"Drink," said the lady, grave and slow--
"_World's use_ behoveth thee to know.
"_World's use_ behoveth thee to know.
Elizabeth Browning - 1
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? --choose
Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose?
"Or, O ye gifted givers! ye
Who give your liberal hearts to me
To make the world this harmony,
"Are ye resigned that they be spent
To such world's help? "
The Spirits bent
Their awful brows and said "Content. "
Content! it sounded like _Amen_
Said by a choir of mourning men;
An affirmation full of pain
And patience,--ay, of glorying
And adoration, as a king
Might seal an oath for governing.
Then said the angel--and his face
Lightened abroad until the place
Grew larger for a moment's space,--
The long aisles flashing out in light,
And nave and transept, columns white
And arches crossed, being clear to sight
As if the roof were off and all
Stood in the noon-sun,--"Lo, I call
To other hearts as liberal.
"This pedal strikes out in the air:
My instrument has room to bear
Still fuller strains and perfecter.
"Herein is room, and shall be room
While Time lasts, for new hearts to come
Consummating while they consume.
"What living man will bring a gift
Of his own heart and help to lift
The tune? --The race is to the swift. "
So asked the angel. Straight the while,
A company came up the aisle
With measured step and sorted smile;
Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise,
With winking unaccustomed eyes
And love-locks smelling sweet of spice.
One bore his head above the rest
As if the world were dispossessed,
And one did pillow chin on breast,
Right languid, an as he should faint;
One shook his curls across his paint
And moralized on worldly taint;
One, slanting up his face, did wink
The salt rheum to the eyelid's brink,
To think--O gods! or--not to think.
Some trod out stealthily and slow,
As if the sun would fall in snow
If they walked to instead of fro;
And some, with conscious ambling free,
Did shake their bells right daintily
On hand and foot, for harmony;
And some, composing sudden sighs
In attitudes of point-device,
Rehearsed impromptu agonies.
And when this company drew near
The spirits crowned, it might appear
Submitted to a ghastly fear;
As a sane eye in master-passion
Constrains a maniac to the fashion
Of hideous maniac imitation
In the least geste--the dropping low
O' the lid, the wrinkling of the brow,
Exaggerate with mock and mow,--
So mastered was that company
By the crowned vision utterly,
Swayed to a maniac mockery.
One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached
With Homer's forehead, though he lacked
An inch of any; and one racked
His lower lip with restless tooth,
As Pindar's rushing words forsooth
Were pent behind it; one his smooth
Pink cheeks did rumple passionate
Like Æschylus, and tried to prate
On trolling tongue of fate and fate;
One set her eyes like Sappho's--or
Any light woman's; one forbore
Like Dante, or any man as poor
In mirth, to let a smile undo
His hard-shut lips; and one that drew
Sour humours from his mother, blew
His sunken cheeks out to the size
Of most unnatural jollities,
Because Anacreon looked jest-wise;
So with the rest: it was a sight
A great world-laughter would requite,
Or great world-wrath, with equal right
Out came a speaker from that crowd
To speak for all, in sleek and proud
Exordial periods, while he bowed
His knee before the angel--"Thus,
O angel who hast called for us,
We bring thee service emulous,
"Fit service from sufficient soul,
Hand-service to receive world's dole,
Lip-service in world's ear to roll
"Adjusted concords soft enow
To hear the wine-cups passing, through,
And not too grave to spoil the show:
"Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
O sapient angel, leanest o'er
The window-sill of metaphor.
"To give our hearts up? fie! that rage
Barbaric antedates the age;
It is not done on any stage.
"Because your scald or gleeman went
With seven or nine-stringed instrument
Upon his back,--must ours be bent?
"We are not pilgrims, by your leave;
No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve,
It is to rhyme to--summer eve:
"And if we labour, it shall be
As suiteth best with our degree,
In after-dinner reverie. "
More yet that speaker would have said,
Poising between his smiles fair-fed
Each separate phrase till finishèd;
But all the foreheads of those born
And dead true poets flashed with scorn
Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn,
Ay, jetted such brave fire that they,
The new-come, shrank and paled away
Like leaden ashes when the day
Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast,
A presence known by power, at last
Took them up mutely: they had passed.
