Chapter VI: A Midsummer Holiday, Astrophel, a Channel Passage and Other Poems (2)

Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs; Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs, Et quand Octobre souffle, emondeur des vieux arbres, Son vent melancolique a l'entour de leurs marbres, Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.

_Les Fleurs du Mal._

I

Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,
Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,
Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat
And full of bitter summer, but more sweet
To thee than gleanings of a northern shore
Trod by no tropic feet?

II

For always thee the fervid languid glories
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs
Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave
That knows not where is that Leucadian grave
Which hides too deep the supreme head of song.
Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,
The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear
Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,
Blind gods that cannot spare.

III

Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:
Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;
The hidden harvest of luxurious time,
Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing as men sow men reap.

IV

O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,
That were athirst for sleep and no more life
And no more love, for peace and no more strife!
Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping
Spirit and body and all the springs of song,
Is it well now where love can do no wrong,
Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang
Behind the unopening closure of her lips?
Is it not well where soul from body slips
And flesh from bone divides without a pang
As dew from flower-bell drips?

V

It is enough; the end and the beginning
Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.
O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,
For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,
No triumph and no labour and no lust,
Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.
O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought,
Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night
With obscure finger silences your sight,
Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,
Sleep, and have sleep for light.

VI

Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,
Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet
Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover,
Such as thy vision here solicited,
Under the shadow of her fair vast head,
The deep division of prodigious breasts,
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,
The weight of awful tresses that still keep
The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests
Where the wet hill-winds weep?

VII

Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?
O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,
Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?
What of despair, of rapture, of derision,
What of life is there, what of ill or good?
Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood?
Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,
The faint fields quicken any terrene root,
In low lands where the sun and moon are mute
And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers
At all, or any fruit?

VIII

Alas, but though my flying song flies after,
O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet
Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,
Some dim derision of mysterious laughter
From the blind tongueless warders of the dead,
Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head,
Some little sound of unregarded tears
Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes,
And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs--
These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,
Sees only such things rise.

IX

Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,
Far too far off for thought or any prayer.
What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?
What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?
Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,
Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,
Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.
Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,
The low light fails us in elusive skies,
Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind
Are still the eluded eyes.

X

Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes,
Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,
The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll
I lay my hand on, and not death estranges
My spirit from communion of thy song--
These memories and these melodies that throng
Veiled porches of a Muse funereal--
These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold
As though a hand were in my hand to hold,
Or through mine ears a mourning musical
Of many mourners rolled.

XI

I among these, I also, in such station
As when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods,
And offering to the dead made, and their gods,
The old mourners had, standing to make libation,
I stand, and to the gods and to the dead
Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed
Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,
And what of honey and spice my seedlands bear,
And what I may of fruits in this chilled air,
And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb
A curl of severed hair.

XII

But by no hand nor any treason stricken,
Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,
The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,
Thou liest, and on this dust no tears could quicken
There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear
Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear
Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages.
Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;
But bending us-ward with memorial urns
The most high Muses that fulfil all ages
Weep, and our God's heart yearns.

XIII

For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often
Among us darkling here the lord of light
Makes manifest his music and his might
In hearts that open and in lips that soften
With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.
Thy lips indeed he touched with bitter wine,
And nourished them indeed with bitter bread;
Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came,
The fire that scarred thy spirit at his flame
Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed
Who feeds our hearts with fame.

XIV

Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting,
God of all suns and songs, he too bends down
To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,
And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.
Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,
Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,
Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,
And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs
Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,
And over thine irrevocable head
Sheds light from the under skies.

XV

And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,
And stains with tears her changing bosom chill:
That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,
That thing transformed which was the Cytherean,
With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine
Long since, and face no more called Erycine;
A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.
Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell
Did she, a sad and second prey, compel
Into the footless places once more trod,
And shadows hot from hell.

XVI

And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,
No choral salutation lure to light
A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night
And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.
There is no help for these things; none to mend
And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,
Will make death clear or make life durable.
Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine
And with wild notes about this dust of thine
At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell
And wreathe an unseen shrine.

XVII

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,
If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;
And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.
Out of the mystic and the mournful garden
Where all day through thine hands in barren braid
Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,
Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey,
Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,
Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,
Shall death not bring us all as thee one day
Among the days departed?

XVIII

For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,
Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.
Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,
And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,
With sadder than the Niobean womb,
And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.
Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done;
There lies not any troublous thing before,
Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,
For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,
All waters as the shore.

