The Poems Of William Watson

THE POEMS OFWILLIAM WATSON New YorkMACMILLAN AND CO.AND LONDON1893 Norwood PressJ.S. Cushing & Co.–Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. CONTENTS MISCELLANEOUS– PRELUDE AUTUMN WORLD-STRANGENESS “WHEN BIRDS WERE SONGLESS” THE MOCK SELF “THY VOICE FROM INMOST DREAMLAND CALLS” IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH “NAY, BID ME NOT MY CARES TO LEAVE” A CHILD’S HAIR THE KEY-BOARD “SCENTLESS FLOW’RS I BRING THEE” ON LANDOR’S “HELLENICS” To —- ON EXAGGERATED DEFERENCE TO FOREIGN LITERARY OPINION ENGLAND TO IRELAND MENSIS LACRIMARUM “UNDER THE DARK AND PINY STEEP” THE BLIND SUMMIT TO LORD TENNYSON SKETCH OF A POLITICAL CHARACTER ART MAXIMS THE GLIMPSE THE BALLAD OF THE “BRITAIN’S PRIDE” LINES THE RAVEN’S SHADOW LUX PERDITA ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES HISTORY THE EMPTY NEST IRELAND THE LUTE-PLAYER “AND THESE–ARE THESE INDEED THE END” THE RUSS AT KARA LIBERTY REJECTED LIFE WITHOUT HEALTH TO A FRIEND, CHAFING AT ENFORCED IDLENESS FROM INTERRUPTED HEALTH “WELL HE SLUMBERS, GREATLY SLAIN” AN EPISTLE TO AUSTIN DOBSON TO EDWARD CLODD TO EDWARD DOWDEN FELICITYVER TENEBROSUM, SONNETS OF MARCH AND APRIL 1885– THE SOUDANESE HASHEEN THE ENGLISH DEAD GORDON GORDON (concluded) THE TRUE PATRIOTISM RESTORED ALLEGIANCE THE POLITICAL LUMINARY FOREIGN MENACE HOME-ROOTEDNESS OUR EASTERN TREASURE REPORTED CONCESSIONS NIGHTMARE LAST WORD: TO THE COLONIESEPIGRAMSWORDSWORTH’S GRAVELACHRYMAE MUSARUMDEDICATION OF “THE DREAM OF MAN”THE DREAM OF MANSHELLEY’S CENTENARYA GOLDEN HOURAT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMBLINES IN A FLYLEAF OF “CHRISTABEL”LINES TO OUR NEW CENSORRELUCTANT SUMMERTHE GREAT MISGIVING“THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT” BEAUTY’S METEMPSYCHOSISENGLAND MY MOTHERNIGHTTHE FUGITIVE IDEAL“THE FORESTERS”SONGCOLUMBUSTHE PRINCE’S QUESTANGELOTHE QUESTIONERTHE RIVERCHANGED VOICESA SUNSETA SONG OF THREE SINGERSLOVE’S ASTROLOGYTHREE FLOWERSTHREE ETERNITIESLOVE OUTLOVEDVANISHINGSBEETHOVENGOD-SEEKINGSKYFARING MISCELLANEOUS PRELUDE The mighty poets from their flowing store Dispense like casual alms the careless ore; Through throngs of men their lonely way they go, Let fall their costly thoughts, nor seem to know.– Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews The facile largess of a stintless Muse.A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long, Capriciously she touches me to song–Then leaves me to lament her flight in vain, And wonder will she ever come again. AUTUMN Thou burden of all songs the earth hath sung, Thou retrospect in Time’s reverted eyes, Thou metaphor of everything that dies,That dies ill-starred, or dies beloved and young And therefore blest and wise,–O be less beautiful, or be less brief, Thou tragic splendour, strange, and full of fear! In vain her pageant shall the Summer rear? At thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, Crumbles the gorgeous year. Ah, ghostly as remembered mirth, the tale Of Summer’s bloom, the legend of the Spring! And thou, too, flutterest an impatient wing, Thou presence yet more fugitive and frail, Thou most unbodied thing,Whose very being is thy going hence, And passage and departure all thy theme; Whose life doth still a splendid dying seem, And thou at height of thy magnificence A figment and a dream. Stilled is the virgin rapture that was June, And cold is August’s panting heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre:And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing!For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey With speech fantastic ring. For me, to dreams resigned, there come and go, ‘Twixt mountains draped and hooded night and morn, Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne, From undiscoverable lips that blow An immaterial horn;And spectral seem thy winter-boding trees, Thy ruinous bowers and drifted foliage wet– Past and Future in sad bridal met,O voice of everything that perishes, And soul of all regret! WORLD-STRANGENESS Strange the world about me lies, Never yet familiar grown–Still disturbs me with surprise, Haunts me like a face half known. In this house with starry dome, Floored with gemlike plains and seas, Shall I never feel at home, Never wholly be at ease? On from room to room I stray, Yet my Host can ne’er espy,And I know not to this day Whether guest or captive I. So, between the starry dome And the floor of plains and seas,I have never felt at home, Never wholly been at ease. “WHEN BIRDS WERE SONGLESS” When birds were songless on the bough I heard thee sing.The world was full of winter, thou Wert full of spring. To-day the world’s heart feels anew The vernal thrill,And thine beneath the rueful yew Is wintry chill. THE MOCK SELF Few friends are mine, though many wights there be Who, meeting oft a phantasm that makes claim To be myself, and hath my face and name, And whose thin fraud I wink at privily,Account this light impostor very me. What boots it undeceive them, and proclaim Myself myself, and whelm this cheat with shame? I care not, so he leave my true self free, Impose not on me also; but alas!I too, at fault, bewildered, sometimes take Him for myself, and far from mine own sight, Torpid, indifferent, doth mine own self pass; And yet anon leaps suddenly awake,And spurns the gibbering mime into the night. “THY VOICE FROM INMOST DREAMLAND CALLS” Thy voice from inmost dreamland calls; The wastes of sleep thou makest fair;Bright o’er the ridge of darkness falls The cataract of thy hair. The morn renews its golden birth: Thou with the vanquished night dost fade; And leav’st the ponderable earth Less real than thy shade. IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD (AUGUST 18, 1890) ‘Twas at this season, year by year,The singer who lies songless hereWas wont to woo a less austere, Less deep repose,Where Rotha to Winandermere Unresting flows,– Flows through a land where torrents call To far-off torrents as they fall,And mountains in their cloudy pall Keep ghostly state,And Nature makes majestical Man’s lowliest fate. There, ‘mid the August glow, still came He of the twice-illustrious name,The loud impertinence of fame Not loth to flee–Not loth with brooks and fells to claim Fraternity. Linked with his happy youthful lot,Is Loughrigg, then, at last forgot? Nor silent peak nor dalesman’s cot Looks on his grave.Lulled by the Thames he sleeps, and not By Rotha’s wave. ‘Tis fittest thus! for though with skill He sang of beck and tarn and ghyll,The deep, authentic mountain-thrill Ne’er shook his page!Somewhat of worldling mingled still With bard and sage. And ’twere less meet for him to lieGuarded by summits lone and highThat traffic with the eternal