And he our pilgrim-poet saw
Only their places, in deep awe,
What time the angel's smile did draw
His gazing upward. Smiling on,
The angel in the angel shone,
Revealing glory in benison;
Till, ripened in the light which shut
The poet in, his spirit mute
Dropped sudden as a perfect fruit;
He fell before the angel's feet,
Saying, "If what is true is sweet,
In something I may compass it:
"For, where my worthiness is poor,
My will stands richly at the door
To pay shortcomings evermore.
"Accept me therefore: not for price
And not for pride my sacrifice
Is tendered, for my soul is nice
"And will beat down those dusty seeds
Of bearded corn if she succeeds
In soaring while the covey feeds.
"I soar, I am drawn up like the lark
To its white cloud--so high my mark,
Albeit my wing is small and dark.
"I ask no wages, seek no fame:
Sew me, for shroud round face and name,
God's banner of the oriflamme.
"I only would have leave to loose
(In tears and blood if so He choose)
Mine inward music out to use:
"I only would be spent--in pain
And loss, perchance, but not in vain--
Upon the sweetness of that strain;
"Only project beyond the bound
Of mine own life, so lost and found,
My voice, and live on in its sound;
"Only embrace and be embraced
By fiery ends, whereby to waste,
And light God's future with my past. "
The angel's smile grew more divine,
The mortal speaking; ay, its shine
Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine,
Till the broad glory round his brow
Did vibrate with the light below;
But what he said I do not know.
Nor know I if the man who prayed,
Rose up accepted, unforbade,
From the church-floor where he was laid,--
Nor if a listening life did run
Through the king-poets, one by one
Rejoicing in a worthy son:
My soul, which might have seen, grew blind
By what it looked on: I can find
No certain count of things behind.
I saw alone, dim, white and grand
As in a dream, the angel's hand
Stretched forth in gesture of command
Straight through the haze. And so, as erst,
A strain more noble than the first
Mused in the organ, and outburst:
With giant march from floor to roof
Rose the full notes, now parted off
In pauses massively aloof
Like measured thunders, now rejoined
In concords of mysterious kind
Which fused together sense and mind,
Now flashing sharp on sharp along
Exultant in a mounting throng,
Now dying off to a low song
Fed upon minors, wavelike sounds
Re-eddying into silver rounds,
Enlarging liberty with bounds:
And every rhythm that seemed to close
Survived in confluent underflows
Symphonious with the next that rose.
Thus the whole strain being multiplied
And greatened, with its glorified
Wings shot abroad from side to side,
Waved backward (as a wind might wave
A Brocken mist and with as brave
Wild roaring) arch and architrave,
Aisle, transept, column, marble wall,--
Then swelling outward, prodigal
Of aspiration beyond thrall,
Soared, and drew up with it the whole
Of this said vision, as a soul
Is raised by a thought. And as a scroll
Of bright devices is unrolled
Still upward with a gradual gold,
So rose the vision manifold,
Angel and organ, and the round
Of spirits, solemnized and crowned;
While the freed clouds of incense wound
Ascending, following in their track,
And glimmering faintly like the rack
O' the moon in her own light cast back.
And as that solemn dream withdrew,
The lady's kiss did fall anew
Cold on the poet's brow as dew.
And that same kiss which bound him first
Beyond the senses, now reversed
Its own law and most subtly pierced
His spirit with the sense of things
Sensual and present. Vanishings
Of glory with Æolian wings
Struck him and passed: the lady's face
Did melt back in the chrysopras
Of the orient morning sky that was
Yet clear of lark and there and so
She melted as a star might do,
Still smiling as she melted slow:
Smiling so slow, he seemed to see
Her smile the last thing, gloriously
Beyond her, far as memory.
Then he looked round: he was alone.
He lay before the breaking sun,
As Jacob at the Bethel stone.
And thought's entangled skein being wound,
He knew the moorland of his swound,
And the pale pools that smeared the ground;
The far wood-pines like offing ships;
The fourth pool's yew anear him drips,
_World's cruelty_ attaints his lips,
And still he tastes it, bitter still;
Through all that glorious possible
He had the sight of present ill.
Yet rising calmly up and slowly
With such a cheer as scorneth folly,
A mild delightsome melancholy,
He journeyed homeward through the wood
And prayed along the solitude
Betwixt the pines, "O God, my God! "
The golden morning's open flowings
Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,
In metric chant of blessed poems.
