Chapter 597

Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born: And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; To none by her fresh wingedness endeared; Unwelcome unto revellers outworn. I the last echoes of Diana's horn In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered. No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul! And more than simple duty moved thy feet. New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame, From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll May men read on the heart I taught to beat: That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim.

THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM

Rich labour is the struggle to be wise, While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. Else better were it in some bower of peace Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. So following her, your hewing may attain The right to speak unto the mute, and shun That sly temptation of the illumined brain, Deliveries oracular, self-spun. Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.

THE STATE OF AGE

Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg Honours from aught about thee. Light the young. Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg. Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue, Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung, Which runs, Time's contrast to thy halting leg. Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. But hast thou in thy season set her fires To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash.

PROGRESS

In Progress you have little faith, say you: Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, By force, and gentle women choose their mates Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: The human heart Bellona's mad halloo Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. 'Now at this time,' says History, 'those two States Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred The bloody settlement of their disputes Till God should bless them better.' They did right. And naming Progress, both shall have the word.

THE WORLD'S ADVANCE

Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. You have perchance observed the inebriate's track At night when he has quitted the inn-sign: He plays diversions on the homeward line, Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack: A hedge may take him, but he turns not back, Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine. 'Spiral,' the memorable Lady terms Our mind's ascent: our world's advance presents That figure on a flat; the way of worms. Cherish the promise of its good intents, And warn it, not one instinct to efface Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.

A CERTAIN PEOPLE

As Puritans they prominently wax, And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks. Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks, They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks. But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks When Peace another door in them unlocks, Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe. Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. They need their pious exercises less Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief That these are devilish only to their thief, Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS

That Garden of sedate Philosophy Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap, A shining spot upon a shaggy map; Where mind and body, in fair junction free, Luted their joyful concord; like the tree From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap. Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature's lap Of gentlemen the happy nursery. That Garden would on light supremest verge, Were the long drawing of an equal breath Healthful for Wisdom's head, her heart, her aims. Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge, And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims The crucifix that came of Nazareth.

A LATER ALEXANDRIAN

An inspiration caught from dubious hues Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased; For they lead farther than the single-faced, Wave subtler promise when desire pursues. The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse, His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste. Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced, And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews. Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled Responsively: he sang not Nature's own Divinest, but his lyric had a tone, As 'twere a forest-echo of her voice: What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice.

AN ORSON OF THE MUSE

Her son, albeit the Muse's livery And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts, Naked and hairy in his savage haunts, To Nature only will he bend the knee; Spouting the founts of her distillery Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants Being Nature's, civil limitation daunts His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he. Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate, The Muse will hearken to with graver ear Than many of her train can waken: him Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight, If in no vessel built for sea they swim.

THE POINT OF TASTE

Unhappy poets of a sunken prime! You to reviewers are as ball to bat. They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime On you the excommunicates of Rhyme, Because you sing not in the living Fat. The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat Is verse that shuns their self-producing time. Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, You win their pleased attention. But, bright God O' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud! Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs.

CAMELUS SALTAT

What say you, critic, now you have become An author and maternal?--in this trap (To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap On instruments as like as drum to drum. You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum, So like the nose fly-teased in its noon's nap. You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap With that between the fingers and the thumb. It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch, Which bade our public gobble or reject. O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked, Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch! What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere, You dealt?--the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.

CONTINUED

Oracle of the market! thence you drew The taste which stamped you guide of the inept. - A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept, A sturdy and a briny, once men knew. He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, To roll ingurgitation till he slept, Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew. At last this dancer to the Polar star Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, To drink the sea and pilot him to land. O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched, Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.

MY THEME

Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt: The song of gladness one straight bolt can check. But I have never stood at Fortune's beck: Were she and her light crew to run atilt At my poor holding little would be spilt; Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck. Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck; He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt. Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell With other than those votaries she deals The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift. I say but that this love of Earth reveals A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.

CONTINUED

'Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts Through contemplation from a heart unbent By many tempests may be stained and rent: The summer flies it mightily attracts. Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts, Which scarce give breathing of the sty's content For their diurnal carnal nourishment: Which treat with Nature in official pacts. The deader body Nature could proclaim. Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth. But during calms the flies of idle aim Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.

ON THE DANGER OF WAR

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick. When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food. Dark looms the issue though the cause be good, But with the doubt 'tis our old devil's trick. O now the down-slope of the lunatic Illumine lest we redden of that brood. For not since man in his first view of thee Ascended to the heavens giving sign Within him of deep sky and sounded sea, Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress; In peril of his blood his ears incline To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.