sky And hear, unawed,The everlasting fingers ply The loom of God, Than, in this hamlet of the plain,A less sublime repose to gain,Where Nature, genial and urbane, To man defers,Yielding to us the right to reign, Which yet is hers. And nigh to where his bones abide,The Thames with its unruffled tideSeems like his genius typified,– Its strength, its grace,Its lucid gleam, its sober pride, Its tranquil pace. But ah! not his the eventual fateWhich doth the journeying wave await– Doomed to resign its limpid state And quickly growTurbid as passion, dark as hate, And wide as woe. Rather, it may be, over-muchHe shunned the common stain and smutch, From soilure of ignoble touch Too grandly free,Too loftily secure in such Cold purity. But he preserved from chance controlThe fortress of his ‘stablisht soul; In all things sought to see the Whole; Brooked no disguise;And set his heart upon the goal, Not on the prize. With those Elect he shall surviveWho seem not to compete or strive,Yet with the foremost still arrive, Prevailing still:Spirits with whom the stars connive To work their will. And ye, the baffled many, who,Dejected, from afar off viewThe easily victorious few Of calm renown,–Have ye not your sad glory too, And mournful crown? Great is the facile conqueror;Yet haply he, who, wounded sore,Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o’er With blood and sweat,Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore,– Is greater yet. THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH Youth! ere thou be flown away.Surely one last boon to-day Thou’lt bestow–One last light of rapture give,Rich and lordly fugitive! Ere thou go. What, thou canst not? What, all spent? All thy spells of ravishment Pow’rless now?Gone thy magic out of date?Gone, all gone that made thee great?– Follow thou! “NAY, BID ME NOT MY CARES TO LEAVE” Nay, bid me not my cares to leave, Who cannot from their shadow flee. I do but win a short reprieve, ‘Scaping to pleasure and to thee. I may, at best, a moment’s grace, And grant of liberty, obtain;Respited for a little space, To go back into bonds again. A CHILD’S HAIR A letter from abroad. I tearIts sheathing open, unawareWhat treasure gleams within; and there– Like bird from cage–Flutters a curl of golden hair Out of the page. From such a frolic head ’twas shorn!(‘Tis but five years since he was born.) Not sunlight scampering over corn Were merrier thing.A child? A fragment of the morn, A piece of Spring! Surely an ampler, fuller dayThan drapes our English skies with grey– A deeper light, a richer ray Than here we know–To this bright tress have given away Their living glow. For Willie dwells where gentian flowers Make mimic sky in mountain bowers;And vineyards steeped in ardent hours Slope to the waveWhere storied Chillon’s tragic towers Their bases lave; And over piny tracts of VaudThe rose of eve steals up the snow; And on the waters far below Strange sails like wingsHalf-bodilessly come and go, Fantastic things; And tender night falls like a sighOn chalet low and chateau high; And the far cataract’s voice comes nigh, Where no man hears;And spectral peaks impale the sky On silver spears. Ah, Willie, whose dissevered tressLies in my hand!–may you possessAt least one sovereign happiness, Ev’n to your grave;One boon than which I ask naught less, Naught greater crave: May cloud and mountain, lake and vale, Never to you be trite or staleAs unto souls whose wellsprings fail Or flow defiled,Till Nature’s happiest fairy-tale Charms not her child! For when the spirit waxes numb,Alien and strange these shows become, And stricken with life’s tedium The streams run dry,The choric spheres themselves are dumb, And dead the sky,– Dead as to captives grown supine,Chained to their task in sightless mine: Above, the bland day smiles benign, Birds carol free,In thunderous throes of life divine Leaps the glad sea; But they–their day and night are one. What is’t to them, that rivulets run,Or what concern of theirs the sun? It seems as thoughTheir business with these things was done Ages ago: Only, at times, each dulled heart feels That somewhere, sealed with hopeless seals, The unmeaning heaven about him reels, And he lies hurledBeyond the roar of all the wheels Of all the world. * * * * * On what strange track one’s fancies fare! To eyeless night in sunless lair‘Tis a far cry from Willie’s hair; And here it lies–Human, yet something which can ne’er Grow sad and wise: Which, when the head where late it lay In life’s grey dusk itself is grey,And when the curfew of life’s day By death is tolled,Shall forfeit not the auroral ray And eastern gold. THE KEY-BOARD Five-and-thirty black slaves, Half-a-hundred white,All their duty but to sing For their Queen’s delight,Now with throats of thunder, Now with dulcet lips,While she rules them royally With her finger-tips! When she quits her palace, All the slaves are dumb–Dumb with dolour till the Queen Back to Court is come:Dumb the throats of thunder, Dumb the dulcet lips,Lacking all the sovereignty Of her finger-tips. Dusky slaves and pallid, Ebon slaves and white,When the Queen was on her throne How you sang to-night!Ah, the throats of thunder! Ah, the dulcet lips!Ah, the gracious tyrannies Of her finger-tips! Silent, silent, silent, All your voices now;Was it then her life alone Did your life endow?Waken, throats of thunder! Waken, dulcet lips!Touched to immortality By her finger-tips. “SCENTLESS FLOW’RS I BRING THEE” Scentless flow’rs I bring thee–yetIn thy bosom be they set;In thy bosom each one growsFragrant beyond any rose. Sweet enough were she who could,In thy heart’s sweet neighbourhood, Some redundant sweetness thusBorrow from that overplus. ON LANDOR’S “HELLENICS” Come hither, who grow cloyed to surfeiting With lyric draughts o’ersweet, from rills that rise On Hybla not Parnassus mountain: comeWith beakers rinsed of the dulcifluous wave Hither, and see a magic miracleOf happiest science, the bland Attic skies True-mirrored by an English well;–no stream Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars Reel, with its restless idiosyncrasy;But well unstirred, save when at times it takes Tribute of lover’s eyelids, and at times Bubbles with laughter of some sprite below. TO —- (WITH A VOLUME OF EPIGRAMS) Unto the Lady of The Nook Fly, tiny book.There thou hast lovers–even thou! Fly thither now. Seven years hast thou for honour yearned, And scant praise earned;But ah! to win, at last, such friends, Is full amends. ON EXAGGERATED DEFERENCE TOFOREIGN LITERARY OPINION What! and shall we, with such submissive airs As age demands in reverence from the young, Await these crumbs of praise from Europe flung, And doubt of our own greatness till it bears