And passing homeward through the wood,
He prayed along the solitude,
"THOU, Poet-God, art great and good!
"And though we must have, and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
THOU, Poet-God, art great and glad! "
CONCLUSION.
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart:
And I was 'ware of walking down
That same green forest where had gone
The poet-pilgrim. One by one
I traced his footsteps. From the east
A red and tender radiance pressed
Through the near trees, until I guessed
The sun behind shone full and round;
While up the leafiness profound
A wind scarce old enough for sound
Stood ready to blow on me when
I turned that way, and now and then
The birds sang and brake off again
To shake their pretty feathers dry
Of the dew sliding droppingly
From the leaf-edges and apply
Back to their song: 'twixt dew and bird
So sweet a silence ministered,
God seemed to use it for a word,
Yet morning souls did leap and run
In all things, as the least had won
A joyous insight of the sun,
And no one looking round the wood
Could help confessing as he stood,
_This Poet-God is glad and good. _
But hark! a distant sound that grows,
A heaving, sinking of the boughs,
A rustling murmur, not of those,
A breezy noise which is not breeze!
And white-clad children by degrees
Steal out in troops among the trees,
Fair little children morning-bright,
With faces grave yet soft to sight,
Expressive of restrained delight.
Some plucked the palm-boughs within reach,
And others leapt up high to catch
The upper boughs and shake from each
A rain of dew till, wetted so,
The child who held the branch let go
And it swang backward with a flow
Of faster drippings. Then I knew
The children laughed; but the laugh flew
From its own chirrup as might do
A frightened song-bird; and a child
Who seemed the chief said very mild,
"Hush! keep this morning undefiled. "
His eyes rebuked them from calm spheres,
His soul upon his brow appears
In waiting for more holy years.
I called the child to me, and said,
"What are your palms for? " "To be spread,"
He answered, "on a poet dead.
"The poet died last month, and now
The world which had been somewhat slow
In honouring his living brow,
"Commands the palms; they must be strown
On his new marble very soon,
In a procession of the town. "
I sighed and said, "Did he foresee
Any such honour? " "Verily
I cannot tell you," answered he.
"But this I know, I fain would lay
My own head down, another day,
As _he_ did,--with the fame away.
"A lily, a friend's hand had plucked,
Lay by his death-bed, which he looked
As deep down as a bee had sucked,
"Then, turning to the lattice, gazed
O'er hill and river and upraised
His eyes illumined and amazed
"With the world's beauty, up to God,
Re-offering on their iris broad
The images of things bestowed
"By the chief Poet. 'God! ' he cried,
'Be praised for anguish which has tried,
For beauty which has satisfied:
"'For this world's presence half within
And half without me--thought and scene--
This sense of Being and Having Been.
"'I thank Thee that my soul hath room
For Thy grand world: both guests may come--
Beauty, to soul--Body, to tomb.
"'I am content to be so weak:
Put strength into the words I speak,
And I am strong in what I seek.
"'I am content to be so bare
Before the archers, everywhere
My wounds being stroked by heavenly air.
"'I laid my soul before Thy feet
That images of fair and sweet
Should walk to other men on it.
"'I am content to feel the step
Of each pure image: let those keep
To mandragore who care to sleep.
"'I am content to touch the brink
Of the other goblet and I think
My bitter drink a wholesome drink.
"'Because my portion was assigned
Wholesome and bitter, Thou art kind,
And I am blessed to my mind.
"'Gifted for giving, I receive
The maythorn and its scent outgive:
I grieve not that I once did grieve.
"'In my large joy of sight and touch
Beyond what others count for such,
I am content to suffer much.
"'_I know_--is all the mourner saith,
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And Life is perfected by Death. '"
The child spake nobly: strange to hear,
His infantine soft accents clear
Charged with high meanings, did appear;
And fair to see, his form and face
Winged out with whiteness and pure grace
From the green darkness of the place.
Behind his head a palm-tree grew;
An orient beam which pierced it through
Transversely on his forehead drew
The figure of a palm-branch brown
Traced on its brightness up and down
In fine fair lines,--a shadow-crown:
Guido might paint his angels so--
A little angel, taught to go
With holy words to saints below--
Such innocence of action yet
Significance of object met
In his whole bearing strong and sweet.
And all the children, the whole band,
Did round in rosy reverence stand,
Each with a palm-bough in his hand.
