Up to this time her poems had been simply sponta-
neous utterances; but now she began to study the art of composition
under the guidance of Alexandre, the Roumanian poet.
neous utterances; but now she began to study the art of composition
under the guidance of Alexandre, the Roumanian poet.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
-
These have we not, who have one thing, the divine
Face and clear eyes of faith and fruitful breast.
And ye shall die before your thrones be won. -
Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun
Shall move and shine without us, and we lie
Dead; but if she too move on earth and live,
But if the old world with all the old irons rent
Laugh and give thanks, shall we be not content ?
Nay, we shall rather live, we shall not die,
Life being so little and death so good to give.
And these men shall forget you. — Yea, but we
Shall be a part of the earth and the ancient sea,
And heaven's high air august, and awful fire,
And all things good; and no man's heart shall beat
But somewhat in it of our blood once shed
Shall quiver and quicken, as now in us the dead
Blood of men slain and the old same life's desire
Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh feet.
But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant,
Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present,
That clothe yourselves with the cold future air;
When mother and father and tender sister and brother
And the old live love that was shall be as ye,
Dust, and no fruit of loving life shall be. -
She shall be yet who is more than all these were,
Than sister or wife or father unto us, or mother.
Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages ?
Lo, the dead mouths of the awful gray-grown ages,
The venerable, in the past that is their prison,
In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave,
Laugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said,
How many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead:
Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen ? -
Not we but she, who is tender and swift to save.
## p. 14311 (#505) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14311
Are ye not weary and faint not by the way,
Seeing night by night devoured of day by day,
Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire?
Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye too sleep? -
We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet,
And surely more than all things sleep were sweet,
Than all things save the inexorable desire
Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.
Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow ?
Is this so sure where all men's hopes are hollow,
Even this your dream, that by much tribulation
Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks
straight?
Nay, though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,
Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless;
But man to man, nation would turn to nation,
And the old life live, and the old great world be great.
Pass on then and pass by us and let us be,
For what light think ye after life to see?
And if the world fare better, will ye know?
And if man triumph, who shall seek you and say ? -
Enough of light is this for one life's span,
That all men born are mortal, but not man;
And we men bring death lives by night to sow,
That man may reap and eat and live by day.
SUPER FLUMINA BABYLONIS
B'
Y The waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
Remembering thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,
And wouldst not see.
By the waters of Babylon we stood up and sang,
Considering thee,
That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,
To set thee free.
And with trumpets and thunderings and with morning song
Came up the light;
And thy spirit uplifted thee to forget thy wrong
As day doth night.
## p. 14312 (#506) ##########################################
14312
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
And thy sons were dejected not any more, as then
When thou wast ashamed;
When thy lovers went heavily without heart, as men
Whose life was maimed.
In the desolate distances, with a great desire,
For thy love's sake,
With our hearts going back to thee, they were filled with fire,
Were nigh to break.
(
It was said to us: “Verily ye are great at heart,
But ye shall bend:
Ye are bondsmen and bondswomen, to be scourged and smart,
To toil and tend. "
And with harrows men harrowed us, and subdued with spears,
And crushed with shame;
And the summer and winter was, and the length of years,
And no change came.
By the rivers of Italy, by the sacred streams,
By town, by tower,
There was feasting with reveling, there was sleep with dreams,
Until thine hour.
And they slept and they rioted on their rose-hung beds
With mouths on flame,
And with love-locks vine-chapleted, and with rose-crowned heads
And robes of shame.
And they knew not their forefathers, nor the hills and streams
And words of power,
Nor the gods that were good to them, but with songs and
dreams
Filled up their hour.
By the rivers of Italy, by the dry streams' beds,
When thy time came,
There was casting of crowns from them, from their young
heads,
The crowns of shame.
By the horn of Eridanus, by the Tiber mouth,
As thy day rose,
They arose up and girded them to the north and south,
By seas, by snows.
## p. 14313 (#507) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14313
As a water in January the frost confines,
Thy kings bound thee;
As a water in April is, in the new-blown vines,
Thy sons made free.
And thy lovers that looked for thee, and that mourned from
far,
For thy sake dead,
We rejoiced in the light of thee, in the signal star
Above thine head.
In thy grief had we followed thee, in thy passion loved,
Loved in thy loss;
In thy shame we stood fast to thee, with thy pangs were
moved,
Clung to thy cross.
By the hillside of Calvary we beheld thy blood,
Thy blood-red tears,
As a mother's in bitterness, an unebbing flood,
Years upon years.
And the north was Gethsemane, without leaf or bloom,
A garden sealed;
And the south was Aceldama, for a sanguine fume
Hid all the field.
By the stone of the sepulchre we returned to weep,
From far, from prison;
And the guards by it keeping it we beheld asleep,
But thou wast risen.
And an angel's similitude by the unsealed grave,
And by the stone;
And the voice was angelical, to whose words God gave
Strength like his own :-
((
“Lo, the graveclothes of Italy that are folded up
In the grave's gloom!
And the guards as men wrought upon with charmèd cup,
By the open tomb,
«And her body most beautiful, and her shining head, -
These are not here;
For your mother, for Italy, is not surely dead:
Have ye no fear.
## p. 14314 (#508) ##########################################
14314
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
“As of old time she spake to you, and you hardly heard,
Hardly took heed,
So now also she saith to you yet another word,
Who is risen indeed.
«By my saying she saith to you, in your ears she saith,
Who hear these things, -
Put no trust in men's royalties, nor in great men's breath,
Nor words of kings.
« For the life of them vanishes and is no more seen,
Nor no more known;
Nor shall any remember him if a crown hath been,
Or where a throne.
« Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown,
The just Fate gives;
Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own lays down,
He, dying so, lives.
“Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the wronged world's
weight
And puts it by,
It is well with him suffering, though he face man's fate:
How should he die ?
Seeing death has no part in him any more, no power
Upon his head:
He has bought his eternity with a little hour,
And is not dead.
For an hour, if ye look for him, he is no more found,
For one hour's space;
Then
ye
lift
up your eyes to him and behold him
crowned,
A deathless face.
“On the mountains of memory by the world's well-springs,
In all men's eyes,
Where the light of the life of him is on all past things,
Death only dies.
«Not the light that was quenched for us, nor the deeds that
were,
Nor the ancient days,
Nor the sorrows not sorrowful, nor the face most fair
Of perfect praise. ”
## p. 14315 (#509) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14315
So the angel of Italy's resurrection said,
So yet he saith;
So the son of her suffering, that from breasts nigh dead
Drew life, not death.
That the pavement of Golgotha should be white as snow,
Not red, but white;
That the waters of Babylon should no longer flow,
And men see light.
MATER TRIUMPHALIS
M
OTHER of earth's time-traveling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshiped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.
Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things;
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.
Angels and Gods, spirit and sense, thou takest
In thy right hand as drops of dust or dew;
The temples and the towers of time thou breakest,
His thoughts and words and works, to make them new.
All we have wandered from thy ways, have hidden
Eyes from thy glory and ears from calls they heard :
Called of thy trumpets vainly, called and chidden,
Scourged of thy speech and wounded of thy word.
We have known thee and have not known thee; stood beside
thee,
Felt thy lips breathe, set foot where thy feet trod,
Loved and renounced and worshiped and denied thee,
As though thou wert but as another God.
>
“One hour for sleep,” we said, “and yet one other;
All day we served her, and who shall serve by night ? ”
Not knowing of thee, thy face not knowing, O mother,
O light wherethrough the darkness is as light.
Men that forsook thee hast thou not forsaken,
Races of men that knew not hast thou known;
Nations that slept, thou hast doubted not to waken,
Worshipers of strange Gods to make thine own.
## p. 14316 (#510) ##########################################
14316
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
All old gray histories hiding thy clear features,
O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales,
Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures,
They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils.
Thine hands, without election or exemption,
Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife,
O thou, the resurrection and redemption,
The Godhead and the manhood and the life.
Thy wings shadow the waters; thine eyes lighten
The horror of the hollows of the night;
The depths of the earth and the dark places brighten
Under thy feet, whiter than fire is white.
Death is subdued to thee, and hell's bands broken;
Where thou art only is heaven; who hears not thee,
Time shall not hear him; when men's names are spoken,
A nameless sign of death shall his name be.
Deathless shall be the death, the name be nameless;
Sterile of stars his twilight time of death;
With fire of hell shall shame consume him shameless,
And dying, all the night darken his death.
The years are as thy garments, the world's ages
As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet;
Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages
Praise of shame only, bitter words or sweet.
Thou sayest “Well done,” and all a century kindles;
Again thou sayest “Depart from sight of me,”
And all the light of face of all men dwindles,
And the age is as the broken glass of thee.
The night is as a seal set on men's faces,
On faces fallen of men that take no light,
Nor give light in the deeps of the dark places,
Blind things incorporate with the body of night.
Their souls are serpents winter-bound and frozen;
Their shame is as a tame beast, at their feet
Couched; their cold lips deride thee and thy chosen,
Their lying lips made gray with dust for meat.
Then when their time is full and days run over,
The splendor of thy sudden brow made bare
Darkens the morning; thy bared hands uncover
The veils of light and night and the awful air.
1
## p. 14317 (#511) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14317
And the world naked as a new-born maiden
Stands virginal and splendid as at birth,
With all thine heaven of all its light unladen,
Of all its love unburdened all thine earth.
For the utter earth and the utter air of heaven
And the extreme depth is thine and the extreme height;
Shadows of things and veils of ages riven
Are as men's kings unkingdomed in thy sight.
Through the iron years, the centuries brazen-gated,
By the ages' barred impenetrable doors,
From the evening to the morning have we waited,
Should thy foot haply sound on the awful floors,
The floors untrodden of the sun's feet-glimmer,
The star-unstricken pavements of the night;
Do the lights burn inside ? the lights wax dimmer
On festal faces withering out of sight.
The crowned heads lose the light on them: it may be
Dawn is at hand to smite the loud feast dumb;
To blind the torch-lit centuries till the day be,
The feasting kingdoms till thy kingdom come.
Shall it not come ? deny they or dissemble,
Is it not even as lightning from on high
Now ? and though many a soul close eyes and tremble,
How should they tremble at all who love thee as I?
I am thine harp between thine hands, O mother!
All my strong chords are strained with love of thee.
We grapple in love and wrestle, as each with other
Wrestle the wind and the unreluctant sea.
I am no courtier of thee sober-suited,
Who loves a little for a little pay.
Me not thy winds and storms nor thrones disrooted
Nor molten crowns nor thine own sins dismay.
Sinned hast thou sometime, therefore art thou sinless;
Stained hast thou been, who art therefore without stain;
Even as man's soul is kin to thee, but kinless
Thou, in whose womb Time sows the all-various grain.
I do not bid thee spare me, o dreadful mother!
I pray thee that thou spare not, of thy grace:
1
## p. 14318 (#512) ##########################################
14318
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
How were it with me then, if ever another
Should come to stand before thee in this my place?
I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion
Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath;
The grave of souls born worms and creeds grown carrion
Thy blast of judgment fills with fires of death.