MEMORIAL VERSES

ON THE DEATH OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER

Death, what hast thou to do with me? So saith Love, with eyes set against the face of Death; What have I done, O thou strong Death, to thee, That mine own lips should wither from thy breath?

Though thou be blind as fire or as the sea, Why should thy waves and storms make war on me? Is it for hate thou hast to find me fair, Or for desire to kiss, if it might be,

My very mouth of song, and kill me there? So with keen rains vexing his crownless hair. With bright feet bruised from no delightful way, Through darkness and the disenchanted air,

Lost Love went weeping half a winter's day. And the armed wind that smote him seemed to say, How shall the dew live when the dawn is fled, Or wherefore should the Mayflower outlast May?

Then Death took Love by the right hand and said, Smiling: Come now and look upon thy dead. But Love cast down the glories of his eyes, And bowed down like a flower his flowerless head.

And Death spake, saying: What ails thee in such wise, Being god, to shut thy sight up from the skies? If thou canst see not, hast thou ears to hear? Or is thy soul too as a leaf that dies?

Even as he spake with fleshless lips of fear, But soft as sleep sings in a tired man's ear, Behold, the winter was not, and its might Fell, and fruits broke forth of the barren year.

And upon earth was largess of great light, And moving music winged for worldwide flight, And shapes and sounds of gods beheld and heard, And day's foot set upon the neck of night.

And with such song the hollow ways were stirred As of a god's heart hidden in a bird, Or as the whole soul of the sun in spring Should find full utterance in one flower-soft word,

And all the season should break forth and sing From one flower's lips, in one rose triumphing; Such breath and light of song as of a flame Made ears and spirits of them that heard it ring.

And Love beholding knew not for the same The shape that led him, nor in face nor name, For he was bright and great of thews and fair, And in Love's eyes he was not Death, but Fame.

Not that grey ghost whose life is empty and bare And his limbs moulded out of mortal air, A cloud of change that shifts into a shower And dies and leaves no light for time to wear:

But a god clothed with his own joy and power, A god re-risen out of his mortal hour Immortal, king and lord of time and space, With eyes that look on them as from a tower.

And where he stood the pale sepulchral place Bloomed, as new life might in a bloodless face, And where men sorrowing came to seek a tomb With funeral flowers and tears for grief and grace,

They saw with light as of a world in bloom The portal of the House of Fame illume The ways of life wherein we toiling tread, And watched the darkness as a brand consume.

And through the gates where rule the deathless dead The sound of a new singer's soul was shed That sang among his kinsfolk, and a beam Shot from the star on a new ruler's head.

A new star lighting the Lethean stream, A new song mixed into the song supreme Made of all souls of singers and their might, That makes of life and time and death a dream.

Thy star, thy song, O soul that in our sight Wast as a sun that made for man's delight Flowers and all fruits in season, being so near The sun-god's face, our god that gives us light.

To him of all gods that we love or fear Thou amongst all men by thy name wast dear, Dear to the god that gives us spirit of song To bind and burn all hearts of men that hear.

The god that makes men's words too sweet and strong For life or time or death to do them wrong, Who sealed with his thy spirit for a sign And filled it with his breath thy whole life long.

Who made thy moist lips fiery with new wine Pressed from the grapes of song, the sovereign vine, And with all love of all things loveliest Gave thy soul power to make them more divine.

That thou might'st breathe upon the breathless rest Of marble, till the brows and lips and breast Felt fall from off them as a cancelled curse That speechless sleep wherewith they lived opprest.

Who gave thee strength and heat of spirit to pierce All clouds of form and colour that disperse, And leave the spirit of beauty to remould In types of clean chryselephantine verse.

Who gave thee words more golden than fine gold To carve in shapes more glorious than of old, And build thy songs up in the sight of time As statues set in godhead manifold:

In sight and scorn of temporal change and clime That meet the sun re-risen with refluent rhyme --As god to god might answer face to face-- From lips whereon the morning strikes sublime.

Dear to the god, our god who gave thee place Among the chosen of days, the royal race, The lords of light, whose eyes of old and ears Saw even on earth and heard him for a space.

There are the souls of those once mortal years That wrought with fire of joy and light of tears In words divine as deeds that grew thereof Such music as he swoons with love who hears.

There are the lives that lighten from above Our under lives, the spheral souls that move Through the ancient heaven of song-illumined air Whence we that hear them singing die with love.

There all the crowned Hellenic heads, and there The old gods who made men godlike as they were, The lyric lips wherefrom all songs take fire, Live eyes, and light of Apollonian hair.

