No More Learning

A son of mine shall liberate thee from woe?

_Prometheus. _ After ten generations, count three more,
And find him in the third.

_Io. _ The oracle
Remains obscure.

_Prometheus. _ And search it not, to learn
Thine own griefs from it.

_Io. _ Point me not to a good,
To leave me straight bereaved.

_Prometheus. _ I am prepared
To grant thee one of two things.

_Io. _ But which two?
Set them before me; grant me power to choose.

_Prometheus. _ I grant it, choose now: shall I name aloud
What griefs remain to wound thee, or what hand
Shall save me out of mine?

_Chorus. _ Vouchsafe, O god,
The one grace of the twain to her who prays;
The next to me; and turn back neither prayer
Dishonour'd by denial. To herself
Recount the future wandering of her feet;
Then point me to the looser of thy chain,
Because I yearn to know him.

_Prometheus. _ Since ye will,
Of absolute will, this knowledge, I will set
No contrary against it, nor keep back
A word of all ye ask for. Io, first
To thee I must relate thy wandering course
Far winding. As I tell it, write it down
In thy soul's book of memories. When thou hast past
The refluent bound that parts two continents,
Track on the footsteps of the orient sun
In his own fire, across the roar of seas,--
Fly till thou hast reached the Gorgonæan flats
Beside Cisthené. There, the Phorcides,
Three ancient maidens, live, with shape of swan,
One tooth between them, and one common eye:
On whom the sun doth never look at all
With all his rays, nor evermore the moon
When she looks through the night. Anear to whom
Are the Gorgon sisters three, enclothed with wings,
With twisted snakes for ringlets, man-abhorred:
There is no mortal gazes in their face
And gazing can breathe on. I speak of such
To guard thee from their horror. Ay, and list
Another tale of a dreadful sight; beware
The Griffins, those unbarking dogs of Zeus,
Those sharp-mouthed dogs! --and the Arimaspian host
Of one-eyed horsemen, habiting beside
The river of Pluto that runs bright with gold:
Approach them not, beseech thee! Presently
Thou'lt come to a distant land, a dusky tribe
Of dwellers at the fountain of the Sun,
Whence flows the river Æthiops; wind along
Its banks and turn off at the cataracts,
Just as the Nile pours from the Bybline hills
His holy and sweet wave; his course shall guide
Thine own to that triangular Nile-ground
Where, Io, is ordained for thee and thine
A lengthened exile. Have I said in this
Aught darkly or incompletely? --now repeat
The question, make the knowledge fuller! Lo,
I have more leisure than I covet, here.

_Chorus. _ If thou canst tell us aught that's left untold,
Or loosely told, of her most dreary flight,
Declare it straight: but if thou hast uttered all,
Grant us that latter grace for which we prayed,
Remembering how we prayed it.

_Prometheus. _ She has heard
The uttermost of her wandering. There it ends.
But that she may be certain not to have heard
All vainly, I will speak what she endured
Ere coming hither, and invoke the past
To prove my prescience true. And so--to leave
A multitude of words and pass at once
To the subject of thy course--when thou hadst gone
To those Molossian plains which sweep around
Dodona shouldering Heaven, whereby the fane
Of Zeus Thesprotian keepeth oracle,
And, wonder past belief, where oaks do wave
Articulate adjurations--(ay, the same
Saluted thee in no perplexèd phrase
But clear with glory, noble wife of Zeus
That shouldst be,--there some sweetness took thy sense! )
Thou didst rush further onward, stung along
The ocean-shore, toward Rhea's mighty bay
And, tost back from it, wast tost to it again
In stormy evolution:--and, know well,
In coming time that hollow of the sea
Shall bear the name Ionian and present
A monument of Io's passage through
Unto all mortals. Be these words the signs
Of my soul's power to look beyond the veil
Of visible things. The rest, to you and her
I will declare in common audience, nymphs,
Returning thither where my speech brake off.
There is a town Canobus, built upon
The earth's fair margin at the mouth of Nile
And on the mound washed up by it; Io, there
Shall Zeus give back to thee thy perfect mind,
And only by the pressure and the touch
Of a hand not terrible; and thou to Zeus
Shalt bear a dusky son who shall be called
Thence, Epaphus, _Touched_. That son shall pluck the fruit
Of all that land wide-watered by the flow
Of Nile; but after him, when counting out
As far as the fifth full generation, then
Full fifty maidens, a fair woman-race,
Shall back to Argos turn reluctantly,
To fly the proffered nuptials of their kin,
Their father's brothers. These being passion struck,
Like falcons bearing hard on flying doves,
Shall follow, hunting at a quarry of love
They should not hunt; till envious Heaven maintain
A curse betwixt that beauty and their desire,
And Greece receive them, to be overcome
In murtherous woman-war, by fierce red hands
Kept savage by the night. For every wife
Shall slay a husband, dyeing deep in blood
The sword of a double edge--(I wish indeed
As fair a marriage-joy to all my foes! )
One bride alone shall fail to smite to death
The head upon her pillow, touched with love,
Made impotent of purpose and impelled
To choose the lesser evil,--shame on her cheeks,
Than blood-guilt on her hands: which bride shall bear
A royal race in Argos. Tedious speech
Were needed to relate particulars
Of these things; 'tis enough that from her seed
Shall spring the strong He, famous with the bow,
Whose arm shall break my fetters off. Behold,
My mother Themis, that old Titaness,
Delivered to me such an oracle,--
But how and when, I should be long to speak,
And thou, in hearing, wouldst not gain at all.