Thou art the player whose organ keys are thunders,
And I beneath thy foot the pedal prest;
Thou art the ray whereat the rent night sunders,
And I the cloudlet borne upon thy breast.
I shall burn up before thee, pass and perish,
As haze in sunrise on the red sea-line;
But thou from dawn to sunsetting shalt cherish
The thoughts that led and souls that lighted mine.
Reared between night and noon and truth and error,
Each twilight-traveling bird that trills and screams
Sickens at midday, nor can face for terror
The imperious heaven's inevitable extremes.
I have no spirit of skill with equal fingers
At sign to sharpen or to slacken strings;
I keep no time of song with gold-perched singers
And chirp of linnets on the wrists of kings.
I am thy storm-thrush of the days that darken,
Thy petrel in the foam that bears thy bark
To port through night and tempest; if thou hearken,
My voice is in thy heaven before the lark.
My song is in the mist that hides thy morning,
My cry is up before the day for thee;
I have heard thee and beheld thee and give warning,
Before thy wheels divide the sky and sea.
Birds shall wake with thee voiced and feathered fairer,
To see in summer what I see in spring;
I have eyes and heart to endure thee, O thunder-bearer,
And they shall be who shall have tongues to sing.
I have love at least, and have not fear, and part not
From thine unnavigable and wingless way:
Thou tarriest, and I have not said thou art not,
Nor all thy night long have denied thy day.
## p. 14319 (#513) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14319
Darkness to daylight shall lift up thy pæan,
Hill to hill thunder, vale cry back to vale,
With wind-notes as of eagles Æschylean,
And Sappho singing in the nightingale.
Sung to by mighty sons of dawn and daughters,
Of this night's songs thine ear shall keep but one:
That supreme song which shook the channeled waters,
And called thee skyward as God calls the sun.
Come, though all heaven again be fire above thee;
Though death before thee come to clear thy sky:
Let us but see in his thy face who loved thee;
Yea, though thou slay us, arise and let us die.
FROM CATHENS)
AN ODE
E
RE from under earth again like fire the violet kindle,
Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom,
Ere the crescent of the last pale month of winter dwindle,
Shrink, and fall as falls a dead leaf on the dead month's
tomb;
Round the hills whose heights the first-born olive-blossom bright-
ened,
Round the city brow-bound once with violets like a bride,
Up from under earth again a light that long since lightened
Breaks, whence all the world took comfort as all time takes
pride.
Pride have all men in their fathers that were free before them,
In the warriors that begat us free-born pride have we;
But the fathers of their spirits, how many men adore them ?
With what rapture may we praise, who bade our souls be free?
Sons of Athens born in spirit and truth are all born free men:
Most of all, we, nurtured where the north wind holds his reign;
Children all we sea-folk of the Salaminian seamen,
Sons of them that beat back Persia, they that beat back Spain.
Since the songs of Greece fell silent, none like ours have risen;
Since the sails of Greece fell slack, no ships have sailed like
ours:
How should we lament not, if her spirit sit in prison ?
How should we rejoice not, if her wreaths renew their flowers ?
All the world is sweeter, if the Athenian violet quicken;
All the world is brighter, if the Athenian sun return;
## p. 14320 (#514) ##########################################
14320
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
All things foul on earth wax fainter, by that sun's light stricken;
All ill growths are withered, where those fragrant flower-lights
burn.
All the wandering waves of seas with all their warring waters
Roll the record on forever of the sea-fight there,
When the capes were battle's lists, and all the straits were slaugh-
ter's,
And the myriad Medes as foam-flakes on the scattering air.
Ours the lightning was that cleared the north and lit the nations,
But the light that gave the whole world light of old was she:
Ours an age or twain, but hers are endless generations:
All the world is hers at heart, and most of all are we.
OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
"O"
F such is the kingdom of heaven :)
No glory that ever was shed
From the crowning star of the seven
That crown the north world's head,
No word that ever was spoken
Of huinan or godlike tongue,
Gave ever such godlike token
Since human harps were strung.
No sign that ever was given
To faithful or faithless eyes,
Showed ever beyond clouds riven
So clear a Paradise.
Earth's creeds may be seventy times seven,
And blood have defiled each creed:
If of such be the kingdom of heaven,
It must be heaven indeed.
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
I'
F CHILDHOOD were not in the world,
But only men and women grown;
No baby-locks in tendrils curled,
No baby-blossoms blown;
Though men were stronger, women fairer,
And nearer all delights in reach,
## p. 14321 (#515) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14321
And verse and music uttered rarer
Tones of more godlike speech;
Though the utmost life of life's best hours
Found, as it cannot now find, words;
Though desert sands were sweet as flowers,
And flowers could sing like birds:
But children never heard them, never
They felt a child's foot leap and run,-
This were a drearier star than ever
Yet looked upon the sun.
A CHILD'S FUTURE
W"
HAT will it please you, my darling, hereafter to be ?
Fame upon land will you look for, or glory by sea ?
Gallant your life will be always, and all of it free.
Free as the wind when the heart of the twilight is stirred
Eastward, and sounds from the springs of the sunrise are
heard;
Free - and we know not another as infinite word.
Darkness or twilight or sunlight may compass us round,
Hate may arise up against us, or hope may confound;
Love may forsake us: yet may not the spirit be bound.
Free in oppression of grief as in ardor of joy,
Still may the soul be, and each to her strength as a toy;
Free in the glance of the man as the smile of the boy.
Freedom alone is the salt and the spirit that gives
Life, and without her is nothing that verily lives:
Death cannot slay her; she laughs upon death, and forgives.
Brightest and hardiest of roses anear and afar,
Glitters the blithe little face of you, round as a star;
Liberty bless you and keep you to be as you are.
England and liberty bless you and keep you to be
Worthy the name of their child and the sight of their sea:
Fear not at all; for a slave, if he fears not, is free.
XXIV-896
## p. 14322 (#516) ##########################################
14322
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
ADIEUX À MARIE STUART
I
Q
UEEN, for whose house my fathers fought,
With hopes that rose and fell,
Red star of boyhood's fiery thought,
Farewell.
They gave their lives, and I, my queen,
Have given you of my life,
Seeing your brave star burn high between
Men's strife.
The strife that lightened round their spears
Long since fell still: so long
Hardly may hope to last in years
My song.
But still through strife of time and thought
Your light on me too fell;
Queen, in whose name we sang or fought,
Farewell.
II
There beats no heart on either border
Wherethrough the north blasts blow
But keeps your memory as a warder
His beacon-fire aglow.
Long since it fired with love and wonder
Mine, for whose April age
Blithe midsummer made banquet under
The shade of Hermitage.
Soft sang the burn's blithe notes, that gather
Strength to ring true;
And air and trees and sun and heather
Remembered you.
Old border ghosts of fight or fairy
Or love or teen,
These they forgot, remembering Mary
The Queen.
## p. 14323 (#517) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14323
III
Queen once of Scots, and ever of yours
Whose sires brought forth for you
Their lives to strew your way like Aowers,
Adieu.
Dead is full many a dead man's name,
Who died for you this long
Time past: shall this too fare the same,
My song ?
But surely, though it die or live,
Your face was worth
All that a man may think to give
On earth.
No darkness cast of years between
Can darken you;
Man's love will never bid my queen
Adieu.
IV
Love hangs like light about your name
As music round the shell;
No heart can take of you a tame
Farewell.
Yet, when your very face was seen,
Ill gifts were yours for giving;
Love gat strange guerdons of my queen
When living
h, diamond eart unflawed and clear,
The whole world's crowning jewel!
Was ever heart so deadly dear
So cruel ?
Yet none for you of all that bled
Grudged once one drop that fell:
Not one to life reluctant said
Farewell.
## p. 14324 (#518) ##########################################
14324
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
V
Strange love they have given you, love disloyal,
Who mock with praise your name,
To leave a head so rare and royal
Too low for praise or blame.
You could not love nor hate, they tell us;
You had nor sense nor sting:
In God's name, then, what plague befell us
To fight for such a thing?
«Some faults the gods will give,” to fetter
Man's highest intent;
But surely you were something better
Than innocent!
No maid that strays with steps unwary
Through snares unseen,
But one to live and die for: Mary,
The Queen.
VI
Forgive them all their praise, who blot
Your fame with praise of you;
Then love may say, and falter not,
Adieu.
Yet some you hardly would forgive
Who did you much less wrong
Once; but resentment should not live
Too long
They never saw your lip's bright bow,
Your sword-bright eyes, -
The bluest of heavenly things below
The skies.
Clear eyes that love's self finds most like
A sword-blade's blue,
A sword-blade's ever keen to strike -
Adieu.
## p. 14325 (#519) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14325
VII
Though all things breathe or sound of fight
That yet make up your spell,
To bid you were to bid the light
Farewell.
Farewell the song says only, being
A star whose race is run;
Farewell the soul says never, seeing
The sun.
Yet, well-nigh as with flash of tears,
The song must say but so
That took your praise up twenty years
Ago.
More bright than stars or moons that vary,
Sun kindling heaven and hell,
Here, after all these years, Queen Mary,
Farewell.
LOVE AT SEA
IMITATED FROM THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
W*
E ARE in Love's hand to-day:
Where shall we go?
Love, shall we start or stay,
Or sail or row ?
There's many a wind and way,
And never a May but May;
We are in Love's hand to-day:
Where shall we go ?
Our land wind is the breath
Of sorrows kissed to death
And joys that were;
Our ballast is a rose;
Our way lies where God knows
And Love knows where.
We are in Love's hand to-day –
Our seamen are fledged Loves,
Our masts are bills of doves,
Our decks fine gold;
## p. 14326 (#520) ##########################################
14326
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Our ropes are dead maids' hair,
Our stores are love-shafts fair
And manifold.
We are in Love's hand to-day –
Where shall we land you, sweet?
On fields of strange men's feet,
Or fields near home?
Or where the fire-flowers blow,
Or where the flowers of snow
Or flowers of foam ?
We are in Love's hand to-day —
Land me, she says, where Love
Shows but one shaft, one dove,
One heart, one hand:
A shore like that, my dear,
Lies where no man will steer,
No maiden land.
A MATCH
I
F LOVE were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief:
If love were what the rose
And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single,
Delight our lips would mingle
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon:
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling,
And I, your love, were death,
We'd shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
## p. 14327 (#521) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14327
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath:
If you were life, my darling,
And I, your love, were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons,
And tears of night and morrow,
And laughs of maid and boy:
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May,
We'd throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day:
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein:
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.
ÉTUDE RÉALISTE
I
,
A Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.
Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.
## p. 14328 (#522) ##########################################
14328
ALGERYON CHARLES SWINBURNE
No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.
II
A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled,
Whence yet no leaf expands,
Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,
A baby's hands.
Then, even as warriors grip their brands
When battle's bolt is hurled,
They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.
No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled
Match, even in loveliest lands,
The sweetest flowers in all the world-
A baby's hands.
INI
A baby's eyes, ere speech begin,
Ere lips learn words or sighs,
Bless all things bright enough to win
A baby's eyes.
Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,
And sleep flows out and in,
Lies perfect in their paradise.
Their glance might cast out pain and sin,
Their speech make dumb the wise;
By mute glad godhead felt within
A baby's eyes.
