Chapter VI: A Midsummer Holiday, Astrophel, a Channel Passage and Other Poems (1)

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

Poems and Ballads Second Series

By Algernon Charles Swinburne

Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne--Vol. III

1917 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

_First printed (Chatto), 1904_ _Reprinted 1904, '05, '10, '12_ _(Heinemann), 1917_

London: William Heinemann, 1917

CONTENTS

POEMS AND BALLADS

Second Series

The Last Oracle 5

In the Bay 11

A Forsaken Garden 22

Relics 26

At a Month's End 29

Sestina 34

The Year of the Rose 36

A Wasted Vigil 39

The Complaint of Lisa 42

For the Feast of Giordano Bruno 48

Ave Atque Vale 50

Memorial Verses on the Death of Theophile Gautier 58

Sonnet (with a Copy of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_) 66

Age and Song (to Barry Cornwall) 67

In Memory of Barry Cornwall 69

Epicede 72

To Victor Hugo 74

Inferiae 75

A Birth-Song 77

Ex-Voto 81

A Ballad of Dreamland 85

Cyril Tourneur 87

A Ballad of Francois Villos 88

Pastiche 90

Before Sunset 92

Song 93

A Vision of Spring in Winter 94

Choriambics 98

At Parting 100

A Song in Season 101

Two Leaders 107

Victor Hugo in 1877 109

Child's Song 110

Triads 111

Four Songs of Four Seasons:--

I. Winter in Northumberland 113

II. Spring in Tuscany 122

III. Summer in Auvergne 125

IV. Autumn in Cornwall 127

The White Czar 129

Rizpah 131

To Louis Kossuth 132

Translations from the French of Villon:--

The Complaint of the Fair Armouress 133

A Double Ballad of Good Counsel 137

Fragment on Death 139

Ballad of the Lords of Old Time 140

Ballad of the Women of Paris 142

Ballad written for a Bridegroom 144

Ballad against the Enemies of France 146

The Dispute of the Heart and Body of Francois Villon 148

Epistle in form of a Ballad to his Friends 150

The Epitaph in form of a Ballad 152

From Victor Hugo 154

Nocturne 155

Theophile Gautier 157

Ode 158

In Obitom Theophili Poetae 160

Ad Catullum 161

Dedication, 1878 162

POEMS AND BALLADS

SECOND SERIES

VOL. III.

INSCRIBED

TO

RICHARD F. BURTON

IN REDEMPTION OF AN OLD PLEDGE AND IN RECOGNITION OF A FRIENDSHIP WHICH I MUST ALWAYS COUNT AMONG THE HIGHEST HONOURS OF MY LIFE

THE LAST ORACLE

(A.D. 361)

[Greek: eipate to basilei, chamai pese daidalos aula; ouketi Phoibos echei kaluban, ou mantida daphnen, ou pagan laleousan; apesbeto kai lalon hudor.]

Years have risen and fallen in darkness or in twilight,
Ages waxed and waned that knew not thee nor thine,
While the world sought light by night and sought not thy light,
Since the sad last pilgrim left thy dark mid shrine.
Dark the shrine and dumb the fount of song thence welling,
Save for words more sad than tears of blood, that said:
_Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling,_
_And the watersprings that spake are quenched and dead._
_Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover_
_In his hand the prophet laurel flowers no more._
And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last lover,
Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core.
And he bowed down his hopeless head
In the drift of the wild world's tide,
And dying, _Thou hast conquered_, he said,
_Galilean_; he said it, and died.
And the world that was thine and was ours
When the Graces took hands with the Hours
Grew cold as a winter wave
In the wind from a wide-mouthed grave,
As a gulf wide open to swallow
The light that the world held dear.
O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,
Destroyer and healer, hear!

Age on age thy mouth was mute, thy face was hidden,
And the lips and eyes that loved thee blind and dumb;
Song forsook their tongues that held thy name forbidden,
Light their eyes that saw the strange God's kingdom come.
Fire for light and hell for heaven and psalms for paeans
Filled the clearest eyes and lips most sweet of song,
When for chant of Greeks the wail of Galileans
Made the whole world moan with hymns of wrath and wrong.
Yea, not yet we see thee, father, as they saw thee,
They that worshipped when the world was theirs and thine,
They whose words had power by thine own power to draw thee
Down from heaven till earth seemed more than heaven divine.
For the shades are about us that hover
When darkness is half withdrawn
And the skirts of the dead night cover
The face of the live new dawn.
For the past is not utterly past
Though the word on its lips be the last,
And the time be gone by with its creed
When men were as beasts that bleed,
As sheep or as swine that wallow,
In the shambles of faith and of fear.
O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,
Destroyer and healer, hear!