The signet of your Goethes or Voltaires? We who alone in latter times have sungWith scarce less power than Arno’s exiled tongue– We who are Milton’s kindred, Shakespeare’s heirs. The prize of lyric victory who shall gain If ours be not the laurel, ours the palm? More than the froth and flotsam of the Seine, More than your Hugo-flare against the night, And more than Weimar’s proud elaborate calm, One flash of Byron’s lightning, Wordsworth’s light. ENGLAND TO IRELAND (FEBRUARY 1888) Spouse whom my sword in the olden time won me, Winning me hatred more sharp than a sword– Mother of children who hiss at or shun me, Curse or revile me, and hold me abhorred– Heiress of anger that nothing assuages, Mad for the future, and mad from the past– Daughter of all the implacable ages, Lo, let us turn and be lovers at last! Lovers whom tragical sin hath made equal, One in transgression and one in remorse. Bonds may be severed, but what were the sequel? Hardly shall amity come of divorce.Let the dead Past have a royal entombing, O’er it the Future built white for a fane! I that am haughty from much overcoming Sue to thee, supplicate–nay, is it vain? Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness,– Could we but see one another, ’twere well! Knowledge is sympathy, charity, kindness, Ignorance only is maker of hell.Could we but gaze for an hour, for a minute, Deep in each other’s unfaltering eyes,Love were begun–for that look would begin it– Born in the flash of a mighty surprise. Then should the ominous night-bird of Error, Scared by a sudden irruption of day,Flap his maleficent wings, and in terror Flit to the wilderness, dropping his prey. Then should we, growing in strength and in sweetness, Fusing to one indivisible soul,Dazzle the world with a splendid completeness, Mightily single, immovably whole. Thou, like a flame when the stormy winds fan it, I, like a rock to the elements bare,–Mixed by love’s magic, the fire and the granite, Who should compete with us, what should compare? Strong with a strength that no fate might dissever, One with a oneness no force could divide, So were we married and mingled for ever, Lover with lover, and bridegroom with bride. MENSIS LACRIMARUM (MARCH 1885) March, that comes roaring, maned, with rampant paws, And bleatingly withdraws;March,–’tis the year’s fantastic nondescript, That, born when frost hath nippedThe shivering fields, or tempest scarred the hills, Dies crowned with daffodils.The month of the renewal of the earth By mingled death and birth:But, England! in this latest of thy years Call it–the Month of Tears. “UNDER THE DARK AND PINY STEEP” Under the dark and piny steep We watched the storm crash by:We saw the bright brand leap and leap Out of the shattered sky. The elements were minist’ring To make one mortal blest;For, peal by peal, you did but cling The closer to his breast. THE BLIND SUMMIT [A Viennese gentleman, who had climbed the Hoch-Koenig without a guide, was found dead, in a sitting posture, near the summit, upon which he had written, “It is cold, and clouds shut out the view.”–Vide the Daily News of September 10, 1891.] So mounts the child of ages of desire, Man, up the steeps of Thought; and would behold Yet purer peaks, touched with unearthlier fire, In sudden prospect virginally new;But on the lone last height he sighs: “‘Tis cold, And clouds shut out the view.” Ah, doom of mortals! Vexed with phantoms old, Old phantoms that waylay us and pursue,– Weary of dreams,–we think to see unfold The eternal landscape of the Real and True; And on our Pisgah can but write: “‘Tis cold, And clouds shut out the view.” TO LORD TENNYSON (WITH A VOLUME OF VERSE) Master and mage, our prince of song, whom Time, In this your autumn mellow and serene, Crowns ever with fresh laurels, nor less green Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime; Heir of the riches of the whole world’s rhyme, Dow’r’d with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien, With Arno’s depth and Avon’s golden sheen; Singer to whom the singing ages climb,Convergent;–if the youngest of the choir May snatch a flying splendour from your name Making his page illustrious, and aspire For one rich moment your regard to claim, Suffer him at your feet to lay his lyre And touch the skirts and fringes of your fame. SKETCH OF A POLITICAL CHARACTER (1885) There is a race of men, who master life, Their victory being inversely as their strife; Who capture by refraining from pursuit;Shake not the bough, yet load their hands with fruit; The earth’s high places who attain to fill, By most indomitably sitting still.While others, full upon the fortress hurled, Lay fiery siege to the embattled world,Of such rude arts their natures feel no need; Greatly inert, they lazily succeed;Find in the golden mean their proper bliss, And doing nothing, never do amiss;But lapt in men’s good graces live, and die By all regretted, nobody knows why. Cast in this fortunate Olympian mould, The admirable * * * * behold;Whom naught could dazzle or mislead, unless ‘Twere the wild light of fatal cautiousness; Who never takes a step from his own door But he looks backward ere he looks before. When once he starts, it were too much to say He visibly gets farther on his way:But all allow, he ponders well his course– For future uses hoarding present force.The flippant deem him slow and saturnine, The summed-up phlegm of that illustrious line; But we, his honest adversaries, whoMore highly prize him than his false friends do, Frankly admire that simple mass and weight– A solid Roman pillar of the State,So inharmonious with the baser style Of neighbouring columns grafted on the pile, So proud and imperturbable and chill,Chosen and matched so excellently ill, He seems a monument of pensive grace,Ah, how pathetically out of place! Would that some call he could not choose but heed– Of private passion or of public need–At last might sting to life that slothful power, And snare him into greatness for an hour! ART MAXIMS Often ornatenessGoes with greatness;Oftener felicityComes of simplicity. Talent that’s cheapestAffects singularity.Thoughts that dive deepestRise radiant in clarity. Life is rough:Sing smoothly, O Bard.Enough, enough,To have found life hard. No record Art keepsOf her travail and throes.There is toil on the steeps,–On the summits, repose. THE GLIMPSE Just for a day you crossed my life’s dull track, Put my ignobler dreams to sudden shame, Went your bright way, and left me to fall back On my own world of poorer deed and aim; To fall back on my meaner world, and feel Like one who, dwelling ‘mid some, smoke-dimmed town,– In a brief pause of labour’s sullen wheel,– ‘Scaped from the street’s dead dust and factory’s