## p. 14329 (#523) ##########################################
14329
CARMEN SYLVA
(ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ROUMANIA)
(1843-)
ARMEN Sylva, the charming pen-name of the poet-queen of
Roumania, is a reminiscence of the forests of Neuwied on
the Rhine, where she was born December 29th, 1843. She
belongs to an intellectual family: her great-uncle was a scientist,
whose collection of specimens of natural history is now in New
York; and her father, Prince Herman of Wied, was a man of culture,
devoted to philosophic studies. The young princess grew up in an
atmosphere well fitted to develop her natural gifts. Her temperament
was passionate, restless, and reserved; and
her imagination so active that her mother
forbade the reading of novels until she
was nineteen. She began to write verses
in her childhood; and from her sixteenth
year kept a sort of poetic diary, whose
existence however was for many years a
secret. Her early life was saddened by the
constant illness of her father and young
brother; and on the whole, sorrow is the
prevailing note in her poems.
After several years spent in travel, she
had determined to devote herself to teach-
ing, when she was married in 1869 to CARMEN SYLVA
Charles of Hohenzollern, Prince of Rouma-
nia. Elizabeth entered on her new sphere with enthusiasm; thor-
oughly acquiring the Roumanian language, and so winning the love
of her people that she is known among them as their "little mother. ”
She founded schools, asylums, hospitals, art galleries, and art schools;
and in every way strove to develop Roumanian nationality.
The death of her little daughter in 1874 led her to express her sor-
row in verse.
Up to this time her poems had been simply sponta-
neous utterances; but now she began to study the art of composition
under the guidance of Alexandre, the Roumanian poet. Her poetic
labors were soon interrupted by the Turko-Russian war, during which
she devoted herself to work among the soldiers, and in the hospitals.
## p. 14330 (#524) ##########################################
14330
CARMEN SYLVA
Roumania became a kingdom in 1881. Shortly before her coronation,
Elizabeth published her first book,-a translation of Roumanian po-
ems. Her first collection of original poems appeared in 1881, entitled
'Storms. ' It contains four poems, the best of which is “Sappho. '
The following year she published Sorrow's Earthly Pilgrimage); “The
Enchantress'; Jehovah,' describing the wanderings of Ahasuerus in
search of God; “A Prayer); and (Pensées d'une Reine' (A Queen's
Thoughts),- a book of aphorisms, which won a medal of honor from
the French Acadeiny. In 1883 appeared From Carmen Sylva's
Kingdom,' — a collection of Roumanian fairy tales and legends, a sec-
ond series of which was brought out in 1887, together with «Through
the Centuries. ' Another collection, “Fairy Tales from the Pelesch,'
takes its title from the stream near the beautiful royal palace in the
Sinaja valley. To this year also belong My Rest,' a collection of
songs and lyrics, in which the Queen is at her best; and (My Rhine,'
poems on places dear to her in childhood. (My Book' – poems on
Egypt — appeared in 1885. The Songs of Toil' were published col-
lectively in 1891; but an English version of thirty songs was brought
out in New York in 1888. Most of these had previously appeared
in the Independent; and through them the Queen was first known to
the American public. These original little poems show her intense
sympathy for the poor, and at the same time illustrate her genius.
Her greatest poetical effort, the tragedy (Master Manole,' appeared
in 1892. In collaboration with Madame Kremnitz, under the com-
mon pseudonym of Idem and Ditto, she wrote the novels From
Two Worlds) (1885), Astra' (1886), «The Outpost' (1887), and Idle
Wanderings? (1887). With the help of Mademoiselle Vacaresco, the
Queen collected Roumanian legends and tales, which were published
under the title “Tales of the Dimbovitza) in 1890.
Carmen Sylva's German is pure and beautiful, and owing to her
remarkable linguistic skill, extraordinarily flexible. Her poems are
full of fire and grace, and show a true musical sense.
however, has the defect of extreme brevity; and her work generally
is impaired by her great facility and rapidity of composition.
The biographies of Queen Elizabeth are Mita Kremnitz's Carmen
Sylva' (1882); 'The Life of Carmen Sylva,' by Baroness Stackelberg
(fifth edition, 1889); M. Schmitz's Carmen Sylva' (1889); Stackelberg's
Life of Carmen Sylva,' translated by Baroness Deichmann (1890);
and Elizabeth of Roumania: A Study,' by Blanche Roosevelt (1891).
Her prose,
## p. 14331 (#525) ##########################################
CARMEN SYLVA
14331
FODDER-TIME
From (Songs of Toil': translated by John Eliot Bowen. The five following
selections from «Songs of Toil) are reprinted by permission of the Fred-
erick A. Stokes Company.
ow sweet the manger smells! The cows all listen
With outstretched necks, and with impatient lowing;
They greet the clover, their content now showing —
And how they lick their noses till they glisten!
HY
Н
The velvet-coated beauties do not languish
Beneath the morning's golden light that's breaking,
The unexhausted spring of life awaking,
Their golden eyes of velvet full of anguish.
They patiently endure their pains. Bestowing
Their sympathy, the other cows are ruing
Their unproductive udders, and renewing
At milking-time their labor and their lowing.
And now I must deceive the darling bossy,–
With hand in milk must make it suck my finger.
Its tender lips cling close like joys that linger,
And feel so warm with dripping white and flossy.
This very hand my people with devotion
Do kiss, - which paints and plays and writes, moreover,
I would it had done naught but pile the clover
To feed the kine that know no base emotion!
THE SOWER
ENEATH the mild sun vanish the vapor's last wet traces,
And for the autumn sowing the mellow soil lies steeping;
The stubble fires have faded, and ended is the reaping;
The piercing plow has leveled the rough resisting places.
B
The solitary sower along the brown field paces, —
Two steps and then a handful, a rhythmic motion keeping;
The eager sparrows follow, now pecking and now peeping.
He sows; but all the increase accomplished by God's grace is.
## p. 14332 (#526) ##########################################
14332
CARMEN SYLVA
And whether frost be fatal or drought be devastating,
The blades rise green and slender for springtime winds to
flutter,
As time of golden harvest the coming fall awaiting.
None see the silent yearnings the sower's lips half utter,
The carking care he suffers, distressing thoughts creating.
With steady hand he paces afield without a mutter.
a
THE BOATMAN'S SONG
D
OWN-STREAM 'tis all by moonlight,
Up-stream at blazing noon;
Down-stream upon the ripples,
Up-stream through sandy dune.
Down-stream, the helm held loosely,
A pipe between the lips;
Up-stream, like beast one straineth
And galls the breast and hips.
What boots it that I seem like
The river's king to-day,
If to-morrow like a beggar,
Despised, I tug away?
My pleasuring leaves no furrow
Upon the water-plain;
The marks of struggling footsteps
Long in the sand remain.
THE COUNTRY LETTER-CARRIER
T THAWS. On field and roadway the packing drifts have faded;
The service-berry drips, and the slush is deep and stale;
The clouds hang low and leaden; the evening glow is pale:
The paths gleam like a brooklet, whose bed is all unshaded.
Along the highway trudges a messenger; unaided,
He limps and halts and shivers; his bag holds little mail. -
A single wretched letter all crumpled, old, and frail —
He must push on; the village he nears now, lame and jaded.
He knocks. A timid woman admits him: “Till now, never
Had I a letter! Heavens! My boy! Quick, give it here!
## p. 14333 (#527) ##########################################
CARMEN SYLVA
14333
He's coming! Now we're happy! Her aged muscles quiver:
“God sent you here. Be seated and warm yourself; come near:
A share of my possessions are yours to keep forever. ”
The postman limps no longer, warmed by the woman's cheer.
THE STONE-CUTTER
W*
E HAMMER, hammer, hammer on and on,
Day out, day in, throughout the year,
In blazing heat and tempests drear;
God's house we slowly heavenward rear
We'll never see it done!
We hammer, hammer, hammer, might and main.
The sun torments, the rain-drops prick,
Our eyes grow blind with dust so thick;
Our name in dust, too, fadeth quick-
No glory and no gain!
We hammer, hammer, hammer ever on.
O blessed God on Heaven's throne,
Dost thou take a care of every stone
And leave the toiling poor alone,
Whom no one looks upon ?
THE POST
S"
WIFT, swift as the wind drives the great Russian Czar,
But we of Roumania are swifter by far:
Eight horses we harness for every-day speed,
But I've driven a team of a dozen at need.
Then over the bridges we hurry along,
Through village and hamlet, with shouting and song,
With a hip-hip-hurrah! swiftly onwards we go!
The birds fly above and our horses below.
When the sun burns at noon and the dust whirls on high,
Like the leaves of the forest grown withered and dry,
We hasten along, never slacking the rein.
The wild mountain riders come down to the plain :
Their hair and their cloaks flutter free in the wind;
The sheep and the buffaloes gallop behind;
## p. 14334 (#528) ##########################################
14334
CARMEN SYLVA
And hip-hip hurrah! boys, with horse and with man,
Like the tempest we pass — let him follow who can.
When winter is here, and the storm spirit's abroad,
Swift glideth the sledge o'er the snow-covered road;
Great drifts hide the inn and the sign-post from sight, -
'Tis an ocean of snow lying waveless and white;
The wolves' and the ravens' wild greetings we hear,
As we pass the ravine, and the precipice drear,
With a hip-hip-hurrah! From the road though we stray
No matter,- the horses will find out the way.
The rain falls in torrents; the stream, grown a flood,
Has shattered the bridge on our passage that stood.
The waters have risen — are rising yet more
'Tis foolhardy daring to swim to the shore.
Ten pieces of gold, and I'll venture my neck:
The carriage is floating – the box-seat's the deck;
But hip-hip-hurrah! boys, so loud are our cheers
That the water flows back, for our shouting it fears.
A jest to the lad and a kiss to the lass,
We throw, while they linger, to watch as we pass;
His laugh still resounds, and her cheek is still red,
When already our bells jingle far on ahead.
Right well does our team know their silvery chime,
And we scarce slacken speed as the mountain we climb.
Then hip-hip-hurrah! boys, - nay! slowly, beware,
For steep's the descent: we must make it with care.
At midnight, the streets of the town to the tread
Of our horses resound: all the sky's glowing red;
For crowds gather round us with torches of light,
And pine-boughs all blazing, to stare at the sight.
A crack of the whip, and a cheer and a song,
Through a circle of fire we clatter along;
And hip-hip-hurrah! through the glow and the glare,
Through flowers and folk, e'er a halt we declare.
Even if I were dead, I could never lie still:
I should hasten afield over valley and hill.
I'd take the light reins and the whip in my hand,
And scarce in the saddle I'd fly through the land.
## p. 14335 (#529) ##########################################
CARMEN SYLVA
14335
No dull, droning chant and procession for me, –
I'd turn in my coffin such doings to see;
And hip-hip-hurrah! from the bier and its gloom
I'd leap to the saddle and drive to my tomb.
DIMBOVITZA
D"
IMBOVITZA! Magic river,
Silver-shining, memory-haunted;
He who drinks thy crystal waters
Ne'er can quit thy shores enchanted.