"And so he died," I whispered. "Nay,
Not _so_," the childish voice did say,
"That poet turned him first to pray
"In silence, and God heard the rest
'Twixt the sun's footsteps down the west.
Then he called one who loved him best,
"Yea, he called softly through the room
(His voice was weak yet tender)--'Come,'
He said, 'come nearer! Let the bloom
"'Of Life grow over, undenied,
This bridge of Death, which is not wide--
I shall be soon at the other side.
"'Come, kiss me! ' So the one in truth
Who loved him best,--in love, not ruth,
Bowed down and kissed him mouth to mouth:
"And in that kiss of love was won
Life's manumission. All was done:
The mouth that kissed last, kissed _alone_.
"But in the former, confluent kiss,
The same was sealed, I think, by His,
To words of truth and uprightness. "
The child's voice trembled, his lips shook
Like a rose leaning o'er a brook,
Which vibrates though it is not struck.
"And who," I asked, a little moved
Yet curious-eyed, "was this that loved
And kissed him last, as it behoved? "
"_I_," softly said the child; and then
"_I_," said he louder, once again:
"His son, my rank is among men:
"And now that men exalt his name
I come to gather palms with them,
That holy love may hallow fame.
"He did not die alone, nor should
His memory live so, 'mid these rude
World-praisers--a worse solitude.
"Me, a voice calleth to that tomb
Where these are strewing branch and bloom
Saying, 'Come nearer:' and I come.
"Glory to God! " resumèd he,
And his eyes smiled for victory
O'er their own tears which I could see
Fallen on the palm, down cheek and chin--
"That poet now has entered in
The place of rest which is not sin.
"And while he rests, his songs in troops
Walk up and down our earthly slopes,
Companioned by diviner hopes. "
"But _thou_," I murmured to engage
The child's speech farther--"hast an age
Too tender for this orphanage. "
"Glory to God--to God! " he saith:
"KNOWLEDGE BY SUFFERING ENTERETH,
AND LIFE IS PERFECTED BY DEATH. "
THE POET'S VOW
O be wiser thou,
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.
WORDSWORTH.
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST.
SHOWING WHEREFORE THE VOW WAS MADE.
I.
Eve is a twofold mystery;
The stillness Earth doth keep,
The motion wherewith human hearts
Do each to either leap
As if all souls between the poles
Felt "Parting comes in sleep. "
II.
The rowers lift their oars to view
Each other in the sea;
The landsmen watch the rocking boats
In a pleasant company;
While up the hill go gladlier still
Dear friends by two and three.
III.
The peasant's wife hath looked without
Her cottage door and smiled,
For there the peasant drops his spade
To clasp his youngest child
Which hath no speech, but its hand can reach
And stroke his forehead mild.
IV.
A poet sate that eventide
Within his hall alone,
As silent as its ancient lords
In the coffined place of stone,
When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk,
And the praying monk is gone.
V.
Nor wore the dead a stiller face
Beneath the cerement's roll:
His lips refusing out in words
Their mystic thoughts to dole,
His steadfast eye burnt inwardly,
As burning out his soul.
VI.
You would not think that brow could e'er
Ungentle moods express,
Yet seemed it, in this troubled world,
Too calm for gentleness,
When the very star that shines from far
Shines trembling ne'ertheless.
VII.
It lacked, all need, the softening light
Which other brows supply:
We should conjoin the scathèd trunks
Of our humanity,
That each leafless spray entwining may
Look softer 'gainst the sky.
VIII.
None gazed within the poet's face,
The poet gazed in none;
He threw a lonely shadow straight
Before the moon and sun,
Affronting nature's heaven-dwelling creatures
With wrong to nature done:
IX.
Because this poet daringly,
--The nature at his heart,
And that quick tune along his veins
He could not change by art,--
Had vowed his blood of brotherhood
To a stagnant place apart.
X.
He did not vow in fear, or wrath,
Or grief's fantastic whim,
But, weights and shows of sensual things
Too closely crossing him,
On his soul's eyelid the pressure slid
And made its vision dim.
XI.
And darkening in the dark he strove
'Twixt earth and sea and sky
To lose in shadow, wave and cloud,
His brother's haunting cry:
The winds were welcome as they swept,
God's five-day work he would accept,
But let the rest go by.
XII.
