Chapter III: Storm 122 (2)

The low plains stretch to the west with a glimmer of rustling weeds,
Where the waves of a golden river wind home by the marshy meads;
And the fresh wind born of the sea grows faint with a sickly breath,
As it stays in the fretting rushes and blows on the dews of death.
We came to the silent city, in the glare of the noontide heat,
When the sound of a whisper rang through the length of the lonely street;
No tree in the clefted ruin, no echo of song nor sound,
But the dust of a world forgotten lay under the barren ground.
There are shrines under these green hillocks to the beautiful
gods that sleep,
Where they prayed in the stormy season for lives gone out on the deep;
And here in the grave street sculptured, old record of loves and tears,
By the dust of the nameless slave, forgotten a thousand years.
Not ever again at even shall ship sail in on the breeze,
Where the hulls of their gilded galleys came home from a hundred seas,
For the marsh plants grow in her haven, the marsh birds breed in her bay,
And a mile to the shoreless westward the water has passed away.
But the sea-folk gathering rushes come up from the windy shore,
So the song that the years have silenced grows musical there once more;
And now and again unburied, like some still voice from the dead,
They light on the fallen shoulder and the lines of a marble head.
But we went from the sorrowful city and wandered away at will,
And thought of the breathing marble and the words that are music still.
How full were their lives that laboured, in their fetterless
strength and far
From the ways that our feet have chosen as the sunlight is from the star,
They clung to the chance and promise that once while the years are free
Look over our life’s horizon as the sun looks over the sea,
But we wait for a day that dawns not, and cry for unclouded skies,
And while we are deep in dreaming the light that was o’er us dies;
We know not what of the present we shall stretch out our hand to save
Who sing of the life we long for, and not of the life we have;
And yet if the chance were with us to gather the days misspent,
Should we change the old resting-places, the wandering ways we went?
They were strong, but the years are stronger; they are grown
but a name that thrills,
And the wreck of their marble glory lies ghost-like over their hills.
So a shadow fell o’er our dreaming for the weary heart of the past,
For the seed that the years have scattered, to reap so little at last.
And we went to the sea-shore forest, through a long colonnade of pines,
Where the skies peep in and the sea, with a flitting of silver lines.
And we came on an open place in the green deep heart of the wood
Where I think in the years forgotten an altar of Faunus stood;
From a spring in the long dark grasses two rivulets rise and run
By the length of their sandy borders where the snake lies
coiled in the sun.
And the stars of the white narcissus lie over the grass like snow,
And beyond in the shadowy places the crimson cyclamens grow;
Far up from their wave home yonder the sea-winds murmuring pass,
The branches quiver and creak and the lizard starts in the grass.
And we lay in the untrod moss and pillowed our cheeks with flowers,
While the sun went over our heads, and we took no count of the hours;
From the end of the waving branches and under the cloudless blue,
Like sunbeams chained for a banner, the thread-like gossamers flew.
And the joy of the woods came o’er us, and we felt that our
world was young
With the gladness of years unspent and the sorrow of life unsung.
So we passed with a sound of singing along to the seaward way,
Where the sails of the fishermen folk came homeward over the bay;
For a cloud grew over the forest and darkened the sea-god’s shrine,
And the hills of the silent city were only a ruby line.
But the sun stood still on the waves as we passed from the fading shores,
And shone on our boat’s red bulwarks and the golden blades of the oars,
And it seemed as we steered for the sunset that we passed
through a twilight sea,
From the gloom of a world forgotten to the light of a world to be.

GARIBALDI IN ROME.

JUNE 29-30, 1849.

St. Peter’s eve, from dim Janiculum
The battle’s thunder drowned the bells that tolled,
The great guns flashed, but that night as of old
We kept St. Peter’s vigil, and the dome
Blazed with its myriad little lamps of gold,
And all the river ran with yellow foam,
While on the torchlit Capitol unrolled
The banner blew of our Republic, Rome,

Then silence fell with treacherous midnight,--
An hour ere dawn we heard a wild alarm,
The blast of bugles, the swift call to arm,
We sang his war hymn and fell in to fight;
Then as dawn gathered on the Esquiline
Our grand old lion gave the battle sign.

ἙΡΑΝ ΤΩΝ ἉΔΥΝΑΤΩΝ.