Dimbovitza! all too deeply
Drank I of thy flowing river;
For my love, my inmost being,
There meseems have sunk forever.
Dimbovitza! Dimbovitza!
All my soul hast thou in keeping,
Since beneath thy banks of verdure
Lies my dearest treasure sleeping.
LONGING
1
LONG to feel thy little arm's embrace,
Thy little silver-sounding voice to hear;
I long for thy warm kisses on my face,
And for thy birdlike carol, blithe and clear.
I long for every childish, loving word;
And for thy little footsteps, fairy light,
That hither, thither moved, and ever stirred
My heart with them to gladness infinite.
And for thy hair I long — that halo blest
Hanging in golden glory round thy brow.
My child, can aught such longing lull to rest ?
Nay, heaven's bliss alone can end it now.
## p. 14336 (#530) ##########################################
14336
CARMEN SYLVA
CARMEN
AT
ND all which I here have been singing,
It is your very own!
From your deep heart its music bringing
To sad chords of your sorrows ringing,
Winning for you the crown.
Yours were the thoughts forever ranging,
You made the folk-tales true.
In this earth-day of chance and changing,
Of lives unfolding, deaths estranging,
Look, Soul! there too are you.
Perchance, when Death shall bring sad leisure,
And these pale lips are dumb,
Then you my words may better measure,
And in my true love take new pleasure;
Then will my meaning come!
## p. 14337 (#531) ##########################################
14337
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
(1840–1893)
Oo. . .
HE restraining and fructifying power of culture receives an
adequate illustration in the writings of John Addington Sy-
Selo monds. There are few critics of this century who approach
him in catholicity of artistic taste, and sensitiveness to the claims
of humanity above all other claims. He is a humanist in the true
sense of the word; preferring the study of man to the study of man's
works, or rather seeking always for the human element in a monu-
ment of art. He is also an exponent of the highest culture, of that
self-effectuation which is the fruit of knowl-
edge married to sympathy. In him, as in
Walter Pater, liberal education has carried
talent almost to the domain of creative
genius — almost but not quite: he remains
a critic, whose criticism is always illumi-
nation. He describes his own development
in his essay on Culture,' when he defines
culture as —
»
«the raising of intellectual faculties to their highest
potency by means of conscious training;
it is a psychical state, so to speak, which may
be acquired by sympathetic and assimilative J. A. SYMONDS
study. It makes a man to be something: it does
not teach him to create anything. It has no power to stand in the place of
nature, and to endow a human being with new faculties. It prepares him
to exert his innate faculties in a chosen line of work with a certain spirit of
freedom, with a certain breadth of understanding. ”
Mr. Symonds's life was singularly uneventful, being devoted en-
tirely to the quiet industries of scholarship. He inherited not a little
of his literary taste from his father of the same name, who was a
practicing physician at Bristol and afterwards at Clifton; and whose
(Miscellanies,' selected and edited by his son, were published in 1871.
That son was born in Bristol, October 5th, 1840. In 1860 he was
graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, winning the Newdigate prize.
On account of ill health he lived for many years at Davos-Platz in
Switzerland. He died at Rome, April 19th, 1893.
XXIV—897
## p. 14338 (#532) ##########################################
14338
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
(
The thirty-three years between the taking of his degree and his
death were occupied chiefly with study, and with the production of
works of criticism. Many of these deal with Italian men of genius;
with the period of the Renaissance, and with those personages in
whom the Renaissance spirit found most significant embodiment. An
Introduction to the Study of Dante,' published in 1872, was one of
the first fruits of Mr. Symonds's scholarship. His poetical tempera-
ment, his sensitiveness to beauty, above all, his intense interest in
human development, fitted him peculiarly to understand the temper
of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He entered with
full sympathy into that highly colored, highly vitalized world, which
was the product of the marriage of medieval Faust with Helen, of
the romance of Italy with the classicism of Greece.
His Renaissance in Italy) is a historical record of the development
of this world, interspersed with subtle and penetrative criticism. This
monumental book is in five parts. The first, The Age of the Des-
pots,' was published in 1875; the second, “The Revival of Learning,'
in 1877; then followed 'The Fine Arts,' Italian Literature, and
lastly in 1886, “The Catholic Reaction. The comprehensiveness of this
work is scarcely less remarkable than its conscientious scholarship,
and its subtle insight into one of the most complex periods in mod-
ern history. He portrays a great age, as it can only be portrayed,
through the medium of personality. He sees the individualism of
the Renaissance expressed in Dante, in Petrarch, and in Boccaccio;
he sees its strength in Michael Angelo, and its sweetness in Raphael.
His Life of Michael Angelo' is written in this spirit of sympathetic
criticism, so that it is less a historical record than a portrait of a
His knowledge of Renaissance conditions enabled him also to
breathe with freedom the glowing air of the England which brought
forth the phenix brood of the dramatists. His Studies of Shake-
speare's Predecessors in the English Drama' are luminous with appre-
ciation, as are also his Life of Sidney' and his “Life of Ben Jonson. '
The chivalry of renascent England is embodied in the one, its hu-
manism in the other. To Mr. Symonds the man is the age.
As was natural with a student of the Renaissance, Mr. Symonds
was also a student of Greek life and thought. His Studies of the
Greek Poets' is a unique work; because it approaches the genius of
Greece, as embodied in her singers, on the side of personality. It is
a book requiring little scholarship in the reader, and it is therefore
popular in the widest sense. It tells of the Greek poets as of men
whose individuality gave color to their age. The reader is brought
into contact with them rather than with remote historical conditions.
Over the whole record lies the beautiful light of a fine and pene-
trative sympathy. The author loses readily his nineteenth-century
man,
## p. 14339 (#533) ##########################################
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
14339
temper of the desire of the impossible, and enters with full harmony
into the mellow objective world of Greece, into its reasonableness and
its temperance. His style attains its greatest perfection in this book.
It is warm and pulsating with his sympathies.
The poetical and appreciative side of Mr. Symonds's nature was
not developed, however, at the expense of the purely intellectual and
scientific. His culture was broad enough to make of him a complete
critic, living his artistic life in the Whole as well as in the Good and
in the Beautiful. Yet he maintains that the scientific spirit, the out-
growth of the rediscovery of the world, must be subordinate to the
humanistic spirit, the outgrowth of the rediscovery of man. This
is so because man is greater than the universe in which he lives.
In his “Essays, Speculative and Suggestive,' he has embodied much
of his critical thought concerning the scientific tendencies of the cen-
tury.
He is also a subtle critic of his contemporaries. His life of Shel-
ley reveals this; as does also a chapter on Zola's La Bête Humaine,'
in which he maintains that Zola is an idealist.
« The idealism which I have been insisting on, which justifies us in calling
(La Bête Humaine) a poem, has to be sought in the method whereby these
separate parcels of the plot are woven together; and also in the dominating
conception contained in the title, which gives unity to the whole work. We
are not in the real region of reality, but in the region of the constructive imagi-
nation, from the first to the last line of the novel. If that be not the essence
of idealism, - this working of the artist's brain, not in but on the subject-
matter of the external world and human nature,- I do not know what mean-
ing to give to the term. )
>
Besides the works already referred to, Mr. Symonds published A
Study of Boccaccio,' 'A Study of Walt Whitman,' (Studies in Italy
and Greece, a volume of poems entitled Many Moods,' another
entitled New and Old, a translation of the autobiography of Ben-
venuto Cellini, a volume of essays with the title 'In the Key of
Blue,' a translation of the sonnets of Michael Angelo, (Sketches
and Studies in Italy,' Wine, Women, and Song: Mediæval Songs
in English Verse,' and a volume of sonnets entitled Vagabundi
Libellus. '
## p. 14340 (#534) ##########################################
14340
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
ITALIAN ART IN ITS RELATION TO RELIGION
From (The Renaissance in Italy)
T.
HE mediæval faiths were still vivid when the first Italian
painters began their work; and the sincere endeavor of
these men was to set forth in beautiful and worthy form
the truths of Christianity. The eyes of the worshiper should no
longer have a mere stock or stone to contemplate: his imagina-
tion should be helped by the dogmatic presentation of the scenes
of sacred history, and his devotion be quickened by lively images
of the passion of our Lord. Spirit should converse with spirit,
through no veil of symbol, but through the transparent medium
of art, itself instinct with inbreathed life and radiant with ideal
beauty. The body and the soul, moreover, should be reconciled;
and God's likeness should be once more acknowledged in the feat-
ures and the limbs of man. Such was the promise of art; and
this promise was in a great measure fulfilled by the painting of
the fourteenth century. Men ceased to worship their God in the
holiness of ugliness; and a great city called its street Glad on
the birthday festival of the first picture investing religious emo-
tion with æsthetic charm. But in making good the promise
they had given, it was needful for the arts on the one hand to
enter a region not wholly their own the region of abstractions
and of mystical conceptions; and on the other to create a world
of sensuous delightfulness, wherein the spiritual element was ma-
terialized to the injury of its own essential quality. Spirit indeed
spake to spirit, so far as the religious content was concerned;
but flesh spake also to flesh in the æsthetic form. The incarna-
tion promised by the arts involved a corresponding sensuousness.
Heaven was brought down to earth, but at the cost of making
men believe that earth itself was heavenly.
At this point the subject of our inquiry naturally divides into
two main questions. The first concerns the form of figurative
art specially adapted to the requirements of religious thought in
the fourteenth century. The second treats of the effects result-
ing both to art and religion from the expression of mystical and
theological conceptions in plastic form.
When we consider the nature of the ideas assimilated in the
Middle Ages by the human mind, it is clear that art, in order
to set them forth, demanded a language the Greeks had never
## p. 14341 (#535) ##########################################
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
14341
greatly needed, and had therefore never fully learned. To over-
estimate the difference from an asthetic point of view between
the religious notions of the Greeks and those which Christianity
had made essential, would be difficult. Faith, hope, and charity;
humility, endurance, suffering; the Resurrection and the Judg-
ment; the Fall and the Redemption; heaven and hell; the height
and depth of man's mixed nature; the drama of human destiny
before the throne of God; — into the sphere of thoughts like
these, vivid and solemn, transcending the region of sense and cor-
poreity, carrying the mind away to an ideal world, where the
things of this earth obtained a new reality by virtue of their
relation to an invisible and infinite beyond, — the modern arts in
their infancy were thrust. There was nothing finite here or tan-
gible, no gladness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the
swiftness of a young man's limbs, no simple idealization of nat-
ural delightfulness. The human body, which the figurative arts
must needs use as the vehicle of their expression, had ceased
to have a value in and for itself, had ceased to be the true and
adequate investiture of thoughts demanded from the artist. At
best it could be taken only as the symbol of some inner mean-
ing, the shrine of an indwelling spirit nobler than itself; just as
a lamp of alabaster owes its beauty and its worth to the flame it
more than half conceals, the light transmitted through its scarce
transparent walls.
In ancient art those moral and spiritual qualities which the
Greeks recognized as truly human, and therefore divine, allowed
themselves to be incarnated in well-selected types of physical
perfection. The deities of the Greek mythology were limited to
the conditions of natural existence; they were men and women
of a larger mold and freer personality: less complex, inasmuch
as each completed some one attribute; less thwarted in activity,
inasmuch as no limit was assigned to exercise of power.
