Part 5

The sole sweet land found fit to wed the sea, With reptile rebels at her heel of old, Set hard her heel upon them, and controlled The cowering poisonous peril. How should she Cower, and resign her trust of empire? Free As winds and waters live the loyal-souled And true-born sons that love her: nay, the bold Base knaves who curse her name have leave to be The loud-tongued liars they are. For she, beyond All woful years that bid men's hearts despond, Sees yet the likeness of her ancient fame Burn from the heavenward heights of history, hears Not Leicester's name but Sidney's--faith's, not fear's-- Not Gladstone's now but only Gordon's name.

RUSSIA: AN ODE

1890

I

Out of hell a word comes hissing, dark as doom, Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom; Out of hell wherein the sinless damned endure More than ever sin conceived of pains impure; More than ever ground men's living souls to dust; Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous lust. Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these. Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of hell, Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire, Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire, Saw not, where the filth was foulest, and the night Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite. Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams. Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives, Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered, Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured, Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thought could shape, Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape, Filth of raging crime and shame that crime enjoys, Age made one with youth in torture, girls with boys, These, and worse if aught be worse than these things are, Prove thee regent, Russia--praise thy mercy, Czar.

II

Sons of man, men born of women, may we dare Say they sin who dare be slain and dare not spare? They who take their lives in hand and smile on death, Holding life as less than sleep's most fitful breath, So their life perchance or death may serve and speed Faith and hope, that die if dream become not deed? Nought is death and nought is life and nought is fate Save for souls that love has clothed with fire of hate. These behold them, weigh them, prove them, find them nought, Save by light of hope and fire of burning thought. What though sun be less than storm where these aspire, Dawn than lightning, song than thunder, light than fire? Help is none in heaven: hope sees no gentler star: Earth is hell, and hell bows down before the Czar. All its monstrous, murderous, lecherous births acclaim Him whose empire lives to match its fiery fame. Nay, perchance at sight or sense of deeds here done, Here where men may lift up eyes to greet the sun, Hell recoils heart-stricken: horror worse than hell Darkens earth and sickens heaven; life knows the spell, Shudders, quails, and sinks--or, filled with fierier breath, Rises red in arms devised of darkling death. Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame, Call aloud on justice by her darker name; Love grows hate for love's sake; life takes death for guide. Night hath none but one red star--Tyrannicide.

III

"God or man, be swift; hope sickens with delay: Smite, and send him howling down his father's way! Fall, O fire of heaven, and smite as fire from hell Halls wherein men's torturers, crowned and cowering, dwell! These that crouch and shrink and shudder, girt with power-- These that reign, and dare not trust one trembling hour-- These omnipotent, whom terror curbs and drives-- These whose life reflects in fear their victims' lives-- These whose breath sheds poison worse than plague's thick breath-- These whose reign is ruin, these whose word is death, These whose will turns heaven to hell, and day to night, These, if God's hand smite not, how shall man's not smite?" So from hearts by horror withered as by fire Surge the strains of unappeasable desire; Sounds that bid the darkness lighten, lit for death; Bid the lips whose breath was doom yield up their breath; Down the way of Czars, awhile in vain deferred, Bid the Second Alexander light the Third. How for shame shall men rebuke them? how may we Blame, whose fathers died, and slew, to leave us free? We, though all the world cry out upon them, know, Were our strife as theirs, we could not strike but so; Could not cower, and could not kiss the hands that smite; Could not meet them armed in sunlit battle's light. Dark as fear and red as hate though morning rise, Life it is that conquers; death it is that dies.

FOR GREECE AND CRETE

Storm and shame and fraud and darkness fill the nations full with night: Hope and fear whose eyes yearn eastward have but fire and sword in sight: One alone, whose name is one with glory, sees and seeks the light.

Hellas, mother of the spirit, sole supreme in war and peace, Land of light, whose word remembered bids all fear and sorrow cease, Lives again, while freedom lightens eastward yet for sons of Greece.

Greece, where only men whose manhood was as godhead ever trod, Bears the blind world witness yet of light wherewith her feet are shod: Freedom, armed of Greece was always very man and very God.

Now the winds of old that filled her sails with triumph, when the fleet Bound for death from Asia fled before them stricken, wake to greet Ships full-winged again for freedom toward the sacred shores of Crete.

There was God born man, the song that spake of old time said: and there Man, made even as God by trust that shows him nought too dire to dare, Now may light again the beacon lit when those we worship were.

