Part 2

Yet, strangely enough, between his politics and his poetry there was a water-tight wall of separation. Other men, to take scattered instances, Kipling, Wordsworth, Milton, fused in various ways their political feeling and their poetical. This Edward Dowden never attempted. I cannot analyse the “why.”

Confining myself to some points which seem left out of sight in most of the admirably appreciative obituary notices in last April’s newspapers, I have tried to say here, in a fragmentary way, a few things about a man of whom many things--infinitely many--might be said without exhausting the total. He was himself at the same time many and one. He had multiform aspects--interests very diverse--and yet life was for him in no wise “patchy and scrappy,” but had unity throughout.

In Shakespeare, whose faithful scholar he was, there are diversities: and yet, do we not image Shakespeare to our minds as one and a whole?

In the volumes now issued by Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons is contained all the verse that the author left available for publication, with the exception of a sequence of a hundred and one lyrics (which by desire is separately published under the somewhat transparent disguise of editorship). That little sequence, named _A Woman’s Reliquary_, is his latest work in verse. Much in it re-echoes sounds that can be heard in his old poems of the early seventies.

E. D. D.

_September 1913._

THE WANDERER

I cast my anchor nowhere (the waves whirled My anchor from me); East and West are one To me; against no winds are my sails furled; --Merely my planet anchors to the Sun.

THE FOUNTAIN

(AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SONNETS)

Hush, let the fountain murmur dim Melodious secrets; stir no limb, But lie along the marge and wait, Till deep and pregnant as with fate, Fine as a star-beam, crystal-clear, Each ripple grows upon the ear. This is that fountain seldom seen By mortal wanderer,--Hippocrene,-- Where the virgins three times three, Thy singing brood, Mnemosyne, Loosen’d the girdle, and with grave Pure joy their faultless bodies gave To sacred pleasure of the wave. Listen! the lapsing waters tell The urgence uncontrollable Which makes the trouble of their breast, And bears them onward with no rest To ampler skies and some grey plain Sad with the tumbling of the main. But see, a sidelong eddy slips Back into the soft eclipse Of day, while careless fate allows, Darkling beneath still olive boughs; Then with chuckle liquid sweet Coils within its shy retreat; This is mine, no wave of might, But pure and live with glimmering light; I dare not follow that broad flood Of Poesy, whose lustihood Nourishes mighty lands, and makes Resounding music for their sakes; I lie beside the well-head clear With musing joy, with tender fear, And choose for half a day to lean Thus on my elbow where the green Margin-grass and silver-white Starry buds, the wind’s delight, Thirsting steer, nor goat-hoof rude Of the branch-sundering Satyr brood Has ever pashed; now, now, I stoop, And in hand-hollow dare to scoop This scantling from the delicate stream; It lies as quiet as a dream, And lustrous in my curvèd hand. Were it a crime if this were drain’d By lips which met the noonday blue Fiery and emptied of its dew? Crown me with small white marish-flowers! To the good Dæmon, and the Powers Of this fair haunt I offer up In unprofanèd lily-cup Libations; still remains for me A bird’s drink of clear Poesy; Yet not as light bird comes and dips A pert bill, but with reverent lips I drain this slender trembling tide; O sweet the coolness at my side, And, lying back, to slowly pry For spaces of the upper sky Radiant ’twixt woven olive leaves; And, last, while some fair show deceives The closing eyes, to find a sleep As full of healing and as deep As on toil-worn Odysseus lay Surge-swept to his Ionian bay.

IN THE GALLERIES

I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE

Radiance invincible! Is that the brow Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped? Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou: For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow And break us, and at best when we have bled, And are much marred, perchance propitiated A little doubtful victory they allow: We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less. O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness, --Even to worship thee I come too late.

II. THE VENUS OF MELOS

Goddess, or woman nobler than the God, No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas Shifting and circling past their Cyclades Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees, And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase, Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod. So thy victorious fairness, unallied To bitter things or barren, doth bestow And not exact; so thou art calm and wise; Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side, And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS

(_In the British Museum_)

Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath And clustered berries burdening the hair? Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath, Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth! The gods are free, and drink a stainless air, And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine. O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught Crowned forehead, must thy drooped eyes ever see The glut of pleasure, those pale lips of thine Still suck a bitter-sweet satiety, Thy soul descend through cloudy realms of thought?

IV. LEONARDO’S “MONNA LISA”

Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear? Secret perfection! Mystery too fair! Tangle the sense no more lest I should hate Thy delicate tyranny, the inviolate Poise of thy folded hands, thy fallen hair. Nay, nay,--I wrong thee with rough words; still be Serene, victorious, inaccessible; Still smile but speak not; lightest irony Lurk ever ’neath thine eyelids’ shadow; still O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy Allure us and reject us at thy will!