These have we not, who have one thing, the divine
Face and clear eyes of faith and fruitful breast.
And ye shall die before your thrones be won. -
Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun
Shall move and shine without us, and we lie
Dead; but if she too move on earth and live,
But if the old world with all the old irons rent
Laugh and give thanks, shall we be not content ?
Nay, we shall rather live, we shall not die,
Life being so little and death so good to give.
And these men shall forget you. — Yea, but we
Shall be a part of the earth and the ancient sea,
And heaven's high air august, and awful fire,
And all things good; and no man's heart shall beat
But somewhat in it of our blood once shed
Shall quiver and quicken, as now in us the dead
Blood of men slain and the old same life's desire
Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh feet.
But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant,
Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present,
That clothe yourselves with the cold future air;
When mother and father and tender sister and brother
And the old live love that was shall be as ye,
Dust, and no fruit of loving life shall be. -
She shall be yet who is more than all these were,
Than sister or wife or father unto us, or mother.
Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages ?
Lo, the dead mouths of the awful gray-grown ages,
The venerable, in the past that is their prison,
In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave,
Laugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said,
How many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead:
Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen ? -
Not we but she, who is tender and swift to save.
## p. 14311 (#505) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14311
Are ye not weary and faint not by the way,
Seeing night by night devoured of day by day,
Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire?
Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye too sleep? -
We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet,
And surely more than all things sleep were sweet,
Than all things save the inexorable desire
Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.
Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow ?
Is this so sure where all men's hopes are hollow,
Even this your dream, that by much tribulation
Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks
straight?
Nay, though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,
Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless;
But man to man, nation would turn to nation,
And the old life live, and the old great world be great.
Pass on then and pass by us and let us be,
For what light think ye after life to see?
And if the world fare better, will ye know?
And if man triumph, who shall seek you and say ? -
Enough of light is this for one life's span,
That all men born are mortal, but not man;
And we men bring death lives by night to sow,
That man may reap and eat and live by day.
SUPER FLUMINA BABYLONIS
B'
Y The waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
Remembering thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,
And wouldst not see.
By the waters of Babylon we stood up and sang,
Considering thee,
That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,
To set thee free.
And with trumpets and thunderings and with morning song
Came up the light;
And thy spirit uplifted thee to forget thy wrong
As day doth night.
## p. 14312 (#506) ##########################################
14312
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
And thy sons were dejected not any more, as then
When thou wast ashamed;
When thy lovers went heavily without heart, as men
Whose life was maimed.
In the desolate distances, with a great desire,
For thy love's sake,
With our hearts going back to thee, they were filled with fire,
Were nigh to break.
(
It was said to us: “Verily ye are great at heart,
But ye shall bend:
Ye are bondsmen and bondswomen, to be scourged and smart,
To toil and tend. "
And with harrows men harrowed us, and subdued with spears,
And crushed with shame;
And the summer and winter was, and the length of years,
And no change came.
By the rivers of Italy, by the sacred streams,
By town, by tower,
There was feasting with reveling, there was sleep with dreams,
Until thine hour.
And they slept and they rioted on their rose-hung beds
With mouths on flame,
And with love-locks vine-chapleted, and with rose-crowned heads
And robes of shame.
And they knew not their forefathers, nor the hills and streams
And words of power,
Nor the gods that were good to them, but with songs and
dreams
Filled up their hour.
By the rivers of Italy, by the dry streams' beds,
When thy time came,
There was casting of crowns from them, from their young
heads,
The crowns of shame.
By the horn of Eridanus, by the Tiber mouth,
As thy day rose,
They arose up and girded them to the north and south,
By seas, by snows.
## p. 14313 (#507) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14313
As a water in January the frost confines,
Thy kings bound thee;
As a water in April is, in the new-blown vines,
Thy sons made free.
And thy lovers that looked for thee, and that mourned from
far,
For thy sake dead,
We rejoiced in the light of thee, in the signal star
Above thine head.
In thy grief had we followed thee, in thy passion loved,
Loved in thy loss;
In thy shame we stood fast to thee, with thy pangs were
moved,
Clung to thy cross.
By the hillside of Calvary we beheld thy blood,
Thy blood-red tears,
As a mother's in bitterness, an unebbing flood,
Years upon years.
And the north was Gethsemane, without leaf or bloom,
A garden sealed;
And the south was Aceldama, for a sanguine fume
Hid all the field.
By the stone of the sepulchre we returned to weep,
From far, from prison;
And the guards by it keeping it we beheld asleep,
But thou wast risen.
And an angel's similitude by the unsealed grave,
And by the stone;
And the voice was angelical, to whose words God gave
Strength like his own :-
((
“Lo, the graveclothes of Italy that are folded up
In the grave's gloom!
And the guards as men wrought upon with charmèd cup,
By the open tomb,
«And her body most beautiful, and her shining head, -
These are not here;
For your mother, for Italy, is not surely dead:
Have ye no fear.
## p. 14314 (#508) ##########################################
14314
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
“As of old time she spake to you, and you hardly heard,
Hardly took heed,
So now also she saith to you yet another word,
Who is risen indeed.
«By my saying she saith to you, in your ears she saith,
Who hear these things, -
Put no trust in men's royalties, nor in great men's breath,
Nor words of kings.
« For the life of them vanishes and is no more seen,
Nor no more known;
Nor shall any remember him if a crown hath been,
Or where a throne.
« Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown,
The just Fate gives;
Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own lays down,
He, dying so, lives.
“Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the wronged world's
weight
And puts it by,
It is well with him suffering, though he face man's fate:
How should he die ?
Seeing death has no part in him any more, no power
Upon his head:
He has bought his eternity with a little hour,
And is not dead.
For an hour, if ye look for him, he is no more found,
For one hour's space;
Then
ye
lift
up your eyes to him and behold him
crowned,
A deathless face.
“On the mountains of memory by the world's well-springs,
In all men's eyes,
Where the light of the life of him is on all past things,
Death only dies.
«Not the light that was quenched for us, nor the deeds that
were,
Nor the ancient days,
Nor the sorrows not sorrowful, nor the face most fair
Of perfect praise. ”
## p. 14315 (#509) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14315
So the angel of Italy's resurrection said,
So yet he saith;
So the son of her suffering, that from breasts nigh dead
Drew life, not death.
That the pavement of Golgotha should be white as snow,
Not red, but white;
That the waters of Babylon should no longer flow,
And men see light.
MATER TRIUMPHALIS
M
OTHER of earth's time-traveling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshiped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.
Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things;
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.
Angels and Gods, spirit and sense, thou takest
In thy right hand as drops of dust or dew;
The temples and the towers of time thou breakest,
His thoughts and words and works, to make them new.
All we have wandered from thy ways, have hidden
Eyes from thy glory and ears from calls they heard :
Called of thy trumpets vainly, called and chidden,
Scourged of thy speech and wounded of thy word.
We have known thee and have not known thee; stood beside
thee,
Felt thy lips breathe, set foot where thy feet trod,
Loved and renounced and worshiped and denied thee,
As though thou wert but as another God.
>
“One hour for sleep,” we said, “and yet one other;
All day we served her, and who shall serve by night ? ”
Not knowing of thee, thy face not knowing, O mother,
O light wherethrough the darkness is as light.
Men that forsook thee hast thou not forsaken,
Races of men that knew not hast thou known;
Nations that slept, thou hast doubted not to waken,
Worshipers of strange Gods to make thine own.
## p. 14316 (#510) ##########################################
14316
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
All old gray histories hiding thy clear features,
O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales,
Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures,
They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils.
Thine hands, without election or exemption,
Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife,
O thou, the resurrection and redemption,
The Godhead and the manhood and the life.
Thy wings shadow the waters; thine eyes lighten
The horror of the hollows of the night;
The depths of the earth and the dark places brighten
Under thy feet, whiter than fire is white.
Death is subdued to thee, and hell's bands broken;
Where thou art only is heaven; who hears not thee,
Time shall not hear him; when men's names are spoken,
A nameless sign of death shall his name be.
Deathless shall be the death, the name be nameless;
Sterile of stars his twilight time of death;
With fire of hell shall shame consume him shameless,
And dying, all the night darken his death.
The years are as thy garments, the world's ages
As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet;
Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages
Praise of shame only, bitter words or sweet.
Thou sayest “Well done,” and all a century kindles;
Again thou sayest “Depart from sight of me,”
And all the light of face of all men dwindles,
And the age is as the broken glass of thee.
The night is as a seal set on men's faces,
On faces fallen of men that take no light,
Nor give light in the deeps of the dark places,
Blind things incorporate with the body of night.
Their souls are serpents winter-bound and frozen;
Their shame is as a tame beast, at their feet
Couched; their cold lips deride thee and thy chosen,
Their lying lips made gray with dust for meat.
Then when their time is full and days run over,
The splendor of thy sudden brow made bare
Darkens the morning; thy bared hands uncover
The veils of light and night and the awful air.
1
## p. 14317 (#511) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14317
And the world naked as a new-born maiden
Stands virginal and splendid as at birth,
With all thine heaven of all its light unladen,
Of all its love unburdened all thine earth.
For the utter earth and the utter air of heaven
And the extreme depth is thine and the extreme height;
Shadows of things and veils of ages riven
Are as men's kings unkingdomed in thy sight.
Through the iron years, the centuries brazen-gated,
By the ages' barred impenetrable doors,
From the evening to the morning have we waited,
Should thy foot haply sound on the awful floors,
The floors untrodden of the sun's feet-glimmer,
The star-unstricken pavements of the night;
Do the lights burn inside ? the lights wax dimmer
On festal faces withering out of sight.
The crowned heads lose the light on them: it may be
Dawn is at hand to smite the loud feast dumb;
To blind the torch-lit centuries till the day be,
The feasting kingdoms till thy kingdom come.
Shall it not come ? deny they or dissemble,
Is it not even as lightning from on high
Now ? and though many a soul close eyes and tremble,
How should they tremble at all who love thee as I?
I am thine harp between thine hands, O mother!
All my strong chords are strained with love of thee.
We grapple in love and wrestle, as each with other
Wrestle the wind and the unreluctant sea.
I am no courtier of thee sober-suited,
Who loves a little for a little pay.
Me not thy winds and storms nor thrones disrooted
Nor molten crowns nor thine own sins dismay.
Sinned hast thou sometime, therefore art thou sinless;
Stained hast thou been, who art therefore without stain;
Even as man's soul is kin to thee, but kinless
Thou, in whose womb Time sows the all-various grain.
I do not bid thee spare me, o dreadful mother!
I pray thee that thou spare not, of thy grace:
1
## p. 14318 (#512) ##########################################
14318
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
How were it with me then, if ever another
Should come to stand before thee in this my place?
I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion
Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath;
The grave of souls born worms and creeds grown carrion
Thy blast of judgment fills with fires of death.
Thou art the player whose organ keys are thunders,
And I beneath thy foot the pedal prest;
Thou art the ray whereat the rent night sunders,
And I the cloudlet borne upon thy breast.