_Io. _ Eleleu, eleleu!
How the spasm and the pain
And the fire on the brain
Strike, burning me through!
How the sting of the curse, all aflame as it flew,
Pricks me onward again!
How my heart in its terror is spurning my breast,
And my eyes, like the wheels of a chariot, roll round!
I am whirled from my course, to the east, to the west,
In the whirlwind of phrensy all madly inwound--
And my mouth is unbridled for anguish and hate,
And my words beat in vain, in wild storms of unrest,
On the sea of my desolate fate.

[_IO rushes out. _

_Chorus. --Strophe. _
Oh, wise was he, oh, wise was he
Who first within his spirit knew
And with his tongue declared it true
That love comes best that comes unto
The equal of degree!
And that the poor and that the low
Should seek no love from those above,
Whose souls are fluttered with the flow
Of airs about their golden height,
Or proud because they see arow
Ancestral crowns of light.

_Antistrophe. _
Oh, never, never may ye, Fates,
Behold me with your awful eyes
Lift mine too fondly up the skies
Where Zeus upon the purple waits!
Nor let me step too near--too near
To any suitor, bright from heaven:
Because I see, because I fear
This loveless maiden vexed and laden
By this fell curse of Heré, driven
On wanderings dread and drear.

_Epode. _
Nay, grant an equal troth instead
Of nuptial love, to bind me by!
It will not hurt, I shall not dread
To meet it in reply.
But let not love from those above
Revert and fix me, as I said,
With that inevitable Eye!
I have no sword to fight that fight,
I have no strength to tread that path,
I know not if my nature hath
The power to bear, I cannot see
Whither from Zeus's infinite
I have the power to flee.

_Prometheus. _ Yet Zeus, albeit most absolute of will,
Shall turn to meekness,--such a marriage-rite
He holds in preparation, which anon
Shall thrust him headlong from his gerent seat
Adown the abysmal void, and so the curse
His father Chronos muttered in his fall,
As he fell from his ancient throne and cursed,
Shall be accomplished wholly. No escape
From all that ruin shall the filial Zeus
Find granted to him from any of his gods,
Unless I teach him. I the refuge know,
And I, the means. Now, therefore, let him sit
And brave the imminent doom, and fix his faith
On his supernal noises, hurtling on
With restless hand the bolt that breathes out fire;
For these things shall not help him, none of them,
Nor hinder his perdition when he falls
To shame, and lower than patience: such a foe
He doth himself prepare against himself,
A wonder of unconquerable hate,
An organizer of sublimer fire
Than glares in lightnings, and of grander sound
Than aught the thunder rolls, out-thundering it,
With power to shatter in Poseidon's fist
The trident-spear which, while it plagues the sea,
Doth shake the shores around it. Ay, and Zeus,
Precipitated thus, shall learn at length
The difference betwixt rule and servitude.

_Chorus. _ Thou makest threats for Zeus of thy desires.

_Prometheus. _ I tell you, all these things shall be fulfilled.
Even so as I desire them.

_Chorus. _ Must we then
Look out for one shall come to master Zeus?

_Prometheus. _ These chains weigh lighter than his sorrows shall.

_Chorus. _ How art thou not afraid to utter such words?

_Prometheus. _ What should _I_ fear who cannot die?

_Chorus. _ But _he_
Can visit thee with dreader woe than death's.

_Prometheus. _ Why, let him do it! I am here, prepared
For all things and their pangs.

_Chorus. _ The wise are they
Who reverence Adrasteia.

_Prometheus. _ Reverence thou,
Adore thou, flatter thou, whomever reigns,
Whenever reigning! but for me, your Zeus
Is less than nothing. Let him act and reign
His brief hour out according to his will--
He will not, therefore, rule the gods too long.
But lo! I see that courier-god of Zeus,
That new-made menial of the new-crowned king:
He doubtless comes to announce to us something new.

_HERMES enters. _

_Hermes. _ I speak to thee, the sophist, the talker-down
Of scorn by scorn, the sinner against gods,
The reverencer of men, the thief of fire,--
I speak to thee and adjure thee! Zeus requires
Thy declaration of what marriage-rite
Thus moves thy vaunt and shall hereafter cause
His fall from empire. Do not wrap thy speech
In riddles, but speak clearly! Never cast
Ambiguous paths, Prometheus, for my feet,
Since Zeus, thou mayst perceive, is scarcely won
To mercy by such means.

