Part 5

Faith, whose eyes in the low last ray Watch the fire that renews the day, Faith which lives in the living past, Rock-rooted, swerves not as weeds that sway.

As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast She stands, unsmitten of death's keen blast, With strong remembrance of sunbright spring Alive at heart to the lifeless last.

Night, she knows, may in no wise cling To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing, A sun that sets not in death's false night Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king.

Souls there are that for soul's affright Bow down and cower in the sun's glad sight, Clothed round with faith that is one with fear, And dark with doubt of the live world's light.

But him we hailed from afar or near As boldest born of the bravest here And loved as brightest of souls that eyed Life, time, and death with unchangeful cheer,

A wider soul than the world was wide, Whose praise made love of him one with pride, What part has death or has time in him, Who rode life's lists as a god might ride?

While England sees not her old praise dim, While still her stars through the world's night swim, A fame outshining her Raleigh's fame, A light that lightens her loud sea's rim,

Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim The pride that kindles at Burton's name. And joy shall exalt their pride to be The same in birth if in soul the same.

But we that yearn for a friend's face--we Who lack the light that on earth was he-- Mourn, though the light be a quenchless flame That shines as dawn on a tideless sea.

ELEGY

1869-1891

Auvergne, Auvergne, O wild and woful land, O glorious land and gracious, white as gleam The stairs of heaven, black as a flameless brand, Strange even as life, and stranger than a dream,

Could earth remember man, whose eyes made bright The splendour of her beauty, lit by day Or soothed and softened and redeemed by night, Wouldst thou not know what light has passed away?

Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world, Mourns? For the world whose wildest ways he trod, And smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled Against him, knows him now less man than god.

Our demigod of daring, keenest-eyed To read and deepest read in earth's dim things, A spirit now whose body of death has died And left it mightier yet in eyes and wings, The sovereign seeker of the world, who now Hath sought what world the light of death may show, Hailed once with me the crowns that load thy brow, Crags dark as midnight, columns bright as snow.

Thy steep small Siena, splendid and content As shines the mightier city's Tuscan pride Which here its face reflects in radiance, pent By narrower bounds from towering side to side,

Set fast between the ridged and foamless waves Of earth more fierce and fluctuant than the sea, The fearless town of towers that hails and braves The heights that gird, the sun that brands Le Puy;

The huddled churches clinging on the cliffs As birds alighting might for storm's sake cling, Moored to the rocks as tempest-harried skiffs To perilous refuge from the loud wind's wing;

The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb Even up to the utmost crag's edge curved and curled, More bright than vision, more than faith sublime, Strange as the light and darkness of the world;

Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun, And washed from west and east by day's deep tide. Shine yet less fair, when all their heights are won, Than sundawn shows thy pillared mountain-side.

Even so the dawn of death, whose light makes dim The starry fires that life sees rise and set, Shows higher than here he shone before us him Whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget.

Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud, Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam, And shrouded as a corpse with storm's grey shroud,

Foot following foot along the sheer strait ledge Where space was none to bear the wild goat's feet Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge Where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat,

The abyss before us, viewless even as time's, The abyss to left of us, the abyss to right, Bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs That death sets free from change of day and night.

The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath Shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod, The wondrous world it darkened, made our path Like theirs who take the shadow of death for God.

Yet eastward, veiled in vapour white as snow, The grim black herbless heights that scorn the sun And mock the face of morning rose to show The work of earth-born fire and earthquake done.

And half the world was haggard night, wherein We strove our blind way through: but far above Was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin, And far beneath a land worth light and love.

Deep down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted By present sense of past and monstrous things,

The glimmering water holds its gracious way Full forth, and keeps one happier hand's-breadth green Of all that storm-scathed world whereon the sway Sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen.

But on the soundless and the viewless river That bears through night perchance again to day The dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver From life that dies, and time's inveterate sway,

No shadow save of falsehood and of fear That brands the future with the past, and bids The spirit wither and the soul grow sere, Hovers or hangs to cloud life's opening lids,

If life have eyes to lift again and see, Beyond the bounds of sensual sight or breath, What life incognisable of ours may be That turns our light to darkness deep as death.

Priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies, About his dust while yet his dust is warm Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes,

Their godless ghost of godhead, false and foul As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we, Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: The corpse be theirs to mock; the soul is free.

Free as ere yet its earthly day was done It lived above the coil about us curled: A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun, A soul whose wings were wider than the world.

We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams, Bound fast with visions, girt about with fears, Live, trust, and think by chance, while shadow seems Light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers.

He, whose full soul held east and west in poise, Weighed man with man, and creed of man's with creed, And age with age, their triumphs and their toys, And found what faith may read not and may read.

Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit With fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn Wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it The splendour and the steadfastness of scorn.

What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what space Illimitable, insuperable, infinite, Now to that strong-winged soul yields ampler place Than passing darkness yields to passing light,

No dream, no faith can tell us: hope and fear, Whose tongues were loud of old as children's, now From babbling fall to silence: change is here, And death; dark furrows drawn by time's dark plough.