V. ST LUKE PAINTING THE VIRGIN

(_By Van der Weyden_)

It was Luke’s will; and she, the mother-maid, Would not gainsay; to please him pleased her best; See, here she sits with dovelike heart at rest Brooding, and smoothest brow; the babe is laid On lap and arm, glad for the unarrayed And swatheless limbs he stretches; lightly pressed By soft maternal fingers the full breast Seeks him, while half a sidelong glance is stayed By her own bosom and half passes down To reach the boy. Through doors and window-frame Bright airs flow in; a river tranquilly Washes the small, glad Netherlandish town. Innocent calm! no token here of shame, A pierced heart, sunless heaven, and Calvary.

ON THE HEIGHTS

Here are the needs of manhood satisfied! Sane breath, an amplitude for soul and sense, The noonday silence of the summer hills, And this embracing solitude; o’er all The sky unsearchable, which lays its claim,-- A large redemption not to be annulled,-- Upon the heart; and far below, the sea Breaking and breaking, smoothly, silently. What need I any further? Now once more My arrested life begins, and I am man Complete with eye, heart, brain, and that within Which is the centre and the light of being; O dull! who morning after morning chose Never to climb these gorse and heather slopes Cairn-crowned, but last within one seaward nook Wasted my soul on the ambiguous speech And slow eye-mesmerism of rolling waves, Courting oblivion of the heart. True life That was not which possessed me while I lay Prone on the perilous edge, mere eye and ear, Staring upon the bright monotony, Having let slide all force from me, each thought Yield to the vision of the gleaming blank, Each nerve of motion and of sense grow numb, Till to the bland persuasion of some breeze, Which played across my forehead and my hair, The lost volition would efface itself, And I was mingled wholly in the sound Of tumbling billow and upjetting surge, Long reluctation, welter and refluent moan, And the reverberating tumultuousness ’Mid shelf and hollow and angle black with spray. Yet under all oblivion there remained A sense of some frustration, a pale dream Of Nature mocking man, and drawing down, As streams draw down the dust of gold, his will, His thought and passion to enrich herself The insatiable devourer.

Welcome earth, My natural heritage! and this soft turf, These rocks which no insidious ocean saps, But the wide air flows over, and the sun Illumines. Take me, Mother, to thy breast, Gather me close in tender, sustinent arms, Lay bare thy bosom’s sweetness and its strength That I may drink vigour and joy and love. Oh, infinite composure of the hills! Thou large simplicity of this fair world, Candour and calmness, with no mockery, No soft frustration, flattering sigh or smile Which masks a tyrannous purpose; and ye Powers Of these sky-circled heights, and Presences Awful and strict, I find you favourable, Who seek not to exclude me or to slay, Rather accept my being, take me up Into your silence and your peace. Therefore By him whom ye reject not, gracious Ones, Pure vows are made that haply he will be Not all unworthy of the world; he casts Forth from him, never to resume again, Veiled nameless things, frauds of the unfilled heart, Fantastic pleasures, delicate sadnesses, The lurid, and the curious, and the occult, Coward sleights and shifts, the manners of the slave, And long unnatural uses of dim life. Hence with you! Robes of angels touch these heights Blown by pure winds and I lay hold upon them.

Here is a perfect bell of purple heath, Made for the sky to gaze at reverently, As faultless as itself, and holding light, Glad air and silence in its slender dome; Small, but a needful moment in the sum Of God’s full joy--the abyss of ecstasy O’er which we hang as the bright bow of foam Above the never-filled receptacle Hangs seven-hued where the endless cataract leaps.

O now I guess why you have summoned me, Headlands and heights, to your companionship; Confess that I this day am needful to you! The heavens were loaded with great light, the winds Brought you calm summer from a hundred fields, All night the stars had pricked you to desire, The imminent joy at its full season flowered, There was a consummation, the broad wave Toppled and fell. And had ye voice for this? Sufficient song to unburden the urged breast? A pastoral pipe to play? a lyre to touch? The brightening glory of the heath and gorse Could not appease your passion, nor the cry Of this wild bird that flits from bush to bush. Me therefore you required, a voice for song, A pastoral pipe to play, a lyre to touch, I recognize your bliss to find me here; The sky at morning when the sun upleaps Demands her atom of intense melody, Her point of quivering passion and delight, And will not let the lark’s heart be at ease. Take me, the brain with various, subtile fold, The breast that knows swift joy, the vocal lips; I yield you here the cunning instrument Between your knees; now let the plectrum fall!

“LA RÉVÉLATION PAR LE DÉSERT”

“Toujours le désert se montre à l’horizon, quand vous prononcez le nom de Jéhovah.” EDGAR QUINET.