So now I know we shall not any more,
As we have done in these last golden days,
Go hand in hand along life’s pleasant ways,
Walk heart with heart together as before.

It seems we cannot choose but wear the chain
Fate winds about our little lives. Ah sweet,
What wall is set between us that your feet
Must wander alway where I gaze in vain!

Could we have climbed together! How these bars
Had melted in the fire of love; the road
Had known our footsteps where the wise men trod,
And our sure ways had ended with the stars!

We had atoned for passion!--passed above
All fleeting shadows of the world’s desire,
Made pure our spirits at a holier fire,
And in the lap of morning laid our love.

One law I knew, one right, one starward way,
One hope to make our lives divine, one love
In this one life, one star of truth above,
And one great desert where the rest go stray.

Life had no more to give, if that we two
Had let the world go gladly, grasp and reach
Strained ever upward, leaning each on each,
Had seen one star-ray of the pure and true.

Had we but climbed together! Oh my light,
My star, my moon, and art thou clouded o’er?
And we that were together, evermore
Must stand apart and stare across the night!

One life it seems must take its tale of days,
And as it may make service of its own,
But ah! the infinite help of love!--alone
The heart grows faint and weary of dispraise.

I shall be braver on the way I go,
Hearing that voice forever, for whose sake,
What burthen had I not bowed down to take,
What shame or peril, had it helped you so!

This must content me, to have loved, who lose
In this hard world where little loves live on,
No man will love you as I might have done,
Sweet heart, too holy for the world to choose!

Therefore be strong, remembering love’s past,
Climb on for ever in the steep old way
That haply so a moment’s space we may
Meet on the verge of changes at the last.

That at the end of all these journeyings,
Crossing the borderland of time and space
We two may stand together face to face,
Whose hearts were set upon abiding things,
And through the cloud-veil of Eternity
Our eyes may meet at last in the full light, and see.

TRANSLATIONS.

_From the Italian of Stecchetti._

I.

When the sere leaves fall and you come one
To find me under the graveyard stone,
It will be in a corner hidden away,
With beds of flowers about it grown.

Then gather and wreathe in your golden hair
The flowers that grow from my heart laid there.

They will be love’s message I might not bring,
And the rest of the songs that I meant to sing.

II.

Floweret born in the hedge-row shade
Set out of sight alone,
Love like thee must hide his head
Love like thee must live unknown.

No smile of the sun, and thou wilt die,
Thorns round thee and above,
No smile of hope, and love will die,
And none take heed.--Poor love! Poor love!

* * * * *

_From the German of Heine._

I.

How the mirrored moonbeams quiver
On the waters’ fall and rise,
Yet the moon serene as ever
Wanders through the quiet skies.

Like the mirrored moonlight’s fretting
Are the dreams I have of you,
For my heart will beat, forgetting
You are ever calm and true.

II.

So fair and pure and holy,
So flowerlike thou art,
And while I gaze the shadow
Grows deeper on my heart;
I want my hands to rest on
That head of thine in prayer,
That God will keep thee alway
So holy pure and fair.

III.

The leaves are falling, falling,
The yellow treetops wave,
Ah, all delight and beauty
Is drawing to the grave.

About the wood’s crest flicker
The wan sun’s laggard rays,
They are the parting kisses
Of fleeting summer days.

Meseems I should be shedding
The heart’s-tears from my eyes,
The day will keep recalling
The time of our good-byes.

I knew that you were dying
And I must pass away,
Oh I was the waning summer,
And you were the wood’s decay.

IV.

From my tears that have fallen a flower
Is springing along the vale,
And the sighs I have sighed endower
The song of a nightingale.

And, child, if you’ll be my lover,
The flowers shall all be yours,
And the bird with its song shall hover
For ever before your doors.

AVE ATQUE VALE.

I.

And he is gone!--like strain of viols parted--
Back to the infinite from whence he came,
And we sit here, bereft and weary hearted,
New songs may wake, but not again the same.

Our hearts were lutes, whereon he used to play,
Now evermore is silence on that key,
And thought grows chilly like a sunless day
That greys the ripple on the haggard sea.

Those lips were cold that lingering we kissed,
There came no pressure from the old true hand,
A little while and through the twilight mist
We scarce shall trace his footprints in the sand.

II.

This was the end love made,--the hard-drawn breath,
The last long sigh that ever man sighs here;
And then for us, the great unanswered fear,
Will love live on,--the other side of death?