There, round the sovereign passion of that lyre Which the stars hear and tremble with desire, The ninefold light Pierian is made one That here we see divided, and aspire,

Seeing, after this or that crown to be won; But where they hear the singing of the sun, All form, all sound, all colour, and all thought Are as one body and soul in unison.

There the song sung shines as a picture wrought, The painted mouths sing that on earth say nought, The carven limbs have sense of blood and growth And large-eyed life that seeks nor lacks not aught.

There all the music of thy living mouth Lives, and all loves wrought of thine hand in youth And bound about the breasts and brows with gold And coloured pale or dusk from north or south.

Fair living things made to thy will of old, Born of thy lips, no births of mortal mould, That in the world of song about thee wait Where thought and truth are one and manifold.

Within the graven lintels of the gate That here divides our vision and our fate, The dreams we walk in and the truths of sleep, All sense and spirit have life inseparate.

There what one thinks, is his to grasp and keep; There are no dreams, but very joys to reap, No foiled desires that die before delight, No fears to see across our joys and weep.

There hast thou all thy will of thought and sight, All hope for harvest, and all heaven for flight; The sunrise of whose golden-mouthed glad head To paler songless ghosts was heat and light.

Here where the sunset of our year is red Men think of thee as of the summer dead, Gone forth before the snows, before thy day, With unshod feet, with brows unchapleted.

Couldst thou not wait till age had wound, they say, Round those wreathed brows his soft white blossoms? Nay, Why shouldst thou vex thy soul with this harsh air, Thy bright-winged soul, once free to take its way?

Nor for men's reverence hadst thou need to wear The holy flower of grey time-hallowed hair; Nor were it fit that aught of thee grew old, Fair lover all thy days of all things fair.

And hear we not thy words of molten gold Singing? or is their light and heat acold Whereat men warmed their spirits? Nay, for all These yet are with us, ours to hear and hold.

The lovely laughter, the clear tears, the call Of love to love on ways where shadows fall, Through doors of dim division and disguise, And music made of doubts unmusical;

The love that caught strange light from death's own eyes,[1] And filled death's lips with fiery words and sighs, And half asleep let feed from veins of his Her close red warm snake's mouth, Egyptian-wise:

And that great night of love more strange than this,[2] When she that made the whole world's bale and bliss Made king of all the world's desire a slave, And killed him in mid kingdom with a kiss;

Veiled loves that shifted shapes and shafts, and gave,[3] Laughing, strange gifts to hands that durst not crave, Flowers double-blossomed, fruits of scent and hue Sweet as the bride-bed, stranger than the grave;

All joys and wonders of old lives and new That ever in love's shine or shadow grew, And all the grief whereof he dreams and grieves, And all sweet roots fed on his light and dew;

All these through thee our spirit of sense perceives, As threads in the unseen woof thy music weaves, Birds caught and snared that fill our ears with thee, Bay-blossoms in thy wreath of brow-bound leaves.

Mixed with the masque of death's old comedy Though thou too pass, have here our flowers, that we For all the flowers thou gav'st upon thee shed, And pass not crownless to Persephone.

Blue lotus-blooms and white and rosy-red We wind with poppies for thy silent head, And on this margin of the sundering sea Leave thy sweet light to rise upon the dead.

[Footnote 1: _La Morte Amoureuse._]

[Footnote 2: _Une Nuit de Cleopatre._]

[Footnote 3: _Mademoiselle de Maupin._]

SONNET

(WITH A COPY OF _Mademoiselle de Maupin_)

This is the golden book of spirit and sense,
The holy writ of beauty; he that wrought
Made it with dreams and faultless words and thought
That seeks and finds and loses in the dense
Dim air of life that beauty's excellence
Wherewith love makes one hour of life distraught
And all hours after follow and find not aught.
Here is that height of all love's eminence
Where man may breathe but for a breathing-space
And feel his soul burn as an altar-fire
To the unknown God of unachieved desire,
And from the middle mystery of the place
Watch lights that break, hear sounds as of a quire,
But see not twice unveiled the veiled God's face.

AGE AND SONG

(TO BARRY CORNWALL)

I

In vain men tell us time can alter Old loves or make old memories falter, That with the old year the old year's life closes. The old dew still falls on the old sweet flowers, The old sun revives the new-fledged hours, The old summer rears the new-born roses.

II

Much more a Muse that bears upon her Raiment and wreath and flower of honour, Gathered long since and long since woven, Fades not or falls as fall the vernal Blossoms that bear no fruit eternal, By summer or winter charred or cloven.