Sharp the concert wrought of discord shrills the tune of shame and death, Turk by Christian fenced and fostered, Mecca backed by Nazareth: All the powerless powers, tongue-valiant, breathe but greed's or terror's breath.

Though the tide that feels the west wind lift it wave by widening wave Wax not yet to height and fullness of the storm that smites to save, None shall bid the flood back seaward till no bar be left to brave.

DELPHIC HYMN TO APOLLO

(B.C. 280)

DONE INTO ENGLISH

I

Thee, the son of God most high, Famed for harping song, will I Proclaim, and the deathless oracular word From the snow-topped rock that we gaze on heard, Counsels of thy glorious giving Manifest for all men living, How thou madest the tripod of prophecy thine Which the wrath of the dragon kept guard on, a shrine Voiceless till thy shafts could smite All his live coiled glittering might.

II

Ye that hold of right alone All deep woods on Helicon, Fair daughters of thunder-girt God, with your bright White arms uplift as to lighten the light, Come to chant your brother's praise, Gold-haired Phoebus, loud in lays, Even his, who afar up the twin-topped seat Of the rock Parnassian whereon we meet Risen with glorious Delphic maids Seeks the soft spring-sweetened shades Castalian, fain of the Delphian peak Prophetic, sublime as the feet that seek. Glorious Athens, highest of state, Come, with praise and prayer elate, O thou that art queen of the plain unscarred That the warrior Tritonid hath alway in guard, Where on many a sacred shrine Young bulls' thigh-bones burn and shine As the god that is fire overtakes them, and fast The smoke of Arabia to heavenward is cast, Scattering wide its balm: and shrill Now with nimble notes that thrill The flute strikes up for the song, and the harp of gold Strikes up to the song sweet answer: and all behold, All, aswarm as bees, give ear, Who by birth hold Athens dear.

A NEW CENTURY

An age too great for thought of ours to scan, A wave upon the sleepless sea of time That sinks and sleeps for ever, ere the chime Pass that salutes with blessing, not with ban, The dark year dead, the bright year born for man, Dies: all its days that watched man cower and climb, Frail as the foam, and as the sun sublime, Sleep sound as they that slept ere these began.

Our mother earth, whose ages none may tell, Puts on no change: time bids not her wax pale Or kindle, quenched or quickened, when the knell Sounds, and we cry across the veering gale Farewell--and midnight answers us, Farewell; Hail--and the heaven of morning answers, Hail.

AN EVENING AT VICHY

SEPTEMBER 1896

WRITTEN ON THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF LORD LEIGHTON

A light has passed that never shall pass away, A sun has set whose rays are unquelled of night. The loyal grace, the courtesy bright as day, The strong sweet radiant spirit of life and light That shone and smiled and lightened on all men's sight, The kindly life whose tune was the tune of May, For us now dark, for love and for fame is bright.

Nay, not for us that live as the fen-fires live, As stars that shoot and shudder with life and die, Can death make dark that lustre of life, or give The grievous gift of trust in oblivion's lie. Days dear and far death touches, and draws them nigh, And bids the grief that broods on their graves forgive The day that seems to mock them as clouds that fly.

If life be life more faithful than shines on sleep When dreams take wing and lighten and fade like flame, Then haply death may be not a death so deep That all things past are past for it wholly--fame, Love, loving-kindness, seasons that went and came, And left their light on life as a seal to keep Winged memory fast and heedful of time's dead claim.

Death gives back life and light to the sunless years Whose suns long sunken set not for ever. Time, Blind, fierce, and deaf as tempest, relents, and hears And sees how bright the days and how sweet their chime Rang, shone, and passed in music that matched the clime Wherein we met rejoicing--a joy that cheers Sorrow, to see the night as the dawn sublime.

The days that were outlighten the days that are, And eyes now darkened shine as the stars we see And hear not sing, impassionate star to star, As once we heard the music that haply he Hears, high in heaven if ever a voice may be The same in heaven, the same as on earth, afar From pain and earth as heaven from the heaving sea.

A woman's voice, divine as a bird's by dawn Kindled and stirred to sunward, arose and held Our souls that heard, from earth as from sleep withdrawn, And filled with light as stars, and as stars compelled To move by might of music, elate while quelled, Subdued by rapture, lit as a mountain lawn By morning whence all heaven in the sunrise welled.

And her the shadow of death as a robe clasped round Then: and as morning's music she passed away. And he then with us, warrior and wanderer, crowned With fame that shone from eastern on western day, More strong, more kind, than praise or than grief might say, Has passed now forth of shadow by sunlight bound, Of night shot through with light that is frail as May.

