Chapter 3
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
THE BLACKBIRD
The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all.
For his song is all of the joy of life, And we in the mad, spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together.
A BOWL OF ROSES
It was a bowl of roses: There in the light they lay, Languishing, glorying, glowing Their life away.
And the soul of them rose like a presence, Into me crept and grew, And filled me with something--some one-- O, was it you?
BEFORE
Behold me waiting--waiting for the knife. A little while, and at a leap I storm The thick sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. The gods are good to me: I have no wife, No innocent child, to think of as I near The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear Unmans me for my bout of passive strife.
Yet I am tremulous and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Caesar and his fortunes--Steady!
MARGARITAE SORORI
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies; And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, grey city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace.
The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine, and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-- Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_
Robert Louis Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in 1850. He was at first trained to be a lighthouse engineer, following the profession of his family. However, he studied law instead; was admitted to the bar in 1875; and abandoned law for literature a few years later.
Though primarily a novelist, Stevenson has left one immortal book of poetry which is equally at home in the nursery and the library: _A Child's Garden of Verses_ (first published in 1885) is second only to Mother Goose's own collection in its lyrical simplicity and universal appeal. _Underwoods_ (1887) and _Ballads_ (1890) comprise his entire poetic output. As a genial essayist, he is not unworthy to be ranked with Charles Lamb. As a romancer, his fame rests securely on _Kidnapped_, the unfinished masterpiece, _Weir of Hermiston_, and that eternal classic of youth, _Treasure Island_.
Stevenson died after a long and dogged fight with his illness, in the Samoan Islands in 1894.
SUMMER SUN
Great is the sun, and wide he goes Through empty heaven without repose; And in the blue and glowing days More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull To keep the shady parlour cool, Yet he will find a chink or two To slip his golden fingers through.
The dusty attic, spider-clad, He, through the keyhole, maketh glad; And through the broken edge of tiles Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.
Meantime his golden face around He bares to all the garden ground, And sheds a warm and glittering look Among the ivy's inmost nook.
Above the hills, along the blue, Round the bright air with footing true, To please the child, to paint the rose, The gardener of the World, he goes.
WINTER-TIME
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, A frosty, fiery sleepy-head; Blinks but an hour or two; and then, A blood-red orange, sets again.
Before the stars have left the skies, At morning in the dark I rise; And shivering in my nakedness, By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
Close by the jolly fire I sit To warm my frozen bones a bit; Or with a reindeer-sled, explore The colder countries round the door.
When to go out, my nurse doth wrap Me in my comforter and cap; The cold wind burns my face, and blows Its frosty pepper up my nose.
Black are my steps on silver sod; Thick blows my frosty breath abroad; And tree and house, and hill and lake, Are frosted like a wedding-cake.
ROMANCE
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me, Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near, The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear! That only I remember, that only you admire, Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
REQUIEM
Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie: Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me: _Here he lies where he long'd to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill._
_Alice Meynell_
Alice Meynell was born in London in 1850. She was educated at home and spent a great part of her childhood in Italy. She has written little, but that little is on an extremely high plane; her verses are simple, pensive and always distinguished. The best of her work is in _Poems_ (1903).
A THRUSH BEFORE DAWN
A voice peals in this end of night A phrase of notes resembling stars, Single and spiritual notes of light. What call they at my window-bars? The South, the past, the day to be, An ancient infelicity.
Darkling, deliberate, what sings This wonderful one, alone, at peace? What wilder things than song, what things Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, Dearer than Italy, untold Delight, and freshness centuries old?
And first first-loves, a multitude, The exaltation of their pain; Ancestral childhood long renewed; And midnights of invisible rain; And gardens, gardens, night and day, Gardens and childhood all the way.
What Middle Ages passionate, O passionless voice! What distant bells Lodged in the hills, what palace state Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells, Without desire, without dismay, Some morrow and some yesterday.
