And a stray seamew with its fretful cry

Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

 

Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings

His load of faggots from the chilly byre,

And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings

The sappy billets on the waning fire,

And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare

His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air;

 

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,

And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again

With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,

For with the first warm kisses of the rain

The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears,

And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

 

From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,

And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs

Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly

Across our path at evening, and the suns

Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see

Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

 

Dance through the hedges till the early rose,

(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)

Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose

The little quivering disk of golden fire

Which the bees know so well, for with it come

Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

 

Then up and down the field the sower goes,

While close behind the laughing younker scares

With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,

And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,

And on the grass the creamy blossom falls

In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals

 

Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons

Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,

That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons

With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine

In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed

And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

 

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,

And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,

Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy

Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,

And violets getting overbold withdraw

From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.

 

O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!

Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock

And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,

Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock

Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon

Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.

 

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,

The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns

Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture

Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations

With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,

And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.

 

Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,

That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine,

And to the kid its little horns, and bring

The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,

Where is that old nepenthe which of yore

Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!

 

There was a time when any common bird

Could make me sing in unison, a time

When all the strings of boyish life were stirred

To quick response or more melodious rhyme

By every forest idyll;—do I change?

Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

 

Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek

To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,

And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek

Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;

Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare

To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!

 

Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul

Takes discontent to be its paramour,

And gives its kingdom to the rude control

Of what should be its servitor,—for sure

Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea

Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’

 

To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect

In natural honour, not to bend the knee

In profitless prostrations whose effect

Is by itself condemned, what alchemy

Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed

Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

 

The minor chord which ends the harmony,

And for its answering brother waits in vain

Sobbing for incompleted melody,

Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain,

A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,

Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.

 

The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,

The little dust stored in the narrow urn,

The gentle ΧΑΙΡΕ of the Attic tomb,—

Were not these better far than to return

To my old fitful restless malady,

Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?

 

Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god

Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed

Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod

Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,

Death is too rude, too obvious a key

To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy.

 

And Love! that noble madness, whose august

And inextinguishable might can slay

The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must

From such sweet ruin play the runaway,

Although too constant memory never can

Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian

 

Which for a little season made my youth

So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence

That all the chiding of more prudent Truth

Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence

Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!

Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss.

 

My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,—

Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow

Back to the troubled waters of this shore

Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now

The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,

Hence!  Hence!  I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.

 

More barren—ay, those arms will never lean

Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul

In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;

Some other head must wear that aureole,

For I am hers who loves not any man

Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian.

 

Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,

And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,

With net and spear and hunting equipage

Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,

But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell

Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.

 

Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy

Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud

Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy

And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed

In wonder at her feet, not for the sake

Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.

 

Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!

And, if my lips be musicless, inspire

At least my life: was not thy glory hymned

By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre

Like Æschylos at well-fought Marathon,

And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son!

 

And yet I cannot tread the Portico

And live without desire, fear and pain,

Or nurture that wise calm which long ago

The grave Athenian master taught to men,

Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,

To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.

 

Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,

Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,

Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse

Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne

Is childless; in the night which she had made

For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed.

 

Nor much with Science do I care to climb,

Although by strange and subtle witchery

She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time

Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry

To no less eager eyes; often indeed

In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read

 

How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war

Against a little town, and panoplied

In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,

White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede

Between the waving poplars and the sea

Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylæ

 

Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,

And on the nearer side a little brood

Of careless lions holding festival!

And stood amazèd at such hardihood,

And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,

And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er

 

Some unfrequented height, and coming down

The autumn forests treacherously slew

What Sparta held most dear and was the crown

Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew

How God had staked an evil net for him

In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim,

 

Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel

With such a goodly time too out of tune

To love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel

That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon

Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes

Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.

 

O for one grand unselfish simple life

To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills

Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife

Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,

Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly

Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!

 

Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he

Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul

Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty

Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal

Where love and duty mingle!  Him at least

The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast;

 

But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote

The clarion watchword of each Grecian school

And follow none, the flawless sword which smote

The pagan Hydra is an effete tool

Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now

Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?

 

One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!

Gone is that last dear son of Italy,

Who being man died for the sake of God,

And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,

O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower,

Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour

 

Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or

The Arno with its tawny troubled gold

O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror

Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old

When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty

Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery

 

Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell

With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,

Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell

With which oblivion buries dynasties

Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,

As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.

 

He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,

He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair,

And now lies dead by that empyreal dome

Which overtops Valdarno hung in air

By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene

Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!

 

Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies

That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine

Forget awhile their discreet emperies,

Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine

Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon,

And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!

 

O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower!

Let some young Florentine each eventide

Bring coronals of that enchanted flower

Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,

And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies

Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;

 

Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,

Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim

Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings

Of the eternal chanting Cherubim

Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away

Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay,

 

He is not dead, the immemorial Fates

Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.

Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!

Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain

For the vile thing he hated lurks within

Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.

 

Still what avails it that she sought her cave

That murderous mother of red harlotries?