Still sunward here on earth its flight was bent, Even since the man within the child began To yearn and kindle with superb intent And trust in time to magnify the man.

Still toward the old garden of the Sun, whose fruit The honey-heavy lips of Sophocles Desired and sang, wherein the unwithering root Sprang of all growths that thought brings forth and sees

Incarnate, bright with bloom or dense with leaf Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night: And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf His strenuous spirit bound and stored aright.

And eastward now, and ever toward the dawn, If death's deep veil by life's bright hand be rent, We see, as through the shadow of death withdrawn, The imperious soul's indomitable ascent.

But not the soul whose labour knew not end-- But not the swordsman's hand, the crested head-- The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend, Burton--a name that lives till fame be dead.

A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING

I

The clearest eyes in all the world they read With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, As they the light of ages quick and dead, Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew Can slay not one of all the works we knew, Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.

The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, And moulded of unconquerable thought, And quickened with imperishable flame, Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame, Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.

_December 13, 1889._

II

Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom Time is not lord, but servant? What least part Of all the fire that fed his living heart, Of all the light more keen than sundawn's bloom That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art, A shadow born of terror's barren womb, That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou, To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow, That power on him is given thee,--that thy breath Can make him less than love acclaims him now, And hears all time sound back the word it saith? What part hast thou then in his glory, Death?

III

A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand, Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve. A graceless guerdon we that loved receive For all our love, from that the dearest land Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland, Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave, Shone on our dreams and memories evermore The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black Seems now the face we loved as he of yore. We have given thee love--no stint, no stay, no lack: What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back?

IV

But he--to him, who knows what gift is thine, Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we Pass likewise thither where to-night is he, Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine And darken round such dreams as half divine Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee, To read with him the secret of thy shrine.

There too, as here, may song, delight, and love, The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove, Fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky Till all beneath wax bright as all above: But none of all that search the heavens, and try The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye.

_December 14._

V

Among the wondrous ways of men and time He went as one that ever found and sought And bore in hand the lamplike spirit of thought To illume with instance of its fire sublime The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime. No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought, No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime, No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light, No love more lovely than the snows are white, No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb, No song-bird singing from some live soul's height, But he might hear, interpret, or illume With sense invasive as the dawn of doom.

VI

What secret thing of splendour or of shade Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein Man, led of love and life and death and sin, Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid, Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade Of that full soul that had for aim to win Light, silent over time's dark toil and din, Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade? O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee That he might know not of in spirit, and see The heart within the heart that seems to strive, The life within the life that seems to be, And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive, The living sound of all men's souls alive?

VII

He held no dream worth waking: so he said, He who stands now on death's triumphal steep, Awakened out of life wherein we sleep And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. But never death for him was dark or dread: "Look forth" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep, All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep Vain memory's vision of a vanished head As all that lives of all that once was he Save that which lightens from his word: but we, Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll, Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea, Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole, And life and death but shadows of the soul.

_December 15._

SUNSET AND MOONRISE

NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1889

All the west, whereon the sunset sealed the dead year's glorious grave Fast with seals of light and fire and cloud that light and fire illume, Glows at heart and kindles earth and heaven with joyous blush and bloom, Warm and wide as life, and glad of death that only slays to save. As a tide-reconquered sea-rock lies aflush with the influent wave Lies the light aflush with darkness, lapped about by lustrous gloom, Even as life with death, and fame with time, and memory with the tomb Where a dead man hath for vassals Fame the serf and Time the slave.

Far from earth as heaven, the steadfast light withdrawn, superb, suspense, Burns in dumb divine expansion of illimitable flower: Moonrise whets the shadow's edges keen as noontide: hence and thence Glows the presence from us passing, shines and passes not the power. Souls arise whose word remembered is as spirit within the sense: All the hours are theirs of all the seasons: death has but his hour.

BIRTHDAY ODE

AUGUST 6, 1891

I

Love and praise, and a length of days whose shadow cast upon time is light, Days whose sound was a spell shed round from wheeling wings as of doves in flight, Meet in one, that the mounting sun to-day may triumph, and cast out night.

Two years more than the full fourscore lay hallowing hands on a sacred head-- Scarce one score of the perfect four uncrowned of fame as they smiled and fled: Still and soft and alive aloft their sunlight stays though the suns be dead.

Ere we were or were thought on, ere the love that gave us to life began, Fame grew strong with his crescent song, to greet the goal of the race they ran, Song with fame, and the lustrous name with years whose changes acclaimed the man.

II

Soon, ere time in the rounding rhyme of choral seasons had hailed us men, We too heard and acclaimed the word whose breath was life upon England then-- Life more bright than the breathless light of soundless noon in a songless glen.

Ah, the joy of the heartstruck boy whose ear was opened of love to hear! Ah, the bliss of the burning kiss of song and spirit, the mounting cheer Lit with fire of divine desire and love that knew not if love were fear!

