Chapter III: Epilogue

Exactos, puer, esse decern tibi gratulor annos;
Hactenus es matris cura patrisque decus.
Incumbis studiis, et amas et amaris, et audes
Pro patria raucis obvius ire fretis.
Non erimus comites, fili, tibi; sed memor esto
Matris in oceano cum vigil astra leges.
Imbelli patre natus habe tamen arma Britannus,
Militiam perfer, spemque fidemque fove.

1889.

JE MAINTIENDRAI

(FOR THE TUNE CALLED SANTA LUCIA)

Rise, rise, ye Devon folk!
Toss off the traitor's yoke,
Peer through the rain and smoke,
Look, look again!
Run down to Brixham pier--
Quick, quick, the Prince is near!
All the rights ye reckon dear
He will maintain.

Chorus--
Welcome, sweet English rose!
Welcome, Dutch Roman nose!
Scatter, scatter all the Gospel's foes,
William and Mary!

High over gulls and boats
Bright, free the banner floats;
Hearken, hear the clarion notes!
Lift hats and stare.
Courtiers who break the laws,
Tame cats with velvet paws,
Hypocrites with poisoned claws,
Croppies, beware!

Trust, Sir, the western shires,
Trust those who baffled Spain;
We'll be hardy like our sires.
Down, Pope, again!
Off, off with sneak and thief!
We'll have an honest chief.
England is no Popish fief;
Free kings shall reign.

SAPPHICS FOR A TUNE

MADE BY REQUEST OF A SONGSTRESS, AND REJECTED

Relics of battle dropt in sandy valley,
Bugle that screamed a warning of surprise,
Shreds of the colour torn before the rally,
Jewel of troth-plight seen by dying eyes--
Welcome, dear tokens of the lad we mourn.
Tell how that day his faithful heart was leaping;
Help me, who linger in the home forlorn,
Throw me a rainbow on my endless weeping.

1885.

JOHNNIE OF BRAIDISLEE

A SECOND ATTEMPT, ACCEPTED

Down the burnside hurry thee, gentle mavis,
Find the bothie, and flutter about the doorway.
Touch the lattice tenderly, bid my mother
Fetch away Johnnie.

Mother, uprouse thee! many bitter arrows
Out of one bosom gather, and for ever
Pray for one resting in a chilly forest
Under an oak tree.

Gentle mavis! hover about the window
Where the sun shines on happy things of home life,
Bid the clansmen troop to the gory dingle.
Clansmen, avenge me!

Mother! oh, my mother! upon a cradle
Woven of willows, with a bow beside me,
Near the kirk of Durrisdeer, under yew boughs,
Rock thy beloved.

1885.

EUROPA

May the foemen's wives, the foemen's children,
Feel the kid leaping when he lifts the surge,
Tumult of swart sea, and the reefs that shudder
Under the scourge.

On such a day to the false bull Europa
Trusted her snowy limbs; and courage failed her,
Where the whales swarmed, the terror of sea-change
and
Treason assailed her.

For the meadow-fays had she duly laboured,
Eager for flowers to bind at eventide;
Shimmering night revealed the stars, the billows,
Nothing beside.

Brought to Crete, the realm of a hundred cities,
"Oh, my sire! my duty!" she clamoured sadly.
"Oh, the forfeit! and oh, the girl unfathered,
Wilfully, madly!

What shore is this, and what have I left behind me?
When a maid sins 'tis not enough to die.
Am I awake? or through the ivory gateway
Cometh a lie?

Cometh a hollow fantasy to the guiltless?
Am I in dreamland? Was it best to wander
Through the long waves, or better far to gather
Rosebuds out yonder?

Now, were he driven within the reach of anger,
Steel would I point against the villain steer,
Grappling, rending the horns of the bull, the monster
Lately so dear.

Shameless I left the homestead and the worship,
Shameless, 'fore hell's mouth, wide agape, I pause.
Hear me, some god, and set me among the lions
Stript for their jaws.

Ere on the cheek that is so fair to look on
Swoop the grim fiends of hunger and decay,
Tigers shall spring and raven, ere the sweetness
Wither away.

Worthless Europa! cries the severed father,
Why dost thou loiter, cling to life, and doat?
Hang on this rowan; hast thou not thy girdle
Meet for thy throat?

Lo, the cliff, the precipice, edged for cleaving,
Trust the quick wind, or take a leman's doom.
Live on and spin; thou wast a prince's daughter;
Toil at the loom.