Yet it may be, lord and father, could we know it,
We that love thee for our darkness shall have light
More than ever prophet hailed of old or poet
Standing crowned and robed and sovereign in thy sight.
To the likeness of one God their dreams enthralled thee,
Who wast greater than all Gods that waned and grew;
Son of God the shining son of Time they called thee,
Who wast older, O our father, than they knew.
For no thought of man made Gods to love or honour
Ere the song within the silent soul began,
Nor might earth in dream or deed take heaven upon her
Till the word was clothed with speech by lips of man.
And the word and the life wast thou,
The spirit of man and the breath;
And before thee the Gods that bow
Take life at thine hands and death.
For these are as ghosts that wane,
That are gone in an age or twain;
Harsh, merciful, passionate, pure,
They perish, but thou shalt endure;
Be their flight with the swan or the swallow,
They pass as the flight of a year.
O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,
Destroyer and healer, hear!

Thou the word, the light, the life, the breath, the glory,
Strong to help and heal, to lighten and to slay,
Thine is all the song of man, the world's whole story;
Not of morning and of evening is thy day.
Old and younger Gods are buried or begotten
From uprising to downsetting of thy sun,
Risen from eastward, fallen to westward and forgotten,
And their springs are many, but their end is one.
Divers births of godheads find one death appointed,
As the soul whence each was born makes room for each;
God by God goes out, discrowned and disanointed,
But the soul stands fast that gave them shape and speech.
Is the sun yet cast out of heaven?
Is the song yet cast out of man?
Life that had song for its leaven
To quicken the blood that ran
Through the veins of the songless years
More bitter and cold than tears,
Heaven that had thee for its one
Light, life, word, witness, O sun,
Are they soundless and sightless and hollow,
Without eye, without speech, without ear?
O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,
Destroyer and healer, hear!

Time arose and smote thee silent at his warning,
Change and darkness fell on men that fell from thee;
Dark thou satest, veiled with light, behind the morning,
Till the soul of man should lift up eyes and see.
Till the blind mute soul get speech again and eyesight,
Man may worship not the light of life within;
In his sight the stars whose fires grow dark in thy sight
Shine as sunbeams on the night of death and sin.
Time again is risen with mightier word of warning,
Change hath blown again a blast of louder breath;
Clothed with clouds and stars and dreams that melt in morning,
Lo, the Gods that ruled by grace of sin and death!
They are conquered, they break, they are stricken,
Whose might made the whole world pale;
They are dust that shall rise not or quicken
Though the world for their death's sake wail.
As a hound on a wild beast's trace,
So time has their godhead in chase;
As wolves when the hunt makes head,
They are scattered, they fly, they are fled;
They are fled beyond hail, beyond hollo,
And the cry of the chase, and the cheer.
O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,
Destroyer and healer, hear!

Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,
Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:
King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;
God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.
In thy lips the speech of man whence Gods were fashioned,
In thy soul the thought that makes them and unmakes;
By thy light and heat incarnate and impassioned,
Soul to soul of man gives light for light and takes.
As they knew thy name of old time could we know it,
Healer called of sickness, slayer invoked of wrong,
Light of eyes that saw thy light, God, king, priest, poet,
Song should bring thee back to heal us with thy song.
For thy kingdom is past not away,
Nor thy power from the place thereof hurled;
Out of heaven they shall cast not the day,
They shall cast not out song from the world.
By the song and the light they give
We know thy works that they live;
With the gift thou hast given us of speech
We praise, we adore, we beseech,
We arise at thy bidding and follow,
We cry to thee, answer, appear,
O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,
Destroyer and healer, hear!

IN THE BAY

I

Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar To fold the fleet in of the winds from far That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast:

II

Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that I desire.

III

If any place for any soul there be, Disrobed and disentrammelled; if the might, The fire and force that filled with ardent light The souls whose shadow is half the light we see, Survive and be suppressed not of the night; This hour should show what all day hid from me.

IV

Night knows not, neither is it shown to day, By sunlight nor by starlight is it shown, Nor to the full moon's eye nor footfall known, Their world's untrodden and unkindled way. Nor is the breath nor music of it blown With sounds of winter or with winds of May.

V

But here, where light and darkness reconciled Hold earth between them as a weanling child Between the balanced hands of death and birth, Even as they held the new-born shape of earth When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled, Here hope might think to find what hope were worth.