I shall burn up before thee, pass and perish,
As haze in sunrise on the red sea-line;
But thou from dawn to sunsetting shalt cherish
The thoughts that led and souls that lighted mine.
Reared between night and noon and truth and error,
Each twilight-traveling bird that trills and screams
Sickens at midday, nor can face for terror
The imperious heaven's inevitable extremes.
I have no spirit of skill with equal fingers
At sign to sharpen or to slacken strings;
I keep no time of song with gold-perched singers
And chirp of linnets on the wrists of kings.
I am thy storm-thrush of the days that darken,
Thy petrel in the foam that bears thy bark
To port through night and tempest; if thou hearken,
My voice is in thy heaven before the lark.
My song is in the mist that hides thy morning,
My cry is up before the day for thee;
I have heard thee and beheld thee and give warning,
Before thy wheels divide the sky and sea.
Birds shall wake with thee voiced and feathered fairer,
To see in summer what I see in spring;
I have eyes and heart to endure thee, O thunder-bearer,
And they shall be who shall have tongues to sing.
I have love at least, and have not fear, and part not
From thine unnavigable and wingless way:
Thou tarriest, and I have not said thou art not,
Nor all thy night long have denied thy day.
## p. 14319 (#513) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14319
Darkness to daylight shall lift up thy pæan,
Hill to hill thunder, vale cry back to vale,
With wind-notes as of eagles Æschylean,
And Sappho singing in the nightingale.
Sung to by mighty sons of dawn and daughters,
Of this night's songs thine ear shall keep but one:
That supreme song which shook the channeled waters,
And called thee skyward as God calls the sun.
Come, though all heaven again be fire above thee;
Though death before thee come to clear thy sky:
Let us but see in his thy face who loved thee;
Yea, though thou slay us, arise and let us die.
FROM CATHENS)
AN ODE
E
RE from under earth again like fire the violet kindle,
Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom,
Ere the crescent of the last pale month of winter dwindle,
Shrink, and fall as falls a dead leaf on the dead month's
tomb;
Round the hills whose heights the first-born olive-blossom bright-
ened,
Round the city brow-bound once with violets like a bride,
Up from under earth again a light that long since lightened
Breaks, whence all the world took comfort as all time takes
pride.
Pride have all men in their fathers that were free before them,
In the warriors that begat us free-born pride have we;
But the fathers of their spirits, how many men adore them ?
With what rapture may we praise, who bade our souls be free?
Sons of Athens born in spirit and truth are all born free men:
Most of all, we, nurtured where the north wind holds his reign;
Children all we sea-folk of the Salaminian seamen,
Sons of them that beat back Persia, they that beat back Spain.
Since the songs of Greece fell silent, none like ours have risen;
Since the sails of Greece fell slack, no ships have sailed like
ours:
How should we lament not, if her spirit sit in prison ?
How should we rejoice not, if her wreaths renew their flowers ?
All the world is sweeter, if the Athenian violet quicken;
All the world is brighter, if the Athenian sun return;
## p. 14320 (#514) ##########################################
14320
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
All things foul on earth wax fainter, by that sun's light stricken;
All ill growths are withered, where those fragrant flower-lights
burn.
All the wandering waves of seas with all their warring waters
Roll the record on forever of the sea-fight there,
When the capes were battle's lists, and all the straits were slaugh-
ter's,
And the myriad Medes as foam-flakes on the scattering air.
Ours the lightning was that cleared the north and lit the nations,
But the light that gave the whole world light of old was she:
Ours an age or twain, but hers are endless generations:
All the world is hers at heart, and most of all are we.
OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
"O"
F such is the kingdom of heaven :)
No glory that ever was shed
From the crowning star of the seven
That crown the north world's head,
No word that ever was spoken
Of huinan or godlike tongue,
Gave ever such godlike token
Since human harps were strung.
No sign that ever was given
To faithful or faithless eyes,
Showed ever beyond clouds riven
So clear a Paradise.
Earth's creeds may be seventy times seven,
And blood have defiled each creed:
If of such be the kingdom of heaven,
It must be heaven indeed.
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
I'
F CHILDHOOD were not in the world,
But only men and women grown;
No baby-locks in tendrils curled,
No baby-blossoms blown;
Though men were stronger, women fairer,
And nearer all delights in reach,
## p. 14321 (#515) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14321
And verse and music uttered rarer
Tones of more godlike speech;
Though the utmost life of life's best hours
Found, as it cannot now find, words;
Though desert sands were sweet as flowers,
And flowers could sing like birds:
But children never heard them, never
They felt a child's foot leap and run,-
This were a drearier star than ever
Yet looked upon the sun.
A CHILD'S FUTURE
W"
HAT will it please you, my darling, hereafter to be ?
Fame upon land will you look for, or glory by sea ?
Gallant your life will be always, and all of it free.
Free as the wind when the heart of the twilight is stirred
Eastward, and sounds from the springs of the sunrise are
heard;
Free - and we know not another as infinite word.
Darkness or twilight or sunlight may compass us round,
Hate may arise up against us, or hope may confound;
Love may forsake us: yet may not the spirit be bound.
Free in oppression of grief as in ardor of joy,
Still may the soul be, and each to her strength as a toy;
Free in the glance of the man as the smile of the boy.
Freedom alone is the salt and the spirit that gives
Life, and without her is nothing that verily lives:
Death cannot slay her; she laughs upon death, and forgives.
Brightest and hardiest of roses anear and afar,
Glitters the blithe little face of you, round as a star;
Liberty bless you and keep you to be as you are.
England and liberty bless you and keep you to be
Worthy the name of their child and the sight of their sea:
Fear not at all; for a slave, if he fears not, is free.
XXIV-896
## p. 14322 (#516) ##########################################
14322
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
ADIEUX À MARIE STUART
I
Q
UEEN, for whose house my fathers fought,
With hopes that rose and fell,
Red star of boyhood's fiery thought,
Farewell.
They gave their lives, and I, my queen,
Have given you of my life,
Seeing your brave star burn high between
Men's strife.
The strife that lightened round their spears
Long since fell still: so long
Hardly may hope to last in years
My song.
But still through strife of time and thought
Your light on me too fell;
Queen, in whose name we sang or fought,
Farewell.
II
There beats no heart on either border
Wherethrough the north blasts blow
But keeps your memory as a warder
His beacon-fire aglow.
Long since it fired with love and wonder
Mine, for whose April age
Blithe midsummer made banquet under
The shade of Hermitage.
Soft sang the burn's blithe notes, that gather
Strength to ring true;
And air and trees and sun and heather
Remembered you.
Old border ghosts of fight or fairy
Or love or teen,
These they forgot, remembering Mary
The Queen.
## p. 14323 (#517) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14323
III
Queen once of Scots, and ever of yours
Whose sires brought forth for you
Their lives to strew your way like Aowers,
Adieu.
Dead is full many a dead man's name,
Who died for you this long
Time past: shall this too fare the same,
My song ?
But surely, though it die or live,
Your face was worth
All that a man may think to give
On earth.
No darkness cast of years between
Can darken you;
Man's love will never bid my queen
Adieu.
IV
Love hangs like light about your name
As music round the shell;
No heart can take of you a tame
Farewell.
Yet, when your very face was seen,
Ill gifts were yours for giving;
Love gat strange guerdons of my queen
When living
h, diamond eart unflawed and clear,
The whole world's crowning jewel!
Was ever heart so deadly dear
So cruel ?
Yet none for you of all that bled
Grudged once one drop that fell:
Not one to life reluctant said
Farewell.
## p. 14324 (#518) ##########################################
14324
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
V
Strange love they have given you, love disloyal,
Who mock with praise your name,
To leave a head so rare and royal
Too low for praise or blame.
You could not love nor hate, they tell us;
You had nor sense nor sting:
In God's name, then, what plague befell us
To fight for such a thing?
«Some faults the gods will give,” to fetter
Man's highest intent;
But surely you were something better
Than innocent!
No maid that strays with steps unwary
Through snares unseen,
But one to live and die for: Mary,
The Queen.
VI
Forgive them all their praise, who blot
Your fame with praise of you;
Then love may say, and falter not,
Adieu.
Yet some you hardly would forgive
Who did you much less wrong
Once; but resentment should not live
Too long
They never saw your lip's bright bow,
Your sword-bright eyes, -
The bluest of heavenly things below
The skies.
Clear eyes that love's self finds most like
A sword-blade's blue,
A sword-blade's ever keen to strike -
Adieu.
## p. 14325 (#519) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14325
VII
Though all things breathe or sound of fight
That yet make up your spell,
To bid you were to bid the light
Farewell.
Farewell the song says only, being
A star whose race is run;
Farewell the soul says never, seeing
The sun.
Yet, well-nigh as with flash of tears,
The song must say but so
That took your praise up twenty years
Ago.
More bright than stars or moons that vary,
Sun kindling heaven and hell,
Here, after all these years, Queen Mary,
Farewell.
LOVE AT SEA
IMITATED FROM THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
W*
E ARE in Love's hand to-day:
Where shall we go?
Love, shall we start or stay,
Or sail or row ?
There's many a wind and way,
And never a May but May;
We are in Love's hand to-day:
Where shall we go ?
Our land wind is the breath
Of sorrows kissed to death
And joys that were;
Our ballast is a rose;
Our way lies where God knows
And Love knows where.
We are in Love's hand to-day –
Our seamen are fledged Loves,
Our masts are bills of doves,
Our decks fine gold;
## p. 14326 (#520) ##########################################
14326
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Our ropes are dead maids' hair,
Our stores are love-shafts fair
And manifold.
We are in Love's hand to-day –
Where shall we land you, sweet?
On fields of strange men's feet,
Or fields near home?
Or where the fire-flowers blow,
Or where the flowers of snow
Or flowers of foam ?
We are in Love's hand to-day —
Land me, she says, where Love
Shows but one shaft, one dove,
One heart, one hand:
A shore like that, my dear,
Lies where no man will steer,
No maiden land.
A MATCH
I
F LOVE were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief:
If love were what the rose
And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single,
Delight our lips would mingle
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon:
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling,
And I, your love, were death,
We'd shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
## p. 14327 (#521) ##########################################
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14327
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath:
If you were life, my darling,
And I, your love, were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons,
And tears of night and morrow,
And laughs of maid and boy:
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May,
We'd throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day:
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein:
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.
ÉTUDE RÉALISTE
I
,
A Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.
Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.
## p. 14328 (#522) ##########################################
14328
ALGERYON CHARLES SWINBURNE
No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.
II
A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled,
Whence yet no leaf expands,
Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,
A baby's hands.
Then, even as warriors grip their brands
When battle's bolt is hurled,
They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.
No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled
Match, even in loveliest lands,
The sweetest flowers in all the world-
A baby's hands.
INI
A baby's eyes, ere speech begin,
Ere lips learn words or sighs,
Bless all things bright enough to win
A baby's eyes.
Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,
And sleep flows out and in,
Lies perfect in their paradise.
Their glance might cast out pain and sin,
Their speech make dumb the wise;
By mute glad godhead felt within
A baby's eyes.