frown,– In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll, Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky: Then journeyed home, to carry in his soul The torment of the difference till he die. THE BALLAD OF THE “BRITAIN’S PRIDE” It was a skipper of Lowestoft That trawled the northern sea,In a smack of thrice ten tons and seven, And the Britain’s Pride was she.And the waves were high to windward, And the waves were high to lee,And he said as he lost his trawl-net, “What is to be, will be.” His craft she reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe,In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe;When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft,And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a dead arm held aloft. And a voice came faint from the rigging– “Help! help!” it whispered and sighed– And a single form to the sole mast clung, In the roaring darkness wide.Oh the crew were but four hands all told, On board of the Britain’s Pride,And ever “Hold on till daybreak!” Across the night they cried. Slowly melted the darkness, Slowly rose the sun,And only the lad in the rigging Was left, out of thirty-one,To tell the tale of his captain, The English sailor true,That did his duty and met his death As English sailors do. Peace to the gallant spirit, The greatly proved and tried,And to all who have fed the hungry sea That is still unsatisfied;And honour and glory for ever, While rolls the unresting tide,To the skipper of little Lowestoft, And the crew of the Britain’s Pride. LINES (WITH A VOLUME OF THE AUTHOR’S POEMS SENT TO M.R.C.) Go, Verse, nor let the grass of tarrying grow Beneath thy feet iambic. Southward goO’er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until Thou reach the summit of a suburb hillTo lettered fame not unfamiliar: there Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair, Who dwelleth in a world of old romance,Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce. Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago, By northern stream and mountain, and where blow Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day One half thy fabric fain would rase away; But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse, Forgive thy better and forget thy worse. Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;– In Shakespeare’s shadow thou shalt find a home, Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome, Or awed by Dante’s wintry presence be,Or won by Goethe’s regal suavity,Or with those masters hardly less adored Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford;And–like a mortal rapt from men’s abodes Into some skyey fastness of the gods–Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine Mayst for a moment dream thyself divine. THE RAVEN’S SHADOW Seabird, elemental sprite, Moulded of the sun and spray–Raven, dreary flake of night Drifting in the eye of day–What in common have ye two,Meeting ‘twixt the blue and blue? Thou to eastward carriest The keen savour of the foam,–Thou dost bear unto the west Fragrance from thy woody home,Where perchance a house is thineOdorous of the oozy pine. Eastward thee thy proper cares, Things of mighty moment, call;Thee to westward thine affairs Summon, weighty matters all:I, where land and sea contest,Watch you eastward, watch you west, Till, in snares of fancy caught, Mystically changed ye seem,And the bird becomes a thought, And the thought becomes a dream,And the dream, outspread on high,Lords it o’er the abject sky. Surely I have known before Phantoms of the shapes ye be–Haunters of another shore ‘Leaguered by another sea.There my wanderings night and mornReconcile me to the bourn. There the bird of happy wings Wafts the ocean-news I crave;Rumours of an isle he brings Gemlike on the golden wave:But the baleful beak and plumeScatter immelodious gloom. Though the flow’rs be faultless made, Perfectly to live and die–Though the bright clouds bloom and fade Flow’rlike ‘midst a meadowy sky–Where this raven roams forlornVeins of midnight flaw the morn. He not less will croak and croak As he ever caws and caws,Till the starry dance he broke, Till the sphery paean pause,And the universal chimeFalter out of tune and time. Coils the labyrinthine sea Duteous to the lunar will,But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still,And the bird that caws and cawsClasps creation with his claws. LUX PERDITA Thine were the weak, slight handsThat might have taken this strong soul, and bent Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent, And bound it unresisting, with such bands As not the arm of envious heaven had rent. Thine were the calming eyesThat round my pinnace could have stilled the sea, And drawn thy voyager home, and bid him be Pure with their pureness, with their wisdom wise, Merged in their light, and greatly lost in thee. But thou–thou passed’st on,With whiteness clothed of dedicated days, Cold, like a star; and me in alien waysThou leftest following life’s chance lure, where shone The wandering gleam that beckons and betrays. ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES She stands, a thousand-wintered tree, By countless morns impearled;Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world;Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed, Clothe the remotest strandWith forests from her scatterings made, New nations fostered in her shade, And linking land with land. O ye by wandering tempest sown ‘Neath every alien star,Forget not whence the breath was blown That wafted you afar!For ye are still her ancient seed On younger soil let fall–Children of Britain’s island-breed, To whom the Mother in her need Perchance may one day call. HISTORY Here, peradventure, in this mirror glassed, Who gazes long and well at times beholds Some sunken feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered foldsAnd soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.