VI

Past Hades, past Elysium, past the long Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe--past the toil Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, The Stygian web of waters--if your song Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil;

VII

If yet these twain survive your worldly breath, Joy trampling sorrow, life devouring death, If perfect life possess your life all through And like your words your souls be deathless too, To-night, of all whom night encompasseth, My soul would commune with one soul of you.

VIII

Above the sunset might I see thine eyes That were above the sundawn in our skies, Son of the songs of morning,--thine that were First lights to lighten that rekindling air Wherethrough men saw the front of England rise And heard thine loudest of the lyre-notes there--

IX

If yet thy fire have not one spark the less, O Titan, born of her a Titaness, Across the sunrise and the sunset's mark Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark, To change this face of our unworthiness, Across this hour dividing light from dark.

X

To change this face of our chill time, that hears No song like thine of all that crowd its ears, Of all its lights that lighten all day long Sees none like thy most fleet and fiery sphere's Outlightening Sirius--in its twilight throng No thunder and no sunrise like thy song.

XI

Hath not the sea-wind swept the sea-line bare To pave with stainless fire through stainless air A passage for thine heavenlier feet to tread Ungrieved of earthly floor-work? hath it spread No covering splendid as the sun-god's hair To veil or to reveal thy lordlier head?

XII

Hath not the sunset strewn across the sea A way majestical enough for thee? What hour save this should be thine hour--and mine, If thou have care of any less divine Than thine own soul; if thou take thought of me, Marlowe, as all my soul takes thought of thine?

XIII

Before the moon's face as before the sun The morning star and evening star are one For all men's lands as England. O, if night Hang hard upon us,--ere our day take flight, Shed thou some comfort from thy day long done On us pale children of the latter light!

XIV

For surely, brother and master and lord and king, Where'er thy footfall and thy face make spring In all souls' eyes that meet thee wheresoe'er, And have thy soul for sunshine and sweet air-- Some late love of thine old live land should cling, Some living love of England, round thee there.

XV

Here from her shore across her sunniest sea My soul makes question of the sun for thee, And waves and beams make answer. When thy feet Made her ways flowerier and their flowers more sweet With childlike passage of a god to be, Like spray these waves cast off her foemen's fleet.

XVI

Like foam they flung it from her, and like weed Its wrecks were washed from scornful shoal to shoal, From rock to rock reverberate; and the whole Sea laughed and lightened with a deathless deed That sowed our enemies in her field for seed And made her shores fit harbourage for thy soul.

XVII

Then in her green south fields, a poor man's child, Thou hadst thy short sweet fill of half-blown joy, That ripens all of us for time to cloy With full-blown pain and passion; ere the wild World caught thee by the fiery heart, and smiled To make so swift end of the godlike boy.

XVIII

For thou, if ever godlike foot there trod These fields of ours, wert surely like a god. Who knows what splendour of strange dreams was shed With sacred shadow and glimmer of gold and red From hallowed windows, over stone and sod, On thine unbowed bright insubmissive head?

XIX

The shadow stayed not, but the splendour stays, Our brother, till the last of English days. No day nor night on English earth shall be For ever, spring nor summer, Junes nor Mays, But somewhat as a sound or gleam of thee Shall come on us like morning from the sea.

XX

Like sunrise never wholly risen, nor yet Quenched; or like sunset never wholly set, A light to lighten as from living eyes The cold unlit close lids of one that lies Dead, or a ray returned from death's far skies To fire us living lest our lives forget.

XXI

For in that heaven what light of lights may be, What splendour of what stars, what spheres of flame Sounding, that none may number nor may name, We know not, even thy brethren; yea, not we Whose eyes desire the light that lightened thee, Whose ways and thine are one way and the same.

XXII

But if the riddles that in sleep we read, And trust them not, be flattering truth indeed, As he that rose our mightiest called them,--he, Much higher than thou as thou much higher than we-- There, might we say, all flower of all our seed, All singing souls are as one sounding sea.

XXIII

All those that here were of thy kind and kin, Beside thee and below thee, full of love, Full-souled for song,--and one alone above Whose only light folds all your glories in-- With all birds' notes from nightingale to dove Fill the world whither we too fain would win.

XXIV

The world that sees in heaven the sovereign light Of sunlike Shakespeare, and the fiery night Whose stars were watched of Webster; and beneath, The twin-souled brethren of the single wreath, Grown in kings' gardens, plucked from pastoral heath, Wrought with all flowers for all men's heart's delight.

XXV

And that fixed fervour, iron-red like Mars, In the mid moving tide of tenderer stars, That burned on loves and deeds the darkest done, Athwart the incestuous prisoner's bride-house bars; And thine, most highest of all their fires but one, Our morning star, sole risen before the sun.