TO CARDINAL MANNING

I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men, Or straining for the angel of the light, Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight, When I behold one lamp that through our fen Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright From speaking to the soul of us forthright What things our craven senses keep from ken. This is the doing of the Christ; the way He went on earth; the service above guile To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines; Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay Such misery as by these present signs Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.

TO COLONEL CHARLES (DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)

I

An English heart, my commandant, A soldier's eye you have, awake To right and left; with looks askant On bulwarks not of adamant, Where white our Channel waters break.

II

Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness Across the ruffled strip of salt, You look, and like the prospect less. On men and guns would you lay stress, To bid the Island's foemen halt.

III

While loud the Year is raising cry At birth to know if it must bear In history the bloody dye, An English heart, a soldier's eye, For the old country first will care.

IV

And how stands she, artillerist, Among the vapours waxing dense, With cannon charged? 'Tis hist! and hist! And now she screws a gouty fist, And now she counts to clutch her pence.

V

With shudders chill as aconite, The couchant chewer of the cud Will start at times in pussy fright Before the dogs, when reads her sprite The streaks predicting streams of blood.

VI

She thinks they may mean something; thinks They may mean nothing: haply both. Where darkness all her daylight drinks, She fain would find a leader lynx, Not too much taxing mental sloth.

VII

Cleft like the fated house in twain, One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench! Gambetta's word on dull MacMahon: 'The cow that sees a passing train': So spies she Russian, German, French.

VIII

She? no, her weakness: she unbraced Among those athletes fronting storms! The muscles less of steel than paste, Why, they of nature feel distaste For flash, much more for push, of arms.

IX

The poet sings, and well know we, That 'iron draws men after it.' But towering wealth may seem the tree Which bears the fruit INDEMNITY, And draw as fast as battle's fit,

X

If feeble be the hand on guard, Alas, alas! And nations are Still the mad forces, though the scarred. Should they once deem our emblem Pard Wagger of tail for all save war; -

XI

Mechanically screwed to flail His flanks by Presses conjuring fear; - A money-bag with head and tail; - Too late may valour then avail! As you beheld, my cannonier,

XII

When with the staff of Benedek, On the plateau of Koniggratz, You saw below that wedgeing speck; Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck, Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.

February 1887.

TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS

I

Strike not thy dog with a stick! I did it yesterday: Not to undo though I gained The Paradise: heavy it rained On Kobold's flanks, and he lay.

II

Little Bruno, our long-ear pup, From his hunt had come back to my heel. I heard a sharp worrying sound, And Bruno foamed on the ground, With Koby as making a meal.

III

I did what I could not undo Were the gates of the Paradise shut Behind me: I deemed it was just. I left Koby crouched in the dust, Some yards from the woodman's hut.

IV

He bewhimpered his welting, and I Scarce thought it enough for him: so, By degrees, through the upper box-grove, Within me an old story hove, Of a man and a dog: you shall know.

V

The dog was of novel breed, The Shannon retriever, untried: His master, an old Irish lord, In an oaken armchair snored At midnight, whisky beside.

VI

Perched up a desolate tower, Where the black storm-wind was a whip To set it nigh spinning, these two Were alone, like the last of a crew, Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.

VII

The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed; He quitted his couch on the rug, Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked; And, finding the signals unmarked, Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.

VIII

He pulled till his master jumped For fury of wrath, and laid on With the length of a tough knotted staff, Fit to drive the life flying like chaff, And leave a sheer carcase anon.

IX

That done, he sat, panted, and cursed The vile cross of this brute: nevermore Would he house it to rear such a cur! The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir, Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.

X

Then his master raised head too, and sniffed: It struck him the dog had a sense That honoured both dam and sire. You have guessed how the tower was afire. The Shannon retriever dates thence.

XI

I mused: saw the pup ease his heart Of his instinct for chasing, and sink Overwrought by excitement so new: A scene that for Koby to view Was the seizure of nerves in a link.

XII

And part sympathetic, and part Imitatively, raged my poor brute; And I, not thinking of ill, Doing eviller: nerves are still Our savage too quick at the root.

XIII

They spring us: I proved it, albeit I played executioner then For discipline, justice, the like. Yon stick I had handy to strike Should have warned of the tyrant in men.

XIV

You read in your History books, How the Prince in his youth had a mind For governing gently his land. Ah, the use of that weapon at hand, When the temper is other than kind!