– For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones;Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages,Impede the slow steps of the pompous ages. THE EMPTY NEST I saunter all about the pleasant place You made thrice pleasant, O my friends, to me; But you are gone where laughs in radiant grace That thousand-memoried unimpulsive sea. To storied precincts of the southern foam, Dear birds of passage, ye have taken wing, And ah! for me, when April wafts you home, The spring will more than ever be the spring Still lovely, as of old, this haunted ground; Tenderly, still, the autumn sunshine falls; And gorgeously the woodlands tower around, Freak’d with wild light at golden intervals: Yet, for the ache your absence leaves, O friends, Earth’s lifeless pageantries are poor amends. IRELAND (DECEMBER 1, 1890) In the wild and lurid desert, in the thunder-travelled ways, ‘Neath the night that ever hurries to the dawn that still delays, There she clutches at illusions, and she seeks a phantom goal With the unattaining passion that consumes the unsleeping soul: And calamity enfolds her, like the shadow of a ban, And the niggardness of Nature makes the misery of man: And in vain the hand is stretched to lift her, stumbling in the gloom, While she follows the mad fen-fire that conducts her to her doom. THE LUTE-PLAYER She was a lady great and splendid, I was a minstrel in her halls.A warrior like a prince attended Stayed his steed by the castle walls. Far had he fared to gaze upon her. “O rest thee now, Sir Knight,” she said. The warrior wooed, the warrior won her, In time of snowdrops they were wed. I made sweet music in his honour, And longed to strike him dead. I passed at midnight from her portal, Throughout the world till death I rove: Ah, let me make this lute immortal With rapture of my hate and love! “AND THESE–ARE THESE INDEED THE END” And these–are these indeed the end, This grinning skull, this heavy loam? Do all green ways whereby we wend Lead but to yon ignoble home? Ah well! Thine eyes invite to bliss; Thy lips are hives of summer still. I ask not other worlds while this Proffers me all the sweets I will. THE RUSS AT KARA O King of kings, that watching from Thy throne Sufferest the monster of Ust-Kara’s hold, With bosom than Siberia’s wastes more cold, And hear’st the wail of captives crushed and prone, And sett’st no sign in heaven! Shall naught atone For their wild pangs whose tale is yet scarce told, Women by uttermost woe made deadly bold, In the far dungeon’s night that hid their moan? Why waits Thy shattering arm, nor smites this Power Whose beak and talons rend the unshielded breast, Whose wings shed terror and a plague of gloom, Whose ravin is the hearts of the oppressed; Whose brood are hell-births–Hate that bides its hour, Wrath, and a people’s curse that loathe their doom? LIBERTY REJECTED About this heart thou hast Thy chains made fast,And think’st thou I would be Therefrom set free,And forth unbound be cast? The ocean would as soon Entreat the moonUnsay the magic verse That seals him hersFrom silver noon to noon. She stooped her pearly head Seaward, and said:“Would’st thou I gave to thee Thy liberty,In Time’s youth forfeited?” And from his inmost hold The answer rolled:“Thy bondman to remain Is sweeter pain,Dearer an hundredfold.” LIFE WITHOUT HEALTH Behold life builded as a goodly house And grown a mansion ruinousWith winter blowing through its crumbling walls! The master paceth up and down his halls, And in the empty hoursCan hear the tottering of his towers And tremor of their bases underground.And oft he starts and looks aroundAt creaking of a distant doorOr echo of his footfall on the floor, Thinking it may be one whom he awaitsAnd hath for many days awaited,Coming to lead him through the mouldering gates Out somewhere, from his home dilapidated. TO A FRIEND CHAFING AT ENFORCED IDLENESS FROM INTERRUPTED HEALTH Soon may the edict lapse, that on you lays This dire compulsion of infertile days,This hardest penal toil, reluctant rest! Meanwhile I count you eminently blest,Happy from labours heretofore well done, Happy in tasks auspiciously begun.For they are blest that have not much to rue– That have not oft mis-heard the prompter’s cue, Stammered and stumbled and the wrong parts played, And life a Tragedy of Errors made. “WELL HE SLUMBERS, GREATLY SLAIN” Well he slumbers, greatly slain, Who in splendid battle dies;Deep his sleep in midmost main Pillowed upon pearl who lies. Ease, of all good gifts the best, War and wave at last decree:Love alone denies us rest, Crueller than sword or sea. AN EPISTLE (To N.A.) So, into Cornwall you go down,And leave me loitering here in town. For me, the ebb of London’s wave,Not ocean-thunder in Cornish cave.My friends (save only one or two)Gone to the glistening marge, like you,– The opera season with blare and dinDying sublime in Lohengrin,–Houses darkened, whose blinded panes All thoughts, save of the dead, preclude,– The parks a puddle of tropic rains,–Clubland a pensive solitude,–For me, now you and yours are flown, The fellowship of books alone! For you, the snaky wave, upflungWith writhing head and hissing tongue; The weed whose tangled fibres tellOf some inviolate deep-sea dell;The faultless, secret-chambered shell, Whose sound is an epitomeOf all the utterance of the sea;Great, basking, twinkling wastes of brine; Far clouds of gulls that wheel and swerve In unanimity divine,With undulation serpentine,And wondrous, consentaneous curve,Flashing in sudden silver sheen,Then melting on the sky-line keen;The world-forgotten coves that seem Lapt in some magic old sea-dream,Where, shivering off the milk-white foam, Lost airs wander, seeking home,And into clefts and caverns peep,Fissures paven with powdered shell, Recesses of primeval sleep,Tranced with an immemorial spell;The granite fangs eternallyRending the blanch’d lips of the sea; The breaker clutching land, then hurledBack on its own tormented world;The mountainous upthunderings,The glorious energy of things,The power, the joy, the cosmic thrill, Earth’s ecstasy made visible,World-rapture old as Night and newAs sunrise;–this, all this, for you! So, by Atlantic breezes fanned,You roam the limits of the land,And I in London’s world abide,Poor flotsam on the human tide!–Nay, rather, isled amid the stream– Watching the flood–and, half in dreamGuessing the sources whence it rose, And musing to what Deep it flows. For still the ancient riddles marOur joy in man, in leaf, in star.The Whence and Whither give no rest, The Wherefore is a hopeless quest;And the dull wight who never thinks,– Who, chancing on the sleeping Sphinx,Passes unchallenged,–fares the best! But ill it suits this random verseThe high enigmas to rehearse,And touch with desultory tongueSecrets no man from Night hath wrung. We ponder, question, doubt–and prayThe Deep to answer Yea or Nay;And what does the engirdling wave,The undivulging, yield us, saveAspersion of bewildering spray?We do but dally on the beach,Writing our little thoughts full large, While Ocean with imperious speechDerides us trifling by the marge.Nay, we are children, who all dayBeside the unknown waters play,And dig with small toy-spade the sand, Thinking our trenches wondrous deep,Till twilight falls, and hand-in-hand Nurse takes us home, well tired, to sleep; Sleep, and forget our toys, and beLulled by the great unsleeping sea. Enough!