XXVI

And one light risen since theirs to run such race Thou hast seen, O Phosphor, from thy pride of place. Thou hast seen Shelley, him that was to thee As light to fire or dawn to lightning; me, Me likewise, O our brother, shalt thou see, And I behold thee, face to glorious face?

XXVII

You twain the same swift year of manhood swept Down the steep darkness, and our father wept. And from the gleam of Apollonian tears A holier aureole rounds your memories, kept Most fervent-fresh of all the singing spheres, And April-coloured through all months and years.

XXVIII

You twain fate spared not half your fiery span; The longer date fulfils the lesser man. Ye from beyond the dark dividing date Stand smiling, crowned as gods with foot on fate. For stronger was your blessing than his ban, And earliest whom he struck, he struck too late.

XXIX

Yet love and loathing, faith and unfaith yet Bind less to greater souls in unison, And one desire that makes three spirits as one Takes great and small as in one spiritual net Woven out of hope toward what shall yet be done Ere hate or love remember or forget.

XXX

Woven out of faith and hope and love too great To bear the bonds of life and death and fate: Woven out of love and hope and faith too dear To take the print of doubt and change and fear: And interwoven with lines of wrath and hate Blood-red with soils of many a sanguine year.

XXXI

Who cannot hate, can love not; if he grieve, His tears are barren as the unfruitful rain That rears no harvest from the green sea's plain, And as thorns crackling this man's laugh is vain. Nor can belief touch, kindle, smite, reprieve His heart who has not heart to disbelieve.

XXXII

But you, most perfect in your hate and love, Our great twin-spirited brethren; you that stand Head by head glittering, hand made fast in hand, And underfoot the fang-drawn worm that strove To wound you living; from so far above, Look love, not scorn, on ours that was your land.

XXXIII

For love we lack, and help and heat and light To clothe us and to comfort us with might. What help is ours to take or give? but ye-- O, more than sunrise to the blind cold sea, That wailed aloud with all her waves all night, Much more, being much more glorious, should you be.

XXXIV

As fire to frost, as ease to toil, as dew To flowerless fields, as sleep to slackening pain, As hope to souls long weaned from hope again Returning, or as blood revived anew To dry-drawn limbs and every pulseless vein, Even so toward us should no man be but you.

XXXV

One rose before the sunrise was, and one Before the sunset, lovelier than the sun. And now the heaven is dark and bright and loud With wind and starry drift and moon and cloud, And night's cry rings in straining sheet and shroud, What help is ours if hope like yours be none?

XXXVI

O well-beloved, our brethren, if ye be, Then are we not forsaken. This kind earth Made fragrant once for all time with your birth, And bright for all men with your love, and worth The clasp and kiss and wedlock of the sea, Were not your mother if not your brethren we.

XXXVII

Because the days were dark with gods and kings And in time's hand the old hours of time as rods, When force and fear set hope and faith at odds, Ye failed not nor abased your plume-plucked wings; And we that front not more disastrous things, How should we fail in face of kings and gods?

XXXVIII

For now the deep dense plumes of night are thinned Surely with winnowing of the glimmering wind Whose feet are fledged with morning; and the breath Begins in heaven that sings the dark to death. And all the night wherein men groaned and sinned Sickens at heart to hear what sundawn saith.

XXXIX

O first-born sons of hope and fairest, ye Whose prows first clove the thought-unsounded sea Whence all the dark dead centuries rose to bar The spirit of man lest truth should make him free, The sunrise and the sunset, seeing one star, Take heart as we to know you that ye are.

XL

Ye rise not and ye set not; we that say Ye rise and set like hopes that set and rise Look yet but seaward from a land-locked bay; But where at last the sea's line is the sky's And truth and hope one sunlight in your eyes, No sunrise and no sunset marks their day.

A FORSAKEN GARDEN

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"
Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die--but we?"
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
And were one to the end--but what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
What love was ever as deep as a grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever;
Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.

RELICS

This flower that smells of honey and the sea, White laurustine, seems in my hand to be A white star made of memory long ago Lit in the heaven of dear times dead to me.

A star out of the skies love used to know Here held in hand, a stray left yet to show What flowers my heart was full of in the days That are long since gone down dead memory's flow.

Dead memory that revives on doubtful ways, Half hearkening what the buried season says Out of the world of the unapparent dead Where the lost Aprils are, and the lost Mays.

Flower, once I knew thy star-white brethren bred Nigh where the last of all the land made head Against the sea, a keen-faced promontory, Flowers on salt wind and sprinkled sea-dews fed.