## p. 14329 (#523) ##########################################
14329
CARMEN SYLVA
(ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ROUMANIA)
(1843-)
ARMEN Sylva, the charming pen-name of the poet-queen of
Roumania, is a reminiscence of the forests of Neuwied on
the Rhine, where she was born December 29th, 1843. She
belongs to an intellectual family: her great-uncle was a scientist,
whose collection of specimens of natural history is now in New
York; and her father, Prince Herman of Wied, was a man of culture,
devoted to philosophic studies. The young princess grew up in an
atmosphere well fitted to develop her natural gifts. Her temperament
was passionate, restless, and reserved; and
her imagination so active that her mother
forbade the reading of novels until she
was nineteen. She began to write verses
in her childhood; and from her sixteenth
year kept a sort of poetic diary, whose
existence however was for many years a
secret. Her early life was saddened by the
constant illness of her father and young
brother; and on the whole, sorrow is the
prevailing note in her poems.
After several years spent in travel, she
had determined to devote herself to teach-
ing, when she was married in 1869 to CARMEN SYLVA
Charles of Hohenzollern, Prince of Rouma-
nia. Elizabeth entered on her new sphere with enthusiasm; thor-
oughly acquiring the Roumanian language, and so winning the love
of her people that she is known among them as their "little mother. ”
She founded schools, asylums, hospitals, art galleries, and art schools;
and in every way strove to develop Roumanian nationality.
The death of her little daughter in 1874 led her to express her sor-
row in verse.
Up to this time her poems had been simply sponta-
neous utterances; but now she began to study the art of composition
under the guidance of Alexandre, the Roumanian poet. Her poetic
labors were soon interrupted by the Turko-Russian war, during which
she devoted herself to work among the soldiers, and in the hospitals.
## p. 14330 (#524) ##########################################
14330
CARMEN SYLVA
Roumania became a kingdom in 1881. Shortly before her coronation,
Elizabeth published her first book,-a translation of Roumanian po-
ems. Her first collection of original poems appeared in 1881, entitled
'Storms. ' It contains four poems, the best of which is “Sappho. '
The following year she published Sorrow's Earthly Pilgrimage); “The
Enchantress'; Jehovah,' describing the wanderings of Ahasuerus in
search of God; “A Prayer); and (Pensées d'une Reine' (A Queen's
Thoughts),- a book of aphorisms, which won a medal of honor from
the French Acadeiny. In 1883 appeared From Carmen Sylva's
Kingdom,' — a collection of Roumanian fairy tales and legends, a sec-
ond series of which was brought out in 1887, together with «Through
the Centuries. ' Another collection, “Fairy Tales from the Pelesch,'
takes its title from the stream near the beautiful royal palace in the
Sinaja valley. To this year also belong My Rest,' a collection of
songs and lyrics, in which the Queen is at her best; and (My Rhine,'
poems on places dear to her in childhood. (My Book' – poems on
Egypt — appeared in 1885. The Songs of Toil' were published col-
lectively in 1891; but an English version of thirty songs was brought
out in New York in 1888. Most of these had previously appeared
in the Independent; and through them the Queen was first known to
the American public. These original little poems show her intense
sympathy for the poor, and at the same time illustrate her genius.
Her greatest poetical effort, the tragedy (Master Manole,' appeared
in 1892. In collaboration with Madame Kremnitz, under the com-
mon pseudonym of Idem and Ditto, she wrote the novels From
Two Worlds) (1885), Astra' (1886), «The Outpost' (1887), and Idle
Wanderings? (1887). With the help of Mademoiselle Vacaresco, the
Queen collected Roumanian legends and tales, which were published
under the title “Tales of the Dimbovitza) in 1890.
Carmen Sylva's German is pure and beautiful, and owing to her
remarkable linguistic skill, extraordinarily flexible. Her poems are
full of fire and grace, and show a true musical sense.
however, has the defect of extreme brevity; and her work generally
is impaired by her great facility and rapidity of composition.
The biographies of Queen Elizabeth are Mita Kremnitz's Carmen
Sylva' (1882); 'The Life of Carmen Sylva,' by Baroness Stackelberg
(fifth edition, 1889); M. Schmitz's Carmen Sylva' (1889); Stackelberg's
Life of Carmen Sylva,' translated by Baroness Deichmann (1890);
and Elizabeth of Roumania: A Study,' by Blanche Roosevelt (1891).
Her prose,
## p. 14331 (#525) ##########################################
CARMEN SYLVA
14331
FODDER-TIME
From (Songs of Toil': translated by John Eliot Bowen. The five following
selections from «Songs of Toil) are reprinted by permission of the Fred-
erick A. Stokes Company.
ow sweet the manger smells! The cows all listen
With outstretched necks, and with impatient lowing;
They greet the clover, their content now showing —
And how they lick their noses till they glisten!
HY
Н
The velvet-coated beauties do not languish
Beneath the morning's golden light that's breaking,
The unexhausted spring of life awaking,
Their golden eyes of velvet full of anguish.
They patiently endure their pains. Bestowing
Their sympathy, the other cows are ruing
Their unproductive udders, and renewing
At milking-time their labor and their lowing.
And now I must deceive the darling bossy,–
With hand in milk must make it suck my finger.
Its tender lips cling close like joys that linger,
And feel so warm with dripping white and flossy.
This very hand my people with devotion
Do kiss, - which paints and plays and writes, moreover,
I would it had done naught but pile the clover
To feed the kine that know no base emotion!
THE SOWER
ENEATH the mild sun vanish the vapor's last wet traces,
And for the autumn sowing the mellow soil lies steeping;
The stubble fires have faded, and ended is the reaping;
The piercing plow has leveled the rough resisting places.
B
The solitary sower along the brown field paces, —
Two steps and then a handful, a rhythmic motion keeping;
The eager sparrows follow, now pecking and now peeping.
He sows; but all the increase accomplished by God's grace is.
## p. 14332 (#526) ##########################################
14332
CARMEN SYLVA
And whether frost be fatal or drought be devastating,
The blades rise green and slender for springtime winds to
flutter,
As time of golden harvest the coming fall awaiting.
None see the silent yearnings the sower's lips half utter,
The carking care he suffers, distressing thoughts creating.
With steady hand he paces afield without a mutter.
a
THE BOATMAN'S SONG
D
OWN-STREAM 'tis all by moonlight,
Up-stream at blazing noon;
Down-stream upon the ripples,
Up-stream through sandy dune.
Down-stream, the helm held loosely,
A pipe between the lips;
Up-stream, like beast one straineth
And galls the breast and hips.
What boots it that I seem like
The river's king to-day,
If to-morrow like a beggar,
Despised, I tug away?
My pleasuring leaves no furrow
Upon the water-plain;
The marks of struggling footsteps
Long in the sand remain.
THE COUNTRY LETTER-CARRIER
T THAWS. On field and roadway the packing drifts have faded;
The service-berry drips, and the slush is deep and stale;
The clouds hang low and leaden; the evening glow is pale:
The paths gleam like a brooklet, whose bed is all unshaded.
Along the highway trudges a messenger; unaided,
He limps and halts and shivers; his bag holds little mail. -
A single wretched letter all crumpled, old, and frail —
He must push on; the village he nears now, lame and jaded.
He knocks. A timid woman admits him: “Till now, never
Had I a letter! Heavens! My boy! Quick, give it here!
## p. 14333 (#527) ##########################################
CARMEN SYLVA
14333
He's coming! Now we're happy! Her aged muscles quiver:
“God sent you here. Be seated and warm yourself; come near:
A share of my possessions are yours to keep forever. ”
The postman limps no longer, warmed by the woman's cheer.
THE STONE-CUTTER
W*
E HAMMER, hammer, hammer on and on,
Day out, day in, throughout the year,
In blazing heat and tempests drear;
God's house we slowly heavenward rear
We'll never see it done!
We hammer, hammer, hammer, might and main.
The sun torments, the rain-drops prick,
Our eyes grow blind with dust so thick;
Our name in dust, too, fadeth quick-
No glory and no gain!
We hammer, hammer, hammer ever on.
O blessed God on Heaven's throne,
Dost thou take a care of every stone
And leave the toiling poor alone,
Whom no one looks upon ?
THE POST
S"
WIFT, swift as the wind drives the great Russian Czar,
But we of Roumania are swifter by far:
Eight horses we harness for every-day speed,
But I've driven a team of a dozen at need.
Then over the bridges we hurry along,
Through village and hamlet, with shouting and song,
With a hip-hip-hurrah! swiftly onwards we go!
The birds fly above and our horses below.
When the sun burns at noon and the dust whirls on high,
Like the leaves of the forest grown withered and dry,
We hasten along, never slacking the rein.
The wild mountain riders come down to the plain :
Their hair and their cloaks flutter free in the wind;
The sheep and the buffaloes gallop behind;
## p. 14334 (#528) ##########################################
14334
CARMEN SYLVA
And hip-hip hurrah! boys, with horse and with man,
Like the tempest we pass — let him follow who can.
When winter is here, and the storm spirit's abroad,
Swift glideth the sledge o'er the snow-covered road;
Great drifts hide the inn and the sign-post from sight, -
'Tis an ocean of snow lying waveless and white;
The wolves' and the ravens' wild greetings we hear,
As we pass the ravine, and the precipice drear,
With a hip-hip-hurrah! From the road though we stray
No matter,- the horses will find out the way.
The rain falls in torrents; the stream, grown a flood,
Has shattered the bridge on our passage that stood.
The waters have risen — are rising yet more
'Tis foolhardy daring to swim to the shore.
Ten pieces of gold, and I'll venture my neck:
The carriage is floating – the box-seat's the deck;
But hip-hip-hurrah! boys, so loud are our cheers
That the water flows back, for our shouting it fears.
A jest to the lad and a kiss to the lass,
We throw, while they linger, to watch as we pass;
His laugh still resounds, and her cheek is still red,
When already our bells jingle far on ahead.
Right well does our team know their silvery chime,
And we scarce slacken speed as the mountain we climb.
Then hip-hip-hurrah! boys, - nay! slowly, beware,
For steep's the descent: we must make it with care.
At midnight, the streets of the town to the tread
Of our horses resound: all the sky's glowing red;
For crowds gather round us with torches of light,
And pine-boughs all blazing, to stare at the sight.
A crack of the whip, and a cheer and a song,
Through a circle of fire we clatter along;
And hip-hip-hurrah! through the glow and the glare,
Through flowers and folk, e'er a halt we declare.
Even if I were dead, I could never lie still:
I should hasten afield over valley and hill.
I'd take the light reins and the whip in my hand,
And scarce in the saddle I'd fly through the land.
## p. 14335 (#529) ##########################################
CARMEN SYLVA
14335
No dull, droning chant and procession for me, –
I'd turn in my coffin such doings to see;
And hip-hip-hurrah! from the bier and its gloom
I'd leap to the saddle and drive to my tomb.
DIMBOVITZA
D"
IMBOVITZA! Magic river,
Silver-shining, memory-haunted;
He who drinks thy crystal waters
Ne'er can quit thy shores enchanted.
Dimbovitza! all too deeply
Drank I of thy flowing river;
For my love, my inmost being,
There meseems have sunk forever.
Dimbovitza! Dimbovitza!