Only a year, and I had hoped to spend
A life of pleasant communing, to be
A kindred spirit holding fast to thee,
We never thought that love had such an end.

This was the end love made, for our delight,
For one sweet year he cannot take away;--
Those tapers burning in the dim half-light,
Those kneeling women with a cross that pray,
And there, beneath green leaves and lilies white,
Beyond the reach of love, our loved one lay.

III.

He had the poet’s eyes,
--Sing to him sleeping,--
Sweet grace of low replies,
--Why are we weeping?

He had the gentle ways,
--Fair dreams befall him!--
Beauty through all his days,
--Then why recall him?--

That which in him was fair
Still shall be ours:
Yet, yet my heart lies there
Under the flowers.

“IF ANY ONE RETURN.”

I would we had carried him far away
To the light of this south sun land,
Where the hills lean down to some red-rocked bay
And the sea’s blue breaks into snow-white spray
As the wave dies out on the sand.

Not there, not there, where the winds deface!
Where the storm and the cloud race by!
But far away in this flowerful place
Where endless summers retouch, retrace,
What flowers find heart to die.

And if ever the souls of the loved, set free,
Come back to the souls that stay,
I could dream he would sit for a while with me,
Where I sit by this wonderful tideless sea,
And look to the red-rocked bay,

By the high cliff’s edge where the wild weeds twine,
And he would not speak or move,
But his eyes would gaze from his soul at mine,--
My eyes that would answer without one sign,
And that were enough for love.

And I think I should feel as the sun went round
That he was not there any more,
But dews were wet on the grass-grown mound
On the bed of my love lying underground,
And evening pale on the shore.

HIC JACET.

Did you play here, child,
The whole spring through,
And smiled and smiled
And never knew?--
Where the shade is cool
And the grass grows deep,
One that was beautiful
Lies in his sleep.

Ah no, child, never
Will he arise;
The sleep was for ever
That closed his eyes.
And his bed is strewn
Deep underground,
He was tired so soon,
And now sleeps sound.

When the first birds sing
We can hear them, dear,
And in early spring
There are snowdrops here;
For the flowers love him
That lies below,
And ever above him
The daisies grow.

“Shall we look down deep
Where he hides away?
Shall we find him asleep?”
Yes, child, some day.
But his palace gate
Is so hard to see,
We two must wait
For the angel’s key.

“WHEN I AM DEAD.”

When I am dead, my spirit
Shall wander far and free
Through realms the dead inherit
Of earth, and sky, and sea;
Through morning dawn and gloaming,
By midnight moons at will,
By shores where the waves are foaming,
By seas where the waves are still.
I, following late behind you,
In wingless sleepless flight,
Will wander till I find you,
In sunshine or twilight;
With silent kiss for greeting
On lips, and eyes, and head,
In that strange after-meeting
Shall love be perfected.
We shall lie in summer breezes,
And pass where whirlwinds go,
And the Northern blast that freezes
Shall bear us with the snow.
We shall stand above the thunder,
And watch the lightnings hurled
At the misty mountains under,
Of the dim forsaken world,
We shall find our footsteps’ traces,
And passing hand in hand
By old familiar places,
We shall laugh, and understand.

ST. CATHARINE OF EGYPT.

There was a king’s one daughter long ago,
In ways of summer, where the swallows go,
For whom no prince was found in any land
Fair lived and clean to wed so white a hand;
Who lying wakeful on a moonless night
Saw the dim ways grow tremulous with light,
As the sun’s dawning glory, and was aware
Of a pale woman standing shrouded there,
With hands locked in another’s hands, whose eyes
Shone like the starriest wonder of the skies.

And the pale woman bending o’er her bed
Unveiled the pity in her eyes, and said,
“Lo this is he whose blameless days were sweet,
If thou could’st love him, and thy love was meet.”
And yet he turned those lustrous brows away,
And a sad voice seemed evermore to say
Across the stillness of a world that slept,
“Not mine, not mine,”--so all night through she wept
And never heard the singing nightingales.

Then awhile after when the cloudy sails
Of many a day had winged across the sky,
And she had gathered all the mystery
From a lone hermit in a desert wood,
He came once more in the night-time and stood
And set a bridal ring upon her hand
To be his lady in his father’s land.
So in a little while her rumour grew
Till the rough Roman angered--her they slew
Being too sweet and wise for that rude time
That murdered pity and made love a crime.