He cried, "O touching, patient Earth
That weepest in thy glee,
Whom God created very good,
And very mournful, we!
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? --choose
Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose?
"Or, O ye gifted givers! ye
Who give your liberal hearts to me
To make the world this harmony,
"Are ye resigned that they be spent
To such world's help? "
The Spirits bent
Their awful brows and said "Content. "
Content! it sounded like _Amen_
Said by a choir of mourning men;
An affirmation full of pain
And patience,--ay, of glorying
And adoration, as a king
Might seal an oath for governing.
Then said the angel--and his face
Lightened abroad until the place
Grew larger for a moment's space,--
The long aisles flashing out in light,
And nave and transept, columns white
And arches crossed, being clear to sight
As if the roof were off and all
Stood in the noon-sun,--"Lo, I call
To other hearts as liberal.
"This pedal strikes out in the air:
My instrument has room to bear
Still fuller strains and perfecter.
"Herein is room, and shall be room
While Time lasts, for new hearts to come
Consummating while they consume.
"What living man will bring a gift
Of his own heart and help to lift
The tune? --The race is to the swift. "
So asked the angel. Straight the while,
A company came up the aisle
With measured step and sorted smile;
Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise,
With winking unaccustomed eyes
And love-locks smelling sweet of spice.
One bore his head above the rest
As if the world were dispossessed,
And one did pillow chin on breast,
Right languid, an as he should faint;
One shook his curls across his paint
And moralized on worldly taint;
One, slanting up his face, did wink
The salt rheum to the eyelid's brink,
To think--O gods! or--not to think.
Some trod out stealthily and slow,
As if the sun would fall in snow
If they walked to instead of fro;
And some, with conscious ambling free,
Did shake their bells right daintily
On hand and foot, for harmony;
And some, composing sudden sighs
In attitudes of point-device,
Rehearsed impromptu agonies.
And when this company drew near
The spirits crowned, it might appear
Submitted to a ghastly fear;
As a sane eye in master-passion
Constrains a maniac to the fashion
Of hideous maniac imitation
In the least geste--the dropping low
O' the lid, the wrinkling of the brow,
Exaggerate with mock and mow,--
So mastered was that company
By the crowned vision utterly,
Swayed to a maniac mockery.
One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached
With Homer's forehead, though he lacked
An inch of any; and one racked
His lower lip with restless tooth,
As Pindar's rushing words forsooth
Were pent behind it; one his smooth
Pink cheeks did rumple passionate
Like Æschylus, and tried to prate
On trolling tongue of fate and fate;
One set her eyes like Sappho's--or
Any light woman's; one forbore
Like Dante, or any man as poor
In mirth, to let a smile undo
His hard-shut lips; and one that drew
Sour humours from his mother, blew
His sunken cheeks out to the size
Of most unnatural jollities,
Because Anacreon looked jest-wise;
So with the rest: it was a sight
A great world-laughter would requite,
Or great world-wrath, with equal right
Out came a speaker from that crowd
To speak for all, in sleek and proud
Exordial periods, while he bowed
His knee before the angel--"Thus,
O angel who hast called for us,
We bring thee service emulous,
"Fit service from sufficient soul,
Hand-service to receive world's dole,
Lip-service in world's ear to roll
"Adjusted concords soft enow
To hear the wine-cups passing, through,
And not too grave to spoil the show:
"Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
O sapient angel, leanest o'er
The window-sill of metaphor.
"To give our hearts up? fie! that rage
Barbaric antedates the age;
It is not done on any stage.
"Because your scald or gleeman went
With seven or nine-stringed instrument
Upon his back,--must ours be bent?
"We are not pilgrims, by your leave;
No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve,
It is to rhyme to--summer eve:
"And if we labour, it shall be
As suiteth best with our degree,
In after-dinner reverie. "
More yet that speaker would have said,
Poising between his smiles fair-fed
Each separate phrase till finishèd;
But all the foreheads of those born
And dead true poets flashed with scorn
Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn,
Ay, jetted such brave fire that they,
The new-come, shrank and paled away
Like leaden ashes when the day
Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast,
A presence known by power, at last
Took them up mutely: they had passed.