_Prometheus. _ A speech well-mouthed
In the utterance, and full-minded in the sense,
As doth befit a servant of the gods!
New gods, ye newly reign, and think forsooth
Ye dwell in towers too high for any dart
To carry a wound there! --have I not stood by
While two kings fell from thence? and shall I not
Behold the third, the same who rules you now,
Fall, shamed to sudden ruin? --Do I seem
To tremble and quail before your modern gods?
Far be it from me! --For thyself, depart,
Re-tread thy steps in haste. To all thou hast asked
I answer nothing.

_Hermes. _ Such a wind of pride
Impelled thee of yore full-sail upon these rocks.

_Prometheus. _ I would not barter---learn thou soothly that! --
My suffering for thy service. I maintain
It is a nobler thing to serve these rocks
Than live a faithful slave to father Zeus.
Thus upon scorners I retort their scorn.

_Hermes. _ It seems that thou dost glory in thy despair.

_Prometheus. _ I glory? would my foes did glory so,
And I stood by to see them! --naming whom,
Thou art not unremembered.

_Hermes. _ Dost thou charge
Me also with the blame of thy mischance?

_Prometheus. _ I tell thee I loathe the universal gods,
Who for the good I gave them rendered back
The ill of their injustice.

_Hermes. _ Thou art mad--
Thou art raving, Titan, at the fever-height.

_Prometheus. _ If it be madness to abhor my foes,
May I be mad!

_Hermes. _ If thou wert prosperous
Thou wouldst be unendurable.

_Prometheus. _ Alas!

_Hermes. _ Zeus knows not that word.

_Prometheus. _ But maturing Time
Teaches all things.

_Hermes. _ Howbeit, thou hast not learnt
The wisdom yet, thou needest.

_Prometheus. _ If I had,
I should not talk thus with a slave like thee.

_Hermes. _ No answer thou vouchsafest, I believe,
To the great Sire's requirement.

_Prometheus. _ Verily
I owe him grateful service,--and should pay it.

_Hermes. _ Why, thou dost mock me, Titan, as I stood
A child before thy face.

_Prometheus. _ No child, forsooth,
But yet more foolish than a foolish child,
If thou expect that I should answer aught
Thy Zeus can ask. No torture from his hand
Nor any machination in the world
Shall force mine utterance ere he loose, himself,
These cankerous fetters from me. For the rest,
Let him now hurl his blanching lightnings down,
And with his white-winged snows and mutterings deep
Of subterranean thunders mix all things,
Confound them in disorder. None of this
Shall bend my sturdy will and make me speak
The name of his dethroner who shall come.

_Hermes. _ Can this avail thee? Look to it!

_Prometheus. _ Long ago
It was looked forward to, precounselled of.

_Hermes. _ Vain god, take righteous courage! dare for once
To apprehend and front thine agonies
With a just prudence.

_Prometheus. _ Vainly dost thou chafe
My soul with exhortation, as yonder sea
Goes beating on the rock. Oh, think no more
That I, fear-struck by Zeus to a woman's mind,
Will supplicate him, loathèd as he is,
With feminine upliftings of my hands,
To break these chains. Far from me be the thought!

_Hermes. _ I have indeed, methinks, said much in vain,
For still thy heart beneath my showers of prayers
Lies dry and hard--nay, leaps like a young horse
Who bites against the new bit in his teeth,
And tugs and struggles against the new-tried rein,--
Still fiercest in the feeblest thing of all,
Which sophism is; since absolute will disjoined
From perfect mind is worse than weak. Behold,
Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast
And whirlwind of inevitable woe
Must sweep persuasion through thee! For at first
The Father will split up this jut of rock
With the great thunder and the bolted flame
And hide thy body where a hinge of stone
Shall catch it like an arm; and when thou hast passed
A long black time within, thou shalt come out
To front the sun while Zeus's winged hound,
The strong carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down
To meet thee, self-called to a daily feast,
And set his fierce beak in thee and tear off
The long rags of thy flesh and batten deep
Upon thy dusky liver. Do not look
For any end moreover to this curse
Or ere some god appear, to accept thy pangs
On his own head vicarious, and descend
With unreluctant step the darks of hell
And gloomy abysses around Tartarus.
Then ponder this--this threat is not a growth
Of vain invention; it is spoken and meant;
King Zeus's mouth is impotent to lie,
Consummating the utterance by the act;
So, look to it, thou! take heed, and nevermore
Forget good counsel, to indulge self-will.

_Chorus. _ Our Hermes suits his reasons to the times;
At least I think so, since he bids thee drop
Self-will for prudent counsel. Yield to him!
When the wise err, their wisdom makes their shame.

_Prometheus. _ Unto me the foreknower, this mandate of power
He cries, to reveal it.
What's strange in my fate, if I suffer from hate
At the hour that I feel it?
Let the locks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening,
Flash, coiling me round,
While the æther goes surging 'neath thunder and scourging
Of wild winds unbound!
Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place
The earth rooted below,
And the brine of the ocean, in rapid emotion,
Be driven in the face
Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!
Let him hurl me anon into Tartarus--on--
To the blackest degree,
With Necessity's vortices strangling me down;
But he cannot join death to a fate meant for _me_!

