Chapter III

I wonder why he mocked me with the grass.
I know not any more how long it is
Since I have dwelt not in my mother's house.
I know they think me mad, for all night long
I haunt the sea-marge, thinking I may find
Some day the herb he offered unto me.
Perhaps he did not jest; they say some simples have
More wide-spanned power than old wives draw from them.

Perhaps, found I this grass, he'd come again.
Perhaps 'tis some strange charm to draw him here,
'Thout which he may not leave his new-found crew
That ride the two-foot coursers of the deep,
And laugh in storms and break the fishers' nets.
Oimè, Oimè!

SONG.

_Voices in the Wind._

We have worn the blue and vair,
And all the sea-caves
Know us of old, and know our new-found mate.
There's many a secret stair
The sea-folk climb....

_Out of the Wind._

Oimè, Oimè!

I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seem
To mock me now, all night, all night, and
Have I strayed among the cliffs here
They say, some day I'll fall
Down through the sea-bit fissures, and no more
Know the warm cloak of sun, or bathe
The dew across my tired eyes to comfort them.
They try to keep me hid within four walls.
I will not stay!
Oimè!
And the wind saith; Oimè!

I am quite tired now. I know the grass
Must grow somewhere along this Thracian coast,
If only he would come some little while and find it me.

ENDETH THE LAMENT FOR GLAUCUS

In Durance

I am homesick after mine own kind,
Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,
But I am homesick after mine own kind.

"These sell our pictures"! Oh well,
They reach me not, touch me some edge or that,
But reach me not and all my life's become
One flame, that reacheth not beyond
Mine heart's own hearth,
Or hides among the ashes there for thee.
"Thee"? Oh "thee" is who cometh first
Out of mine own-soul-kin,
For I am homesick after mine own kind
And ordinary people touch me not.
Yea, I am homesick
After mine own kind that know, and feel
And have some breath for beauty and the arts.

Aye, I am wistful for my kin of the spirit
And have none about me save in the shadows
When come _they_, surging of power, "DAEMON,"
"Quasi KALOUN" S.T. says, Beauty is most that a
"calling to the soul."
Well then, so call they; the swirlers out of the mist
of my soul,
They that come mewards bearing old magic.

But for all that, I am home sick after mine own kind
And would meet kindred e'en as I am,
Flesh-shrouded bearing the secret.
"All they that with strange sadness"
Have the earth in mock'ry, and are kind to all,
My fellows, aye I know the glory
Of th' unbounded ones, but ye, that hide
As I hide most the while
And burst forth to the windows only whiles or whiles
For love, or hope, or beauty or for power,
Then smoulder, with the lids half closed
And are untouched by echoes of the world.

Oh ye, my fellows: with the seas between us some be,
Purple and sapphire for the silver shafts
Of sun and spray all shattered at the bows
Of such a "Veltro" of the vasty deep
As bore my tortoise house scant years agone:
And some the hills hold off,
The little hills to east us, though here we
Have damp and plain to be our shutting in.

And yet my soul sings "Up!" and we are one.
Yea thou, and Thou, and THOU, and all my kin
To whom my breast and arms are ever warm,
For that I love ye as the wind the trees
That holds their blossoms and their leaves in cure
And calls the utmost singing from the boughs
That 'thout him, save the aspen, were as dumb
Still shade, and bade no whisper speak the birds of how
"Beyond, beyond, beyond, there lies...."

Guillaume de Lorris Belated

A Vision of Italy

Wisdom set apart from all desire,
A hoary Nestor with youth's own glad eyes,
Him met I at the style, and all benign
He greeted me an equal and I knew,
By this his lack of pomp, he was himself.