Fear and love as of heaven above and earth enkindled of heaven were one; One white flame, that around his name grew keen and strong as the worldwide sun; Awe made bright with implied delight, as weft with weft of the rainbow spun.

III

He that fears not the voice he hears and loves shall never have heart to sing: All the grace of the sun-god's face that bids the soul as a fountain spring Bids the brow that receives it bow, and hail his likeness on earth as king.

We that knew when the sun's shaft flew beheld and worshipped, adored and heard: Light rang round it of shining sound, whence all men's hearts were subdued and stirred: Joy, love, sorrow, the day, the morrow, took life upon them in one man's word.

Not for him can the years wax dim, nor downward swerve on a darkening way: Upward wind they, and leave behind such light as lightens the front of May: Fair as youth and sublime as truth we find the fame that we hail to-day.

THRENODY

OCTOBER 6, 1892

I

Life, sublime and serene when time had power upon it and ruled its breath, Changed it, bade it be glad or sad, and hear what change in the world's ear saith, Shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens the dusk of death.

Suns that sink on the wan sea's brink, and moons that kindle and flame and fade, Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and see not shade Rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and moonlight swayed.

So, when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pillowed on Shakespeare's breast, Hand in hand with him, soon to stand where shine the glories that death loves best, Passed the light of his face from sight, and sank sublimely to radiant rest.

II

Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voiceless praise, Shines for ever the name that never shall feel the shade of the changeful days Fall and chill the delight that still sees winter's light on it shine like May's.

Strong as death is the dark day's breath whose blast has withered the life we see Here where light is the child of night, and less than visions or dreams are we: Strong as death; but a word, a breath, a dream is stronger than death can be.

Strong as truth and superb in youth eternal, fair as the sundawn's flame Seen when May on her first-born day bids earth exult in her radiant name, Lives, clothed round with its praise and crowned with love that dies not, his love-lit fame.

III

Fairer far than the morning star, and sweet for us as the songs that rang Loud through heaven from the choral Seven when all the stars of the morning sang, Shines the song that we loved so long--since first such love in us flamed and sprang.

England glows as a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from sea to sea, Bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow that needs must be, Needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory to lawn and lea.

Not through tears shall the new-born years behold him, crowned with applause of men, Pass at last from a lustrous past to life that lightens beyond their ken, Glad and dead, and from earthward led to sunward, guided of Imogen.

THE BALLAD OF MELICERTES

IN MEMORY OF THEODORE DE BANVILLE

Death, a light outshining life, bids heaven resume Star by star the souls whose light made earth divine. Death, a night outshining day, sees burn and bloom Flower by flower, and sun by sun, the fames that shine Deathless, higher than life beheld their sovereign sign. Dead Simonides of Ceos, late restored, Given again of God, again by man deplored, Shone but yestereve, a glory frail as breath. Frail? But fame's breath quickens, kindles, keeps in ward, Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.

Mother's love, and rapture of the sea, whose womb Breeds eternal life of joy that stings like brine, Pride of song, and joy to dare the singer's doom, Sorrow soft as sleep and laughter bright as wine, Flushed and filled with fragrant fire his lyric line. As the sea-shell utters, like a stricken chord, Music uttering all the sea's within it stored, Poet well-beloved, whose praise our sorrow saith, So thy songs retain thy soul, and so record Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.

Side by side we mourned at Gautier's golden tomb: Here in spirit now I stand and mourn at thine. Yet no breath of death strikes thence, no shadow of gloom, Only light more bright than gold of the inmost mine, Only steam of incense warm from love's own shrine. Not the darkling stream, the sundering Stygian ford, Not the hour that smites and severs as a sword, Not the night subduing light that perisheth, Smite, subdue, divide from us by doom abhorred, Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.

Prince of song more sweet than honey, lyric lord, Not thy France here only mourns a light adored, One whose love-lit fame the world inheriteth. Strangers too, now brethren, hail with heart's accord Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.

AU TOMBEAU DE BANVILLE

La plus douce des voix qui vibraient sous le ciel Se tait: les rossignols ailés pleurent le frère Qui s'envole au-dessus de l'âpre et sombre terre, Ne lui laissant plus voir que l'être essentiel,

Esprit qui chante et rit, fleur d'une âme sans fiel. L'ombre élyséenne, où la nuit n'est que lumière, Revoit, tout revêtu de splendeur douce et fière, Mélicerte, poète à la bouche de miel.

Dieux exilés, passants célestes de ce monde, Dont on entend parfois dans notre nuit profonde Vibrer la voix, frémir les ailes, vous savez S'il vous aima, s'il vous pleura, lui dont la vie Et le chant rappelaient les vôtres. Recevez L'âme de Mélicerte affranchie et ravie.

LIGHT: AN EPICEDE

TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON

Love will not weep because the seal is broken That sealed upon a life beloved and brief Darkness, and let but song break through for token How deep, too far for even thy song's relief, Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.

Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter, As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair; As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter, Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care.