And he our pilgrim-poet saw
Only their places, in deep awe,
What time the angel's smile did draw
His gazing upward. Smiling on,
The angel in the angel shone,
Revealing glory in benison;
Till, ripened in the light which shut
The poet in, his spirit mute
Dropped sudden as a perfect fruit;
He fell before the angel's feet,
Saying, "If what is true is sweet,
In something I may compass it:
"For, where my worthiness is poor,
My will stands richly at the door
To pay shortcomings evermore.
"Accept me therefore: not for price
And not for pride my sacrifice
Is tendered, for my soul is nice
"And will beat down those dusty seeds
Of bearded corn if she succeeds
In soaring while the covey feeds.
"I soar, I am drawn up like the lark
To its white cloud--so high my mark,
Albeit my wing is small and dark.
"I ask no wages, seek no fame:
Sew me, for shroud round face and name,
God's banner of the oriflamme.
"I only would have leave to loose
(In tears and blood if so He choose)
Mine inward music out to use:
"I only would be spent--in pain
And loss, perchance, but not in vain--
Upon the sweetness of that strain;
"Only project beyond the bound
Of mine own life, so lost and found,
My voice, and live on in its sound;
"Only embrace and be embraced
By fiery ends, whereby to waste,
And light God's future with my past. "
The angel's smile grew more divine,
The mortal speaking; ay, its shine
Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine,
Till the broad glory round his brow
Did vibrate with the light below;
But what he said I do not know.
Nor know I if the man who prayed,
Rose up accepted, unforbade,
From the church-floor where he was laid,--
Nor if a listening life did run
Through the king-poets, one by one
Rejoicing in a worthy son:
My soul, which might have seen, grew blind
By what it looked on: I can find
No certain count of things behind.
I saw alone, dim, white and grand
As in a dream, the angel's hand
Stretched forth in gesture of command
Straight through the haze. And so, as erst,
A strain more noble than the first
Mused in the organ, and outburst:
With giant march from floor to roof
Rose the full notes, now parted off
In pauses massively aloof
Like measured thunders, now rejoined
In concords of mysterious kind
Which fused together sense and mind,
Now flashing sharp on sharp along
Exultant in a mounting throng,
Now dying off to a low song
Fed upon minors, wavelike sounds
Re-eddying into silver rounds,
Enlarging liberty with bounds:
And every rhythm that seemed to close
Survived in confluent underflows
Symphonious with the next that rose.
Thus the whole strain being multiplied
And greatened, with its glorified
Wings shot abroad from side to side,
Waved backward (as a wind might wave
A Brocken mist and with as brave
Wild roaring) arch and architrave,
Aisle, transept, column, marble wall,--
Then swelling outward, prodigal
Of aspiration beyond thrall,
Soared, and drew up with it the whole
Of this said vision, as a soul
Is raised by a thought. And as a scroll
Of bright devices is unrolled
Still upward with a gradual gold,
So rose the vision manifold,
Angel and organ, and the round
Of spirits, solemnized and crowned;
While the freed clouds of incense wound
Ascending, following in their track,
And glimmering faintly like the rack
O' the moon in her own light cast back.
And as that solemn dream withdrew,
The lady's kiss did fall anew
Cold on the poet's brow as dew.
And that same kiss which bound him first
Beyond the senses, now reversed
Its own law and most subtly pierced
His spirit with the sense of things
Sensual and present. Vanishings
Of glory with Æolian wings
Struck him and passed: the lady's face
Did melt back in the chrysopras
Of the orient morning sky that was
Yet clear of lark and there and so
She melted as a star might do,
Still smiling as she melted slow:
Smiling so slow, he seemed to see
Her smile the last thing, gloriously
Beyond her, far as memory.
Then he looked round: he was alone.
He lay before the breaking sun,
As Jacob at the Bethel stone.
And thought's entangled skein being wound,
He knew the moorland of his swound,
And the pale pools that smeared the ground;
The far wood-pines like offing ships;
The fourth pool's yew anear him drips,
_World's cruelty_ attaints his lips,
And still he tastes it, bitter still;
Through all that glorious possible
He had the sight of present ill.
Yet rising calmly up and slowly
With such a cheer as scorneth folly,
A mild delightsome melancholy,
He journeyed homeward through the wood
And prayed along the solitude
Betwixt the pines, "O God, my God! "
The golden morning's open flowings
Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,
In metric chant of blessed poems.
And passing homeward through the wood,
He prayed along the solitude,
"THOU, Poet-God, art great and good!