_Hermes. _ Why, the words that he speaks and the thoughts that he thinks
Are maniacal! --add,
If the Fate who hath bound him should loose not the links,
He were utterly mad.
Then depart ye who groan with him,
Leaving to moan with him,--
Go in haste! lest the roar of the thunder anearing
Should blast you to idiocy, living and hearing.

_Chorus. _ Change thy speech for another, thy thought for a new,
If to move me and teach me indeed be thy care!
For thy words swerve so far from the loyal and true
That the thunder of Zeus seems more easy to bear.
How! couldst teach me to venture such vileness? behold!
I _choose_, with this victim, this anguish foretold!
I recoil from the traitor in hate and disdain,
And I know that the curse of the treason is worse
Than the pang of the chain.

_Hermes. _ Then remember, O nymphs, what I tell you before,
Nor, when pierced by the arrows that Até will throw you,
Cast blame on your fate and declare evermore
That Zeus thrust you on anguish he did not foreshow you.
Nay, verily, nay! for ye perish anon
For your deed--by your choice. By no blindness of doubt,
No abruptness of doom, but by madness alone,
In the great net of Até, whence none cometh out,
Ye are wound and undone.

_Prometheus. _ Ay! in act now, in word now no more,
Earth is rocking in space.
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round,
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
And blow each upon each with a passion of sound,
And æther goes mingling in storm with the sea.
Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along.
O my mother's fair glory! O Æther, enringing
All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing!
Dost see how I suffer this wrong?




A LAMENT FOR ADONIS


FROM THE GREEK OF BION


I.

I mourn for Adonis--Adonis is dead,
Fair Adonis is dead and the Loves are lamenting.
Sleep, Cypris, no more on thy purple-strewed bed:
Arise, wretch stoled in black; beat thy breast unrelenting,
And shriek to the worlds, "Fair Adonis is dead! "


II.

I mourn for Adonis--the Loves are lamenting.
He lies on the hills in his beauty and death;
The white tusk of a boar has transpierced his white thigh.
Cytherea grows mad at his thin gasping breath,
While the black blood drips down on the pale ivory,
And his eyeballs lie quenched with the weight of his brows,
The rose fades from his lips, and upon them just parted
The kiss dies the goddess consents not to lose,
Though the kiss of the Dead cannot make her glad-hearted:
He knows not who kisses him dead in the dews.


III.

I mourn for Adonis--the Loves are lamenting.
Deep, deep in the thigh is Adonis's wound,
But a deeper, is Cypris's bosom presenting.
The youth lieth dead while his dogs howl around,
And the nymphs weep aloud from the mists of the hill,
And the poor Aphrodité, with tresses unbound,
All dishevelled, unsandaled, shrieks mournful and shrill
Through the dusk of the groves. The thorns, tearing her feet,
Gather up the red flower of her blood which is holy,
Each footstep she takes; and the valleys repeat
The sharp cry she utters and draw it out slowly.
She calls on her spouse, her Assyrian, on him
Her own youth, while the dark blood spreads over his body,
The chest taking hue from the gash in the limb,
And the bosom, once ivory, turning to ruddy.


IV.

Ah, ah, Cytherea! the Loves are lamenting.
She lost her fair spouse and so lost her fair smile:
When he lived she was fair, by the whole world's consenting,
Whose fairness is dead with him: woe worth the while!
All the mountains above and the oaklands below
Murmur, ah, ah, Adonis! the streams overflow
Aphrodité's deep wail; river-fountains in pity
Weep soft in the hills, and the flowers as they blow
Redden outward with sorrow, while all hear her go
With the song of her sadness through mountain and city.


V.

Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead,
Fair Adonis is dead--Echo answers, Adonis:
Who weeps not for Cypris, when bowing her head
She stares at the wound where it gapes and astonies?
--When, ah, ah! --she saw how the blood ran away
And empurpled the thigh, and, with wild hands flung out,
Said with sobs: "Stay, Adonis! unhappy one, stay,
Let me feel thee once more, let me ring thee about
With the clasp of my arms, and press kiss into kiss!
Wait a little, Adonis, and kiss me again,
For the last time, beloved,--and but so much of this
That the kiss may learn life from the warmth of the strain!
--Till thy breath shall exude from thy soul to my mouth,
To my heart, and, the love-charm I once more receiving
May drink thy love in it and keep of a truth
That one kiss in the place of Adonis the living.
Thou fliest me, mournful one, fliest me far,
My Adonis, and seekest the Acheron portal,--
To Hell's cruel King goest down with a scar,
While I weep and live on like a wretched immortal,
And follow no step! O Persephoné, take him,
My husband! --thou'rt better and brighter than I,
So all beauty flows down to thee: _I_ cannot make him
Look up at my grief; there's despair in my cry,
Since I wail for Adonis who died to me--died to me--
Then, I fear _thee_! --Art thou dead, my Adored?
Passion ends like a dream in the sleep that's denied to me,
Cypris is widowed, the Loves seek their lord
All the house through in vain. Charm of cestus has ceased
With thy clasp! O too bold in the hunt past preventing,
Ay, mad, thou so fair, to have strife with a beast! "
Thus the goddess wailed on--and the Loves are lamenting.