All-natural things! But more--Whence came This yet remoter mystery? How do these starry notes proclaim A graver still divinity? This hope, this sanctity of fear? _O innocent throat! O human ear!_
_Fiona Macleod_
(_William Sharp_)
William Sharp was born at Garthland Place, Scotland, in 1855. He wrote several volumes of biography and criticism, published a book of plays greatly influenced by Maeterlinck (_Vistas_) and was editor of "The Canterbury Poets" series.
His feminine _alter ego_, Fiona Macleod, was a far different personality. Sharp actually believed himself possessed of another spirit; under the spell of this other self, he wrote several volumes of Celtic tales, beautiful tragic romances and no little unusual poetry. Of the prose stories written by Fiona Macleod, the most barbaric and vivid are those collected in _The Sin-Eater and Other Tales_; the longer _Pharais, A Romance of the Isles_, is scarcely less unique.
In the ten years, 1882-1891, William Sharp published four volumes of rather undistinguished verse. In 1896 _From the Hills of Dream_ appeared over the signature of Fiona Macleod; _The Hour of Beauty_, an even more distinctive collection, followed shortly. Both poetry and prose were always the result of two sharply differentiated moods constantly fluctuating; the emotional mood was that of Fiona Macleod, the intellectual and, it must be admitted the more arresting, was that of William Sharp.
He died in 1905.
THE VALLEY OF SILENCE
In the secret Valley of Silence No breath doth fall; No wind stirs in the branches; No bird doth call: As on a white wall A breathless lizard is still, So silence lies on the valley Breathlessly still.
In the dusk-grown heart of the valley An altar rises white: No rapt priest bends in awe Before its silent light: But sometimes a flight Of breathless words of prayer White-wing'd enclose the altar, Eddies of prayer.
THE VISION
In a fair place Of whin and grass, I heard feet pass Where no one was.
I saw a face Bloom like a flower-- Nay, as the rainbow-shower Of a tempestuous hour.
It was not man, or woman: It was not human: But, beautiful and wild, Terribly undefiled, I knew an unborn child.
_Oscar Wilde_
Oscar Wilde was born at Dublin, Ireland, in 1856, and even as an undergraduate at Oxford he was marked for a brilliant career. When he was a trifle over 21 years of age, he won the Newdigate Prize with his poem _Ravenna_.
Giving himself almost entirely to prose, he speedily became known as a writer of brilliant epigrammatic essays and even more brilliant paradoxical plays such as _An Ideal Husband_ and _The Importance of Being Earnest_. His aphorisms and flippancies were quoted everywhere; his fame as a wit was only surpassed by his notoriety as an aesthete. (See Preface.)
Most of his poems in prose (such as _The Happy Prince_, _The Birthday of the Infanta_ and _The Fisherman and His Soul_) are more imaginative and richly colored than his verse; but in one long poem, _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ (1898), he sounded his deepest, simplest and most enduring note. Prison was, in many ways, a regeneration for Wilde. It not only produced _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ but made possible his most poignant piece of writing, _De Profundis_, only a small part of which has been published. _Salome_, which has made the author's name a household word, was originally written in French in 1892 and later translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas, accompanied by the famous illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. More recently this heated drama, based on the story of Herod and Herodias, was made into an opera by Richard Strauss.
Wilde's society plays, flashing and cynical, were the forerunners of Bernard Shaw's audacious and far more searching ironies. One sees the origin of a whole school of drama in such epigrams as "The history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known: the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts." Or "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Wilde died at Paris, November 30, 1900.
REQUIESCAT
Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast; I vex my heart alone, She is at rest.
Peace, peace; she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet; All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it.
IMPRESSION DU MATIN
The Thames nocturne of blue and gold Changed to a harmony in grey; A barge with ochre-coloured hay Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold
The yellow fog came creeping down The bridges, till the houses' walls Seemed changed to shadows, and St. Paul's Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.
Then suddenly arose the clang Of waking life; the streets were stirred With country waggons; and a bird Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.
But one pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone.