Slow-Smiling is companion unto him,
And Mellow-Laughter serves, his trencherman.
And I a thousand beauties there beheld.
And he and they made merry endlessly.
And love was rayed between them as a mist,
And yet so fine and delicate a haze
It did impede the eyes no whit,
Unless it were to make the halo round each one
Appear more myriad-jewelled marvellous,
Than any pearled and ruby diadem the courts o' earth
ha' known.
Slender as mist-wrought maids and hamadryads
Did meseem these shapes that ministered,
These formed harmonies with lake-deep eyes,
And first the cities of north Italy
I did behold,
Each as a woman wonder-fair,
And svelte Verona first I met at eve;
And in the dark we kissed and then the way
Bore us somewhile apart.
And yet my heart keeps tryst with her,
So every year our thoughts are interwove
As fingers were, such times as eyes see much, and tell.
And she that loved the master years agone,
That bears his signet in her "Signor Square,"
"Che lo glorifico."[9]
She spread her arms,
And in that deep embrace
All thoughts of woe were perished
And of pain and weariness and all the wrack
Of light-contending thoughts and battled-gleams,
(That our intelligence doth gain by strife against itself)
Of things we have not yet the earnèd right to clearly see.
And all, yea all that dust doth symbolize
Was there forgot, and my enfranchised soul
Grew as the liquid elements, and was infused
With joy that is not light, nor might nor harmony,
And yet hath part and quality of all these three,
Whereto is added calm past earthly peace.

Thus with Verona's spirit, and all time
Swept on beyond my ken, and as the sea
Hath in no wise a form within itself,
_Cioè_, as liquid hath no form save where it bounden is
By some enshrouding chalice of hard things--
As wine its graven goblet, and the sea
Its wave-hewn basalt for a bordering,
So had my thought and now my thought's remembrance
No "_in_formation" of whatso there passed
For this long space the dream-king's horny gate.

And when that age was done and the transfusion
Of all my self through her and she through me,
I did perceive that she enthroned two things:
Verona, and a maid I knew on earth;
And dulled some while from dream, and then become
That lower thing, deductive intellect, I saw
How all things are but symbols of all things,[10]
And each of many, do we know
But the equation governing.
And in my rapture at this vision's scope
I saw no end or bourn to what things mean,
So praised Pythagoras and once more raised
By this said rapture to the house of Dream,
Beheld Fenicè as a lotus-flower
Drift through the purple of the wedded sea
And grow a wraith and then a dark-eyed she,
And knew her name was "All-forgetfulness,"
And hailed her: "Princess of the Opiates,"
And guessed her evil and her good thereby.

And then a maid of nine "Pavia" hight,
Passed with a laugh that was all mystery,
And when I turned to her
She reached me one clear chalice of white wine,
Pressed from the recent grapes that yet were hung
Adown her shoulders, and were bound
Right cunningly about her elfish brows;
So hale a draught, the life of every grape
Lurked without ferment in the amber cloud.
And memory, this wine was, of all good.

And more I might have seen: Firenza, Goito,
Or that proudest gate, Ligurian Genoa,
Cornelia of Colombo of far sight,
That, man and seer in one, had well been twain,
And each a glory to his hills and sea;
And past her a great band
Bright garlanded or rich with purple skeins,
And crimson mantles and queynt fineries
That tarnished held but so the more
Of dim allurement in their half-shown folds:
So swept my vision o'er their filmy ranks,
Then rose some opaque cloud,
Whose name I have not yet discerned,
And music as I heard it one clear night
Within our earthly night's own mirroring,
_Cioè_,--San Pietro by Adige,[11]
Where altar candles blazed out as dim stars,
And all the gloom was soft, and shadowy forms
Made and sang God, within the far-off choir.
And in a clear space high behind
Them and the tabernacle of that place,
Two tapers shew the master of the keys
As some white power pouring forth itself.

And all the church rang low and murmured
Thus in my dream of forms the music swayed.
And I was lost in it and only woke
When something like a mass bell rang, and then
That white-foot wind, pale Dawn's annunciatrice.
Me bore to earth again, but some strange peace
I had not known so well before this swevyn
Clung round my head and made me hate earth less.

[Footnote 11: For notes on this poem see end of volume--A Vision of Italy.]

In the Old Age of the Soul

I do not choose to dream; there cometh on me
Some strange old lust for deeds.
As to the nerveless hand of some old warrior
The sword-hilt or the war-worn wonted helmet
Brings momentary life and long-fled cunning,
So to my soul grown old--
Grown old with many a jousting, many a foray,
Grown old with many a hither-coming and hence-going--
Till now they send him dreams and no more deed;
So doth he flame again with might for action,
Forgetful of the council of the elders,
Forgetful that who rules doth no more battle,
Forgetful that such might no more cleaves to him
So doth he flame again toward valiant doing.