VI.

Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead.
She wept tear after tear with the blood which was shed,
And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close,
Her tears, to the windflower; his blood, to the rose.


VII.

I mourn for Adonis--Adonis is dead.
Weep no more in the woods, Cytherea, thy lover!
So, well: make a place for his corse in thy bed,
With the purples thou sleepest in, under and over
He's fair though a corse--a fair corse, like a sleeper.
Lay him soft in the silks he had pleasure to fold
When, beside thee at night, holy dreams deep and deeper
Enclosed his young life on the couch made of gold.
Love him still, poor Adonis; cast on him together
The crowns and the flowers: since he died from the place,
Why, let all die with him; let the blossoms go wither,
Rain myrtles and olive-buds down on his face.
Rain the myrrh down, let all that is best fall a-pining,
Since the myrrh of his life from thy keeping is swept.
Pale he lay, thine Adonis, in purples reclining,
The Loves raised their voices around him and wept.
They have shorn their bright curls off to cast on Adonis;
One treads on his bow,--on his arrows, another,--
One breaks up a well-feathered quiver, and one is
Bent low at a sandal, untying the strings,
And one carries the vases of gold from the springs,
While one washes the wound,--and behind them a brother
Fans down on the body sweet air with his wings.


VIII.

Cytherea herself now the Loves are lamenting
Each torch at the door Hymenæus blew out;
And, the marriage-wreath dropping its leaves as repenting,
No more "Hymen, Hymen," is chanted about,
But the _ai ai_ instead--"Ai alas! " is begun
For Adonis, and then follows "Ai Hymenæus! "
The Graces are weeping for Cinyris' son,
Sobbing low each to each, "His fair eyes cannot see us! "
Their wail strikes more shrill than the sadder Dioné's.
The Fates mourn aloud for Adonis, Adonis,
Deep chanting; he hears not a word that they say:
He _would_ hear, but Persephoné has him in keeping.
--Cease moan, Cytherea! leave pomps for to-day,
And weep new when a new year refits thee for weeping.




A VISION OF POETS


O Sacred Essence, lighting me this hour,
How may I lightly stile thy great power?
_Echo. _ Power.
Power! but of whence? under the greenwood spraye?
Or liv'st in Heaven? saye.
_Echo. _ In Heavens aye.
In Heavens aye! tell, may I it obtayne
By alms, by fasting, prayer,--by paine?
_Echo. _ By paine
Show me the paine, it shall be undergone.
I to mine end will still go on.
_Echo. _ Go on.

_Britannia's Pastorals. _




A VISION OF POETS.


A poet could not sleep aright,
For his soul kept up too much light
Under his eyelids for the night.

And thus he rose disquieted
With sweet rhymes ringing through his head,
And in the forest wanderèd

Where, sloping up the darkest glades,
The moon had drawn long colonnades
Upon whose floor the verdure fades

To a faint silver: pavement fair,
The antique wood-nymphs scarce would dare
To foot-print o'er, had such been there,

And rather sit by breathlessly,
With fear in their large eyes, to see
The consecrated sight. But HE--

The poet who, with spirit-kiss
Familiar, had long claimed for his
Whatever earthly beauty is,

Who also in his spirit bore
A beauty passing the earth's store,--
Walked calmly onward evermore.

His aimless thoughts in metre went,
Like a babe's hand without intent
Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument:

Nor jarred it with his humour as,
With a faint stirring of the grass,
An apparition fair did pass.

He might have feared another time,
But all things fair and strange did chime
With his thoughts then, as rhyme to rhyme.

An angel had not startled him,
Alighted from heaven's burning rim
To breathe from glory in the Dim;

Much less a lady riding slow
Upon a palfrey white as snow,
And smooth as a snow-cloud could go.

Full upon his she turned her face,
"What ho, sir poet! dost thou pace
Our woods at night in ghostly chase

"Of some fair Dryad of old tales
Who chants between the nightingales
And over sleep by song prevails? "

She smiled; but he could see arise
Her soul from far adown her eyes,
Prepared as if for sacrifice.

She looked a queen who seemeth gay
From royal grace alone. "Now, nay,"
He answered, "slumber passed away,

"Compelled by instincts in my head
That I should see to-night, instead
Of a fair nymph, some fairer Dread. "

She looked up quickly to the sky
And spake: "The moon's regality
Will hear no praise; She is as I.

"She is in heaven, and I on earth;
This is my kingdom: I come forth
To crown all poets to their worth. "

He brake in with a voice that mourned;
"To their worth, lady? They are scorned
By men they sing for, till inurned.

"To their worth? Beauty in the mind
Leaves the hearth cold, and love-refined
Ambitions make the world unkind.

"The boor who ploughs the daisy down,
The chief whose mortgage of renown,
Fixed upon graves, has bought a crown--

"Both these are happier, more approved
Than poets! --why should I be moved
In saying, both are more beloved? "

"The south can judge not of the north,"
She resumed calmly; "I come forth
To crown all poets to their worth.