Their hearts were glad of the free place's glory; The wind that sang them all his stormy story Had talked all winter to the sleepless spray, And as the sea's their hues were hard and hoary.

Like things born of the sea and the bright day, They laughed out at the years that could not slay, Live sons and joyous of unquiet hours, And stronger than all storms that range for prey.

And in the close indomitable flowers A keen-edged odour of the sun and showers Was as the smell of the fresh honeycomb Made sweet for mouths of none but paramours.

Out of the hard green wall of leaves that clomb They showed like windfalls of the snow-soft foam, Or feathers from the weary south-wind's wing, Fair as the spray that it came shoreward from.

And thou, as white, what word hast thou to bring? If my heart hearken, whereof wilt thou sing? For some sign surely thou too hast to bear, Some word far south was taught thee of the spring.

White like a white rose, not like these that were Taught of the wind's mouth and the winter air, Poor tender thing of soft Italian bloom, Where once thou grewest, what else for me grew there?

Born in what spring and on what city's tomb, By whose hand wast thou reached, and plucked for whom? There hangs about thee, could the soul's sense tell, An odour as of love and of love's doom.

Of days more sweet than thou wast sweet to smell, Of flower-soft thoughts that came to flower and fell, Of loves that lived a lily's life and died, Of dreams now dwelling where dead roses dwell.

O white birth of the golden mountain-side That for the sun's love makes its bosom wide At sunrise, and with all its woods and flowers Takes in the morning to its heart of pride!

Thou hast a word of that one land of ours, And of the fair town called of the Fair Towers, A word for me of my San Gimignan, A word of April's greenest-girdled hours.

Of the old breached walls whereon the wallflowers ran Called of Saint Fina, breachless now of man, Though time with soft feet break them stone by stone, Who breaks down hour by hour his own reign's span.

Of the old cliff overcome and overgrown That all that flowerage clothed as flesh clothes bone, That garment of acacias made for May, Whereof here lies one witness overblown.

The fair brave trees with all their flowers at play, How king-like they stood up into the day! How sweet the day was with them, and the night! Such words of message have dead flowers to say.

This that the winter and the wind made bright, And this that lived upon Italian light, Before I throw them and these words away, Who knows but I what memories too take flight?

AT A MONTH'S END

The night last night was strange and shaken:
More strange the change of you and me.
Once more, for the old love's love forsaken,
We went out once more toward the sea.

For the old love's love-sake dead and buried,
One last time, one more and no more,
We watched the waves set in, the serried
Spears of the tide storming the shore.

Hardly we saw the high moon hanging,
Heard hardly through the windy night
Far waters ringing, low reefs clanging,
Under wan skies and waste white light.

With chafe and change of surges chiming,
The clashing channels rocked and rang
Large music, wave to wild wave timing,
And all the choral water sang.

Faint lights fell this way, that way floated,
Quick sparks of sea-fire keen like eyes
From the rolled surf that flashed, and noted
Shores and faint cliffs and bays and skies.

The ghost of sea that shrank up sighing
At the sand's edge, a short sad breath
Trembling to touch the goal, and dying
With weak heart heaved up once in death--

The rustling sand and shingle shaken
With light sweet touches and small sound--
These could not move us, could not waken
Hearts to look forth, eyes to look round.

Silent we went an hour together,
Under grey skies by waters white.
Our hearts were full of windy weather,
Clouds and blown stars and broken light.

Full of cold clouds and moonbeams drifted
And streaming storms and straying fires,
Our souls in us were stirred and shifted
By doubts and dreams and foiled desires.

Across, aslant, a scudding sea-mew
Swam, dipped, and dropped, and grazed the sea:
And one with me I could not dream you;
And one with you I could not be.

As the white wing the white wave's fringes
Touched and slid over and flashed past--
As a pale cloud a pale flame tinges
From the moon's lowest light and last--

As a star feels the sun and falters,
Touched to death by diviner eyes--
As on the old gods' untended altars
The old lire of withered worship dies--

(Once only, once the shrine relighted
Sees the last fiery shadow shine,
Last shadow of flame and faith benighted,
Sees falter and flutter and fail the shrine)

So once with fiery breath and flying
Your winged heart touched mine and went,
And the swift spirits kissed, and sighing,
Sundered and smiled and were content.

That only touch, that feeling only,
Enough we found, we found too much;
For the unlit shrine is hardly lonely
As one the old fire forgets to touch.

Slight as the sea's sight of the sea-mew,
Slight as the sun's sight of the star:
Enough to show one must not deem you
For love's sake other than you are.