III

No time casts down, no time upraises, Such loves, such memories, and such praises, As need no grace of sun or shower, No saving screen from frost or thunder To tend and house around and under The imperishable and fearless flower.

IV

Old thanks, old thoughts, old aspirations, Outlive men's lives and lives of nations, Dead, but for one thing which survives-- The inalienable and unpriced treasure, The old joy of power, the old pride of pleasure, That lives in light above men's lives.

IN MEMORY OF BARRY CORNWALL

(October 4, 1874)

I

In the garden of death, where the singers whose names are deathless One with another make music unheard of men, Where the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long breathless, And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or change again, Who comes now crowned with the blossom of snow-white years? What music is this that the world of the dead men hears?

II

Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey, Whose name in our ears and our fathers' ears was sweet, Like summer gone forth of the land his songs made sunny, To the beautiful veiled bright world where the glad ghosts meet, Child, father, bridegroom and bride, and anguish and rest, No soul shall pass of a singer than this more blest.

III

Blest for the years' sweet sake that were filled and brightened, As a forest with birds, with the fruit and the flower of his song; For the souls' sake blest that heard, and their cares were lightened, For the hearts' sake blest that have fostered his name so long; By the living and dead lips blest that have loved his name, And clothed with their praise and crowned with their love for fame.

IV

Ah, fair and fragrant his fame as flowers that close not, That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by night, As a thought in the heart shall increase when the heart's self knows not, Shall endure in our ears as a sound, in our eyes as a light; Shall wax with the years that wane and the seasons' chime, As a white rose thornless that grows in the garden of time.

V

The same year calls, and one goes hence with another, And men sit sad that were glad for their sweet songs' sake; The same year beckons, and elder with younger brother Takes mutely the cup from his hand that we all shall take.[1] They pass ere the leaves be past or the snows be come; And the birds are loud, but the lips that outsang them dumb.

VI

Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous, To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death; But the flower of their souls he shall take not away to shame us, Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath. For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell, Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.

[Footnote 1: Sydney Dobell died August 22, 1874.]

EPICEDE

(James Lorimer Graham died at Florence, April 30, 1876)

Life may give for love to death
Little; what are life's gifts worth
To the dead wrapt round with earth?
Yet from lips of living breath
Sighs or words we are fain to give,
All that yet, while yet we live,
Life may give for love to death.

Dead so long before his day,
Passed out of the Italian sun
To the dark where all is done,
Fallen upon the verge of May;
Here at life's and April's end
How should song salute my friend
Dead so long before his day?

Not a kindlier life or sweeter
Time, that lights and quenches men,
Now may quench or light again,
Mingling with the mystic metre
Woven of all men's lives with his
Not a clearer note than this,
Not a kindlier life or sweeter.

In this heavenliest part of earth
He that living loved the light,
Light and song, may rest aright,
One in death, if strange in birth,
With the deathless dead that make
Life the lovelier for their sake
In this heavenliest part of earth.

Light, and song, and sleep at last--
Struggling hands and suppliant knees
Get no goodlier gift than these.
Song that holds remembrance fast,
Light that lightens death, attend
Round their graves who have to friend
Light, and song, and sleep at last.

TO VICTOR HUGO

He had no children, who for love of men, Being God, endured of Gods such things as thou, Father; nor on his thunder-beaten brow Fell such a woe as bows thine head again, Twice bowed before, though godlike, in man's ken, And seen too high for any stroke to bow Save this of some strange God's that bends it now The third time with such weight as bruised it then. Fain would grief speak, fain utter for love's sake Some word; but comfort who might bid thee take? What God in your own tongue shall talk with thee, Showing how all souls that look upon the sun Shall be for thee one spirit and thy son, And thy soul's child the soul of man to be?

_January 3, 1876._

INFERIAE

Spring, and the light and sound of things on earth Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; A time of passage or a time of birth Fourscore years since as this year, first and last.

The sun is all about the world we see, The breath and strength of very spring; and we Live, love, and feed on our own hearts; but he Whose heart fed mine has passed into the past.

Past, all things born with sense and blood and breath; The flesh hears nought that now the spirit saith. If death be like as birth and birth as death, The first was fair--more fair should be the last.

Fourscore years since, and come but one month more The count were perfect of his mortal score Whose sail went seaward yesterday from shore To cross the last of many an unsailed sea.

Light, love and labour up to life's last height, These three were stars unsetting in his sight; Even as the sun is life and heat and light And sets not nor is dark when dark are we.