"Yea, verily, to anoint them all
With blessed oils which surely shall
Smell sweeter as the ages fall. "

"As sweet," the poet said, and rung
A low sad laugh, "as flowers are, sprung
Out of their graves when they die young;

"As sweet as window-eglantine,
Some bough of which, as they decline,
The hired nurse gathers at their sign:

"As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud
Which the gay Roman maidens sewed
For English Keats, singing aloud. "

The lady answered, "Yea, as sweet!
The things thou namest being complete
In fragrance, as I measure it.

"Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell
Of him who having lived, dies well;
And wholly sweet the asphodel

"Stirred softly by that foot of his,
When he treads brave on all that is,
Into the world of souls, from this.

"Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door
Of tearless Death, and even before:
Sweet, consecrated evermore.

"What, dost thou judge it a strange thing
That poets, crowned for vanquishing,
Should bear some dust from out the ring?

"Come on with me, come on with me,
And learn in coming: let me free
Thy spirit into verity. "

She ceased: her palfrey's paces sent
No separate noises as she went;
'Twas a bee's hum, a little spent.

And while the poet seemed to tread
Along the drowsy noise so made,
The forest heaved up overhead

Its billowy foliage through the air,
And the calm stars did far and spare
O'erswim the masses everywhere

Save when the overtopping pines
Did bar their tremulous light with lines
All fixed and black. Now the moon shines

A broader glory. You may see
The trees grow rarer presently;
The air blows up more fresh and free:

Until they come from dark to light,
And from the forest to the sight
Of the large heaven-heart, bare with night,

A fiery throb in every star,
Those burning arteries that are
The conduits of God's life afar,--

A wild brown moorland underneath,
And four pools breaking up the heath
With white low gleamings, blank as death.

Beside the first pool, near the wood,
A dead tree in set horror stood,
Peeled and disjointed, stark as rood;

Since thunder-stricken, years ago,
Fixed in the spectral strain and throe
Wherewith it struggled from the blow:

A monumental tree, alone,
That will not bend in storms, nor groan,
But break off sudden like a stone.

Its lifeless shadow lies oblique
Upon the pool where, javelin-like,
The star-rays quiver while they strike.

"Drink," said the lady, very still--
"Be holy and cold. " He did her will
And drank the starry water chill.

The next pool they came near unto
Was bare of trees; there, only grew
Straight flags, and lilies just a few

Which sullen on the water sate
And leant their faces on the flat,
As weary of the starlight-state.

"Drink," said the lady, grave and slow--
"_World's use_ behoveth thee to know. "
He drank the bitter wave below.

The third pool, girt with thorny bushes
And flaunting weeds and reeds and rushes
That winds sang through in mournful gushes,

Was whitely smeared in many a round
By a slow slime; the starlight swound
Over the ghastly light it found.

"Drink," said the lady, sad and slow--
"_World's love_ behoveth thee to know. "
He looked to her commanding so;

Her brow was troubled, but her eye
Struck clear to his soul. For all reply
He drank the water suddenly,--

Then, with a deathly sickness, passed
Beside the fourth pool and the last,
Where weights of shadow were downcast

From yew and alder and rank trails
Of nightshade clasping the trunk-scales
And flung across the intervals

From yew to yew: who dares to stoop
Where those dank branches overdroop,
Into his heart the chill strikes up,

He hears a silent gliding coil,
The snakes strain hard against the soil,
His foot slips in their slimy oil,

And toads seem crawling on his hand,
And clinging bats but dimly scanned
Full in his face their wings expand.

A paleness took the poet's cheek:
"Must I drink _here_? " he seemed to seek
The lady's will with utterance meek:

"Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be;"
(And this time she spake cheerfully)
"Behoves thee know _World's cruelty_. "

He bowed his forehead till his mouth
Curved in the wave, and drank unloth
As if from rivers of the south;

His lips sobbed through the water rank,
His heart paused in him while he drank,
His brain beat heart-like, rose and sank,

And he swooned backward to a dream
Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam,
With Death and Life at each extreme:

And spiritual thunders, born of soul
Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole
And o'er him roll and counter-roll,

Crushing their echoes reboant
With their own wheels. Did Heaven so grant
His spirit a sign of covenant?

At last came silence. A slow kiss
Did crown his forehead after this;
His eyelids flew back for the bliss--

The lady stood beside his head,
Smiling a thought, with hair dispread;
The moonshine seemed dishevellèd

In her sleek tresses manifold
Like Danaë's in the rain of old
That dripped with melancholy gold:

But SHE was holy, pale and high
As one who saw an ecstasy
Beyond a foretold agony.

"Rise up! " said she with voice where song
Eddied through speech, "rise up; be strong:
And learn how right avenges wrong. "

The poet rose up on his feet:
He stood before an altar set
For sacrament with vessels meet

And mystic altar-lights which shine
As if their flames were crystalline
Carved flames that would not shrink or pine.

