No More Learning

For the song-birds of sorrow, that muffle
Their music as clouds do their fire;
For the storm-birds of passion, that ruffle
Wild wings in a wind of desire;
In the stream of the storm as it setties
Blown seaward, borne far from the sun,
Shaken loose on the darkness like petals
Dropt one after one ?


## p. 14296 (#490) ##########################################

14296
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Though the world of your hands be more gracious,
And lovelier in lordship of things
Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious
Warm heaven of her imminent wings,
Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,
For the love of old loves and lost times;
And receive in your palace of painting
This revel of rhymes.
Though the seasons of man full of losses
Make empty the years full of youth,
If but one thing be constant in crosses,
Change lays not her hand upon truth;
Hopes die, and their tombs are for token
That the grief, as the joy, of them ends
Ere time that breaks all men has broken
The faith between friends.
Though the many lights dwindle to one light,
There is help if the heaven has one;
Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight
And the earth dispossessed of the sun,
They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,
When, refreshed as a bride, and set free
With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,
Night sinks on the sea.
HYMN TO PROSERPINE
AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Vicisti, Galilæe
I
HAVE lived long enough, having seen one thing,— that love hath an
end:
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh
or that weep:
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harp-string of gold,
A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold ?
I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.


## p. 14297 (#491) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14297
For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains,
men say
New Gods are crowned in the city, their fowers have broken your
rods:
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the Gods are at strife: ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
I say to you, Cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, Be at peace,
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean ? but these thou shalt not take:
The laurel, the palms, and the pæan, the breast of the nymphs in the
brake,-
Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that Aicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die: shall life not thrive as it may ?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labor, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years ?
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray
from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all ? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of
the tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods !
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the
past:


## p. 14298 (#492) ##########################################

14298
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
as
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-
gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits;
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas
with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled.
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the
world.
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
In its sides is the north wind bound; and its salt is of all men's
tears:
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years;
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour:
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that
devour;
And its vapor and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to
be;
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of
the sea;
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the
air :
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is
made bare.
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea
with rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye
Gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
Ye are Gods, and behold ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at
last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
things,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you
for kings.
Though the feet of thine high-priests tread where thy lords and our
forefathers trod,
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a
God,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her
head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee
dead.


## p. 14299 (#493) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14299
Of the maiden thy mother, men sing as a goddess with grace clad
around:
Thou art throned where another was king: where another was queen
she is crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another; but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering
seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the
foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odor and color of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendor, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her
name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on
the sea,
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token ? we wist that ye should not
fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end :
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
I am also, I also, thy brother: I go as I came unto earth.
In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night
where thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from
the heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red
rose is white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of
the night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and
undone.
Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal
breath:
For these give labor and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.


## p. 14300 (#494) ##########################################

14300
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE
H*
ERE, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbor,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
Weak ships and spirits steer:
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine;
Pale beds of blowing rushes
Where no leaf blooms or blushes,
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.


## p. 14301 (#495) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14301
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her,
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her, and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things:
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.


## p. 14302 (#496) ##########################################

14302
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor winter leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
HESPERIA
0
UT of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore
is,
Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fullness of joy,
As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of
stories,
Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,
Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,
Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,
Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or
pleasant -
Is it thither the wind's wings beat ? is it hither to me, O my
sweet ?


## p. 14303 (#497) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14303
as
a
For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the
water,
Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose
daughter
Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.
Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber,
Strayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead
Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without
number
Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the
dead, -
Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten
caresses,
One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures :
The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of
thy tresses,
And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures.
But thy bosom is warm for my face, and profound as a manifold
flower,
Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odor that fades in a flame;
Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bounti-
ful hour
That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were
it shame.
Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy lips that
are loving,
Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream;
And my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward thee,
and moving
As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream,
Fair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison,
That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea,
Closed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost re-arisen,
Pale as the love that revives as a ghost re-arisen in me.
From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places
Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead,
Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces,
And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is
red,
Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and re-
presses,
That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his fill;


## p. 14304 (#498) ##########################################

14304
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive
caresses
That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will.
Thy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou art pale as
a rose is,
Paler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the bud:
And the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core it
incloses,
Pity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with the blood.
As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her
bosom,
So love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns as a flame;
I have loved overmuch in my life: when the live bud bursts with the
blossom,
Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame.
As a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven asunder;
As the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves that
allure;
And the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight and a
wonder;
And the thorns are too sharp for a boy, too slight for a man, to
endure.
Too soon did I love it, and lost love's rose; and I cared not for
glory's:
Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed in my hair.
Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores?
Was it pallor of slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee
fair ?
For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart is her
fuel;
She was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from the rage
of her reign;
Who behold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her mouth grow-
ing cruel,
And flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, Our Lady of
Pain.
Low down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than with leaves
in the summer,
In the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of tongues that I
knew;
And the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, their
mouths overcome her,
And her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as a desert
with dew.


