Chapter 3

Nor much with Science do I care to climb, Although by strange and subtle witchery She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry To no less eager eyes; often indeed In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read

How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war Against a little town, and panoplied In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar, White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede Between the waving poplars and the sea Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylæ

Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall, And on the nearer side a little brood Of careless lions holding festival! And stood amazèd at such hardihood, And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore, And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er

Some unfrequented height, and coming down The autumn forests treacherously slew What Sparta held most dear and was the crown Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew How God had staked an evil net for him In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim,

Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel With such a goodly time too out of tune To love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.

O for one grand unselfish simple life To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills, Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!

Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal Where love and duty mingle! Him at least The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast;

But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote The clarion watchword of each Grecian school And follow none, the flawless sword which smote The pagan Hydra is an effete tool Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?

One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod! Gone is that last dear son of Italy, Who being man died for the sake of God, And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully, O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower, Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour

Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or The Arno with its tawny troubled gold O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery

Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell With an old man who grabbled rusty keys, Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell With which oblivion buries dynasties Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.

He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome, He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair, And now lies dead by that empyreal dome Which overtops Valdarno hung in air By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!

Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine Forget awhile their discreet emperies, Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon, And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!

O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower! Let some young Florentine each eventide Bring coronals of that enchanted flower Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide, And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;

Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings, Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings Of the eternal chanting Cherubim Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay,

He is not dead, the immemorial Fates Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain. Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates! Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain For the vile thing he hated lurks within Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.

Still what avails it that she sought her cave That murderous mother of red harlotries? At Munich on the marble architrave The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas Which wash Ægina fret in loneliness Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless

For lack of our ideals, if one star Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,

What Easter Day shall make her children rise, Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes Shall see them bodily? O it were meet To roll the stone from off the sepulchre And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,

Our Italy! our mother visible! Most blessed among nations and most sad, For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell That day at Aspromonte and was glad That in an age when God was bought and sold One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,

See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily, And no word said:—O we are wretched men Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen

Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword Which slew its master righteously? the years Have lost their ancient leader, and no word Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears: While as a ruined mother in some spasm Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm

Genders unlawful children, Anarchy Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal Licence who steals the gold of Liberty And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp

Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed For whose dull appetite men waste away Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed Of things which slay their sower, these each day Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.

What even Cromwell spared is desecrated By weed and worm, left to the stormy play Of wind and beating snow, or renovated By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness, But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.

Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air Seems from such marble harmonies to ring With sweeter song than common lips can dare To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow

For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One Who loved the lilies of the field with all Our dearest English flowers? the same sun Rises for us: the seasons natural Weave the same tapestry of green and grey: The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.

And yet perchance it may be better so, For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen, Murder her brother is her bedfellow, And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set; Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!

For gentle brotherhood, the harmony Of living in the healthful air, the swift Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free And women chaste, these are the things which lift Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,

Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair White as her own sweet lily and as tall, Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,— Ah! somehow life is bigger after all Than any painted angel, could we see The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity

Which curbs the passion of that level line Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine And mirror her divine economies, And balanced symmetry of what in man Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at least within the span

Between our mother’s kisses and the grave Might so inform our lives, that we could win Such mighty empires that from her cave Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin Would walk ashamed of his adulteries, And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.

To make the body and the spirit one With all right things, till no thing live in vain From morn to noon, but in sweet unison With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain The soul in flawless essence high enthroned, Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,

Mark with serene impartiality The strife of things, and yet be comforted, Knowing that by the chain causality All separate existences are wed Into one supreme whole, whose utterance Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance

Of Life in most august omnipresence, Through which the rational intellect would find In passion its expression, and mere sense, Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind, And being joined with it in harmony More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,

Strike from their several tones one octave chord Whose cadence being measureless would fly Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord Return refreshed with its new empery And more exultant power,—this indeed Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.

Ah! it was easy when the world was young To keep one’s life free and inviolate, From our sad lips another song is rung, By our own hands our heads are desecrate, Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.

Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown, And of all men we are most wretched who Must live each other’s lives and not our own For very pity’s sake and then undo All that we lived for—it was otherwise When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.

But we have left those gentle haunts to pass With weary feet to the new Calvary, Where we behold, as one who in a glass Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity, And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.

O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn! O chalice of all common miseries! Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne An agony of endless centuries, And we were vain and ignorant nor knew That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.

Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, The night that covers and the lights that fade, The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, The lips betraying and the life betrayed; The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.

Is this the end of all that primal force Which, in its changes being still the same, From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course, Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, Till the suns met in heaven and began Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!

Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know, Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again, No need have we of hyssop-laden rod, That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God.

LOUIS NAPOLEON

EAGLE of Austerlitz! where were thy wings When far away upon a barbarous strand, In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!

Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red, Or ride in state through Paris in the van Of thy returning legions, but instead Thy mother France, free and republican,

Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place The better laurels of a soldier’s crown, That not dishonoured should thy soul go down To tell the mighty Sire of thy race

That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty, And found it sweeter than his honied bees, And that the giant wave Democracy Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.

ENDYMION (FOR MUSIC)

THE apple trees are hung with gold, And birds are loud in Arcady, The sheep lie bleating in the fold, The wild goat runs across the wold, But yesterday his love he told, I know he will come back to me. O rising moon! O Lady moon! Be you my lover’s sentinel, You cannot choose but know him well, For he is shod with purple shoon, You cannot choose but know my love, For he a shepherd’s crook doth bear, And he is soft as any dove, And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call Upon her crimson-footed groom, The grey wolf prowls about the stall, The lily’s singing seneschal Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all The violet hills are lost in gloom. O risen moon! O holy moon! Stand on the top of Helice, And if my own true love you see, Ah! if you see the purple shoon, The hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair, The goat-skin wrapped about his arm, Tell him that I am waiting where The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

The falling dew is cold and chill, And no bird sings in Arcady, The little fauns have left the hill, Even the tired daffodil Has closed its gilded doors, and still My lover comes not back to me. False moon! False moon! O waning moon! Where is my own true lover gone, Where are the lips vermilion, The shepherd’s crook, the purple shoon? Why spread that silver pavilion, Why wear that veil of drifting mist? Ah! thou hast young Endymion Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!

LE JARDIN

THE lily’s withered chalice falls Around its rod of dusty gold, And from the beech-trees on the wold The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.

The gaudy leonine sunflower Hangs black and barren on its stalk, And down the windy garden walk The dead leaves scatter,—hour by hour.

Pale privet-petals white as milk Are blown into a snowy mass: The roses lie upon the grass Like little shreds of crimson silk.

LA MER

A WHITE mist drifts across the shrouds, A wild moon in this wintry sky Gleams like an angry lion’s eye Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

The muffled steersman at the wheel Is but a shadow in the gloom;— And in the throbbing engine-room Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace Upon this huge and heaving dome, For the thin threads of yellow foam Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

LE PANNEAU

UNDER the rose-tree’s dancing shade There stands a little ivory girl, Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl With pale green nails of polished jade.

The red leaves fall upon the mould, The white leaves flutter, one by one, Down to a blue bowl where the sun, Like a great dragon, writhes in gold.

The white leaves float upon the air, The red leaves flutter idly down, Some fall upon her yellow gown, And some upon her raven hair.

She takes an amber lute and sings, And as she sings a silver crane Begins his scarlet neck to strain, And flap his burnished metal wings.

She takes a lute of amber bright, And from the thicket where he lies Her lover, with his almond eyes, Watches her movements in delight.

And now she gives a cry of fear, And tiny tears begin to start: A thorn has wounded with its dart The pink-veined sea-shell of her ear.

And now she laughs a merry note: There has fallen a petal of the rose Just where the yellow satin shows The blue-veined flower of her throat.

With pale green nails of polished jade, Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl, There stands a little ivory girl Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade.