_John Davidson_
John Davidson was born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire, in 1857. His _Ballads and Songs_ (1895) and _New Ballads_ (1897) attained a sudden but too short-lived popularity, and his great promise was quenched by an apathetic public and by his own growing disillusion and despair. His sombre yet direct poetry never tired of repeating his favorite theme: "Man is but the Universe grown conscious."
Davidson died by his own hand in 1909.
A BALLAD OF HELL
'A letter from my love to-day! Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!' She struck a happy tear away, And broke the crimson seal.
'My love, there is no help on earth, No help in heaven; the dead-man's bell Must toll our wedding; our first hearth Must be the well-paved floor of hell.'
The colour died from out her face, Her eyes like ghostly candles shone; She cast dread looks about the place, Then clenched her teeth and read right on.
'I may not pass the prison door; Here must I rot from day to day, Unless I wed whom I abhor, My cousin, Blanche of Valencay.
'At midnight with my dagger keen, I'll take my life; it must be so. Meet me in hell to-night, my queen, For weal and woe.'
She laughed although her face was wan, She girded on her golden belt, She took her jewelled ivory fan, And at her glowing missal knelt.
Then rose, 'And am I mad?' she said: She broke her fan, her belt untied; With leather girt herself instead, And stuck a dagger at her side.
She waited, shuddering in her room, Till sleep had fallen on all the house. She never flinched; she faced her doom: They two must sin to keep their vows.
Then out into the night she went, And, stooping, crept by hedge and tree; Her rose-bush flung a snare of scent, And caught a happy memory.
She fell, and lay a minute's space; She tore the sward in her distress; The dewy grass refreshed her face; She rose and ran with lifted dress.
She started like a morn-caught ghost Once when the moon came out and stood To watch; the naked road she crossed, And dived into the murmuring wood.
The branches snatched her streaming cloak; A live thing shrieked; she made no stay! She hurried to the trysting-oak-- Right well she knew the way.
Without a pause she bared her breast, And drove her dagger home and fell, And lay like one that takes her rest, And died and wakened up in hell.
She bathed her spirit in the flame, And near the centre took her post; From all sides to her ears there came The dreary anguish of the lost.
The devil started at her side, Comely, and tall, and black as jet. 'I am young Malespina's bride; Has he come hither yet?'
'My poppet, welcome to your bed.' 'Is Malespina here?' 'Not he! To-morrow he must wed His cousin Blanche, my dear!'
'You lie, he died with me to-night.' 'Not he! it was a plot' ... 'You lie.' 'My dear, I never lie outright.' 'We died at midnight, he and I.'
The devil went. Without a groan She, gathered up in one fierce prayer, Took root in hell's midst all alone, And waited for him there.
She dared to make herself at home Amidst the wail, the uneasy stir. The blood-stained flame that filled the dome, Scentless and silent, shrouded her.
How long she stayed I cannot tell; But when she felt his perfidy, She marched across the floor of hell; And all the damned stood up to see.
The devil stopped her at the brink: She shook him off; she cried, 'Away!' 'My dear, you have gone mad, I think.' 'I was betrayed: I will not stay.'
Across the weltering deep she ran; A stranger thing was never seen: The damned stood silent to a man; They saw the great gulf set between.
To her it seemed a meadow fair; And flowers sprang up about her feet She entered heaven; she climbed the stair And knelt down at the mercy-seat.
Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.
IMAGINATION
(_From "New Year's Eve"_)
There is a dish to hold the sea, A brazier to contain the sun, A compass for the galaxy, A voice to wake the dead and done!
That minister of ministers, Imagination, gathers up The undiscovered Universe, Like jewels in a jasper cup.
Its flame can mingle north and south; Its accent with the thunder strive; The ruddy sentence of its mouth Can make the ancient dead alive.
The mart of power, the fount of will, The form and mould of every star, The source and bound of good and ill, The key of all the things that are,
Imagination, new and strange In every age, can turn the year; Can shift the poles and lightly change The mood of men, the world's career.