## p. 14305 (#499) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14305
With the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful lips be
so bitter,
(smile;
With the cold foul foam of the snakes, they soften and redden and
And her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide, and her eyelashes
glitter,
And she laughs with a savor of blood in her face, and a savor of
guile.
She laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows hither and
hisses,
As a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder and leap:
Let her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous kisses,
To consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our Lady of Sleep.
Ah, daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into prison,
Who shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly;
Let us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a moon un-
arisen,
Swift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart and not die.
They are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; there
is none that hath ridden,
None that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life as we ride:
By the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the shore
that is hidden,
Where life breaks loud and unseen, a sonorous invisible tide;
By the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools bitter and
sterile,
By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the channel ºf
years,
Our wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through pleasure and
peril,
Labor and listen, and pant not or pause for the peril that nears;
And the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as an arrow
asunder;
And slow by the sandhill and swift by the down with its glimpses of
grass,
Sudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and thunder,
Rings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as we pass;
Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a
maiden,
Stung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf where we
past;
And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy-
laden,
As we burn with the fire of our flight: ah, love, shall we win at the
last ?
XXIV—895


## p. 14306 (#500) ##########################################

14306
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
B“CK
ACK to the flower-town, side by side,
The bright months bring,
New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
Freedom and spring.
The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
Filled full of sun;
All things come back to her, being free -
All things but one.
In many a tender wheaten plot,
Flowers that were dead
Live, and old suns revive; but not
That holier head.
By this white wandering waste of sea,
Far north, I hear
One face shall never turn to me
As once this year;
Shall never smile and turn and rest
On mine as there,
Nor one most sacred hand be prest
Upon my hair.
I came as one whose thoughts half linger,
Half run before;
The youngest to the oldest singer
That England bore.
I found him whom I shall not find
Till all grief end,
In holiest age our mightiest mind,
Father and friend.
But thou, if anything endure,
If hope there be,
O spirit that man's life left pure,
Man's death set free,-
Not with disdain of days that were,
Look earthward now:
Let dreams revive the reverend hair,
The imperial brow:
Come back in sleep; for in the life
Where thou art not


## p. 14307 (#501) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14307
We find none like thee. Time and strife
And the world's lot
Move thee no more; but love at least
And reverent heart
May move thee, royal and released
Soul, as thou art.
And thou, his Florence, to thy trust
Receive and keep-
Keep safe his dedicated dust,
His sacred sleep.
So shall thy lovers, come from far,
Mix with thy name
As morning-star with evening-star
His faultless fame.
A FORSAKEN GARDEN
I
N A coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn incloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed,
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.
The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand ?
So long have the gray bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briers if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.
The dense hard passage is blind and stifled,
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken -
These remain.


## p. 14308 (#502) ##########################################

14308
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song:
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long
The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath;
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.
Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,”
Did he whisper? -«look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam flowers endure when the rose blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die — but we ? »
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
Love was dead.
Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
And were one to the end; but what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea, as a rose must wither, -
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
What love was ever as deep as a grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them,
Or the wave.
All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea;
Not a breath of the time that has been, hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.
Here death may deal not again for ever;
Here change may come not till all change end.


## p. 14309 (#503) ##########################################

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
14309
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
Who have left naught living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, -
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be ;
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea,
Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and•meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink.
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.
THE PILGRIMS
W"
was
ho is your lady of love, O ye that pass
Singing ? and is it for sorrow of that which
That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be ?
For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing. –
Our lady of love by you is unbeholden:
For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden
Treasure of hair, nor face, nor form; but we
That love, we know her more fair than anything.
Is she a queen, having great gifts to give ? -
Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live
Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain,
Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears;
And when she bids die he shall surely die.
And he shall leave all things under the sky,
And go forth naked under sun and rain,
And work and wait and watch out all his years.
Hath she on earth no place of habitation ? -
Age to age calling, nation answering nation,
Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say:
For if she be not in the spirit of men,
For if in the inward soul she hath no place,
In vain they cry unto her, seeking her face,
In vain their mouths make much of her; for they
Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again.


## p. 14310 (#504) ##########################################

14310
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
O ye that follow, and have ye no repentance ?
For on your brows is written mortal sentence,
An hieroglyph of sorrow, a fiery sign,
That in your lives ye shall not pause or rest,
Nor have the sure sweet common love, nor keep
Friends and safe days, nor joy of life nor sleep. -
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.



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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,


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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.


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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.