All my soul hast thou in keeping,
Since beneath thy banks of verdure
Lies my dearest treasure sleeping.
LONGING
1
LONG to feel thy little arm's embrace,
Thy little silver-sounding voice to hear;
I long for thy warm kisses on my face,
And for thy birdlike carol, blithe and clear.
I long for every childish, loving word;
And for thy little footsteps, fairy light,
That hither, thither moved, and ever stirred
My heart with them to gladness infinite.
And for thy hair I long — that halo blest
Hanging in golden glory round thy brow.
My child, can aught such longing lull to rest ?
Nay, heaven's bliss alone can end it now.
## p. 14336 (#530) ##########################################
14336
CARMEN SYLVA
CARMEN
AT
ND all which I here have been singing,
It is your very own!
From your deep heart its music bringing
To sad chords of your sorrows ringing,
Winning for you the crown.
Yours were the thoughts forever ranging,
You made the folk-tales true.
In this earth-day of chance and changing,
Of lives unfolding, deaths estranging,
Look, Soul! there too are you.
Perchance, when Death shall bring sad leisure,
And these pale lips are dumb,
Then you my words may better measure,
And in my true love take new pleasure;
Then will my meaning come!
## p. 14337 (#531) ##########################################
14337
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
(1840–1893)
Oo. . .
HE restraining and fructifying power of culture receives an
adequate illustration in the writings of John Addington Sy-
Selo monds. There are few critics of this century who approach
him in catholicity of artistic taste, and sensitiveness to the claims
of humanity above all other claims. He is a humanist in the true
sense of the word; preferring the study of man to the study of man's
works, or rather seeking always for the human element in a monu-
ment of art. He is also an exponent of the highest culture, of that
self-effectuation which is the fruit of knowl-
edge married to sympathy. In him, as in
Walter Pater, liberal education has carried
talent almost to the domain of creative
genius — almost but not quite: he remains
a critic, whose criticism is always illumi-
nation. He describes his own development
in his essay on Culture,' when he defines
culture as —
»
«the raising of intellectual faculties to their highest
potency by means of conscious training;
it is a psychical state, so to speak, which may
be acquired by sympathetic and assimilative J. A. SYMONDS
study. It makes a man to be something: it does
not teach him to create anything. It has no power to stand in the place of
nature, and to endow a human being with new faculties. It prepares him
to exert his innate faculties in a chosen line of work with a certain spirit of
freedom, with a certain breadth of understanding. ”
Mr. Symonds's life was singularly uneventful, being devoted en-
tirely to the quiet industries of scholarship. He inherited not a little
of his literary taste from his father of the same name, who was a
practicing physician at Bristol and afterwards at Clifton; and whose
(Miscellanies,' selected and edited by his son, were published in 1871.
That son was born in Bristol, October 5th, 1840. In 1860 he was
graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, winning the Newdigate prize.
On account of ill health he lived for many years at Davos-Platz in
Switzerland. He died at Rome, April 19th, 1893.
XXIV—897
## p. 14338 (#532) ##########################################
14338
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
(
The thirty-three years between the taking of his degree and his
death were occupied chiefly with study, and with the production of
works of criticism. Many of these deal with Italian men of genius;
with the period of the Renaissance, and with those personages in
whom the Renaissance spirit found most significant embodiment. An
Introduction to the Study of Dante,' published in 1872, was one of
the first fruits of Mr. Symonds's scholarship. His poetical tempera-
ment, his sensitiveness to beauty, above all, his intense interest in
human development, fitted him peculiarly to understand the temper
of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He entered with
full sympathy into that highly colored, highly vitalized world, which
was the product of the marriage of medieval Faust with Helen, of
the romance of Italy with the classicism of Greece.
His Renaissance in Italy) is a historical record of the development
of this world, interspersed with subtle and penetrative criticism. This
monumental book is in five parts. The first, The Age of the Des-
pots,' was published in 1875; the second, “The Revival of Learning,'
in 1877; then followed 'The Fine Arts,' Italian Literature, and
lastly in 1886, “The Catholic Reaction. The comprehensiveness of this
work is scarcely less remarkable than its conscientious scholarship,
and its subtle insight into one of the most complex periods in mod-
ern history. He portrays a great age, as it can only be portrayed,
through the medium of personality. He sees the individualism of
the Renaissance expressed in Dante, in Petrarch, and in Boccaccio;
he sees its strength in Michael Angelo, and its sweetness in Raphael.
His Life of Michael Angelo' is written in this spirit of sympathetic
criticism, so that it is less a historical record than a portrait of a
His knowledge of Renaissance conditions enabled him also to
breathe with freedom the glowing air of the England which brought
forth the phenix brood of the dramatists. His Studies of Shake-
speare's Predecessors in the English Drama' are luminous with appre-
ciation, as are also his Life of Sidney' and his “Life of Ben Jonson. '
The chivalry of renascent England is embodied in the one, its hu-
manism in the other. To Mr. Symonds the man is the age.
As was natural with a student of the Renaissance, Mr. Symonds
was also a student of Greek life and thought. His Studies of the
Greek Poets' is a unique work; because it approaches the genius of
Greece, as embodied in her singers, on the side of personality. It is
a book requiring little scholarship in the reader, and it is therefore
popular in the widest sense. It tells of the Greek poets as of men
whose individuality gave color to their age. The reader is brought
into contact with them rather than with remote historical conditions.
Over the whole record lies the beautiful light of a fine and pene-
trative sympathy. The author loses readily his nineteenth-century
man,
## p. 14339 (#533) ##########################################
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
14339
temper of the desire of the impossible, and enters with full harmony
into the mellow objective world of Greece, into its reasonableness and
its temperance. His style attains its greatest perfection in this book.
It is warm and pulsating with his sympathies.
The poetical and appreciative side of Mr. Symonds's nature was
not developed, however, at the expense of the purely intellectual and
scientific. His culture was broad enough to make of him a complete
critic, living his artistic life in the Whole as well as in the Good and
in the Beautiful. Yet he maintains that the scientific spirit, the out-
growth of the rediscovery of the world, must be subordinate to the
humanistic spirit, the outgrowth of the rediscovery of man. This
is so because man is greater than the universe in which he lives.
In his “Essays, Speculative and Suggestive,' he has embodied much
of his critical thought concerning the scientific tendencies of the cen-
tury.
He is also a subtle critic of his contemporaries. His life of Shel-
ley reveals this; as does also a chapter on Zola's La Bête Humaine,'
in which he maintains that Zola is an idealist.
« The idealism which I have been insisting on, which justifies us in calling
(La Bête Humaine) a poem, has to be sought in the method whereby these
separate parcels of the plot are woven together; and also in the dominating
conception contained in the title, which gives unity to the whole work. We
are not in the real region of reality, but in the region of the constructive imagi-
nation, from the first to the last line of the novel. If that be not the essence
of idealism, - this working of the artist's brain, not in but on the subject-
matter of the external world and human nature,- I do not know what mean-
ing to give to the term. )
>
Besides the works already referred to, Mr. Symonds published A
Study of Boccaccio,' 'A Study of Walt Whitman,' (Studies in Italy
and Greece, a volume of poems entitled Many Moods,' another
entitled New and Old, a translation of the autobiography of Ben-
venuto Cellini, a volume of essays with the title 'In the Key of
Blue,' a translation of the sonnets of Michael Angelo, (Sketches
and Studies in Italy,' Wine, Women, and Song: Mediæval Songs
in English Verse,' and a volume of sonnets entitled Vagabundi
Libellus. '
## p. 14340 (#534) ##########################################
14340
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
ITALIAN ART IN ITS RELATION TO RELIGION
From (The Renaissance in Italy)
T.
HE mediæval faiths were still vivid when the first Italian
painters began their work; and the sincere endeavor of
these men was to set forth in beautiful and worthy form
the truths of Christianity. The eyes of the worshiper should no
longer have a mere stock or stone to contemplate: his imagina-
tion should be helped by the dogmatic presentation of the scenes
of sacred history, and his devotion be quickened by lively images
of the passion of our Lord. Spirit should converse with spirit,
through no veil of symbol, but through the transparent medium
of art, itself instinct with inbreathed life and radiant with ideal
beauty. The body and the soul, moreover, should be reconciled;
and God's likeness should be once more acknowledged in the feat-
ures and the limbs of man. Such was the promise of art; and
this promise was in a great measure fulfilled by the painting of
the fourteenth century. Men ceased to worship their God in the
holiness of ugliness; and a great city called its street Glad on
the birthday festival of the first picture investing religious emo-
tion with æsthetic charm. But in making good the promise
they had given, it was needful for the arts on the one hand to
enter a region not wholly their own the region of abstractions
and of mystical conceptions; and on the other to create a world
of sensuous delightfulness, wherein the spiritual element was ma-
terialized to the injury of its own essential quality. Spirit indeed
spake to spirit, so far as the religious content was concerned;
but flesh spake also to flesh in the æsthetic form. The incarna-
tion promised by the arts involved a corresponding sensuousness.
Heaven was brought down to earth, but at the cost of making
men believe that earth itself was heavenly.
At this point the subject of our inquiry naturally divides into
two main questions. The first concerns the form of figurative
art specially adapted to the requirements of religious thought in
the fourteenth century. The second treats of the effects result-
ing both to art and religion from the expression of mystical and
theological conceptions in plastic form.
When we consider the nature of the ideas assimilated in the
Middle Ages by the human mind, it is clear that art, in order
to set them forth, demanded a language the Greeks had never
## p. 14341 (#535) ##########################################
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
14341
greatly needed, and had therefore never fully learned. To over-
estimate the difference from an asthetic point of view between
the religious notions of the Greeks and those which Christianity
had made essential, would be difficult. Faith, hope, and charity;
humility, endurance, suffering; the Resurrection and the Judg-
ment; the Fall and the Redemption; heaven and hell; the height
and depth of man's mixed nature; the drama of human destiny
before the throne of God; — into the sphere of thoughts like
these, vivid and solemn, transcending the region of sense and cor-
poreity, carrying the mind away to an ideal world, where the
things of this earth obtained a new reality by virtue of their
relation to an invisible and infinite beyond, — the modern arts in
their infancy were thrust. There was nothing finite here or tan-
gible, no gladness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the
swiftness of a young man's limbs, no simple idealization of nat-
ural delightfulness. The human body, which the figurative arts
must needs use as the vehicle of their expression, had ceased
to have a value in and for itself, had ceased to be the true and
adequate investiture of thoughts demanded from the artist. At
best it could be taken only as the symbol of some inner mean-
ing, the shrine of an indwelling spirit nobler than itself; just as
a lamp of alabaster owes its beauty and its worth to the flame it
more than half conceals, the light transmitted through its scarce
transparent walls.
In ancient art those moral and spiritual qualities which the
Greeks recognized as truly human, and therefore divine, allowed
themselves to be incarnated in well-selected types of physical
perfection. The deities of the Greek mythology were limited to
the conditions of natural existence; they were men and women
of a larger mold and freer personality: less complex, inasmuch
as each completed some one attribute; less thwarted in activity,
inasmuch as no limit was assigned to exercise of power.