Pass beneath the hand of a foreign lady;
Serve a proud rival." Lo, behind her back
Slyly laughed Venus, and her archer minion
Held the bow slack.

Then, the game played out, "Put away," she whispered,
"Wrath and upbraiding, and the quarrel's heat,
When the loathed bull surrenders horns, for riving,
Low at your feet.

Bride of high Jove's majesty, bride unwitting,
Cease from your sobbing; rise, your luck is rare.
Your name's the name which half the world divided
Henceforth shall bear."

HYPERMNESTRA

Let me tell Lyde of wedding-law slighted,
Penance of maidens and bootless task,
Wasting of water down leaky cask,
Crime in the prison-pit slowly requited.

Miscreant brides! for their grooms they slew.
One out of many is not attainted,
One alone blest and for ever sainted,
False to her father, to wedlock true.

Praise her! she gave her young husband the warning.
Praise her for ever! She cried, "Arise!
Flee from the slumber that deadens the eyes;
Flee from the night that hath never a morning.

Baffle your host who contrived our espousing,
Baffle my sisters, the forty and nine,
Raging like lions that mangle the kink,
Each on the blood of a quarry carousing.

I am more gentle, I strike not thee,
I will not hold thee in dungeon tower.
Though the king chain me, I will not cower,
Though my sire banish me over the sea.

Freely run, freely sail, good luck attend thee;
Go with the favour of Venus and Night.
On thy tomb somewhere and some day bid write
Record of her who hath dared to befriend thee."

BARINE

Lady, if you ever paid
Forfeit for a heart betrayed,
If for broken pledge you were
By one tooth, one nail less fair,

I would trust. But when a vow
Slips from off your faithless brow,
Forth you flash with purer lustre,
And a fonder troop you muster.

You with vantage mock the shade
Of a mother lowly laid,
Silent stars and depths of sky,
And high saints that cannot die.

Laughs the Queen of love, I say,
Laughs at this each silly fay,
Laughs the rogue who's ever whetting
Darts of fire on flint of fretting.

Ay, the crop of youth is yours,
Fresh enlistments throng your doors,
Veterans swear you serve them ill,
Threaten flight, and linger still.

Dames and thrifty greybeards dread
Lest you turn a stripling's head;
Poor young brides are in dismay
Lest you sigh their lords away.

TO BRITOMART MUSING

Classic throat and wrist and ear
Tempt a gallant to draw near;
Must romantic lip and eye
Make him falter, bid him fly?

If Camilla's upright lance
By the contrast did enhance
Charms of curving neck and waist,
Yet she never was embraced.

She was girt to take the field,
And her aventayle concealed
Half the grace that might have won
Homage from Evander's son.

Countess Montfort, clad in steel,
Showed she could both dare and feel;
Smiled to greet the champion ships,
Touched Sir Walter with the lips.

She could charm, although in dress
Like the sainted shepherdess,
Jeanne, a leader void of guile,
Jeanne, a woman all the while.

Damsel with the mind of man,
Lay not softness under ban;
For the glory of thy sex
Twine with myrtle manly necks.

HERSILIA

I see her stand with arms a-kimbo,
A blue and blonde s_ub aureo nimbo_;
She scans her literary limbo,
The reliques of her teens;

Things like the chips of broken stilts,
Or tatters of embroidered quilts,
Or nosegays tossed away by jilts,
Notes, ballads, tales, and scenes.

Soon will she gambol like a lamb,
Fenced, but not tethered, near the Cam.
Maybe she'll swim where Byron swam,
And chat beneath the limes,

Where Arthur, Alfred, Fitz, and Brooks
Lit thought by one another's looks,
Embraced their jests and kicked their books,
In England's happier times;

Ere magic poets felt the gout,
Ere Darwin whelmed the Church in doubt
Ere Apologia had found out
The round world must be right;

When Gladstone, bluest of the blue,
Read all Augustine's folios through;
When France was tame, and no one knew
We and the Czar would fight.

"Sixty years since" (said dear old Scott;
We're bound, you know, to quote Sir Wat)
This isle had not a sweeter spot
Than Neville's Court by Granta;

No Newnham then, no kirtled scribes,
No Clelia to harangue the tribes,
No race for girls, no apple bribes
To tempt an Atalanta.

We males talked fast, we meant to be
World-betterers all at twenty-three,
But somehow failed to level thee,
Oh battered fort of Edom!

Into the breach our daughters press,
Brave patriots in unwarlike dress,
Adepts at thought-in-idleness,
Sweet devotees of freedom.