Alba Belingalis

Phoebus shineth ere his splendour flieth
Aurora drives faint light athwart the land
And the drowsy watcher crieth,
"ARISE."

_Ref_

O'er cliff and ocean the white dawn appeareth
It passeth vigil and the shadows cleareth.

They be careless of the gates, delaying,
Whom the ambush glides to hinder,
Whom I warn and cry to, praying,
"ARISE."

_Ref_

O'er cliff and ocean the white dawn appeareth
It passeth vigil and the shadows cleareth.

Forth from out Arcturus, North Wind bloweth
The stars of heaven sheathe their glory
And sun-driven forth-goeth
Settentrion.

_Ref._

O'er sea mist, and mountain is the dawn display'd
It passeth watch and maketh night afraid.

From a tenth-century MS.

From Syria

The song of Peire Bremon "Lo Tort" that he made for his Lady
in Provença: he being in Syria a crusader.

In April when I see all through
Mead and garden new flowers blow,
And streams with ice-bands broken flow,
Eke hear the birds their singing do;
When spring's grass-perfume floateth by
Then 'tis sweet song and birdlet's cry
Do make mine old joy come anew.

Such time was wont my thought of old
To wander in the ways of love.
Burnishing arms and clang thereof,
And honour-services manifold
Be now my need. Whoso combine
Such works, love is his bread and wine,
Wherefore should his fight the more be bold.

Song bear I, who tears should bring
Sith ire of love mak'th me annoy,
With song think I to make me joy.
Yet ne'er have I heard said this thing:
"He sings who sorrow's guise should wear."
Natheless I will not despair
That sometime I'll have cause to sing.

I should not to despair give way
That some while I'll my lady see.
I trust well He that lowered me
Hath power again to make me gay.
But if e'er I come to my Love's land
And turn again to Syrian strand,
God keep me there for a fool, alway!

God for a miracle well should
Hold my coming from her away,
And hold me in His grace alway
That I left her, for holy-rood.
An I lose her, no joy for me,
Pardi, hath the wide world in fee.
Nor could He mend it, if He would.

Well did she know sweet wiles to take
My heart, when thence I took my way.
'Thout sighing, pass I ne'er a day
For that sweet semblance she did make
To me, saying all in sorrow:
"Sweet friend, and what of me to-morrow?"
"Love mine, why wilt me so forsake?"

ENVOI

Beyond sea be thou sped, my song,
And, by God, to my Lady say
That in desirous, grief-filled way
My nights and my days are full long.
And command thou William the Long-Seer
To tell thee to my Lady dear,
That comfort be her thoughts among.

The only bit of Peire Bremon's work that has come down to
us, and through its being printed with the songs of Giraut
of Bornelh he is like to lose credit for even this.--E.P.

From the Saddle

D'AUBIGNE TO DIANE

Wearied by wind and wave death goes
With gin and snare right near alway
Unto my sight. Behind me bay
As hounds the tempests of my foes.
Ever on ward against such woes,
Pistols my pillow's service pay,
Yet Love makes me the poet play.
Thou know'st the rime demands repose,
So if my line disclose distress,
The soldier and my restlessness
And teen, Pardon, dear Lady mine,
For since mid war I bear love's pain
'Tis meet my verse, as I, show sign
Of powder, gun-match and sulphur stain.

Marvoil

A poor clerk I, "Arnaut the less" they call me,
And because I have small mind to sit
Day long, long day cooped on a stool
A-jumbling o' figures for Maitre Jacques Polin,
I ha' taken to rambling the South here.

The Vicomte of Beziers's not such a bad lot.
I made rimes to his lady this three year:
Vers and canzone, till that damn'd son of Aragon,
Alfonso the half-bald, took to hanging
_His_ helmet at Beziers.
Then came what might come, to wit: three men and one woman,
Beziers off at Mont-Ausier, I and his lady
Singing the stars in the turrets of Beziers,
And one lean Aragonese cursing the seneschal
To the end that you see, friends:

Aragon cursing in Aragon, Beziers busy at Beziers--
Bored to an inch of extinction,
Tibors all tongue and temper at Mont-Ausier,
Me! in this damn'd inn of Avignon,
Stringing long verse for the Burlatz;
All for one half-bald, knock-knee'd king of the Aragonese,
Alfonso, Quatro, poke-nose.