–to Cornwall you go down,And I tag rhymes in London town. TO AUSTIN DOBSON Yes! urban is your Muse, and ownsAn empire based on London stones;Yet flow’rs, as mountain violets sweet, Spring from the pavement ‘neath her feet. Of wilder birth this Muse of mine,Hill-cradled, and baptized with brine; And ’tis for her a sweet despairTo watch that courtly step and air! Yet surely she, without reproof,Greeting may send from realms aloof, And even claim a tie in blood,And dare to deem it sisterhood. For well we know, those Maidens beAll daughters of Mnemosyne;And ‘neath the unifying sun,Many the songs–but Song is one. TO EDWARD CLODD Friend, in whose friendship I am twice well-starred, A debt not time may cancel is your due; For was it not your praise that earliest drew, On me obscure, that chivalrous regard,Ev’n his, who, knowing fame’s first steep how hard, With generous lips no faltering clarion blew, Bidding men hearken to a lyre by fewHeeded, nor grudge the bay to one more bard? Bitter the task, year by inglorious year, Of suitor at the world’s reluctant ear. One cannot sing for ever, like a bird, For sole delight of singing! Him his mate Suffices, listening with a heart elate; Nor more his joy, if all the rapt heav’n heard. TO EDWARD DOWDEN ON RECEIVING FROM HIM A COPY OF “THE LIFE OF SHELLEY” First, ere I slake my hunger, let me thank The giver of the feast. For feast it is, Though of ethereal, translunary fare–His story who pre-eminently of menSeemed nourished upon starbeams and the stuff Of rainbows, and the tempest, and the foam; Who hardly brooked on his impatient soul The fleshly trammels; whom at last the sea Gave to the fire, from whose wild arms the winds Took him, and shook him broadcast to the world. In my young days of fervid poesyHe drew me to him with his strange far light,– He held me in a world all clouds and gleams, And vasty phantoms, where ev’n Man himself Moved like a phantom ‘mid the clouds and gleams. Anon the Earth recalled me, and a voiceMurmuring of dethroned divinitiesAnd dead times deathless upon sculptured urn– And Philomela’s long-descended painFlooding the night–and maidens of romance To whom asleep St. Agnes’ love-dreams come– Awhile constrained me to a sweet duresse And thraldom, lapping me in high content, Soft as the bondage of white amorous arms. And then a third voice, long unheeded–held Claustral and cold, and dissonant and tame– Found me at last with ears to hear. It sang Of lowly sorrows and familiar joys,Of simple manhood, artless womanhood, And childhood fragrant as the limpid morn; And from the homely matter nigh at handAscending and dilating, it disclosed Spaces and avenues, calm heights and breadths Of vision, whence I saw each blade of grass With roots that groped about eternity,And in each drop of dew upon each blade The mirror of the inseparable All.The first voice, then the second, in their turns Had sung me captive. This voice sang me free. Therefore, above all vocal sons of men,Since him whose sightless eyes saw hell and heaven, To Wordsworth be my homage, thanks, and love. Yet dear is Keats, a lucid presence, great With somewhat of a glorious soullessness. And dear, and great with an excess of soul, Shelley, the hectic flamelike rose of verse, All colour, and all odour, and all bloom, Steeped in the noonlight, glutted with the sun, But somewhat lacking root in homely earth, Lacking such human moisture as bedewsHis not less starward stem of song, who, rapt Not less in glowing vision, yet retained His clasp of the prehensible, retainedThe warm touch of the world that lies to hand, Not in vague dreams of man forgetting men, Nor in vast morrows losing the to-day;Who trusted nature, trusted fate, nor found An Ogre, sovereign on the throne of things; Who felt the incumbence of the unknown, yet bore Without resentment the Divine reserve;Who suffered not his spirit to dash itself Against the crags and wavelike break in spray, But ‘midst the infinite tranquillitiesMoved tranquil, and henceforth, by Rotha stream And Rydal’s mountain-mirror, and where flows Yarrow thrice sung or Duddon to the sea, And wheresoe’er man’s heart is thrilled by tones Struck from man’s lyric heartstrings, shall survive. FELICITY A squalid, hideous town, where streams run black With vomit of a hundred roaring mills,– Hither occasion calls me; and ev’n here, All in the sable reek that wantonlyDefames the sunlight and deflowers the morn, One may at least surmise the sky still blue. Ev’n here, the myriad slaves of the machine Deem life a boon; and here, in days far sped, I overheard a kind-eyed girl relateTo her companions, how a favouring chance By some few shillings weekly had increased The earnings of her household, and she said: “So now we are happy, having all we wished,”– Felicity indeed! though more it layIn wanting little than in winning all. Felicity indeed! Across the yearsTo me her tones come back, rebuking; me, Spreader of toils to snare the wandering Joy No guile may capture and no force surprise– Only by them that never wooed her, won. O curst with wide desires and spacious dreams, Too cunningly do ye accumulateAppliances and means of happiness,E’er to be happy! Lavish hosts, ye make Elaborate preparation to receiveA shy and simple guest, who, warned of all The ceremony and circumstance wherewithYe mean to entertain her, will not come. VER TENEBROSUM SONNETS OF MARCH AND APRIL 1885 I THE SOUDANESE They wrong’d not us, nor sought ‘gainst us to wage The bitter battle. On their God they cried For succour, deeming justice to abideIn heaven, if banish’d from earth’s vicinage. And when they rose with a gall’d lion’s rage, We, on the captor’s, keeper’s, tamer’s side, We, with the alien tyranny allied,We bade them back to their Egyptian cage. Scarce knew they who we were! A wind of blight From the mysterious far north-west we came. Our greatness now their veriest babes have learn’d, Where, in wild desert homes, by day, by night, Thousands that weep their warriors unreturn’d, O England, O my country, curse thy name! II HASHEEN “Of British arms, another victory!”Triumphant words, through all the land’s length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea–Another efflux of a sea more red!Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong’d people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably aloneWith the dilating spectre of her own Dark sin, uprisen from yonder spectral sands: Penitent more than to herself is known;England, appall’d by her own crimson hands. III THE ENGLISH DEAD Give honour to our heroes fall’n, how ill Soe’er the cause that bade them forth to die. Honour to him, the untimely struck, whom high In place, more high in hope, ’twas fate’s harsh will With tedious pain unsplendidly to kill.Honour to him, doom’d splendidly to die, Child of the city whose foster-child am I, Who, hotly leading up the ensanguin’d hill His charging thousand, fell without a word– Fell, but shall fall not from our memory. Also for them let honour’s voice be heard Who nameless sleep, while dull time covereth With no illustrious shade of laurel tree, But with the poppy alone, their deeds and death. IV GORDON Idle although our homage be and vain, Who loudly through the door of silence press And vie in zeal to crown death’s nakedness, Not therefore shall melodious lips refrain Thy praises, gentlest warrior without stain, Denied the happy garland of success,Foil’d by dark fate, but glorious none the less, Greatest of losers, on the lone peak slain Of Alp-like virtue. Not to-day, and notTo-morrow, shall thy spirit’s splendour be Oblivion’s victim; but when God shall find All human grandeur among men forgot,Then only shall the world, grown old and blind, Cease, in her dotage, to remember Thee. V GORDON (concluded) Arab, Egyptian, English–by the sword Cloven, or pierced with spears, or bullet-mown– In equal fate they sleep: their dust is grown A portion of the fiery sands abhorred.And thou, what hast thou, hero, for reward, Thou, England’s glory and her shame? O’erthrown Thou liest, unburied, or with grave unknown As his to whom on Nebo’s height the Lord Showed all the land of Gilead, unto Dan; Judah sea-fringed; Manasseh and Ephraim; And Jericho palmy, to where Zoar lay;And in a valley of Moab buried him, Over against Beth-Peor, but no manKnows of his sepulchre unto this day. VI THE TRUE PATRIOTISM The ever-lustrous name of patriotTo no man be denied because he sawWhere in his country’s wholeness lay the flaw, Where, on her whiteness, the unseemly blot. England! thy loyal sons condemn thee.–What! Shall we be meek who from thine own breasts draw Our fierceness? Not ev’n thou shalt overawe Us thy proud children nowise basely got. Be this the measure of our loyalty–To feel thee noble and weep thy lapse the more. This truth by thy true servants is confess’d– Thy sins, who love thee most, do most deplore. Know thou thy faithful! Best they honour thee Who honour in thee only what is best. VII RESTORED ALLEGIANCE Dark is thy trespass, deep be thy remorse, O England! Fittingly thine own feet bleed, Submissive to the purblind guides that lead Thy weary steps along this rugged course. Yet … when I glance abroad, and track the source More selfish far, of other nations’ deed, And mark their tortuous craft, their jealous greed, Their serpent-wisdom or mere soulless force, Homeward returns my vagrant fealty,Crying, “O England, shouldst thou one day fall, Shatter’d in ruins by some Titan foe,Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all The world, and Truth less passionately free, And God the poorer for thine overthrow.” VIII THE POLITICAL LUMINARY A skilful leech, so long as we were whole: Who scann’d the nation’s every outward part, But ah! misheard the beating of its heart. Sire of huge sorrows, yet erect of soul. Swift rider with calamity for goal,Who, overtasking his equestrian art, Unstall’d a steed full willing for the start, But wondrous hard to curb or to control. Sometimes we thought he led the people forth: Anon he seemed to follow where they flew; Lord of the golden tongue and smiting eyes; Great out of season, and untimely wise:A man whose virtue, genius, grandeur, worth Wrought deadlier ill than ages can undo. IX FOREIGN MENACE I marvel that this land, whereof I claim The glory of sonship–for it was erewhile A glory to be sprung of Britain’s isle,Though now it well-nigh more resembles shame– I marvel that this land with heart so tame Can brook the northern insolence and guile. But most it angers me, to think how vile Art thou, how base, from whom the insult came, Unwieldly laggard, many an age behindThy sister Powers, in brain and conscience both; In recognition of man’s widening mindAnd flexile adaptation to its growth: Brute bulk, that bearest on thy back, half loth, One wretched man, most pitied of mankind. X HOME-ROOTEDNESS I cannot boast myself cosmopolite;I own to “insularity,” although‘Tis fall’n from fashion, as full well I know. For somehow, being a plain and simple wight, I am skin-deep a child of the new light, But chiefly am mere Englishman below,Of island-fostering; and can hate a foe, And trust my kin before the Muscovite.Whom shall I trust if not my kin? And whom Account so near in natural bonds as these Born of my mother England’s mighty womb, Nursed on my mother England’s mighty knees, And lull’d as I was lull’d in glory and gloom With cradle-song of her protecting seas? XI OUR EASTERN TREASURE In cobwebb’d corners dusty and dim I hear A thin voice pipingly revived of late,Which saith our India is a cumbrous weight, An idle decoration, bought too dear.The wiser world contemns not gorgeous gear; Just pride is no mean factor in a State; The sense of greatness keeps a nation great; And mighty they who mighty can appear.It may be that if hands of greed could steal From England’s grasp the envied orient prize, This tide of gold would flood her still as now: But were she the same England, made to feel A brightness gone from out those starry eyes, A splendour from that constellated brow? XII REPORTED CONCESSIONS So we must palter, falter, cringe, and shrink, And when the bully threatens, crouch or fly.– There are who tell me with a shuddering eye That war’s red cup is Satan’s chosen drink. Who shall gainsay them? Verily I do think War is as hateful almost, and well-nighAs ghastly, as this terrible Peace whereby We halt for ever on the crater’s brinkAnd feed the wind with phrases, while we know There gapes at hand the infernal precipice O’er which a gossamer bridge of words we throw, Yet cannot choose but hear from the abyss The sulphurous gloom’s unfathomable hiss And simmering lava’s subterranean flow. XIII NIGHTMARE (Written during apparent imminence of war) In a false dream I saw the Foe prevail. The war was ended; the last smoke had rolled Away: and we, erewhile the strong and bold, Stood broken, humbled, withered, weak and pale, And moan’d, “Our greatness is become a tale To tell our children’s babes when we are old. They shall put by their playthings to be told How England once, before the years of bale, Throned above trembling, puissant, grandiose, calm, Held Asia’s richest jewel in her palm;And with unnumbered isles barbaric, she The broad hem of her glistering robe impearl’d; Then, when she wound her arms about the world, And had for vassal the obsequious sea.” XIV LAST WORD: TO THE COLONIES Brothers beyond the Atlantic’s loud expanse; And you that rear the innumerable fleece Far southward ‘mid the ocean named of peace; Britons that past