May dies, and light grows darkness, and life grows death: Hope fades and shrinks and falls as a changing leaf: Remembrance, touched and kindled by love's live breath, Shines, and subdues the shadow of time called grief, The shade whose length of life is as life's date brief, With joy that broods on the sunlight past, and saith That thought and love hold sorrow and change in fief.

Sweet, glad, bright spirit, kind as the sun seems kind When earth and sea rejoice in his gentler spell, Thy face that was we see not; bereft and blind, We see but yet, rejoicing to see, and dwell Awhile in days that heard not the death-day's knell, A light so bright that scarcely may sorrow find One old sweet word that hails thee and mourns--Farewell.

TO GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

ON THE EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, FEBRUARY 23, 1897

High thought and hallowed love, by faith made one, Begat and bare the sweet strong-hearted child, Art, nursed of Nature; earth and sea and sun Saw Nature then more godlike as she smiled. Life smiled on death, and death on life: the Soul Between them shone, and soared above their strife, And left on Time's unclosed and starry scroll A sign that quickened death to deathless life. Peace rose like Hope, a patient queen, and bade Hell's firstborn, Faith, abjure her creed and die; And Love, by life and death made sad and glad, Gave Conscience ease, and watched Good Will pass by. All these make music now of one man's name, Whose life and age are one with love and fame.

ON THE DEATH OF MRS. LYNN LINTON

Kind, wise, and true as truth's own heart, A soul that here Chose and held fast the better part And cast out fear,

Has left us ere we dreamed of death For life so strong, Clear as the sundawn's light and breath, And sweet as song.

We see no more what here awhile Shed light on men: Has Landor seen that brave bright smile Alive again?

If death and life and love be one And hope no lie And night no stronger than the sun, These cannot die.

The father-spirit whence her soul Took strength, and gave Back love, is perfect yet and whole, As hope might crave.

His word is living light and fire: And hers shall live By grace of all good gifts the sire Gave power to give.

The sire and daughter, twain and one In quest and goal, Stand face to face beyond the sun, And soul to soul.

Not we, who loved them well, may dream What joy sublime Is theirs, if dawn through darkness gleam, And life through time.

Time seems but here the mask of death, That falls and shows A void where hope may draw not breath: Night only knows.

Love knows not: all that love may keep Glad memory gives: The spirit of the days that sleep Still wakes and lives.

But not the spirit's self, though song Would lend it speech, May touch the goal that hope might long In vain to reach.

How dear that high true heart, how sweet Those keen kind eyes, Love knows, who knows how fiery fleet Is life that flies.

If life there be that flies not, fair The life must be That thrills her sovereign spirit there And sets it free.

IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI

Beloved above all nations, land adored, Sovereign in spirit and charm, by song and sword, Sovereign whose life is love, whose name is light, Italia, queen that hast the sun for lord,

Bride that hast heaven for bridegroom, how should night Veil or withhold from faith's and memory's sight A man beloved and crowned of thee and fame, Hide for an hour his name's memorial might?

Thy sons may never speak or hear the name Saffi, and feel not love's regenerate flame Thrill all the quickening heart with faith and pride In one whose life makes death and life the same.

They die indeed whose souls before them died: Not he, for whom death flung life's portal wide, Who stands where Dante's soul in vision came, In Dante's presence, by Mazzini's side.

_March 26, 1896._

CARNOT

Death, winged with fire of hate from deathless hell Wherein the souls of anarchs hiss and die, With stroke as dire has cloven a heart as high As twice beyond the wide sea's westward swell The living lust of death had power to quell Through ministry of murderous hands whereby Dark fate bade Lincoln's head and Garfield's lie Low even as his who bids his France farewell.

France, now no heart that would not weep with thee Loved ever faith or freedom. From thy hand The staff of state is broken: hope, unmanned With anguish, doubts if freedom's self be free. The snake-souled anarch's fang strikes all the land Cold, and all hearts unsundered by the sea.

_June 25, 1894._

AFTER THE VERDICT

France, cloven in twain by fire of hell and hate, Shamed with the shame of men her meanest born, Soldier and judge whose names, inscribed for scorn, Stand vilest on the record writ of fate, Lies yet not wholly vile who stood so great, Sees yet not all her praise of old outworn. Not yet is all her scroll of glory torn, Or left for utter shame to desecrate. High souls and constant hearts of faithful men Sustain her perfect praise with tongue and pen Indomitable as honour. Storms may toss And soil her standard ere her bark win home: But shame falls full upon the Christless cross Whose brandmark signs the holy hounds of Rome.