The life, the spirit, and the work were one That here--ah, who shall say, that here are done? Not I, that know not; father, not thy son, For all the darkness of the night and sea.

_March 5, 1877_

A BIRTH-SONG

(For Olivia Frances Madox Rossetti, born September 20, 1875)

Out of the dark sweet sleep
Where no dreams laugh or weep
Borne through bright gates of birth
Into the dim sweet light
Where day still dreams of night
While heaven takes form on earth,
White rose of spirit and flesh, red lily of love,
What note of song have we
Fit for the birds and thee,
Fair nestling couched beneath the mother-dove?

Nay, in some more divine
Small speechless song of thine
Some news too good for words,
Heart-hushed and smiling, we
Might hope to have of thee,
The youngest of God's birds,
If thy sweet sense might mix itself with ours,
If ours might understand
The language of thy land,
Ere thine become the tongue of mortal hours:

Ere thy lips learn too soon
Their soft first human tune,
Sweet, but less sweet than now,
And thy raised eyes to read
Glad and good things indeed,
But none so sweet as thou:
Ere thought lift up their flower-soft lids to see
What life and love on earth
Bring thee for gifts at birth,
But none so good as thine who hast given us thee:

Now, ere thy sense forget
The heaven that fills it yet,
Now, sleeping or awake,
If thou couldst tell, or we
Ask and be heard of thee,
For love's undying sake,
From thy dumb lips divine and bright mute speech
Such news might touch our ear
That then would burn to hear
Too high a message now for man's to reach.

Ere the gold hair of corn
Had withered wast thou born,
To make the good time glad;
The time that but last year
Fell colder than a tear
On hearts and hopes turned sad,
High hopes and hearts requickening in thy dawn,
Even theirs whose life-springs, child,
Filled thine with life and smiled,
But then wept blood for half their own withdrawn.[1]

If death and birth be one,
And set with rise of sun,
And truth with dreams divine,
Some word might come with thee
From over the still sea
Deep hid in shade or shine,
Crossed by the crossing sails of death and birth,
Word of some sweet new thing
Fit for such lips to bring,
Some word of love, some afterthought of earth.

If love be strong as death,
By what so natural breath
As thine could this be said?
By what so lovely way
Could love send word to say
He lives and is not dead?
Such word alone were fit for only thee,
If his and thine have met
Where spirits rise and set,
His whom we see not, thine whom scarce we see:

His there new-born, as thou
New-born among us now;
His, here so fruitful-souled,
Now veiled and silent here,
Now dumb as thou last year,
A ghost of one year old:
If lights that change their sphere in changing meet,
Some ray might his not give
To thine who wast to live,
And make thy present with his past life sweet?

Let dreams that laugh or weep,
All glad and sad dreams, sleep;
Truth more than dreams is dear.
Let thoughts that change and fly,
Sweet thoughts and swift, go by;
More than all thought is here.
More than all hope can forge or memory feign
The life that in our eyes,
Made out of love's life, lies,
And flower-like fed with love for sun and rain.

Twice royal in its root
The sweet small olive-shoot
Here set in sacred earth;
Twice dowered with glorious grace
From either heaven-born race
First blended in its birth;
Fair God or Genius of so fair an hour,
For love of either name
Twice crowned, with love and fame,
Guard and be gracious to the fair-named flower.

_October 19, 1875._

[Footnote 1: Oliver Madox Brown died November 5, 1874, in his twentieth year.]

EX-VOTO

When their last hour shall rise Pale on these mortal eyes, Herself like one that dies, And kiss me dying The cold last kiss, and fold Close round my limbs her cold Soft shade as raiment rolled And leave them lying,

If aught my soul would say Might move to hear me pray The birth-god of my day That he might hearken, This grace my heart should crave, To find no landward grave That worldly springs make brave, World's winters darken,

Nor grow through gradual hours The cold blind seed of flowers Made by new beams and showers From limbs that moulder, Nor take my part with earth, But find for death's new birth A bed of larger girth, More chaste and colder.

Not earth's for spring and fall, Not earth's at heart, not all Earth's making, though men call Earth only mother, Not hers at heart she bare Me, but thy child, O fair Sea, and thy brother's care, The wind thy brother.

Yours was I born, and ye, The sea-wind and the sea, Made all my soul in me A song for ever, A harp to string and smite For love's sake of the bright Wind and the sea's delight, To fail them never:

Not while on this side death I hear what either saith And drink of either's breath With heart's thanksgiving That in my veins like wine Some sharp salt blood of thine, Some springtide pulse of brine, Yet leaps up living.