Who snares and tames with fear and danger
A bright beast of a fiery kin,
Only to mar, only to change her
Sleek supple soul and splendid skin?

Easy with blows to mar and maim her,
Easy with bonds to bind and bruise;
What profit, if she yield her tamer
The limbs to mar, the soul to lose?

Best leave or take the perfect creature,
Take all she is or leave complete;
Transmute you will not form or feature,
Change feet for wings or wings for feet.

Strange eyes, new limbs, can no man give her;
Sweet is the sweet thing as it is.
No soul she hath, we see, to outlive her;
Hath she for that no lips to kiss?

So may one read his weird, and reason,
And with vain drugs assuage no pain.
For each man in his loving season
Fools and is fooled of these in vain.

Charms that allay not any longing,
Spells that appease not any grief,
Time brings us all by handfuls, wronging
All hurts with nothing of relief.

Ah, too soon shot, the fool's bolt misses!
What help? the world is full of loves;
Night after night of running kisses,
Chirp after chirp of changing doves.

Should Love disown or disesteem you
For loving one man more or less?
You could not tame your light white sea-mew,
Nor I my sleek black pantheress.

For a new soul let whoso please pray,
We are what life made us, and shall be.
For you the jungle and me the sea-spray,
And south for you and north for me.

But this one broken foam-white feather
I throw you off the hither wing,
Splashed stiff with sea-scurf and salt weather,
This song for sleep to learn and sing--

Sing in your ear when, daytime over,
You, couched at long length on hot sand
With some sleek sun-discoloured lover,
Wince from his breach as from a brand:

Till the acrid hour aches out and ceases,
And the sheathed eyeball sleepier swims,
The deep flank smoothes its dimpling creases.
And passion loosens all the limbs:

Till dreams of sharp grey north-sea weather
Fall faint upon your fiery sleep,
As on strange sands a strayed bird's feather
The wind may choose to lose or keep.

But I, who leave my queen of panthers,
As a tired honey-heavy bee
Gilt with sweet dust from gold-grained anthers
Leaves the rose-chalice, what for me?

From the ardours of the chaliced centre,
From the amorous anthers' golden grime,
That scorch and smutch all wings that enter,
I fly forth hot from honey-time.

But as to a bee's gilt thighs and winglets
The flower-dust with the flower-smell clings;
As a snake's mobile rampant ringlets
Leave the sand marked with print of rings;

So to my soul in surer fashion
Your savage stamp and savour hangs;
The print and perfume of old passion,
The wild-beast mark of panther's fangs.

SESTINA

I saw my soul at rest upon a day
As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
And knew not as men waking, of delight.

This was the measure of my soul's delight;
It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
And all the love and life that sleepers may.

But such life's triumph as men waking may
It might not have to feed its faint delight
Between the stars by night and sun by day,
Shut up with green leaves and a little light;
Because its way was as a lost star's way,
A world's not wholly known of day or night.

All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night
Made it all music that such minstrels may,
And all they had they gave it of delight;
But in the full face of the fire of day
What place shall be for any starry light,
What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way?

Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,
Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,
And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,
Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,
Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,
Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.

For who sleeps once and sees the secret light
Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way
Between the rise and rest of day and night,
Shall care no more to fare as all men may,
But be his place of pain or of delight,
There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.

Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light Before the night be fallen across thy way; Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.

THE YEAR OF THE ROSE

From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
Till autumn pluck from his hand
An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
From the maze that a flower-belt encloses
To the stones and sea-grass on the strand
How red was the reign of the roses
Over the rose-crowned land!

The year of the rose is brief;
From the first blade blown to the sheaf,
From the thin green leaf to the gold,
It has time to be sweet and grow old,
To triumph and leave not a leaf
For witness in winter's sight
How lovers once in the light
Would mix their breath with its breath,
And its spirit was quenched not of night,
As love is subdued not of death.

In the red-rose land not a mile
Of the meadows from stile to stile,
Of the valleys from stream to stream,
But the air was a long sweet dream
And the earth was a sweet wide smile
Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned
From the sea which had borne her and burned,
That with one swift smile of her mouth
Looked full on the north as it yearned,
And the north was more than the south.

For the north, when winter was long,
In his heart had made him a song,
And clothed it with wings of desire,
And shod it with shoon as of fire,
To carry the tale of his wrong
To the south-west wind by the sea.
That none might bear it but he
To the ear of the goddess unknown
Who waits till her time shall be
To take the world for a throne.