And if when I am dead
They take the trouble to tear out this wall here,
They'll know more of Arnaut of Marvoil
Than half his canzoni say of him.
As for will and testament I leave none,
Save this: "Vers and canzone to the Countess of Beziers
In return for the first kiss she gave me."
May her eyes and her cheek be fair
To all men except the King of Aragon,
And may I come speedily to Beziers
Whither my desire and my dream have preceded me.
O hole in the wall here! be thou my jongleur
As ne'er had I other, and when the wind blows,
Sing thou the grace of the Lady of Beziers,
For even as thou art hollow before I fill thee with
this parchment,
So is my heart hollow when she filleth not mine eyes,
And so were my mind hollow, did she not fill utterly
my thought.

Wherefore, O hole in the wall here,
When the wind blows sigh thou for my sorrow
That I have not the Countess of Beziers
Close in my arms here.
Even as thou shalt soon have this parchment.

O hole in the wall here, be thou my jongleur,
And though thou sighest my sorrow in the wind,
Keep yet my secret in thy breast here;
Even as I keep her image in my heart here.

_Mihi pergamena deest._

Revolt

Against the crepuscular spirit in

modern poetry

I would shake off the lethargy of this our time,
and give
For shadows--shapes of power
For dreams--men.

"It is better to dream than do"?
Aye! and, No!

Aye! if we dream great deeds, strong men,
Hearts hot, thoughts mighty.

No! if we dream pale flowers,
Slow-moving pageantry of hours that languidly
Drop as o'er-ripened fruit from sallow trees.
If so we live and die not life but dreams,
Great God, grant life in dreams,
Not dalliance, but life!

Let us be men that dream,
Not cowards, dabblers, waiters
For dead Time to reawaken and grant balm
For ills unnamed.

Great God, if we be damn'd to be not men but only dreams,
Then let us be such dreams the world shall tremble at
And know we be its rulers though but dreams!
Then let us be such shadows as the world shall tremble at
And know we be its masters though but shadow!

Great God, if men are grown but pale sick phantoms
That must live only in these mists and tempered lights
And tremble for dim hours that knock o'er loud
Or tread too violent in passing them;

Great God, if these thy sons are grown such thin ephemera,
I bid thee grapple chaos and beget
Some new titanic spawn to pile the hills and stir
This earth again.

And Thus in Nineveh

"Aye! I am a poet and upon my tomb
Shall maidens scatter rose leaves
And men myrtles, ere the night
Slays day with her dark sword.

"Lo! this thing is not mine
Nor thine to hinder,
For the custom is full old,
And here in Nineveh have I beheld
Many a singer pass and take his place
In those dim halls where no man troubleth
His sleep or song.
And many a one hath sung his songs

More craftily, more subtle-souled than I;
And many a one now doth surpass
My wave-worn beauty with his wind of flowers,
Yet am I poet, and upon my tomb
Shall all men scatter rose leaves
Ere the night slay light
With her blue sword.

"It is not, Raama, that my song rings highest
Or more sweet in tone than any, but that I
Am here a Poet, that doth drink of life
As lesser men drink wine."

The White Stag

I ha' seen them mid the clouds on the heather.
Lo! they pause not for love nor for sorrow,
Yet their eyes are as the eyes of a maid to her lover,
When the white hart breaks his cover
And the white wind breaks the morn.

"_'Tis the white stagy Fame, we're a-hunting,
Bid the world's hounds come to horn!_"

_Piccadilly_

_Beautiful, tragical faces,_
_Ye that were whole, and are so sunken;_
_And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved,_
_That are so sodden and drunken,_
_Who hath forgotten you?_

_O wistful, fragile faces, few out of many!_

_The gross, the coarse, the brazen,_
_God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do,_
_But, oh, ye delicate, wistful faces,_
_Who hath forgotten you?_

NOTES

NOTE PRECEDENT TO "LA FRAISNE"

"When the soul is exhausted of fire, then doth the spirit return unto its primal nature and there is upon it a peace great and of the woodland

"_magna pax et silvestris_."