When thy salt lips wellnigh Sucked in my mouth's last sigh, Grudged I so much to die This death as others? Was it no ease to think The chalice from whose brink Fate gave me death to drink Was thine--my mother's?

Thee too, the all-fostering earth, Fair as thy fairest birth, More than thy worthiest worth, We call, we know thee, More sweet and just and dread Than live men highest of head Or even thy holiest dead Laid low below thee.

The sunbeam on the sheaf, The dewfall on the leaf, All joy, all grace, all grief, Are thine for giving; Of thee our loves are born, Our lives and loves, that mourn And triumph; tares with corn, Dead seed with living:

All good and ill things done In eyeshot of the sun At last in thee made one Rest well contented; All words of all man's breath And works he doth or saith, All wholly done to death, None long lamented.

A slave to sons of thee, Thou, seeming, yet art free; But who shall make the sea Serve even in seeming? What plough shall bid it bear Seed to the sun and the air, Fruit for thy strong sons' fare, Fresh wine's foam streaming?

What oldworld son of thine, Made drunk with death as wine, Hath drunk the bright sea's brine With lips of laughter? Thy blood they drink; but he Who hath drunken of the sea Once deeplier than of thee Shall drink not after.

Of thee thy sons of men Drink deep, and thirst again; For wine in feasts, and then In fields for slaughter; But thirst shall touch not him Who hath felt with sense grown dim Rise, covering lip and limb, The wan sea's water.

All fire of thirst that aches The salt sea cools and slakes More than all springs or lakes, Freshets or shallows; Wells where no beam can burn Through frondage of the fern That hides from hart and hern The haunt it hallows.

Peace with all graves on earth For death or sleep or birth Be alway, one in worth One with another; But when my time shall be, O mother, O my sea, Alive or dead, take me, Me too, my mother.

A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes,
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart;
Lie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes,
And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart?
Only the song of a secret bird.

The green land's name that a charm encloses,
It never was writ in the traveller's chart,
And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,
It never was sold in the merchant's mart.
The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,
And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;
No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart,
Only the song of a secret bird.

ENVOI

In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.

CYRIL TOURNEUR

A sea that heaves with horror of the night, As maddened by the moon that hangs aghast With strain and torment of the ravening blast, Haggard as hell, a bleak blind bloody light; No shore but one red reef of rock in sight, Whereon the waifs of many a wreck were cast And shattered in the fierce nights overpast Wherein more souls toward hell than heaven took flight; And 'twixt the shark-toothed rocks and swallowing shoals A cry as out of hell from all these souls Sent through the sheer gorge of the slaughtering sea, Whose thousand throats, full-fed with life by death, Fill the black air with foam and furious breath; And over all these one star--Chastity.

A BALLAD OF FRANCOIS VILLON

PRINCE OF ALL BALLAD-MAKERS

Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn
Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years,
First of us all and sweetest singer born
Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears
Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears;
When song new-born put off the old world's attire
And felt its tune on her changed lips expire,
Writ foremost on the roll of them that came
Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!

Alas the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn,
That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears,
And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn
And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers
Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears;
Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire,
When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire
Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame
Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!

Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn!
Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears!
Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn,
That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers
Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears!
What far delight has cooled the fierce desire
That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire
On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame,
But left more sweet than roses to respire,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name?

ENVOI

Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire; Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame. But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, Love reads out first at head of all our quire, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.

PASTICHE

Now the days are all gone over Of our singing, love by lover, Days of summer-coloured seas Blown adrift through beam and breeze.

Now the nights are all past over Of our dreaming, dreams that hover In a mist of fair false things, Nights afloat on wide wan wings.

Now the loves with faith for mother, Now the fears with hope for brother, Scarce are with us as strange words, Notes from songs of last year's birds.

Now all good that comes or goes is As the smell of last year's roses, As the radiance in our eyes Shot from summer's ere he dies.

Now the morning faintlier risen Seems no God come forth of prison, But a bird of plume-plucked wing, Pale with thoughts of evening.

Now hath hope, outraced in running, Given the torch up of his cunning And the palm he thought to wear Even to his own strong child--despair.

BEFORE SUNSET

In the lower lands of day
On the hither side of night,
There is nothing that will stay,
There are all things soft to sight;
Lighted shade and shadowy light
In the wayside and the way,
Hours the sun has spared to smite,
Flowers the rain has left to play.