the Indian wave advance Our name and spirit and world-predominance; And you our kin that reap the earth’s increase Where crawls that long-backed mountain till it cease Crown’d with the headland of bright esperance:– Remote compatriots wheresoe’er ye dwell, By your prompt voices ringing clear and true We know that with our England all is well: Young is she yet, her world-task but begun! By you we know her safe, and know by you Her veins are million but her heart is one. EPIGRAMS ‘Tis human fortune’s happiest height to be A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole; Second in order of felicity I hold it, to have walk’d with such a soul. * * * * * The statue–Buonarroti said–doth wait, Thrall’d in the block, for me to emancipate. The poem–saith the poet–wanders freeTill I betray it to captivity. * * * * * To keep in sight Perfection, and adore The vision, is the artist’s best delight; His bitterest pang, that he can ne’er do more Than keep her long’d-for loveliness in sight. * * * * * If Nature be a phantasm, as thou say’st, A splendid fiction and prodigious dream, To reach the real and true I’ll make no haste, More than content with worlds that only seem. * * * * * The Poet gathers fruit from every tree, Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles he. Pluck’d by his hand, the basest weed that grows Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose. * * * * * Brook, from whose bridge the wandering idler peers To watch thy small fish dart or cool floor shine, I would that bridge whose arches all are years Spann’d not a less transparent wave than thine! * * * * * To Art we go as to a well, athirst, And see our shadow ‘gainst its mimic skies, But in its depth must plunge and be immersed To clasp the naiad Truth where low she lies. * * * * * In youth the artist voweth lover’s vows To Art, in manhood maketh her his spouse. Well if her charms yet hold for him such joy As when he craved some boon and she was coy! * * * * * Immured in sense, with fivefold bonds confined, Rest we content if whispers from the stars In waftings of the incalculable wind Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars. * * * * * Love, like a bird, hath perch’d upon a spray For thee and me to hearken what he sings. Contented, he forgets to fly away; But hush!… remind not Eros of his wings. * * * * * Think not thy wisdom can illume awayThe ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough, to acknowledge both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things clear. * * * * * In mid whirl of the dance of Time ye start, Start at the cold touch of Eternity,And cast your cloaks about you, and depart: The minstrels pause not in their minstrelsy. * * * * * The beasts in field are glad, and have not wit To know why leapt their hearts when springtime shone. Man looks at his own bliss, considers it, Weighs it with curious fingers; and ’tis gone. * * * * * Momentous to himself as I to me Hath each man been that ever woman bore; Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy, I felt this truth, an instant, and no more.

The gods man makes he breaks; proclaims them each Immortal, and himself outlives them all: But whom he set not up he cannot reach To shake His cloud-dark sun-bright pedestal.

The children romp within the graveyard’s pale; The lark sings o’er a madhouse, or a gaol;– Such nice antitheses of perfect poiseChance in her curious rhetoric employs.

Our lithe thoughts gambol close to God’s abyss, Children whose home is by the precipice. Fear not thy little ones shall o’er it fall: Solid, though viewless, is the girdling wall.

Lives there whom pain hath evermore pass’d by And Sorrow shunn’d with an averted eye?Him do thou pity, him above the rest, Him of all hapless mortals most unbless’d. * * * * * Say what thou wilt, the young are happy never. Give me bless’d Age, beyond the fire and fever,– Past the delight that shatters, hope that stings, And eager flutt’ring of life’s ignorant wings. * * * * * Onward the chariot of the Untarrying moves; Nor day divulges him nor night conceals; Thou hear’st the echo of unreturning hooves And thunder of irrevocable wheels. * * * * * A deft musician does the breeze become Whenever an AEolian harp it finds:Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb Unto the most musicianly of winds. * * * * * I follow Beauty; of her train am I: Beauty whose voice is earth and sea and air; Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply; Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere. * * * * * Toiling and yearning, ’tis man’s doom to see No perfect creature fashion’d of his hands. Insulted by a flower’s immaculacy, And mock’d at by the flawless stars he stands. * * * * * For metaphors of man we search the skies, And find our allegory in all the air.We gaze on Nature with Narcissus-eyes, Enamour’d of our shadow everywhere. * * * * * One music maketh its occult abode In all things scatter’d from great Beauty’s hand; And evermore the deepest words of God Are yet the easiest to understand. * * * * * Enough of mournful melodies, my lute! Be henceforth joyous, or be henceforth mute. Song’s breath is wasted when it does but fan The smouldering infelicity of man. * * * * * I pluck’d this flower, O brighter flower, for thee, There where the river dies into the sea. To kiss it the wild west wind hath made free: Kiss it thyself and give it back to me. * * * * * To be as this old elm full loth were I, That shakes in the autumn storm its palsied head. Hewn by the weird last woodman let me lie Ere the path rustle with my foliage shed. * * * * * Ah, vain, thrice vain in the end, thy hate and rage, And the shrill tempest of thy clamorous page. True poets but transcendent lovers be,And one great love-confession poesy. * * * * * His rhymes the poet flings at all men’s feet, And whoso will may trample on his rhymes. Should Time let die a song that’s true and sweet, The singer’s loss were more than match’d by Time’s. * * * * * ON LONGFELLOW’S DEATH No puissant singer he, whose silence grieves To-day the great West’s tender heart and strong; No singer vast of voice: yet one who leaves His native air the sweeter for his song. * * * * * BYRON THE VOLUPTUARY Too avid of earth’s bliss, he was of those Whom Delight flies because they give her chase. Only the odour of her wild hair blows Back in their faces hungering for her face. * * * * * ANTONY AT ACTIUM He holds a dubious balance:–yet that scale, Whose freight the world is, surely shall prevail? No; Cleopatra droppeth into _this_One counterpoising orient sultry kiss. * * * * * ART The thousand painful steps at last are trod, At last the temple’s difficult door we win; But perfect on his pedestal, the god