_September 1899._

THE TRANSVAAL

Patience, long sick to death, is dead. Too long Have sloth and doubt and treason bidden us be What Cromwell's England was not, when the sea To him bore witness given of Blake how strong She stood, a commonweal that brooked no wrong From foes less vile than men like wolves set free Whose war is waged where none may fight or flee-- With women and with weanlings. Speech and song Lack utterance now for loathing. Scarce we hear Foul tongues that blacken God's dishonoured name With prayers turned curses and with praise found shame Defy the truth whose witness now draws near To scourge these dogs, agape with jaws afoam, Down out of life. Strike, England, and strike home.

_October 9, 1899._

REVERSE

The wave that breaks against a forward stroke Beats not the swimmer back, but thrills him through With joyous trust to win his way anew Through stronger seas than first upon him broke And triumphed. England's iron-tempered oak Shrank not when Europe's might against her grew Full, and her sun drank up her foes like dew, And lion-like from sleep her strength awoke.

As bold in fight as bold in breach of trust We find our foes, and wonder not to find, Nor grudge them praise whom honour may not bind; But loathing more intense than speaks disgust Heaves England's heart, when scorn is bound to greet Hunters and hounds whose tongues would lick their feet.

_November 1, 1899._

THE TURNING OF THE TIDE

Storm, strong with all the bitter heart of hate, Smote England, now nineteen dark years ago, As when the tide's full wrath in seaward flow Smites and bears back the swimmer. Fraud and fate Were leagued against her: fear was fain to prate Of honour in dishonour, pride brought low, And humbleness whence holiness must grow, And greatness born of shame to be so great.

The winter day that withered hope and pride Shines now triumphal on the turning tide That sets once more our trust in freedom free, That leaves a ruthless and a truthless foe And all base hopes that hailed his cause laid low, And England's name a light on land and sea.

_February 27, 1900._

ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL BENSON

Northumberland, so proud and sad to-day, Weep and rejoice, our mother, whom no son More glorious than this dead and deathless one Brought ever fame whereon no time shall prey. Nor heed we more than he what liars dare say Of mercy's holiest duties left undone Toward whelps and dams of murderous foes, whom none Save we had spared or feared to starve and slay.

Alone as Milton and as Wordsworth found And hailed their England, when from all around Howled all the recreant hate of envious knaves, Sublime she stands: while, stifled in the sound, Each lie that falls from German boors and slaves Falls but as filth dropt in the wandering waves.

_November 4, 1901._

ASTRÆA VICTRIX

England, elect of time, By freedom sealed sublime, And constant as the sun that saw thy dawn Outshine upon the sea His own in heaven, to be A light that night nor day should see withdrawn, If song may speak not now thy praise, Fame writes it higher than song may soar or faith may gaze.

Dark months of months beheld Hope thwarted, crossed, and quelled, And heard the heartless hounds of hatred bay Aloud against thee, glad As now their souls are sad Who see their hope in hatred pass away And wither into shame and fear And shudder down to darkness, loth to see or hear.

Nought now they hear or see That speaks or shows not thee Triumphant; not as empires reared of yore, The imperial commonweal That bears thy sovereign seal And signs thine orient as thy natural shore Free, as no sons but thine may stand, Steers lifeward ever, guided of thy pilot hand.

Fear, masked and veiled by fraud, Found shameful time to applaud Shame, and bow down thy banner towards the dust, And call on godly shame To desecrate thy name And bid false penitence abjure thy trust: Till England's heart took thought at last, And felt her future kindle from her fiery past.

Then sprang the sunbright fire High as the sun, and higher Than strange men's eyes might watch it undismayed: But winds athwart it blew Storm, and the twilight grew Darkness awhile, an unenduring shade: And all base birds and beasts of night Saw no more England now to fear, no loathsome light.

All knaves and slaves at heart Who, knowing thee what thou art, Abhor thee, seeing what none save here may see, Strong freedom, taintless truth, Supreme in ageless youth, Howled all their hate and hope aloud at thee While yet the wavering wind of strife Bore hard against her sail whose freight is hope and life.

And now the quickening tide That brings back power and pride To faith and love whose ensign is thy name Bears down the recreant lie That doomed thy name to die, Sons, friends, and foes behold thy star the same As when it stood in heaven a sun And Europe saw no glory left her sky save one.