And now it is your turn, fair soul,
To see the fervent car-wheels roll,
Your rivals clashing past the goal,
Some sly Milanion leading.

Ah! with them may your Genius bring
Some Celia, some Miss Mannering;
For youthful friendship is a thing
More precious than succeeding.

SAPPHO'S CURSING

Woman dead, lie there;
No record of thee
Shall there ever be,
Since thou dost not share
Roses in Pieria grown.
In the deathful cave,
With the feeble troop
Of the folk that droop,
Lurk and flit and crave,
Woman severed and far-flown.

A SERVING MAN'S EPITAPH

A slave--oh yes, a slave!
But in a freeman's grave.
By thee, when work was done,
Timanthes, foster-son,
By thee whom I obeyed,
My master, I was laid.
Live long, from trouble free;
But if thou com'st to me,
Paying to age thy debt,
Thine am I, master, yet.

A SONG TO A SINGER

Dura fida rubecula,
Cur moraris in arbore
Dum cadunt folia et brevi
Flavet luce November.

Quid boni tibi destinat
Hora crastina? quid petes
Antris ex hiemalibus?
Quid speras oriturum?

Est ut hospita te vocet
Myrtis, et reseret fores,
Ut te vere nitentibus
Emiretur ocellis.

Quod si contigerit tibi,
Ter beata vocaberis,
Invidenda volucribus,
Invidenda poetae.

AGE AND GIRLHOOD

A dry cicale chirps to a lass making hay,
"Why creak'st thou, Tithonus?" quoth she. "I don't
play;
It doubles my toil, your importunate lay;
I've earned a sweet pillow, lo! Hesper is nigh;
I clasp a good wisp, and in fragrance I lie;
But thou art unwearied, and empty, and dry."

A LEGEND OF PORTO SANTO

A time-worn sage without a home,
A man of dim and tearful sight,
Up from the hallowed haven clomb
In lowly longing for the height.

He loiters on a half-way rock
To hear the waves that pant and seethe,
Which give the beats of Nature's clock
To mortals conscious that they breathe.

The buxom waves may nurse a boat,
May well nigh seem to soothe and lull
The crying of a tethered goat,
The trouble of a searching gull.

There might be comfort in the tide,
There might be Lethe in the surge,
Could they but hint that oceans hide,
That pangs absolve, bereavements purge.

The thinker, not despairing yet,
Upraises limbs not wholly stiff,
Half envying him that draws the net,
Half proud to combat with the cliff.

He groans, but soon around his lips
Tear-channels bend into a smile,
He thinks "They're saying in the ships
I'm looking for the hidden isle.

I climb but as my humours lead,
My thoughts are mazed, my will is faint,
Yon men who see me roam, they need
No Lethe-fount, no shriving saint."

Good faith! can we believe, or feign
Believing, that such lands exist
Through ages drenched with blotting rain,
For ever folded in the mist?

Maybe some babe by sirens clothed
Swam thence, and brought report thereof.
Some hopeful virgin just betrothed
Braved the incredulous pilot's scoff;

And murmuring to a friendly lute,
While greybeards snored and beldames laughed,
Some minstrel-corsair made pursuit
Along the moon's white hunting-shaft;

Along the straight illumined track
The bride, the singer, and the child
Fled, far from sceptics, came not back,
Engulped? Who knows? perhaps enisled.

Now were there such another crew,
Now would their bark make room for me,
Now were that island false or true,
I'd go, forgetting, with the three.

TO A LINNET

My cheerful mate, you fret not for the wires,
The changeless limits of your small desires;
You heed not winter rime or summer dew,
You feel no difference 'twixt old and new;
You kindly take the lettuce or the cress
Without the cognizance of more and less,
Content with light and movement in a cage.
Not reckoning hours, nor mortified by age,
You bear no penance, you resent no wrong,
Your timeless soul exists in each unconscious song.

A SONG FOR A PARTING

I.
Flora will pass from firth to firth;
Duty must draw, and vows must bind.
Flora will sail half round the earth,
Yet will she leave some grace behind.

II.
Waft her, on Faith, from friend to friend,
Make her a saint in some far isle;
Yet will we keep, till memories end,
Something that once was Flora's smile.

MIR IST LEIDE

Woe worth old Time the lord,
Pointing his senseless sword
Down on our festal board,
Where we would dine,
Chilling the kindly hall,
Bidding the dainties pall,
Making the garlands fall,
Souring the wine.

LEBEWOHL--WORDS FOR A TUNE