And the wise men were glad when she was dead,
For they had failed of reason--she had said,
“When I come up into my kingdom there
And my Lord greets me, and I speak him fair,
Then will I take him by the hand with me
And lead him down, how far so e’er it be,
Until we find the old man, Socrates,
And the fair souls who followed, for all these
Will be together, and I will bid him take
Their hands in his and love them for my sake,
Because of old they brought me near his side.”

It was the time of even when she died;
And a fair choir of angels swept along
The dying afterglow, before their song
The gates were loosed and through the broken bars
They bore her skyward under the chill stars,
Westward--but once alighting as they flew.
In a deep meadow-land, with soft night-dew,
They washed the tender wounded throat, and kissed
The cords that bound her delicate soft wrist,
And at their kiss the fetters fell in twain
And the white robe grew faultless of one stain.
Then onward, ever onward, all night through,
Till lustreless the moon of morning grew
In the pale sky where one star lingered yet.

Some dark-browed fisher, as he cast his net
And woke a ripple on the waveless calm,
Looked up and heard the passing angels’ psalm,
And through the ripple of the water-rings
He saw the gleam of rainbow-tinted wings
Drift o’er the glassing bosom of the sea.

There where the grave of innocence should be,
High up between the rock ridge and the sky,
Upon the holy summit Sinai,
Above the red sea’s summer-tranced wave
They laid their burden in a marble grave.
And there her beauty fleeteth not, decay
Can never steal her loveliness away,
But like a carven image evermore
Sleeps on now with her still hands folded o’er
The saint’s white lily ever blossoming,--
All that was earthly of so fair a thing.

ATALANTA.

Wait not along the shore, they will not come;
The suns go down beyond the windy seas,
Those weary sails shall never wing them home
O’er this white foam;
No voice from these
On any landward wind that dies among the trees.

Gone south, it may be, rudderless, astray,
Gone where the winds and ocean currents bore,
Out of all tracks along the sea’s highway
This many a day,
To some far shore
Where never wild seas break, or any fierce winds roar.

For there are lands ye never recked of yet
Between the blue of stormless sea and sky,
Beyond where any suns of yours have set,
Or these waves fret;
And loud winds die
In cloudless summertide, where those far islands lie.

They will not come! for on the coral shore
The good ship lies, by little waves caressed,
All stormy ways and wanderings are o’er,
No more, no more!
But long sweet rest,
In cool green meadow-lands, that lie along the West.

Or if beneath far fathom depths of waves
She lies heeled over by the slow tide’s sweep,
Deep down where never any swift sea raves,
Through ocean caves,
A dreaming deep
Of softly gliding forms, a glimmering world of sleep.

Then have they passed beyond the outer gate
Through death to knowledge of all things, and so
From out the silence of their unkown fate
They bid us wait,
Who only know
That twixt their loves and ours the great seas ebb and flow.

THEORETIKOS.

A THOUGHT OF DARWIN.

He dwelt unblinded with eternal truth,
Through long communion perfected, not once
Did he misdeem the prelude for the song,
And looking onward, to his ample view
That long to-come when he should be no more
Outweighed the moment of his passing here.
And he was happy, and his peace was full,
Having outlived the struggle--not as those
Who take the world on faith, and rest content
With the old verdicts, question, wonder not,
But feeling trusting loving are at peace.
He sought and found one little germ of truth,
Made pure his spirit of all chance and change,
Held fast on things abiding, learned to stand
On ever loftier summits-till at last
TI is brow grew starry and his searching eyes
Blue with the mirrored distance, and he heard
The everlasting music, Time and space
Were part with every heart-beat, and almost
God seemed to whisper in his listening ear.
What need for him of all your wonder world?
He made the wonder visible--enough
This little handful of the common clay
A seed to sow therein, and then to watch
The hidden forces quicken into life,
Till leaf by leaf some flower-star unfolds,
One flower of all the flowers, because the sun
Is in the skies, one sun of all the suns.
Search but the structure of one daisy’s heart
Your lore has no such miracle as this!--
And look at all the infinite device,
The texture of the leaves of all the trees--
Is there not marvel here enough? And yet
Ye crave new signs and wonders to convince
And wander lost upon your devious ways.
Ye will but gaze upon a part, and grow
In little wisdom overwise, therefore
Your partial grasp is barren to conceive
The thought Infinity, Time wilders yet
Because ye measure with your finite gauge,
And Motion maddens through your own unrest.
He let the world go gladly, hand in hand
He walked with Reason, till thought strained away
And God grew nearer,--so he built his mind
A bridge to span from sun to sun of all
The starry systems;--like a faint far dream
The changing pageant of men’s lives unrolled,
And he stood by serenely,--but with him
The calm was struggle in a lordlier way,
Absorbed and dwelling with eternal truth,
Whose star o’ershone him; till it seemed that life
And death were one, and from the throbbing brow
The craving died away,--and now he rests
With that fair choir from many times whose souls
Have earned the right of knowledge after death.