Shall these hours run down and say
No good thing of thee and me?
Time that made us and will slay
Laughs at love in me and thee;
But if here the flowers may see
One whole hour of amorous breath,
Time shall die, and love shall be
Lord as time was over death.

SONG

Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rosy bed; And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.

And fear and sorrow and scorn Kept watch by his head forlorn, Till the night was overworn And the world was merry with morn.

And Joy came up with the day And kissed Love's lips as he lay, And the watchers ghostly and grey Sped from his pillow away.

And his eyes as the dawn grew bright, And his lips waxed ruddy as light: Sorrow may reign for a night, But day shall bring back delight.

A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER

I

O tender time that love thinks long to see,
Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows
Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows,
Be not too long irresolute to be;
O mother-month, where have they hidden thee?
Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose
I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands,
I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours,
The purplest of the prime;
I lean my soul down over them, with hands
Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers;
I send my love back to the lovely time.

II

Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head?
Veiled with what visions while the grey world grieves,
Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves,
What warm intangible green shadows spread
To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed?
What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives?
Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn
Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet
Its silver web unweave,
Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn
Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret
Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve.

III

Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star,
Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune,
Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon;
But where the silver-sandalled shadows are,
Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar,
Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon:
Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims,
The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath,
The light is listening;
They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs,
Virginal, born again of doubtful death,
Chill foster-father of the weanling spring.

IV

As sweet desire of day before the day,
As dreams of love before the true love born,
From the outer edge of winter overworn
The ghost arisen of May before the May
Takes through dim air her unawakened way,
The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn.
With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks
Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring,
Lifts windward her bright brows,
Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks,
And kindles with her own mouth's colouring
The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.

V

I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see,
Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath
Shall put at last the deadly days to death
And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee
And seaward hollows where my feet would be
When heaven shall hear the word that April saith
To change the cold heart of the weary time,
To stir and soften all the time to tears,
Tears joyfuller than mirth;
As even to May's clear height the young days climb
With feet not swifter than those fair first years
Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.

VI

I would not bid thee, though I might, give back
One good thing youth has given and borne away;
I crave not any comfort of the day
That is not, nor on time's retrodden track
Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black
That long since left me on their mortal way;
Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath
That comes with morning from the sun to be
And sets light hope on fire;
No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death,
No flower nor hour once fallen from life's green tree,
No leaf once plucked or once fulfilled desire.

VII

The morning song beneath the stars that fled
With twilight through the moonless mountain air,
While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair
Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head,
Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead,
The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were;
These may'st thou not give back for ever; these,
As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste,
Lie deeper than the sea;
But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease,
And all its April to the world thou may'st
Give back, and half my April back to me.

CHORIAMBICS

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made
lovely, we thought, with love?
What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down
from the light above?

What strange faces of dreams, voices that called,
hands that were raised to wave,
Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the
sunless grave?

Ah, thy luminous eyes! once was their light fed with
the fire of day;
Now their shadowy lids cover them close, hush them
and hide away.

Ah, thy snow-coloured hands! once were they chains,
mighty to bind me fast;
Now no blood in them burns, mindless of love, senseless
of passion past.

Ah, thy beautiful hair! so was it once braided for
me, for me;
Now for death is it crowned, only for death, lover
and lord of thee.

Sweet, the kisses of death set on thy lips, colder are
they than mine;
Colder surely than past kisses that love poured for
thy lips as wine.

Lov'st thou death? is his face fairer than love's,
brighter to look upon?
Seest thou light in his eyes, light by which love's
pales and is overshone?

Lo the roses of death, grey as the dust, chiller of leaf
than snow!
Why let fall from thy hand love's that were thine,
roses that loved thee so?

Large red lilies of love, sceptral and tall, lovely for
eyes to see;
Thornless blossom of love, full of the sun, fruits that
were reared for thee.

Now death's poppies alone circle thy hair, girdle thy
breasts as white;
Bloodless blossoms of death, leaves that have sprung
never against the light.

Nay then, sleep if thou wilt; love is content; what
should he do to weep?
Sweet was love to thee once; now in thine eyes
sweeter than love is sleep.

AT PARTING

For a day and a night Love sang to us, played with us,
Folded us round from the dark and the light;
And our hearts were fulfilled of the music he made with us,
Made with our hearts and our lips while he stayed with us,
Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight
For a day and a night.