LES BALLONS

AGAINST these turbid turquoise skies The light and luminous balloons Dip and drift like satin moons Drift like silken butterflies;

Reel with every windy gust, Rise and reel like dancing girls, Float like strange transparent pearls, Fall and float like silver dust.

Now to the low leaves they cling, Each with coy fantastic pose, Each a petal of a rose Straining at a gossamer string.

Then to the tall trees they climb, Like thin globes of amethyst, Wandering opals keeping tryst With the rubies of the lime.

CANZONET

I HAVE no store Of gryphon-guarded gold; Now, as before, Bare is the shepherd’s fold. Rubies nor pearls Have I to gem thy throat; Yet woodland girls Have loved the shepherd’s note.

Then pluck a reed And bid me sing to thee, For I would feed Thine ears with melody, Who art more fair Than fairest fleur-de-lys, More sweet and rare Than sweetest ambergris.

What dost thou fear? Young Hyacinth is slain, Pan is not here, And will not come again. No horned Faun Treads down the yellow leas, No God at dawn Steals through the olive trees.

Hylas is dead, Nor will he e’er divine Those little red Rose-petalled lips of thine. On the high hill No ivory dryads play, Silver and still Sinks the sad autumn day.

LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES

THIS winter air is keen and cold, And keen and cold this winter sun, But round my chair the children run Like little things of dancing gold.

Sometimes about the painted kiosk The mimic soldiers strut and stride, Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide In the bleak tangles of the bosk.

And sometimes, while the old nurse cons Her book, they steal across the square, And launch their paper navies where Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze.

And now in mimic flight they flee, And now they rush, a boisterous band— And, tiny hand on tiny hand, Climb up the black and leafless tree.

Ah! cruel tree! if I were you, And children climbed me, for their sake Though it be winter I would break Into spring blossoms white and blue!

PAN DOUBLE VILLANELLE

I.

O GOAT-FOOT God of Arcady! This modern world is grey and old, And what remains to us of thee?

No more the shepherd lads in glee Throw apples at thy wattled fold, O goat-foot God of Arcady!

Nor through the laurels can one see Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold And what remains to us of thee?

And dull and dead our Thames would be, For here the winds are chill and cold, O goat-loot God of Arcady!

Then keep the tomb of Helice, Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold, And what remains to us of thee?

Though many an unsung elegy Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold, O goat-foot God of Arcady! Ah, what remains to us of thee?

II.

AH, leave the hills of Arcady, Thy satyrs and their wanton play, This modern world hath need of thee.

No nymph or Faun indeed have we, For Faun and nymph are old and grey, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

This is the land where liberty Lit grave-browed Milton on his way, This modern world hath need of thee!

A land of ancient chivalry Where gentle Sidney saw the day, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

This fierce sea-lion of the sea, This England lacks some stronger lay, This modern world hath need of thee!

Then blow some trumpet loud and free, And give thine oaten pipe away, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! This modern world hath need of thee!

IN THE FOREST

OUT of the mid-wood’s twilight Into the meadow’s dawn, Ivory limbed and brown-eyed, Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing, And his shadow dances along, And I know not which I should follow, Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow! O Nightingale, catch me his strain! Else moonstruck with music and madness I track him in vain!

SYMPHONY IN YELLOW

AN omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay Are moored against the shadowy wharf, And, like a yellow silken scarf, The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade And flutter from the Temple elms, And at my feet the pale green Thames Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

SONNETS

HÉLAS!

TO drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which can winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God: Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance— And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

TO MILTON

MILTON! I think thy spirit hath passed away From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers; This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey, And the age changed unto a mimic play Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours: For all our pomp and pageantry and powers We are but fit to delve the common clay, Seeing this little isle on which we stand, This England, this sea-lion of the sea, By ignorant demagogues is held in fee, Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land Which bare a triple empire in her hand When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA

CHRIST, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones? For here the air is horrid with men’s groans, The priests who call upon Thy name are slain, Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain From those whose children lie upon the stones? Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom Curtains the land, and through the starless night Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see! If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!

HOLY WEEK AT GENOA