In the earth beneath, and above
In the heaven where her name is love,
She warms with light from her eyes
The seasons of life as they rise,
And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,
But the wings that lift her and bear
As an eagle's, and all her hair
As fire by the wind's breath curled,
And her passage is song through the air,
And her presence is spring through the world.

So turned she northward and came,
And the white-thorn land was aflame
With the fires that were shed from her feet,
That the north, by her love made sweet,
Should be called by a rose-red name;
And a murmur was heard as of doves,
And a music beginning of loves
In the light that the roses made,
Such light as the music loves,
The music of man with maid.

But the days drop one upon one,
And a chill soft wind is begun
In the heart of the rose-red maze
That weeps for the roseleaf days
And the reign of the rose undone
That ruled so long in the light,
And by spirit, and not by sight,
Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,
Still ruled in the viewless night,
As love might rule over death.

The time of lovers is brief;
From the fair first joy to the grief
That tells when love is grown old,
From the warm wild kiss to the cold,
From the red to the white-rose leaf,
They have but a season to seem
As roseleaves lost on a stream
That part not and pass not apart
As a spirit from dream to dream,
As a sorrow from heart to heart.

From the bloom and the gloom that encloses
The death-bed of Love where he dozes
Till a relic be left not of sand
To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand;
From the change in the grey garden-closes
To the last stray grass of the strand,
A rain and ruin of roses
Over the red-rose land

A WASTED VIGIL

I

Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold, Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold, With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea; Couldst thou not watch with me?

II

What, not one hour? for star by star the night Falls, and her thousands world by world take flight; They die, and day survives, and what of thee? Couldst thou not watch with me?

III

Lo, far in heaven the web of night undone, And on the sudden sea the gradual sun; Wave to wave answers, tree responds to tree; Couldst thou not watch with me?

IV

Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line, Foam by foam quickens on the brightening brine; Sail by sail passes, flower by flower gets free; Couldst thou not watch with me?

V

Last year, a brief while since, an age ago, A whole year past, with bud and bloom and snow, O moon that wast in heaven, what friends were we! Couldst thou not watch with me?

VI

Old moons, and last year's flowers, and last year's snows! Who now saith to thee, moon? or who saith, rose? O dust and ashes, once found fair to see! Couldst thou not watch with me?

VII

O dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell! With me it is not, is it with thee well? O sea-drift blown from windward back to lee! Couldst thou not watch with me?

VIII

The old year's dead hands are full of their dead flowers. The old days are full of dead old loves of ours, Born as a rose, and briefer born than she; Couldst thou not watch with me?

IX

Could two days live again of that dead year, One would say, seeking us and passing here, _Where is she?_ and one answering, _Where is he?_ Couldst thou not watch with me?

X

Nay, those two lovers are not anywhere; If we were they, none knows us what we were, Nor aught of all their barren grief and glee. Couldst thou not watch with me?

XI

Half false, half fair, all feeble, be my verse Upon thee not for blessing nor for curse; For some must stand, and some must fall or flee; Couldst thou not watch with me?

XII

As a new moon above spent stars thou wast; But stars endure after the moon is past. Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three? Couldst thou not watch with me?

XIII

What of the night? The night is full, the tide Storms inland, the most ancient rocks divide; Yet some endure, and bow nor head nor knee; Couldst thou not watch with me?

XIV

Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways; Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. Lie still, sleep on, be glad--as such things be; Thou couldst not watch with me.

THE COMPLAINT OF LISA

(_Double Sestina_)

Decameron, x. 7

There is no woman living that draws breath So sad as I, though all things sadden her. There is not one upon life's weariest way Who is weary as I am weary of all but death. Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower All day with all his whole soul toward the sun; While in the sun's sight I make moan all day, And all night on my sleepless maiden bed Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee, That thou or he would take me to the dead, And know not what thing evil I have done That life should lay such heavy hand on me.

Alas, Love, what is this thou wouldst with me? What honour shall thou have to quench my breath, Or what shall my heart broken profit thee? O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed: I am the least flower in thy flowery way, But till my time be come that I be dead Let me live out my flower-time in the sun Though my leaves shut before the sunflower.

O Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower! Shall he the sun hath looked on look on me, That live down here in shade, out of the sun, Here living in the sorrow and shadow of death? Shall he that feeds his heart full of the day Care to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath? Because she loves him shall my lord love her Who is as a worm in my lord's kingly way? I shall not see him or know him alive or dead; But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee That in brief while my brief life-days be done, And the worm quickly make my marriage-bed.