From his foes that kept watch with his wings had he hidden us,
Covered us close from the eyes that would smite,
From the feet that had tracked and the tongues that had chidden us
Sheltering in shade of the myrtles forbidden us
Spirit and flesh growing one with delight
For a day and a night.

But his wings will not rest and his feet will not stay for us:
Morning is here in the joy of its might;
With his breath has he sweetened a night and a day for us;
Now let him pass, and the myrtles make way for us;
Love can but last in us here at his height
For a day and a night.

A SONG IN SEASON

I

Thou whose beauty
Knows no duty
Due to love that moves thee never;
Thou whose mercies
Are men's curses,
And thy smile a scourge for ever;

II

Thou that givest
Death and livest
On the death of thy sweet giving;
Thou that sparest
Not nor carest
Though thy scorn leave no love living;

III

Thou whose rootless
Flower is fruitless
As the pride its heart encloses,
But thine eyes are
As May skies are,
And thy words like spoken roses;

IV

Thou whose grace is
In men's faces
Fierce and wayward as thy will is;
Thou whose peerless
Eyes are tearless,
And thy thoughts as cold sweet lilies;

V

Thou that takest
Hearts and makest
Wrecks of loves to strew behind thee,
Whom the swallow
Sure should follow,
Finding summer where we find thee;

VI

Thou that wakest
Hearts and breakest,
And thy broken hearts forgive thee,
That wilt make no
Pause and take no
Gift that love for love might give thee;

VII

Thou that bindest
Eyes and blindest,
Serving worst who served thee longest;
Thou that speakest,
And the weakest
Heart is his that was the strongest;

VIII

Take in season
Thought with reason;
Think what gifts are ours for giving;
Hear what beauty
Owes of duty
To the love that keeps it living.

IX

Dust that covers
Long dead lovers
Song blows off with breath that brightens;
At its flashes
Their white ashes
Burst in bloom that lives and lightens.

X

Had they bent not
Head or lent not
Ear to love and amorous duties,
Song had never
Saved for ever,
Love, the least of all their beauties.

XI

All the golden
Names of olden
Women yet by men's love cherished,
All our dearest
Thoughts hold nearest,
Had they loved not, all had perished.

XII

If no fruit is
Of thy beauties,
Tell me yet, since none may win them,
What and wherefore
Love should care for
Of all good things hidden in them?

XIII

Pain for profit
Comes but of it,
If the lips that lure their lover's
Hold no treasure
Past the measure
Of the lightest hour that hovers.

XIV

If they give not
Or forgive not
Gifts or thefts for grace or guerdon,
Love that misses
Fruit of kisses
Long will bear no thankless burden.

XV

If they care not
Though love were not,
If no breath of his burn through them,
Joy must borrow
Song from sorrow,
Fear teach hope the way to woo them.

XVI

Grief has measures
Soft as pleasure's,
Fear has moods that hope lies deep in,
Songs to sing him,
Dreams to bring him,
And a red-rose bed to sleep in.

XVII

Hope with fearless
Looks and tearless
Lies and laughs too near the thunder;
Fear hath sweeter
Speech and meeter
For heart's love to hide him under.

XVIII

Joy by daytime
Fills his playtime
Full of songs loud mirth takes pride in;
Night and morrow
Weave round sorrow
Thoughts as soft as sleep to hide in.

XIX

Graceless faces,
Loveless graces,
Are but motes in light that quicken,
Sands that run down
Ere the sundown,
Roseleaves dead ere autumn sicken.

XX

Fair and fruitless
Charms are bootless
Spells to ward off age's peril;
Lips that give not
Love shall live not,
Eyes that meet not eyes are sterile.

XXI

But the beauty
Bound in duty
Fast to love that falls off never
Love shall cherish
Lest it perish,
And its root bears fruit for ever.

TWO LEADERS

[Greek: Bate domon, megaloi philotimoi Nuktos paides apaides, hup euphroni pompa.]

I

O great and wise, clear-souled and high of heart,
One the last flower of Catholic love, that grows
Amid bare thorns their only thornless rose,
From the fierce juggling of the priests' loud mart
Yet alien, yet unspotted and apart
From the blind hard foul rout whose shameless shows
Mock the sweet heaven whose secret no man knows
With prayers and curses and the soothsayer's art;
One like a storm-god of the northern foam
Strong, wrought of rock that breasts and breaks the sea
And thunders back its thunder, rhyme for rhyme
Answering, as though to outroar the tides of time
And bid the world's wave back--what song should be
Theirs that with praise would bring and sing you home?

II