Chapter V

Of thee the Northman by his beached galley
Dreamt, as he watched the never-setting Ursa
And longed for summer and thy light, O sacred
Mediterranean.

Unseen he loved thee; for the heart within him
Knew earth had gardens where he might be blessed,
Putting away long dreams and aimless, barbarous
Hunger for battle.

The foretaste of thy languors thawed his bosom;
A great need drove him to thy caverned islands
From the gray, endless reaches of the outer
Desert of ocean.

He saw thy pillars, saw thy sudden mountains
Wrinkled and stark, and in their crooked gorges,
'Neath peeping pine and cypress, guessed the torrent
Smothered in flowers.

Thine incense to the sun, thy gathered vapours,
He saw suspended on the flanks of Taurus,
Or veiling the snowed bosom of the virgin
Sister of Atlas.

He saw the luminous top of wide Olympus,
Fit for the happy gods; he saw the pilgrim
River, with rains of Ethiopia flooding
Populous Egypt.

And having seen, he loved thee. His racked spirit,
By thy breath tempered and the light that clothes thee,
Forgot the monstrous gods, and made of Nature
Mistress and mother.

The more should I, O fatal sea, before thee
Of alien words make echoes to thy music;
For I was born where first the rills of Tagus
Turn to the westward,

And wandering long, alas! have need of drinking
Deep of the patience of thy perfect sadness,
O thou that constant through the change of ages,
Beautiful ever,

Never wast wholly young and void of sorrows,
Nor ever canst be old, while yet the morning
Kindles thy ripples, or the golden evening
Dyes thee in purple.

Thee, willing to be tamed but still untamable,
The Roman called his own until he perished,
As now the busy English hover o'er thee,
Stalwart and noble;

But all is naught to thee, while no harsh winter
Congeals thy fountains, and the blown Sahara
Chokes not with dreadful sand thy deep and placid
Rock-guarded havens.

Thou carest not what men may tread thy margin;
Nor I, while from some heather-scented headland
I may behold thy beauty, the eternal
Solace of mortals.

ATHLETIC ODE

I hear a rumour and a shout,
A louder heart-throb pulses in the air.
Fling, Muse, thy lattice open, and beware
To keep the morning out.
Beckon into the chamber of thy care
The bird of healing wing
That trilleth there,
Blithe happy passion of the strong and fair.
Their wild heart singeth. Do thou also sing.
How vain, how vain
The feeble croaking of a reasoning tongue
That heals no pain
And prompts no bright deed worthy to be sung
Too soon cold earth
Refuses flowers. Oh, greet their lovely birth!
Too soon dull death
Quiets the heaving of our doubtful breath.
Deem not its worth
Too high for honouring mirth;
Sing while the lyre is strung,
And let the heart beat, while the heart is young.
When the dank earth begins to thaw and yield
The early clover, didst thou never pass
Some balmy noon from field to sunny field
And press thy feet against the tufted grass?
So hadst thou seen
A spring palaestra on the tender green.
Here a tall stripling, with a woman's face,
Draws the spiked sandal on his upturned heel,
Sure-footed for the race;
Another hurls the quoit of heavy steel
And glories to be strong;
While yet another, lightest of the throng,
Crouching on tiptoe for the sudden bound,
Flies o'er the level race-course, like the hound,
And soon is lost afar;
Another jumps the bar,
For some god taught him easily to spring,
The legs drawn under, as a bird takes wing,
Till, tempting fortune farther than is meet,
At last he fails, and fails, and vainly tries,
And blushing, and ashamed to lift his eyes,
Shakes the light earth from his feet.
Him friendly plaudits greet
And pleasing to the unaccustomed ear.
Come then afield, come with the sporting year
And watch the youth at play,
For gentle is the strengthening sun, and sweet
The soul of boyhood and the breath of May.

And with the milder ray
Of the declining sun, when sky and shore,
In purple drest and misty silver-grey,
Hang curtains round the day,
Come list the beating of the plashing oar,
For grief in rhythmic labour glides away.
The glancing blades make circles where they dip,--
Now flash and drip
Cool wind-blown drops into the glassy river,
Now sink and cleave,
While the lithe rowers heave
And feel the boat beneath them leap and quiver.
The supple oars in time,
Shattering the mirror of the rippled water,
Fly, fly as poets climb,
Borne by the pliant promise of their rhyme,
Or as bewitched by Nereus' loveliest daughter
The painted dolphins, following along,
Leap to the measure of her liquid song.

But the blasts of late October,
Tempering summer's paling grief
With a russet glow and sober,
Bring of these sports the latest and the chief.
Then bursts the flame from many a smouldering ember,
And many an ardent boy
Woos harsher pleasures sweeter to remember,
Hugged with a sterner and a tenser joy.
Look where the rivals come:
Each little phalanx on its chosen ground
Strains for the sudden shock, and all around
The multitude is dumb.
Come, watch the stubborn fight
And doubtful, in the sight
Of wide-eyed beauty and unstinted love,
Ay, the wise gods above,
Attentive to this hot and generous fray,
Smile on its fortunes and its end prepare,
For play is also life, and far from care
Their own glad life is play.

Ye nymphs and fauns, to Bacchus dear,
That woke Cithaeron with your midnight rout,
Arise, arise and shout!
Your day returns, your haunt is here.
Shake off dull sleep and long despair;
There is intoxication in this air,
And frenzy in this yelping cheer.
How oft of old the enraptured Muses sung
Olympian victors' praise.
Lo! even in these days
The world is young.
Life like a torrent flung
For ever down
For ever wears a rainbow for a crown.
O idle sigh for loveliness outworn,
When the red flush of each unfailing morn
Floods every field and grove,
And no moon wanes but some one is in love.
O wasted tear,
A new soul wakes with each awakened year.
Beneath these rags, these blood-clots on the face,
The valiant soul is still the same, the same
The strength, the art, the inevitable grace,
The thirst unquenched for fame
Quenching base passion, the high will severe,
The long obedience, and the knightly flame
Of loyalty to honour and a name.
Give o'er, ye chords, your music ere ye tire,
Be sweetly mute, O lyre.
Words soon are cold, and life is warm for ever.
One half of honour is the strong endeavour,
Success the other, but when both conspire
Youth has her perfect crown, and age her old desire.

VARIOUS POEMS

CAPE COD

The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine,
The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,--
O, I am far from home!

The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air,
And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear,--
When will the good ship come?

The wretched stumps all charred and burned,
And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned,--
Why is the world so old?

The lapping wave, and the broad gray sky
Where the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly,--
Where are the dead untold?

The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog,
The huge stranded hulk and the floating log,--
Sorrow with life began!

And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore,
O the wind, and the wind, for evermore!
What will become of man?

A TOAST

See this bowl of purple wine,
Life-blood of the lusty vine!
All the warmth of summer suns
In the vintage liquid runs,
All the glow of winter nights
Plays about its jewel lights,
Thoughts of time when love was young
Lurk its ruby drops among,
And its deepest depths are dyed
With delight of friendship tried.
Worthy offering, I ween,
For a god or for a queen,
Is the draught I pour to thee,--
Comfort of all misery,
Single friend of the forlorn,
Haven of all beings born,
Hope when trouble wakes at night,
And when naught delights, delight.
Holy Death, I drink to thee;
Do not part my friends and me.
Take this gift, which for a night
Puts dull leaden care to flight,
Thou who takest grief away
For a night and for a day.

PREMONITION

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

A hidden light illumines all our seeing,
An unknown love enchants our solitude.
We feel and know that from the depths of being
Exhales an infinite, a perfect good.

Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow
And be not happy like a naked star,
Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow,
Some rapture from the rapture felt afar.

Our heart strings are too coarse for Nature's fingers
Deftly to quicken as she pulses on,
And the harsh tremor that among them lingers
Will into sweeter silence die anon.

We catch the broken prelude and suggestion
Of things unuttered, needing to be sung;
We know the burden of them, and their question
Lies heavy on the heart, nor finds a tongue.

Till haply, lightning through the storm of ages,
Our sullen secret flash from sky to sky,
Glowing in some diviner poet's pages
And swelling into rapture from this sigh.

SOLIPSISM

I could believe that I am here alone,
And all the world my dream;
The passion of the scene is all my own,
And things that seem but seem.

Perchance an exhalation of my sorrow
Hath raised this vaporous show,
For whence but from my soul should all things borrow
So deep a tinge of woe?

I keep the secret doubt within my breast
To be the gods' defence,
To ease the heart by too much ruth oppressed
And drive the horror hence.

O sorrow that the patient brute should cower
And die, not having sinned!
O pity that the wild and fragile flower
Should shiver in the wind!

Then were I dreaming dreams I know not of,
For that is part of me
That feels the piercing pang of grief and love
And doubts eternally.

But whether all to me the vision come
Or break in many beams,
The pageant ever shifts, and being's sum
Is but the sum of dreams.

SYBARIS

Lap, ripple, lap, Icarian wave, the sand
Along the ruins of this piteous land;
Murmur the praises of a lost delight,
And soothe the aching of my starved sight
With sheen of mirrored beauties, caught aright.

Here stood enchanted palaces of old,
All veined porphyry and burnished gold;
Here matrons and slight maidens sat aloof
Beneath cool porches, rich with Tyrian woof
Hung from the carven rafters of the roof.

Here in a mart a swarthy turbaned brave
Showed the wrought blade or praised the naked slave.
"Touch with your finger-tips this edge of steel,"
Quoth he, "and see this lad, from head to heel
Like a bronze Cupid. Feel, my masters, feel."

Here Aphrodite filled with frenzied love
The dark recesses of her murmurous grove.
The doves that haunted it, the winds that sighed,
Were souls of youths that in her coverts died,
And hopes of heroes strewed her garden wide.

Under her shades a narrow brazen gate
Led to the courts of Ares and of Fate.
Who entered breathed the unutterable prayer
Of cruel hearts, and death was worshipped there,
And men went thence enfranchised by despair.

Here the proud athlete in the baths delayed,
While a cool fountain on his shoulders played,
Then in fine linen swathed his breast and thighs,
And silent, myrtle crowned, with serious eyes,
Stepped forth to list the wranglings of the wise.

A sage stalked by, his ragged mantle bound
About his brows; his eyes perused the ground;
He conned the number of the cube and square
Of the moon's orb; his horny feet and bare
Trampled the lilies carpeting the stair.

A jasper terrace hung above the sea
Where the King supped with his beloved three:
The Libyan chanted of her native land
In raucous melody, the Indian fanned,
And the huge mastiff licked his master's hand.

Below, alone, despairing of the gale,
A crouching sailor furled the saffron sail;
Then rose, breathed deep, and plunged in the lagoon.
A mermaid spied his glistening limbs: her croon
Enticed him down; her cold arms choked him soon.

And the King laughed, filled full his jewelled bowl,
And drinking mused: "What know we of the soul?
What magic, perfecting her harmony,
Have these red drops that so attune her key,
Or those of brine that set the wretched free?

"If death should change me, as old fables feign,
Into some slave or beast, to purge with pain
My lordly pleasures, let my torment be
Still to behold thee, Sybaris, and see
The sacred horror of thy loves and thee.

"Be thou my hell, my dumb eternal grief,
But spare thy King the madness of belief,
The brutish faith of ignorant desire
That strives and wanders. Let the visible fire
Of beauty torture me. That doom is higher.

"I wear the crown of life. The rose and gem
Twine with the pale gold of my diadem.
Nature, long secret, hath unveiled to me
And proved her vile. Her wanton bosoms be
My pillow now. I know her, I am free."

He spoke, and smiling stretched a languid hand,
And music burst in mighty chords and bland
Of harp and flute and cymbal.--When between
Two cypresses the large moon rose, her sheen
Silvered the nymphs' feet, tripping o'er the green.

AVILA

Again my feet are on the fragrant moor
Amid the purple uplands of Castile,
Realm proudly desolate and nobly poor,
Scorched by the sky's inexorable zeal.

Wide desert where a diadem of towers
Above Adaja hems a silent town,
And locks, unmindful of the mocking hours,
Her twenty temples in a granite crown.

The shafts of fervid light are in the sky,
And in my heart the mysteries of yore.
Here the sad trophies of my spirit lie:
These dead fulfilled my destiny before.

Like huge primeval stones that strew this plain,
Their nameless sorrows sink upon my breast,
And like this ardent sky their cancelled pain
Smiles at my grief and quiets my unrest.

For here hath mortal life from age to age
Endured the silent hand that makes and mars,
And, sighing, taken up its heritage
Beneath the smiling and inhuman stars.

Still o'er this town the crested castle stands,
A nest for storks, as once for haughty souls,
Still from the abbey, where the vale expands,
The curfew for the long departed tolls,

Wafting some ghostly blessing to the heart
From prayer of nun or silent Capuchin,
To heal with balm of Golgotha the smart
Of weary labour and distracted sin.

What fate has cast me on a tide of time
Careless of joy and covetous of gold,
What force compelled to weave the pensive rhyme
When loves are mean, and faith and honour old,

When riches crown in vain men's sordid lives,
And learning chokes a mind of base degree?
What winged spirit rises from their hives?
What heart, revolting, ventures to be free?

Their pride will sink and more ignobly fade
Without memorial of its hectic fire.
What altars shall survive them, where they prayed?
What lovely deities? What riven lyre?

Tarry not, pilgrim, but with inward gaze
Pass daily, musing, where their prisons are,
And o'er the ocean of their babble raise
Thy voice in greeting to thy changeless star.

Abroad a tumult, and a ruin here;
Nor world nor desert hath a home for thee.
Out of the sorrows of the barren year
Build thou thy dwelling in eternity.

Let patience, faith's wise sister, be thy heaven,
And with high thoughts necessity alloy.
Love is enough, and love is ever given,
While fleeting days bring gift of fleeting joy.

The little pleasures that to catch the sun
Bubble a moment up from being's deep,
The glittering sands of passion as they run,
The merry laughter and the happy sleep,--

These are the gems that, like the stars on fire,
Encrust with glory all our heaven's zones;
Each shining atom, in itself entire,
Brightens the galaxy of sister stones,

Dust of a world that crumbled when God's dream
To throbbing pulses broke the life of things,
And mingled with the void the scattered gleam
Of many orbs that move in many rings,

Perchance at last into the parent sun
To fall again and reunite their rays,
When God awakes and gathers into one
The light of all his loves and all his days.

KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL

The buttress frowns, the gorgeous windows blaze,
The vaults hang wonderful with woven fans,
The four stone sentinels to heaven raise
Their heads, in a more constant faith than man's.

The College gathers, and the courtly prayer
Is answered still by hymn and organ-groan;
The beauty and the mystery are there,
The Virgin and Saint Nicholas are gone.

Not one _Ora pro nobis_ bids them pause
In their far flight, to hear this anthem roll;
No heart, of all that the King's relic awes,
Sings _Requiescat_ to his mournful soul.

No grain of incense thrown upon the embers
Of their cold hearth, no lamp in witness hung
Before their image. One alone remembers;
Only the stranger knows their mother tongue.

Long rows of tapers light the people's places;
The little choristers may read, and mark
The rhythmic fall; I see their wondering faces;
Only the altar--like the soul--is dark.

Ye floating voices through these arches ringing
With measured music, subtle, sweet, and strong,
Feel ye the inmost reason of your singing?
Know ye the ancient burden of your song?

The twilight deepens, and the blood-dyed glories
Of all these fiery blazonings are dim.
Oh, they are jumbled, sad, forgotten stories!
Why should ye read them, children? Chant your hymn.

But I must con them while the rays of even
Kindle aloft some fading jewel-gleam
And the vast windows glow a peopled heaven,
Rich with the gathering pageant of my dream.

Eden I see, where from the leafy cover
The green-eyed snake begins to uncoil his length
And whispers to the woman and her lover,
As they lie musing, large, in peaceful strength.

I see their children, bent with toil and terror,
Lurking in caves, or heaping madly on
The stones of Babel, or the endless error
Of Sodom, Nineveh, and Babylon.

Here the Egyptian, wedding life with death,
Flies from the sun into his painted tomb,
And winds the secret of his antique faith
Tight in his shroud, and seals in sterile gloom.

There the bold prophets of the heart's desire
Hail the new Zion God shall build for them,
And rapt Isaiah strikes the heavenly lyre,
And Jeremiah mourns Jerusalem.

Here David's daughter, full of grace and truth,
Kneels in the temple, waiting for the Lord;
With the first _Ave_ comes the winged youth,
Bringing the lily ere he bring the sword.

There, to behold the Mother and the Child,
The sturdy shepherds down the mountain plod,
And angels sing, with voices sweet and wild
And wide lips parted: "Glory be to God."

Here, mounted on an ass, the twain depart
To hallowed Egypt, safe from Herod's wrong;
And Mary ponders all things in her heart,
And pensive Joseph sadly walks along.

There with the Twelve, before his blood is shed,
Christ blesses bread and breaks it with his hands,
"This is my body." Thomas shakes his head,
They marvel all, and no one understands,

Save John, whom Jesus loved above the rest.
He marvels too, but, seeking naught beside,
Leans, as his wont is, on his Master's breast.
Ah! the Lord's body also should abide.

There Golgotha is dark against the blue
In the broad east, above the painted crowd,
And many look upon the sign, but few
Read the hard lesson of the cross aloud.

And from this altar, now an empty tomb,
The Lord is risen. Lo! he is not here.
No shining angel sitteth in the gloom,
No Magdalen in anguish draweth near.

All pure in heart, or all in aspect pure,
The seemly Christians, kneeling, line the choir,
And drop their eyelids, tender and demure,
As the low lingering harmonies expire.

In that _Amen_ are the last echoes blended
Of all the ghostly world. The shades depart
Into the sacred night. In peace is ended
The long delirious fever of the heart.

Then I go forth into the open wold
And breathe the vigour of the freshening wind,
And with the piling drift of cloud I hold
A worship sweeter to the homeless mind,

Where the squat willows with their osiers crowned
Border the humble reaches of the Cam,
And the deep meadows stretching far around
Make me forget the exile that I am,--

Exile not only from the wind-swept moor
Where Guadarrama lifts his purple crest,
But from the spirit's realm, celestial, sure
Goal of all hope and vision of the best.

They also will go forth, these gentle youths,
Strong in the virtues of their manful isle,
Till one the pathway of the forest smooths,
And one the Ganges rules, and one the Nile;

And to whatever wilderness they choose
Their hearts will bear the sanctities of home,
The perfect ardours of the Grecian Muse,
The mighty labour of the arms of Rome;

But, ah! how little of these storied walls
Beneath whose shadow all their nurture was!
No, not one passing memory recalls
The Blessed Mary and Saint Nicholas.

Unhappy King, look not upon these towers,
Remember not thine only work that grew.
The moving world that feeds thy gift devours,
And the same hand that finished overthrew.

ON AN UNFINISHED STATUE

BY MICHAEL ANGELO IN THE BARGELLO, CALLED AN
APOLLO OR A DAVID

What beauteous form beneath a marble veil
Awaited in this block the Master's hand?
Could not the magic of his art avail
To unseal that beauty's tomb and bid it stand?

Alas! the torpid and unwilling mass
Misknew the sweetness of the mind's control,
And the quick shifting of the winds, alas!
Denied a body to that flickering soul.

Fair homeless spirit, harbinger of bliss,
It wooed dead matter that they both might live,
But dreamful earth still slumbered through the kiss
And missed the blessing heaven stooped to give,

As when Endymion, locked in dullard sleep,
Endured the gaze of Dian, till she turned
Stung with immortal wrath and doomed to weep
Her maiden passion ignorantly spurned.