For underground there is no sleepless bed: But here since I beheld my sunflower These eyes have slept not, seeing all night and day His sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun. Wherefore if anywhere be any death, I would fain find and fold him fast to me, That I may sleep with the world's eldest dead, With her that died seven centuries since, and her That went last night down the night-wandering way. For this is sleep indeed, when labour is done, Without love, without dreams, and without breath, And without thought, O name unnamed! of thee.

Ah, but, forgetting all things, shall I thee? Wilt thou not be as now about my bed There underground as here before the sun? Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead, Thy moving vision without form or breath? I read long since the bitter tale of her Who read the tale of Launcelot on a day, And died, and had no quiet after death, But was moved ever along a weary way, Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me, O my king, O my lordly sunflower, Would God to me too such a thing were done!

But if such sweet and bitter things be done, Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee. For in that living world without a sun Thy vision will lay hold upon me dead, And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death. Yet if being wroth God had such pity on her, Who was a sinner and foolish in her day, That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath, Why should he not in some wise pity me? So if I sleep not in my soft strait bed I may look up and see my sunflower As he the sun, in some divine strange way.

O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what way This sore sweet evil unto us was done. For on a holy and a heavy day I was arisen out of my still small bed To see the knights tilt, and one said to me "The king," and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath, And if the girl spake more, I heard not her, For only I saw what I shall see when dead, A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower, That shone against the sunlight like the sun, And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee, The fire of love that lights the pyre of death.

Howbeit I shall not die an evil death Who have loved in such a sad and sinless way, That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee. So when mine eyes are shut against the sun, O my soul's sun, O the world's sunflower, Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead. And dying I pray with all my low last breath That thy whole life may be as was that day, That feast-day that made trothplight death and me, Giving the world light of thy great deeds done; And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed, That God be good as God hath been to her.

That all things goodly and glad remain with her, All things that make glad life and goodly death; That as a bee sucks from a sunflower Honey, when summer draws delighted breath, Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way, And love make life a fruitful marriage-bed Where day may bring forth fruits of joy to day And night to night till days and nights be dead. And as she gives light of her love to thee, Give thou to her the old glory of days long done; And either give some heat of light to me, To warm me where I sleep without the sun.

O sunflower made drunken with the sun, O knight whose lady's heart draws thine to her, Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee. There is a weed lives out of the sun's way, Hid from the heat deep in the meadow's bed, That swoons and whitens at the wind's least breath, A flower star-shaped, that all a summer day Will gaze her soul out on the sunflower For very love till twilight finds her dead. But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death, Knows not when all her loving life is done; And so much knows my lord the king of me.

Aye, all day long he has no eye for me; With golden eye following the golden sun From rose-coloured to purple-pillowed bed, From birthplace to the flame-lit place of death, From eastern end to western of his way. So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower, So the white star-flower turns and yearns to thee, The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead, Trod underfoot if any pass by her, Pale, without colour of summer or summer breath In the shrunk shuddering petals, that have done No work but love, and die before the day.

But thou, to-day, to-morrow, and every day, Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me. Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sun Shall drop its golden seed in the world's way, That all men thereof nourished shall praise thee For grain and flower and fruit of works well done; Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower, Bring forth such growth of the world's garden-bed As like the sun shall outlive age and death. And yet I would thine heart had heed of her Who loves thee alive; but not till she be dead. Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.

Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead; From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee, To fly all day from sun's birth to sun's death Down the sun's way after the flying sun, For love of her that gave thee wings and breath, Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.

FOR THE FEAST OF GIORDANO BRUNO,

PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR

I

Son of the lightning and the light that glows
Beyond the lightning's or the morning's light,
Soul splendid with all-righteous love of right,
In whose keen fire all hopes and fears and woes
Were clean consumed, and from their ashes rose
Transfigured, and intolerable to sight
Save of purged eyes whose lids had cast off night,
In love's and wisdom's likeness when they close,
Embracing, and between them truth stands fast,
Embraced of either; thou whose feet were set
On English earth while this was England yet,
Our friend that art, our Sidney's friend that wast,
Heart hardier found and higher than all men's past,
Shall we not praise thee though thine own forget?

II

Lift up thy light on us and on thine own,
O soul whose spirit on earth was as a rod
To scourge off priests, a sword to pierce their God,
A staff for man's free thought to walk alone,
A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throne
On ways untrodden where his fathers trod
Ere earth's heart withered at a high priest's nod
And all men's mouths that made not prayer made moan.
From bonds and torments and the ravening flame
Surely thy spirit of sense rose up to greet
Lucretius, where such only spirits meet,
And walk with him apart till Shelley came
To make the heaven of heavens more heavenly sweet
And mix with yours a third incorporate name.

AVE ATQUE VALE

IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE