Chapter XXXI: Book I: The First Violets

Who that has loved knows not the tender tale
Which flowers reveal, when lips are coy to tell?
Whose youth has paused not, dreaming, in the vale
Where the rath violets dwell?

Lo, where they shrink along the lonely brake,
Under the leafless melancholy tree;
Not yet the cuckoo sings, nor glides the snake,
Nor wild thyme lures the bee;

Yet at their sight and scent entranced and thrall'd,
All June seems golden in the April skies;
How sweet the days we yearn for,--_till fulfill'd_:
O distant Paradise,

Dear Land to which Desire for ever flees;
Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
Say in the fix'd Eternal shall we seize
At last the fleeting Now?

Dream not of days to come--of that Unknown
Whither Hope wanders--maze without a clue;
Give their true witchery to the flowers;--thine own
Youth in their youth renew.

Avarice, remember when the cowslip's gold
Lured and yet lost its glitter in thy grasp.
Do thy hoards glad thee more than those of old?
_Those_ wither'd in thy clasp,

From _these_ thy clasp falls palsied.--It was then
That thou wert rich--thy coffers are a lie;
Alas, poor fool, Joy is the wealth of men,
And Care their penury.

Come, foil'd Ambition, what hast thou desired?
Empire and power?--O, wanderer, tempest-tost!
These once were thine, when life's gay spring inspired
Thy soul with glories lost.

Let the flowers charm thee back to that rich time
When golden Dreamland lay within thy chart,
When Love bestow'd a realm indeed sublime--
The boundless human heart.

Hark, hark again, the tread of bashful feet!
Hark the boughs rustling round the trysting-place!
Let air again with one dear breath be sweet,
Earth fair with one dear face.

Brief-lived first flowers--first love! The hours steal on
To prank the world in summer's pomp of hue,
But what can flaunt beneath a fiercer sun
Worth what we lose in you?

Oft by a flower, a leaf, in some loved book
We mark the lines that charm us most;--Retrace
Thy life;--recall its loveliest passage;--Look,
Dead violets keep the place!

THE IMAGE ON THE TIDE.

Not a sound is heard
But my heart by thine,
Breathe not a word,
Lay thy hand in mine.

How trembling, yet still,
On the lake's clear tide,
Sleep the distant hill,
And the bank beside.

The near and the far,
Intermingled flow;
The herb and the star
Imaged both below.

So deep and so clear,
Through the shadowy light,
The far and the near
In my soul unite;

The future and past,
Like the bank and hill,
On the surface glass'd,
Though they tremble still;

Disturb not the dream
Of this double whole;
The heav'n in the stream
On my soul thy soul.

The sense cannot count
(As the waters glass
The forest and mount
And the clouds that pass)

The shadows and gleams
In that stilly deep,
Like the tranquil dreams
Of a hermit's sleep.

_One_ shadow alone
On my soul doth fall,--
And yet in the one
It reflects on All.

IS IT ALL VANITY?

Doubting of life, my spirit paused perplext
Let fall its fardell of laborious care,
And the sharp cry of my great trouble vext
Unsympathizing air.

Out on this choice of unrewarded toil,
This upward path into the realm of snow!
Oh for one glimpse of the old happy soil
Fragrant with flowers below!

For what false gold, like alchemists, we yearn,
Wasting the wealth we never can recall,
Joy and life's lavish prime;--and our return?
Ashes, cold ashes, all!

Could youth but dream what narrow burial-urns
Hopes that went forth to conquer worlds should hold,
How in a tomb the lamp Experience burns
Amidst the dust of old!--

Look back, how all the beautiful Ideal,
Sporting in doubtful moonlight, one by one
Fade from the rising of the hard-eyed Real,
Like Fairies from the sun.

Love render'd saintlike by its pure devotion;
Knowledge exulting lone by shoreless seas
And Feelings tremulous to each emotion,
As May leaves to the breeze.

And, oh, that grand Ambition, poet-nurst,
When boyhood's heart swells up to the Sublime,
And on the gaze the towers of Glory first
Flash from the peaks of Time!

Are they then wiser who but nurse the growth
Of joys in life's most common element,
Creeping from hour to hour in that calm sloth
Which Egoists call "Content?"

Who freight for storms no hopeful argosy,
Who watch no beacon wane on hilltops grey,
Who bound their all, where from the human eye
The horizon fades away?

Alas for Labour, if indeed more wise
To drink life's tide unwitting where it flows;
Renounce the arduous palm, and only prize
The Cnidian vine and rose!

Out from the Porch the Stoic cries "For shame!"
What hast thou left us, Stoic, in thy school?
"That pain or pleasure is but in the name?"
Go, prick thy finger, fool!

Never grave Pallas, never Muse severe
Charm'd this hard life like the free, zoneless Grace;
Pleasure is sweet, in spite of every sneer
On Zeno's wrinkled face.

What gain'd and left ye to this age of ours
Ye early priesthoods of the Isis, Truth,--
When light first glimmer'd from the Cuthite's towers;
When Thebes was in her youth?

When to the weird Chaldaean spoke the seer,
When Hades open'd at Heraclean spells,
When Fate made Nature her interpreter
In leaves and murmuring wells?

When the keen Greek chased flying Science on,
Upward and up the infinite abyss?--
Like perish'd stars your arts themselves have gone
Noiseless to nothingness!

And what is knowledge but the Wizard's ring,
Kindling a flame to circumscribe a ground?
The belt of light that lures the spirit's wing
Hems the invoker round.

Ponder and ask again "what boots our toil?"
Can we the Garden's wanton child gainsay,
When from kind lips he culls their rosy spoil
And lives life's holiday?

Life answers "No--if ended here be life,
Seize what the sense can give--it is thine all;
Disarm thee, Virtue, barren is thy strife;
Knowledge, thy torch let fall.

"Seek thy lost Psyche, yearning Love, no more!
Love is but lust, if soul be only breath;
Who would put forth one billow from the shore
If the great sea be--Death?"

But if the soul, that slow artificer
For ends its instinct rears _from_ life hath striven,
Feeling beneath its patient webwork stir
Wings only freed in Heaven,

_Then_ and but then to toil is to be wise;
Solved is the riddle of the grand desire
Which ever, ever, for the Distant sighs,
And must perforce aspire.

Rise, then, my soul, take comfort from thy sorrow;
Thou feel'st thy treasure when thou feel'st thy load;
Life without thought, the day without the morrow,
God on the brute bestow'd;

Longings obscure as for a native clime,
Flight from what is to live in what may be,
God gave the Soul.--Thy discontent with Time
Proves thine eternity.

THE TRUE JOY-GIVER.

Oh Oevoe, _liber Pater_,
Oh, the vintage feast divine,
When the God was in the bosom
And his rapture in the wine;

When the Faun laugh'd out at morning;
When the Maenad hymn'd the night;
And the Earth itself was drunken
With the worship of delight;

Oh Oevoe, _liber Pater_,
Whose orgies are upon
The hilltops of Parnassus,
The banks of Helicon;--

How often have I hail'd thee!
How often have I been
The bearer of the thyrsus,
When its wither'd leaves were green.

Then the boughs were purple gleaming
With the dewdrop and the star;
And chanting came the wood-nymph,
And flashing came the car.

Long faded are the garlands
Of the thyrsus that I bore,
When the wood-nymph chanted "Follow"
In the vintage-feast of yore.

My vineyards are the richest
Falernian slopes bestow;
Has the vineherd lost his cunning?
Has the summer lost its glow?

Oh, never on Falernium
The Care-Dispeller trod,
Its vine-leaves wreathe no thyrsus,
Its fruits allure no god.

For ever young, Lyaeus;
For ever young his priest;
The Boy-god of the Morning,
The conqueror of the East,

His wine is Nature's life-blood;
His vineyards bloom upon
The hilltops of Parnassus,
The banks of Helicon.

But the hilltops of Parnassus
Are free to every age;
I have trod them with the Poet,
I have mapp'd them with the Sage;

And I'll take my pert disciple
To see, with humble eyes,
How the Gladness-bringer honours
The worship of the wise.

Lo, the arching of the vine-leaves;
Lo, the sparkle of the fount;
Hark, the carol of the Maenads;
Lo, the car is on the Mount!

"Ho, room, ye thyrsus-bearers,
Your playmate I have been!"
"Go, madman," laughs Lyaeus,
"Thy thyrsus then was green."

And adown the gleaming alleys
The gladness-givers glide;
And the wood-nymph murmurs "Follow,"
To the young man by my side.

BELIEF; THE UNKNOWN LANGUAGE.

AN IDYLL.

By summer-reeds a music murmur'd low,
And straight the Shepherd-age came back to me;
When idylls breathed where Himera's waters flow,
Or on the Hoemus hill, or Rhodope;[A]

As when the swans, by Moschus heard at noon,
Mourn'd their lost Bion on the Thracian streams;[B]
Or when Simaethea murmur'd to the moon
Of Myndian Delphis,[C]--old Sicilian themes.

Then softly turning, on the margent-slope
Which back as clear translucent waters gave,
Behold, a Shape as beautiful as Hope,
And calm as Grief, bent, singing o'er the wave.

To the sweet lips, sweet music seem'd a thing
Natural as perfume to the violet.
All else was silent; not a zephyr's wing
Stirr'd from the magic of the charmer's net.

What was the sense beneath the silver tone?
What the fine chain that link'd the floating measure?
Not mine, to say,--the language was unknown,
And sense was lost in undistinguish'd pleasure.

Pleasure, dim-shadow'd with a gentle pain
As twilight Hesper with a twilight shroud;
Or like the balm of a delicious rain
Press'd from the fleeces of a summer cloud.

When the song ceased, I knelt before the singer
And raised my looks to soft and childlike eyes,
Sighing? "What fountain, O thou nectar-bringer
Feeds thy full urn with golden melodies?

"Interpret sounds, O Hebe of the soul,
Oft heard, methinks, in Ida's starry grove,
When to thy feet the charmed eagle stole,
And the dark thunder left the brows of Jove!"

Smiling, the Beautiful replied to me,
And still the language flow'd in words unknown;
Only in those pure eyes my sense could see
How calm the soul that so perplex'd my own.

And while she spoke, symphonious murmurs rose;
Dryads from trees, Nymphs murmur'd from the rills;
Murmur'd Maenalian Pan from dim repose
In the lush coverts of Pelasgic hills;

Murmur'd the voice of Chloris in the flower;
Bent, murmuring from his car, Hyperion;
Each thing regain'd the old Presiding Power,
And spoke,--and still the language was unknown.

Dull listener, placed amidst the harmonious Whole,
Hear'st thou no voice to sense divinely dark?
The sweetest sounds that wander to the soul
Are in the Unknown Language.--Pause, and hark!

[A] Theocrit. Id. 7.

[B] Mosch, Id. 3; Epitaph on Bion.

[C] Theocrit. Id. 2.

THE PILGRIM OF THE DESERT.

Wearily flaggeth my Soul in the Desert;
Wearily, wearily.
Sand, ever sand, not a gleam of the fountain;
Sun, ever sun, not a shade from the mountain;
Wave after wave flows the sea of the Desert,
Drearily, drearily.

Life dwelt with life in my far native valleys,
Nightly and daily;
Labour had brothers to aid and beguile;
A tear for my tear, and a smile for my smile;
And the sweet human voices rang out; and the valleys
Echoed them gaily.

Under the almond-tree, once in the spring-time,
Careless reclining;
The sigh of my Leila was hush'd on my breast,
As the note of the last bird had died in its nest;
Calm look'd the stars on the buds of the spring-time,
Calm--but how shining!

Below on the herbage there darken'd a shadow;
Stirr'd the boughs o'er me;
Dropp'd from the almond-tree, sighing, the blossom;
Trembling the maiden sprang up from my bosom;
Then the step of a stranger came mute through the shadow,
Pausing before me.

He stood grey with age in the robe of a Dervise,
As a king awe-compelling;
And the cold of his eye like the diamond was bright,
As if years from the hardness had fashion'd the light,
"A draught from thy spring for the way-weary Dervise,
And rest in thy dwelling."

And my herds gave the milk, and my tent gave the shelter;
And the stranger spell-bound me
With his tales, all the night, of the far world of wonder,
Of the ocean of Oman with pearls gleaming under;
And I thought, "O, how mean are the tents' simple shelter
And the valleys around me!"

I seized as I listen'd, in fancy, the treasures
By Afrites conceal'd;
Scared the serpents that watch in the ruins afar
O'er the hoards of the Persian in lost Chil-Menar;--
Alas! ill that night happy youth had more treasures
Than Ormus can yield.

Morn came, and I went with my guest through the gorges
In the rock hollow'd;
The flocks bleated low as I pass'd them ungrieving,
The almond-buds strew'd the sweet earth I was leaving;
Slowly went Age through the gloom of the gorges,
Lightly Youth follow'd.

We won through the Pass--the Unknown lay before me,
Sun-lighted and wide;
Then I turn'd to my guest, but how languid his tread,
And the awe I had felt in his presence was fled,
And I cried, "Can thy age in the journey before me
Still keep by my side?"

"Hope and Wisdom soon part; be it so," said the Dervise,
"My mission is done."
As he spoke, came the gleam of the crescent and spear,
Chimed the bells of the camel more sweet and more near;--
"Go, and march with the Caravan, youth," sigh'd the Dervise,
"Fare thee well!"--he was gone.

What profits to speak of the wastes I have traversed
Since that early time?
One by one the procession, replacing the guide,
Have dropp'd on the sands, or have stray'd from my side;
And I hear never more in the solitudes traversed
The camel-bell's chime.

How oft I have yearn'd for the old happy valley,
But the sands have no track;
He who scorn'd what was near must advance to the far,
Who forsaketh the landmark must march by the star,
And the steps that once part from the peace of the valley
Can never come back.

So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,
Wearily, wearily;
Sand, ever sand--not a gleam of the fountain;
Sun, ever sun--not a shade from the mountain;
As a sea on a sea, flows the width of the Desert,
Drearily, drearily.

How narrow content, and how infinite knowledge!
Lost vale, and lost maiden!
Enclosed in the garden the mortal was blest:
A world with its wonders lay round him unguest;
That world was his own when he tasted of knowledge--
Was it worth Aden?

THE KING AND THE WRAITH.

KING.

Who art thou, who art thou, indistinct as the spray
Rising up from a torrent in vapour and cloud?
Ghastly Phantom, obscuring the splendour of day
And enveloped in awe, as a corpse with a shroud?

WRAITH.

King, my form is thy shade,
And my life is thy breath;
Lo, thy likeness display'd
In the mirror of Death!

KING.

My veins are as ice! 'Tis my voice that I hear!
'Tis my form coming forth from the cloud that I see!
My voice?--can its sound be so dread to my ear?
My form?--can myself be so loathly to me?

WRAITH.

Never Man comes in sight
Of himself till the last;
In the flicker of light
When the fuel is past!

KING.

Nay, avaunt, lying Spectre, my fears are dispell'd,
For the likeness that fool'd me is fading away,
And I see, where the shape of a king was beheld,
But the coil of an earthworm that creeps into clay.

WRAITH.

As thy shade I began;
As thyself I depart;
And thy last looks, O Man,
See the worm that thou art!

LOVE AND DEATH.

O Strong as the eagle,
O mild as the dove,
How like and how unlike
O Death and O Love!

Knitting earth to the heaven,
The near to the far,
With the step in the dust,
And the eye on the star.

Ever changing your symbols
Of light or of gloom;
Now the rue on the altar,
The rose on the tomb.

From Love, if the infant
Receiveth his breath,
The love that gave life
Yields a subject to Death.

When Death smites the aged,
Escaping above
Flies the soul re-deliver'd
By Death unto Love.

And therefore in wailing
We enter on life;
And therefore in smiling
Depart from its strife.

Thus Love is best known
By the tears it has shed;
And Death's surest sign
Is the smile of the dead.

The purer the spirit,
The clearer its view,
The more it confoundeth
The shapes of the two;

For, if thou lov'st truly,
Thou canst not dissever
The grave from the altar,
The Now from the Ever;

And if, nobly hoping,
Thou gazest above,
In Death thou beholdest
The aspect of LOVE.

THE POET TO THE DEAD.