At Munich on the marble architrave

The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas

Which wash Ægina fret in loneliness

Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless

 

For lack of our ideals, if one star

Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust

Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war

Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust

Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe

For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,

 

What Easter Day shall make her children rise,

Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet

Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes

Shall see them bodily?  O it were meet

To roll the stone from off the sepulchre

And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,

 

Our Italy! our mother visible!

Most blessed among nations and most sad,

For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell

That day at Aspromonte and was glad

That in an age when God was bought and sold

One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,

 

See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves

Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty

Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives

Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,

And no word said:—O we are wretched men

Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen

 

Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword

Which slew its master righteously? the years

Have lost their ancient leader, and no word

Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:

While as a ruined mother in some spasm

Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm

 

Genders unlawful children, Anarchy

Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal

Licence who steals the gold of Liberty

And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real

One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp

That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp

 

Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed

For whose dull appetite men waste away

Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed

Of things which slay their sower, these each day

Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet

Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.

 

What even Cromwell spared is desecrated

By weed and worm, left to the stormy play

Of wind and beating snow, or renovated

By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay

Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,

But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.

 

Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing

Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air

Seems from such marble harmonies to ring

With sweeter song than common lips can dare

To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now

The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow

 

For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One

Who loved the lilies of the field with all

Our dearest English flowers? the same sun

Rises for us: the seasons natural

Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:

The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.

 

And yet perchance it may be better so,

For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,

Murder her brother is her bedfellow,

And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene

And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;

Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!

 

For gentle brotherhood, the harmony

Of living in the healthful air, the swift

Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free

And women chaste, these are the things which lift

Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s

Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,

 

Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair

White as her own sweet lily and as tall,

Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,—

Ah! somehow life is bigger after all

Than any painted angel, could we see

The God that is within us!  The old Greek serenity

 

Which curbs the passion of that level line

Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes

And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine

And mirror her divine economies,

And balanced symmetry of what in man

Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at least within the span

 

Between our mother’s kisses and the grave

Might so inform our lives, that we could win

Such mighty empires that from her cave

Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin

Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,

And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.

 

To make the body and the spirit one

With all right things, till no thing live in vain

From morn to noon, but in sweet unison

With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain

The soul in flawless essence high enthroned,

Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,

 

Mark with serene impartiality

The strife of things, and yet be comforted,

Knowing that by the chain causality

All separate existences are wed

Into one supreme whole, whose utterance

Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance

 

Of Life in most august omnipresence,

Through which the rational intellect would find

In passion its expression, and mere sense,

Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,

And being joined with it in harmony

More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,

 

Strike from their several tones one octave chord

Whose cadence being measureless would fly

Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord

Return refreshed with its new empery

And more exultant power,—this indeed

Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.

 

Ah! it was easy when the world was young

To keep one’s life free and inviolate,

From our sad lips another song is rung,

By our own hands our heads are desecrate,

Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed

Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.

 

Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,

And of all men we are most wretched who

Must live each other’s lives and not our own

For very pity’s sake and then undo

All that we lived for—it was otherwise

When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.

 

But we have left those gentle haunts to pass

With weary feet to the new Calvary,

Where we behold, as one who in a glass

Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity,

And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze

Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.

 

O smitten mouth!  O forehead crowned with thorn!

O chalice of all common miseries!

Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne

An agony of endless centuries,

And we were vain and ignorant nor knew

That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.

 

Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,

The night that covers and the lights that fade,

The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,

The lips betraying and the life betrayed;

The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we

Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.

 

Is this the end of all that primal force

Which, in its changes being still the same,

From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,

Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,

Till the suns met in heaven and began

Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!

 

Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though

The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain

Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know,

Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again,

No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,

That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God.

 

FLOWER OF LOVE

ΓΛΥΚΥΠΙΚΡΟΣ ΕΡΩΣ

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault

was, had I not been made of common clay

I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed

yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.

 

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had

struck a better, clearer song,

Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled

with some Hydra-headed wrong.

 

Had my lips been smitten into music by the

kisses that but made them bleed,

You had walked with Bice and the angels on

that verdant and enamelled mead.

 

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw

the suns of seven circles shine,

Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,

as they opened to the Florentine.

 

And the mighty nations would have crowned

me, who am crownless now and without name,

And some orient dawn had found me kneeling

on the threshold of the House of Fame.

 

I had sat within that marble circle where the

oldest bard is as the young,

And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the

lyre’s strings are ever strung.

 

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out

the poppy-seeded wine,

With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,

clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

 

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush

the burnished bosom of the dove,

Two young lovers lying in an orchard would

have read the story of our love.

 

Would have read the legend of my passion,

known the bitter secret of my heart,

Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as

we two are fated now to part.

 

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by

the cankerworm of truth,

And no hand can gather up the fallen withered

petals of the rose of youth.

 

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you—ah! what

else had I a boy to do,—

For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the

silent-footed years pursue.

 

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and

when once the storm of youth is past,

Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death

the silent pilot comes at last.

 

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for

the blindworm battens on the root,

And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of

Passion bears no fruit.

 

Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s

own mother was less dear to me,

And less dear the Cytheræan rising like an

argent lily from the sea.

 

I have made my choice, have lived my poems,

and, though youth is gone in wasted days,

I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better

than the poet’s crown of bays.