"And though we must have, and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
THOU, Poet-God, art great and glad! "
CONCLUSION.
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart:
And I was 'ware of walking down
That same green forest where had gone
The poet-pilgrim. One by one
I traced his footsteps. From the east
A red and tender radiance pressed
Through the near trees, until I guessed
The sun behind shone full and round;
While up the leafiness profound
A wind scarce old enough for sound
Stood ready to blow on me when
I turned that way, and now and then
The birds sang and brake off again
To shake their pretty feathers dry
Of the dew sliding droppingly
From the leaf-edges and apply
Back to their song: 'twixt dew and bird
So sweet a silence ministered,
God seemed to use it for a word,
Yet morning souls did leap and run
In all things, as the least had won
A joyous insight of the sun,
And no one looking round the wood
Could help confessing as he stood,
_This Poet-God is glad and good. _
But hark! a distant sound that grows,
A heaving, sinking of the boughs,
A rustling murmur, not of those,
A breezy noise which is not breeze!
And white-clad children by degrees
Steal out in troops among the trees,
Fair little children morning-bright,
With faces grave yet soft to sight,
Expressive of restrained delight.
Some plucked the palm-boughs within reach,
And others leapt up high to catch
The upper boughs and shake from each
A rain of dew till, wetted so,
The child who held the branch let go
And it swang backward with a flow
Of faster drippings. Then I knew
The children laughed; but the laugh flew
From its own chirrup as might do
A frightened song-bird; and a child
Who seemed the chief said very mild,
"Hush! keep this morning undefiled. "
His eyes rebuked them from calm spheres,
His soul upon his brow appears
In waiting for more holy years.
I called the child to me, and said,
"What are your palms for? " "To be spread,"
He answered, "on a poet dead.
"The poet died last month, and now
The world which had been somewhat slow
In honouring his living brow,
"Commands the palms; they must be strown
On his new marble very soon,
In a procession of the town. "
I sighed and said, "Did he foresee
Any such honour? " "Verily
I cannot tell you," answered he.
"But this I know, I fain would lay
My own head down, another day,
As _he_ did,--with the fame away.
"A lily, a friend's hand had plucked,
Lay by his death-bed, which he looked
As deep down as a bee had sucked,
"Then, turning to the lattice, gazed
O'er hill and river and upraised
His eyes illumined and amazed
"With the world's beauty, up to God,
Re-offering on their iris broad
The images of things bestowed
"By the chief Poet. 'God! ' he cried,
'Be praised for anguish which has tried,
For beauty which has satisfied:
"'For this world's presence half within
And half without me--thought and scene--
This sense of Being and Having Been.
"'I thank Thee that my soul hath room
For Thy grand world: both guests may come--
Beauty, to soul--Body, to tomb.
"'I am content to be so weak:
Put strength into the words I speak,
And I am strong in what I seek.
"'I am content to be so bare
Before the archers, everywhere
My wounds being stroked by heavenly air.
"'I laid my soul before Thy feet
That images of fair and sweet
Should walk to other men on it.
"'I am content to feel the step
Of each pure image: let those keep
To mandragore who care to sleep.
"'I am content to touch the brink
Of the other goblet and I think
My bitter drink a wholesome drink.
"'Because my portion was assigned
Wholesome and bitter, Thou art kind,
And I am blessed to my mind.
"'Gifted for giving, I receive
The maythorn and its scent outgive:
I grieve not that I once did grieve.
"'In my large joy of sight and touch
Beyond what others count for such,
I am content to suffer much.
"'_I know_--is all the mourner saith,
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And Life is perfected by Death. '"
The child spake nobly: strange to hear,
His infantine soft accents clear
Charged with high meanings, did appear;
And fair to see, his form and face
Winged out with whiteness and pure grace
From the green darkness of the place.
Behind his head a palm-tree grew;
An orient beam which pierced it through
Transversely on his forehead drew
The figure of a palm-branch brown
Traced on its brightness up and down
In fine fair lines,--a shadow-crown:
Guido might paint his angels so--
A little angel, taught to go
With holy words to saints below--
Such innocence of action yet
Significance of object met
In his whole bearing strong and sweet.
And all the children, the whole band,
Did round in rosy reverence stand,
Each with a palm-bough in his hand.