The altar filled the central place
Of a great church, and toward its face
Long aisles did shoot and interlace,

And from it a continuous mist
Of incense (round the edges kissed
By a yellow light of amethyst)

Wound upward slowly and throbbingly,
Cloud within cloud, right silverly,
Cloud above cloud, victoriously,--

Broke full against the archèd roof
And thence refracting eddied off
And floated through the marble woof

Of many a fine-wrought architrave,
Then, poising its white masses brave,
Swept solemnly down aisle and nave

Where, now in dark and now in light,
The countless columns, glimmering white,
Seemed leading out to the Infinite:

Plunged halfway up the shaft, they showed
In that pale shifting incense-cloud
Which flowed them by and overflowed

Till mist and marble seemed to blend
And the whole temple, at the end,
With its own incense to distend,--

The arches like a giant's bow
To bend and slacken,--and below,
The nichèd saints to come and go:

Alone amid the shifting scene
That central altar stood serene
In its clear steadfast taper-sheen.

Then first, the poet was aware
Of a chief angel standing there
Before that altar, in the glare.

His eyes were dreadful, for you saw
That _they_ saw God; his lips and jaw
Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's law

They could enunciate and refrain
From vibratory after-pain,
And his brow's height was sovereign:

On the vast background of his wings
Rises his image, and he flings
From each plumed arc pale glitterings

And fiery flakes (as beateth, more
Or less, the angel-heart) before
And round him upon roof and floor,

Edging with fire the shifting fumes,
While at his side 'twixt lights and glooms
The phantasm of an organ booms.

Extending from which instrument
And angel, right and left-way bent,
The poet's sight grew sentient

Of a strange company around
And toward the altar, pale and bound
With bay above the eyes profound.

Deathful their faces were, and yet
The power of life was in them set--
Never forgot nor to forget:

Sublime significance of mouth,
Dilated nostril full of youth,
And forehead royal with the truth.

These faces were not multiplied
Beyond your count, but side by side
Did front the altar, glorified,

Still as a vision, yet exprest
Full as an action--look and geste
Of buried saint in risen rest.

The poet knew them. Faint and dim
His spirits seemed to sink in him--
Then, like a dolphin, change and swim

The current: these were poets true,
Who died for Beauty as martyrs do
For Truth--the ends being scarcely two.

God's prophets of the Beautiful
These poets were; of iron rule,
The rugged cilix, serge of wool.

Here Homer, with the broad suspense
Of thunderous brows, and lips intense
Of garrulous god-innocence.

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world: O eyes sublime
With tears and laughters for all time!

Here Æschylus, the women swooned
To see so awful when he frowned
As the gods did: he standeth crowned.

Euripides, with close and mild
Scholastic lips, that could be wild
And laugh or sob out like a child

Even in the classes. Sophocles,
With that king's-look which down the trees
Followed the dark effigies

Of the lost Theban. Hesiod old,
Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold,
Cared most for gods and bulls. And bold

Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear
Slant startled eyes that seem to hear

The chariot rounding the last goal,
To hurtle past it in his soul.
And Sappho, with that gloriole

Of ebon hair on calmèd brows--
O poet-woman! none forgoes
The leap, attaining the repose.

Theocritus, with glittering locks
Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks
He watched the visionary flocks.

And Aristophanes, who took
The world with mirth, and laughter-struck
The hollow caves of Thought and woke

The infinite echoes hid in each.
And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech
Did help the shade of bay to reach

And knit around his forehead high:
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.

Lucretius, nobler than his mood,
Who dropped his plummet down the broad
Deep universe and said "No God--"

Finding no bottom: he denied
Divinely the divine, and died
Chief poet on the Tiber-side

By grace of God: his face is stern
As one compelled, in spite of scorn,
To teach a truth he would not learn.

And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed;
Once counted greater than the rest,
When mountain-winds blew out his vest.

And Spenser drooped his dreaming head
(With languid sleep-smile you had said
From his own verse engenderèd)

On Ariosto's, till they ran
Their curls in one: the Italian
Shot nimbler heat of bolder man

From his fine lids. And Dante stern
And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
For wine and milk poured out in turn.

Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed
Boiardo, who with laughter filled
The pauses of the jostled shield.

And Berni, with a hand stretched out
To sleek that storm. And, not without
The wreath he died in and the doubt

He died by, Tasso, bard and lover,
Whose visions were too thin to cover
The face of a false woman over.

And soft Racine; and grave Corneille,
The orator of rhymes, whose wail
Scarce shook his purple. And Petrarch pale,

From whose brain-lighted heart were thrown
A thousand thoughts beneath the sun,
Each lucid with the name of One.

And Camoens, with that look he had,
Compelling India's Genius sad
From the wave through the Lusiad,--

The murmurs of the storm-cape ocean
Indrawn in vibrative emotion
Along the verse. And, while devotion

In his wild eyes fantastic shone
Under the tonsure blown upon
By airs celestial, Calderon.

And bold De Vega, who breathed quick
Verse after verse, till death's old trick
Put pause to life and rhetoric.

And Goethe, with that reaching eye
His soul reached out from, far and high,
And fell from inner entity.

And Schiller, with heroic front
Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon 't,
Too large for wreath of modern wont.

And Chaucer, with his infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine;
That mark upon his lip is wine.