Then becometh it kin to the faun and the dryad, a woodland-dweller amid the rocks and streams

"_consociis faunis dryadisque inter saxa sylvarum_."
Janus of Basel.[1]

Also has Mr. Yeats in his "Celtic Twilight" treated of such, and I because in such a mood, feeling myself divided between myself corporal and a self aetherial "a dweller by streams and in woodland," eternal because simple in elements

"_ Aeternus quia simplex naturae_."

Being freed of the weight of a soul "capable of salvation or damnation," a grievous striving thing that after much straining was mercifully taken from me; as had one passed saying as one in the Book of the Dead,

"I, lo I, am the assembler of souls," and had taken it with him leaving me thus _simplex naturae_, even so at peace and transsentient as a wood pool I made it.

The Legend thus: "Miraut de Garzelas, after the pains he bore a-loving Riels of Calidorn and that to none avail, ran mad in the forest.

"Yea even as Peire Vidal ran as a wolf for her of Penautier though some say that twas folly or as Garulf Bisclavret so ran truly, till the King brought him respite (See 'Lais' Marie de France), so was he ever by the Ash Tree."

Hear ye his speaking: (low, slowly he speaketh it, as one drawn apart, reflecting) (égaré).

[Footnote 1: Referendum for contrast. "Daemonalitas" of the Rev. Father Sinistrari of Ameno (1600 circ.) "A treatise wherein is shown that there are in existence on earth rational creatures besides man, endowed like him with a body and soul, that are born and die like him, redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ, and capable of receiving salvation or damnation." Latin and English text, pub. Liseux, Paris, 1879.]

NOTES ON NEW POEMS

VISION OF ITALY.

1. "_che lo glorifico_." In the Piazza dei Signori, you will find an inscription which translates thus:

"It is here Can Grande della Scala gave welcome to Dante Alighieri, the _same which glorified him_, dedicating to him that third his song eternal."

"C.G. vi accolse D.A. che lo
glorifico dedicandogli la terza,
delle eterne sue cantiche."

2. Ref. Richard of St. Victor. "On the preparation of the soul for contemplation," where he distinguishes between cogitation, meditation, and contemplation.

In cogitation the thought or attention flits aimlessly about the subject.

In meditation it circles round it, that is, it views it systematically, from all sides, gaining perspective.

In contemplation it radiates from a centre, that is, as light from the sun it reaches out in an infinite number of ways to things that are related to or dependent on it.

The words above are my own, as I have not the Benjamin Minor by me.

Following St. Victor's figure of radiation: Poetry in its acme is expression from contemplation.

3. San Pietro Incarnato. There are several rows of houses intervening between it and the river.

ALBA BELINGALIS

MS. in Latin, with refrain,

"L alba par umet mar atras el poy
Pas abigil miraclar Tenebris."

It was and may still be the oldest fragment of Provençal known.

MARVOIL

The Personae are:

Arnaut of Marvoil, a troubadour, date 1170-1200.
The Countess (in her own right) of Burlatz, and of Beziers, being
the wife of
The Vicomte of Beziers.
Alfonso IV of Aragon.
Tibors of Mont-Ausier. For fuller mention of her see the
"razos" on Bertran of Born. She is contemporary with the
other persons, but I have no strict warrant for dragging her name
into this particular affair.

Marco Londonio's Italian version of "Nel Biancheggiar":

Nel biancheggiar di delicata rosa
Risplendono i colori
D' occidentali fiori
Prima che l'alba, in esultanza ascosa

Voglia baciarli. Ed aleggiar io sento
Qual su dolce lïuto
Nel lor linguaggio muto
Fiorir di gioia e tocco di tormento

Cosi un' arcano senso di languore,
Le sue sognanti dita
Fanno scordar la vita
Spirando in verso tutto pien d'amore....

Senza morir: chè sanno i suoni alati,
Vedendo il nostro stato,
Ch' è dal dolor turbato,
Di lasciarci, morendo, desolati.