"And so he died," I whispered. "Nay,
Not _so_," the childish voice did say,
"That poet turned him first to pray
"In silence, and God heard the rest
'Twixt the sun's footsteps down the west.
Then he called one who loved him best,
"Yea, he called softly through the room
(His voice was weak yet tender)--'Come,'
He said, 'come nearer! Let the bloom
"'Of Life grow over, undenied,
This bridge of Death, which is not wide--
I shall be soon at the other side.
"'Come, kiss me! ' So the one in truth
Who loved him best,--in love, not ruth,
Bowed down and kissed him mouth to mouth:
"And in that kiss of love was won
Life's manumission. All was done:
The mouth that kissed last, kissed _alone_.
"But in the former, confluent kiss,
The same was sealed, I think, by His,
To words of truth and uprightness. "
The child's voice trembled, his lips shook
Like a rose leaning o'er a brook,
Which vibrates though it is not struck.
"And who," I asked, a little moved
Yet curious-eyed, "was this that loved
And kissed him last, as it behoved? "
"_I_," softly said the child; and then
"_I_," said he louder, once again:
"His son, my rank is among men:
"And now that men exalt his name
I come to gather palms with them,
That holy love may hallow fame.
"He did not die alone, nor should
His memory live so, 'mid these rude
World-praisers--a worse solitude.
"Me, a voice calleth to that tomb
Where these are strewing branch and bloom
Saying, 'Come nearer:' and I come.
"Glory to God! " resumèd he,
And his eyes smiled for victory
O'er their own tears which I could see
Fallen on the palm, down cheek and chin--
"That poet now has entered in
The place of rest which is not sin.
"And while he rests, his songs in troops
Walk up and down our earthly slopes,
Companioned by diviner hopes. "
"But _thou_," I murmured to engage
The child's speech farther--"hast an age
Too tender for this orphanage. "
"Glory to God--to God! " he saith:
"KNOWLEDGE BY SUFFERING ENTERETH,
AND LIFE IS PERFECTED BY DEATH. "
THE POET'S VOW
O be wiser thou,
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.
WORDSWORTH.
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST.
SHOWING WHEREFORE THE VOW WAS MADE.
I.
Eve is a twofold mystery;
The stillness Earth doth keep,
The motion wherewith human hearts
Do each to either leap
As if all souls between the poles
Felt "Parting comes in sleep. "
II.
The rowers lift their oars to view
Each other in the sea;
The landsmen watch the rocking boats
In a pleasant company;
While up the hill go gladlier still
Dear friends by two and three.
III.
The peasant's wife hath looked without
Her cottage door and smiled,
For there the peasant drops his spade
To clasp his youngest child
Which hath no speech, but its hand can reach
And stroke his forehead mild.
IV.
A poet sate that eventide
Within his hall alone,
As silent as its ancient lords
In the coffined place of stone,
When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk,
And the praying monk is gone.
V.
Nor wore the dead a stiller face
Beneath the cerement's roll:
His lips refusing out in words
Their mystic thoughts to dole,
His steadfast eye burnt inwardly,
As burning out his soul.
VI.
You would not think that brow could e'er
Ungentle moods express,
Yet seemed it, in this troubled world,
Too calm for gentleness,
When the very star that shines from far
Shines trembling ne'ertheless.
VII.
It lacked, all need, the softening light
Which other brows supply:
We should conjoin the scathèd trunks
Of our humanity,
That each leafless spray entwining may
Look softer 'gainst the sky.
VIII.
None gazed within the poet's face,
The poet gazed in none;
He threw a lonely shadow straight
Before the moon and sun,
Affronting nature's heaven-dwelling creatures
With wrong to nature done:
IX.
Because this poet daringly,
--The nature at his heart,
And that quick tune along his veins
He could not change by art,--
Had vowed his blood of brotherhood
To a stagnant place apart.
X.
He did not vow in fear, or wrath,
Or grief's fantastic whim,
But, weights and shows of sensual things
Too closely crossing him,
On his soul's eyelid the pressure slid
And made its vision dim.
XI.
And darkening in the dark he strove
'Twixt earth and sea and sky
To lose in shadow, wave and cloud,
His brother's haunting cry:
The winds were welcome as they swept,
God's five-day work he would accept,
But let the rest go by.
XII.
He cried, "O touching, patient Earth
That weepest in thy glee,
Whom God created very good,
And very mournful, we!