How should the vision stay to guide the hand,
How should the holy thought and ardour stay,
When the false deeps of all the soul are sand
And the loose rivets of the spirit clay?

What chisel shaking in the pulse of lust
Shall find the perfect line, immortal, pure?
What fancy blown by every random gust
Shall mount the breathless heavens and endure?

Vain was the trance through which a thrill of joy
Passed for the nonce, when a vague hand, unled,
Half shaped the image of this lovely boy
And caught the angel's garment as he fled.

Leave, leave, distracted hand, the baffling stone,
And on that clay, thy fickle heart, begin.
Mould first some steadfast virtue of thine own
Out of the sodden substance of thy sin.

They who wrought wonders by the Nile of old,
Bequeathing their immortal part to us,
Cast their own spirit first into the mould
And were themselves the rock they fashioned thus.

Ever their docile and unwearied eye
Traced the same ancient pageant to the grave,
And awe made rich their spirit's husbandry
With the perpetual refluence of its wave,

Till 'twixt the desert and the constant Nile
Sphinx, pyramid, and awful temple grew,
And the vast gods, self-knowing, learned to smile
Beneath the sky's unalterable blue.

Long, long ere first the rapt Arcadian swain
Heard Pan's wild music pulsing through the grove,
His people's shepherds held paternal reign
Beneath the large benignity of Jove.

Long mused the Delphic sibyl in her cave
Ere mid his laurels she beheld the god,
And Beauty rose a virgin from the wave
In lands the foot of Heracles had trod.

Athena reared her consecrated wall,
Poseidon laid its rocky basement sure,
When Theseus had the monstrous race in thrall
And made the worship of his people pure.

Long had the stripling stood in silence, veiled,
Hearing the heroes' legend o'er and o'er,
Long in the keen palaestra striven, nor quailed
To tame the body to the task it bore,

Ere soul and body, shaped by patient art,
Walked linked with the gods, like friend with friend,
And reason, mirrored in the sage's heart,
Beheld her purpose and confessed her end.

Mould, then, thyself and let the marble be.
Look not to frailty for immortal themes,
Nor mock the travail of mortality
With barren husks and harvesting of dreams.

MIDNIGHT

The dank earth reeks with three days' rain,
The phantom trees are dark and still,
Above the darkness and the hill
The tardy moon shines out again.
O heavy lethargy of pain!
O shadows of forgotten ill!

My parrot lips, when I was young,
To prove and to disprove were bold.
The mighty world has tied my tongue,
And in dull custom growing old
I leave the burning truth untold
And the heart's anguish all unsung.

Youth dies in man's benumbed soul,
Maid bows to woman's broken life,
A thousand leagues of silence roll
Between the husband and the wife.
The spirit faints with inward strife
And lonely gazing at the pole.

But how should reptiles pine for wings
Or a parched desert know its dearth?
Immortal is the soul that sings
The sorrow of her mortal birth.
O cruel beauty of the earth!
O love's unutterable stings!

IN GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS

ON FIRST HEARING A SKYLARK SING

Too late, thou tender songster of the sky
Trilling unseen, by things unseen inspired,
I list thy far-heard cry
That poets oft to kindred song hath fired,
As floating through the purple veils of air
Thy soul is poured on high,
A little joy in an immense despair.

Too late thou biddest me escape the earth,
In ignorance of wrong
To spin a little slender thread of song;
On yet unwearied wing
To rise and soar and sing,
Not knowing death or birth
Or any true unhappy human thing.

To dwell 'twixt field and cloud,
By river-willow and the murmurous sedge,
Be thy sweet privilege,
To thee and to thy happy lords allowed.
My native valley higher mountains hedge
'Neath starlit skies and proud,
And sadder music in my soul is loud.

Yet have I loved thy voice,
Frail echo of some ancient sacred joy.
Ah, who might not rejoice
Here to have wandered, a fair English boy,
And breathed with life thy rapture and thy rest
Where woven meadow-grasses fold thy nest?
But whose life is his choice?
And he who chooseth not hath chosen best.

SPAIN IN AMERICA

WRITTEN AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH
FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF SANTIAGO, IN 1898