_William Watson_
William Watson was born at Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, August 2, 1858. He achieved his first wide success through his long and eloquent poems on Wordsworth, Shelley, and Tennyson--poems that attempted, and sometimes successfully, to combine the manners of these masters. _The Hope of the World_ (1897) contains some of his most characteristic verse.
It was understood that he would be appointed poet laureate upon the death of Alfred Austin. But some of his radical and semi-political poems are supposed to have displeased the powers at Court, and the honor went to Robert Bridges. His best work, which is notable for its dignity and moulded imagination, may be found in _Selected Poems_, published in 1903 by John Lane Co.
ODE IN MAY[1]
Let me go forth, and share The overflowing Sun With one wise friend, or one Better than wise, being fair, Where the pewit wheels and dips On heights of bracken and ling, And Earth, unto her leaflet tips, Tingles with the Spring.
What is so sweet and dear As a prosperous morn in May, The confident prime of the day, And the dauntless youth of the year, When nothing that asks for bliss, Asking aright, is denied, And half of the world a bridegroom is, And half of the world a bride?
The Song of Mingling flows, Grave, ceremonial, pure, As once, from lips that endure, The cosmic descant rose, When the temporal lord of life, Going his golden way, Had taken a wondrous maid to wife That long had said him nay.
For of old the Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and pressed; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all that drink of her breast.
And the triumph of him that begot, And the travail of her that bore, Behold, they are evermore As warp and weft in our lot. We are children of splendour and flame, Of shuddering, also, and tears. Magnificent out of the dust we came, And abject from the Spheres.
O bright irresistible lord, We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one, And fruit of thy loins, O Sun, Whence first was the seed outpoured. To thee as our Father we bow, Forbidden thy Father to see, Who is older and greater than thou, as thou Art greater and older than we.
Thou art but as a word of his speech, Thou art but as a wave of his hand; Thou art brief as a glitter of sand 'Twixt tide and tide on his beach; Thou art less than a spark of his fire, Or a moment's mood of his soul: Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir That chant the chant of the Whole.
ESTRANGEMENT[2]
So, without overt breach, we fall apart, Tacitly sunder--neither you nor I Conscious of one intelligible Why, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. So, with resigned and acquiescent heart, Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie, I seem to see an alien shade pass by, A spirit wherein I have no lot or part.
Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim, From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn That June on her triumphal progress goes Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him She is a legend emptied of concern, And idle is the rumour of the rose.
SONG
April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears, April, that mine ears Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears. April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But, the moment after, Weep thy golden tears!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] From _The Hope of the World_ by William Watson. Copyright, 1897, by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
[2] From _The Hope of the World_ by William Watson. Copyright, 1897, by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
_Francis Thompson_
Born in 1859 at Preston, Francis Thompson was educated at Owen's College, Manchester. Later he tried all manner of strange ways of earning a living. He was, at various times, assistant in a boot-shop, medical student, collector for a book seller and homeless vagabond; there was a period in his life when he sold matches on the streets of London. He was discovered in terrible poverty (having given up everything except poetry and opium) by the editor of a magazine to which he had sent some verses the year before. Almost immediately thereafter he became famous. His exalted mysticism is seen at its purest in "A Fallen Yew" and "The Hound of Heaven." Coventry Patmore, the distinguished poet of an earlier period, says of the latter poem, which is unfortunately too long to quote, "It is one of the very few _great_ odes of which our language can boast."
Thompson died, after a fragile and spasmodic life, in St. John's Wood in November, 1907.
DAISY
Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill-- O breath of the distant surf!--
The hills look over on the South, And southward dreams the sea; And with the sea-breeze hand in hand Came innocence and she.
Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs; Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape whose veins Run snow instead of wine.
She knew not those sweet words she spake, Nor knew her own sweet way; But there's never a bird, so sweet a song Thronged in whose throat all day.
Oh, there were flowers in Storrington On the turf and on the spray; But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Was the Daisy-flower that day!
Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face. She gave me tokens three:-- A look, a word of her winsome mouth, And a wild raspberry.
A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,--strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to her little hand.