XV

At home all was well; Koby's ribs Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled, He forgives me, his criminal air Throws a shade of Llewellyn's despair For the hound slain for saving his child.

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

I

Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves. Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm, Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

II

Here the snake across your path Stretches in his golden bath: Mossy-footed squirrels leap Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: Yaffles on a chuckle skim Low to laugh from branches dim: Up the pine, where sits the star, Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. Each has business of his own; But should you distrust a tone, Then beware. Shudder all the haunted roods, All the eyeballs under hoods Shroud you in their glare. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

III

Open hither, open hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror on the mould. These, the woods of Westermain, Are as others to behold, Rich of wreathing sun and rain; Foliage lustreful around Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, Shelter eager minikins, Myriads, free to peck and pipe: Would you better? would you worse? You with them may gather ripe Pleasures flowing not from purse. Quick and far as Colour flies Taking the delighted eyes, You of any well that springs May unfold the heaven of things; Have it homely and within, And thereof its likeness win, Will you so in soul's desire: This do sages grant t' the lyre. This is being bird and more, More than glad musician this; Granaries you will have a store Past the world of woe and bliss; Sharing still its bliss and woe; Harnessed to its hungers, no. On the throne Success usurps, You shall seat the joy you feel Where a race of water chirps, Twisting hues of flourished steel: Or where light is caught in hoop Up a clearing's leafy rise, Where the crossing deerherds troop Classic splendours, knightly dyes. Or, where old-eyed oxen chew Speculation with the cud, Read their pool of vision through, Back to hours when mind was mud; Nigh the knot, which did untwine Timelessly to drowsy suns; Seeing Earth a slimy spine, Heaven a space for winging tons. Farther, deeper, may you read, Have you sight for things afield, Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, Cloaked, but in the peep revealed; Showing a kind face and sweet: Look you with the soul you see't. Glory narrowing to grace, Grace to glory magnified, Following that will you embrace Close in arms or aery wide. Banished is the white Foam-born Not from here, nor under ban Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn, Pipings of the reedy Pan. Loved of Earth of old they were, Loving did interpret her; And the sterner worship bars None whom Song has made her stars. You have seen the huntress moon Radiantly facing dawn, Dusky meads between them strewn Glimmering like downy awn: Argent Westward glows the hunt, East the blush about to climb; One another fair they front, Transient, yet outshine the time; Even as dewlight off the rose In the mind a jewel sows. Thus opposing grandeurs live Here if Beauty be their dower: Doth she of her spirit give, Fleetingness will spare her flower. This is in the tune we play, Which no spring of strength would quell; In subduing does not slay; Guides the channel, guards the well: Tempered holds the young blood-heat, Yet through measured grave accord, Hears the heart of wildness beat Like a centaur's hoof on sward. Drink the sense the notes infuse, You a larger self will find: Sweetest fellowship ensues With the creatures of your kind. Ay, and Love, if Love it be Flaming over I and ME, Love meet they who do not shove Cravings in the van of Love. Courtly dames are here to woo, Knowing love if it be true. Reverence the blossom-shoot Fervently, they are the fruit. Mark them stepping, hear them talk, Goddess, is no myth inane, You will say of those who walk In the woods of Westermain. Waters that from throat and thigh Dart the sun his arrows back; Leaves that on a woodland sigh Chat of secret things no lack; Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, Bare or veiled they move sincere; Not by slavish terrors tripped Being anew in nature dipped, Growths of what they step on, these; With the roots the grace of trees. Casket-breasts they give, nor hide, For a tyrant's flattered pride, Mind, which nourished not by light, Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite: Whereof are strange tales to tell; Some in blood writ, tombed in bell. Here the ancient battle ends, Joining two astonished friends, Who the kiss can give and take With more warmth than in that world Where the tiger claws the snake, Snake her tiger clasps infurled, And the issue of their fight People lands in snarling plight. Here her splendid beast she leads Silken-leashed and decked with weeds Wild as he, but breathing faint Sweetness of unfelt constraint. Love, the great volcano, flings Fires of lower Earth to sky; Love, the sole permitted, sings Sovereignly of ME and I. Bowers he has of sacred shade, Spaces of superb parade, Voiceful . . . But bring you a note Wrangling, howsoe'er remote, Discords out of discord spin Round and round derisive din: Sudden will a pallor pant Chill at screeches miscreant; Owls or spectres, thick they flee; Nightmare upon horror broods; Hooded laughter, monkish glee, Gaps the vital air. Enter these enchanted woods You who dare.

IV