Here, Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim:
The shapes of suns and stars did swim
Like clouds from them, and granted him

God for sole vision. Cowley, there,
Whose active fancy debonair
Drew straws like amber--foul to fair.

Drayton and Browne, with smiles they drew
From outward nature, still kept new
From their own inward nature true.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,
Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when
The world was worthy of such men.

And Burns, with pungent passionings
Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs
Are of the fire-mount's issuings.

And Shelley, in his white ideal,
All statue-blind. And Keats the real
Adonis with the hymeneal

Fresh vernal buds half sunk between
His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen
In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen.

And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave
And salt as life; forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave.

And visionary Coleridge, who
Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
Their wings with cadence up the Blue.

These poets faced (and many more)
The lighted altar looming o'er
The clouds of incense dim and hoar:

And all their faces, in the lull
Of natural things, looked wonderful
With life and death and deathless rule.

All, still as stone and yet intense;
As if by spirit's vehemence
That stone were carved and not by sense.

But where the heart of each should beat,
There seemed a wound instead of it,
From whence the blood dropped to their feet

Drop after drop--dropped heavily
As century follows century
Into the deep eternity.

Then said the lady--and her word
Came distant, as wide waves were stirred
Between her and the ear that heard,--

"_World's use_ is cold, _world's love_ is vain,
_World's cruelty_ is bitter bane,
But pain is not the fruit of pain.

"Hearken, O poet, whom I led
From the dark wood: dismissing dread,
Now hear this angel in my stead.

"His organ's clavier strikes along
These poets' hearts, sonorous, strong,
They gave him without count of wrong,--

"A diapason whence to guide
Up to God's feet, from these who died,
An anthem fully glorified--

"Whereat God's blessing, IBARAK (=yivarech=)
Breathes back this music, folds it back
About the earth in vapoury rack,

"And men walk in it, crying 'Lo
The world is wider, and we know
The very heavens look brighter so:

"'The stars move statelier round the edge
Of the silver spheres, and give in pledge
Their light for nobler privilege:

"'No little flower but joys or grieves,
Full life is rustling in the sheaves,
Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves. '

"So works this music on the earth,
God so admits it, sends it forth
To add another worth to worth--

"A new creation-bloom that rounds
The old creation and expounds
His Beautiful in tuneful sounds.

"Now hearken! " Then the poet gazed
Upon the angel glorious-faced
Whose hand, majestically raised,

Floated across the organ-keys,
Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas,
With no touch but with influences:

Then rose and fell (with swell and swound
Of shapeless noises wandering round
A concord which at last they found)

Those mystic keys: the tones were mixed,
Dim, faint, and thrilled and throbbed betwixt
The incomplete and the unfixed:

And therein mighty minds were heard
In mighty musings, inly stirred,
And struggling outward for a word:

Until these surges, having run
This way and that, gave out as one
An Aphroditè of sweet tune,

A Harmony that, finding vent,
Upward in grand ascension went,
Winged to a heavenly argument,

Up, upward like a saint who strips
The shroud back from his eyes and lips,
And rises in apocalypse:

A harmony sublime and plain,
Which cleft (as flying swan, the rain,--
Throwing the drops off with a strain

Of her white wing) those undertones
Of perplext chords, and soared at once
And struck out from the starry thrones

Their several silver octaves as
It passed to God. The music was
Of divine stature; strong to pass:

And those who heard it, understood
Something of life in spirit and blood,
Something of nature's fair and good:

And while it sounded, those great souls
Did thrill as racers at the goals
And burn in all their aureoles;

But she the lady, as vapour-bound,
Stood calmly in the joy of sound,
Like Nature with the showers around:

And when it ceased, the blood which fell
Again, alone grew audible,
Tolling the silence as a bell.

The sovran angel lifted high
His hand, and spake out sovranly:
"Tried poets, hearken and reply!

"Give me true answers. If we grant
That not to suffer, is to want
The conscience of the jubilant,--

"If ignorance of anguish is
_But_ ignorance, and mortals miss
Far prospects, by a level bliss,--

"If, as two colours must be viewed
In a visible image, mortals should
Need good and evil, to see good,--

"If to speak nobly, comprehends
To feel profoundly,--if the ends
Of power and suffering, Nature blends,--

"If poets on the tripod must
Writhe like the Pythian to make just
Their oracles and merit trust,--

"If every vatic word that sweeps
To change the world must pale their lips
And leave their own souls in eclipse,--

"If to search deep the universe
Must pierce the searcher with the curse,
Because that bolt (in man's reverse)

"Was shot to the heart o' the wood and lies
Wedged deepest in the best,--if eyes
That look for visions and surprise

"From influent angels, must shut down
Their eyelids first to sun and moon,
The head asleep upon a stone,--

"If ONE who did redeem you back,
By His own loss, from final wrack,
Did consecrate by touch and track

"Those temporal sorrows till the taste
Of brackish waters of the waste
Is salt with tears He dropt too fast,--

"If all the crowns of earth must wound
With prickings of the thorns He found,--
If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound,--

"What say ye unto this? --refuse
This baptism in salt water?