ROME.

I.--FROM THE HILL OF GARDENS.

The outline of a shadowy city spread
Between the garden and the distant hill--
And o’er yon dome the flame-ring lingers still,
Set like the glory on an angel’s head:
The light fades quivering into evening blue
Behind the pine-tops on Ianiculum;
The swallow whispered to the swallow “come!”
And took the sunset on her wings, and flew.

One rift of cloud the wind caught up suspending
A ruby path between the earth and sky;
Those shreds of gold are angel wings ascending
From where the sorrows of our singers lie;
They have not found those wandering spirits yet,
But seek for ever in the red sunset.

Pass upward angel wings! Seek not for these,
They sit not in the cypress-planted graves;
Their spirits wander over moonlit waves,
And sing in all the singing of the seas;
And by green places in the spring-tide showers,
And in the re-awakening of flowers.

Some pearl-lipped shell still dewy with sea foam
Bear back to whisper where their feet have trod;
They are the earth’s for evermore; fly home!
And lay a daisy at the feet of God.

II.--IN THE COLISEUM.

Night wanes; I sit in the ruin alone;
Beneath, the shadow of arches falls
From the dim outline of the broken walls;
And the half-light steals o’er the age-worn stone
From a midway arch where the moon looks through
A silver shield in the deep, deep blue.

This is the hour of ghosts that rise;--
Line on line of the noiseless dead--
The clouds above are their awning spread;
Look into the shadow with moon-dazed eyes,
You will see the writhing of limbs in pain,
And the whole red tragedy over again.

The ghostly galleys ride out and meet,
The Cæsar sits in his golden chair,
His fingers toy with his women’s hair,
The water is blood-red under his feet,--
Till the owl’s long cry dies down with the night,
And one star waits for the dawning light.

III.--IN A CHURCH.

This was the first shrine lit for Queen Marie;
And I will sit a little at her feet,
For winds without howl down the narrow street
And storm-clouds gather from the westward sea.

Sweet here to watch the peasant people pray,
While through the crimson shrouded-window falls
Low light of even, and the golden walls
Grow dim and dreamful at the end of day.

Till from these columns fades their marble sheen,
And lines grow soft and mystical,--these wraiths
That watch the service of the changing faiths,
To Mary mother from the Cyprian queen.

But aye for me this old-word colonnade
Seems open to blue summer skies once more,
These altars pass, and on the polished floor
I see the lines of chequered light and shade;

I seem to see the dark-browed Lybian lean
To cool the tortured burning of the lash,
I see the fountains as they leap and flash,
The rustling sway of cypress set between.

And now yon friar with the bare feet there,
Is grown the haunting spirit of the place;
Ah! brown-robed friar with the shaven face,
The saints are weary of thy mumbled prayer.

From matins’ bell to the slow day’s decline
He sits and thumbs his endless round of beads,
Draws out the dreary cadence of his creeds,
And nods assent to each familiar line.

But she the goddess whose white star is set,
Whose fane was pillaged for this sombre shrine,
Could she look down upon those lips of thine,
And hear thee mutter, would she still regret?

There came a sound of singing on my ear,
And slowly glided through the far-off door
A glimmer of grey forms like ghosts, they bore
A dead man lying on his purple bier.

Some poor man’s soul, so little candle smoke
Went curling upwards by the uncased shroud,
And then a sudden thunder-clap broke loud,
And drowned the droning of the priest who spoke.

So all the shuffling feet passed out again
To lightnings flashing through the wet and wind,
And while I lingered in the gate behind
The dead man travelled through the storm and rain.

SEA PICTURES--FRANCE.