Beyond the places haunted by the feet Of thoughts and swift desires, and where the eyes Of wing’d imaginings are wild, and dreams Glide by on noiseless plumes, beyond the dim Veiled sisterhood of ever-circling mists, Who dip their urns in those enchanted meres Where all thought fails, and every ardour dies, And through the vapour dead looms a low moon, Beyond the fountains of the dawn, beyond The white home of the morning star, lies spread A desert lifeless, bright, illimitable, The world’s confine, o’er which no sighing goes From weary winds of Time.

I sat me down Upon a red stone flung on the red sand, In length as great as some sarcophagus Which holds a king, but scribbled with no runes, Bald, and unstained by lichen or grey moss. Save me no living thing in that red land Showed under heaven; no furtive lizard slipped, No desert weed pushed upward the tough spine Or hairy lump, no slow bird was a spot Of moving black on the deserted air, Or stationary shrilled his tuneless cry; No shadow stirr’d, nor luminous haze uprose, Quivering against the blanched blue of the marge. I sat unbonneted, and my throat baked, And my tongue loll’d dogwise. Red sand below, And one unlidded eye above--mere God Blazing from marge to marge. I did not pray, My heart was as a cinder in my breast, And with both hands I held my head which throbbed. I, who had sought for God, had followed God Through the fair world which stings with sharp desire For him of whom its hints and whisperings are, Its gleams and tingling moments of the night, I, who in flower, and wave, and mountain-wind, And song of bird, and man’s diviner heart Had owned the present Deity, yet strove For naked access to his inmost shrine,-- Now found God doubtless, for he filled the heaven Like brass, he breathed upon the air like fire. But I, a speck ’twixt the strown sand and sky, Being yet an atom of pure and living will, And perdurable as any God of brass, With all my soul, with all my mind and strength Hated this God. O, for a little cloud No bigger than a man’s hand on the rim, To rise with rain and thunder in its womb, And blot God out! But no such cloud would come. I felt my brain on fire, heard each pulse tick; It was a God to make a man stark mad; I rose with neck out-thrust, and nodding head, While with dry chaps I could not choose but laugh; _Ha_, _ha_, _ha_, _ha_, across the air it rang, No sweeter than the barking of a dog, Hard as the echo from an iron cliff; It must have buffeted the heaven; I ceased, I looked to see from the mid sky an arm, And one sweep of the scimitar; I stood; And when the minute passed with no event, No doomsman’s stroke, no sundering soul and flesh, When silence dropt its heavy fold on fold, And God lay yet inert in heaven, or scorn’d His rebel antic-sized, grotesque,--I swooned.

Now when the sense returned my lips were wet, And cheeks and chin were wet, with a dank dew, Acrid and icy, and one shadow huge Hung over me blue-black, while all around The fierce light glared. O joy, a living thing, Emperor of this red domain of sand, A giant snake! One fold, one massy wreath Arched over me; a man’s expanded arms Could not embrace the girth of this great lord In his least part, and low upon the sand His small head lay, wrinkled, a flaccid bag, Set with two jewels of green fire, the eyes That had not slept since making of the world. Whence grew I bold to gaze into such eyes? Thus gazing each conceived the other’s thought, Aware how each read each; the Serpent mused, “Are all the giants dead, a long time dead, Born of the broad-hipped women, grave and tall, In whom God’s sons poured a celestial seed? A long time dead, whose great deeds filled the earth With clamour as of beaten shields, all dead, And Cush and Canaan, Mizraim and Phut, And the boy Nimrod storming through large lands Like earthquake through tower’d cities, these depart, And what remains? Behold, the elvish thing We raised from out his swoon, this now is man. The pretty vermin! helpless to conceive Of great, pure, simple sin, and vast revolt; The world escapes from deluge these new days, We build no Babels with the Shinar slime; What would this thin-legged grasshopper with us, The Dread Ones? Rather let him skip, and chirp Hymns in his smooth grass to his novel God, ‘The Father’; here no bland paternity He meets, but visible Might blocks the broad sky, My great Co-mate, the Ancient. Hence! avoid! What wouldst thou prying on our solitude? For thee my sly small cousin may suffice, And sly small bites about the heart and groin; Hence to his haunt! Yet ere thou dost depart I mark thee with my sign.”

A vibrant tongue Had in a moment pricked upon my brow The mystic mark of brotherhood, Cain’s brand, But when I read within his eyes the words “Hence” and “avoid,” dim horror seized on me, And rising, with both arms stretched forth, and head Bowed earthward, and not turning once I ran; And what things saw me as I raced by them, What hands plucked at my dress, what light wings brushed My face, what waters in my hearing seethed, I know not, till I reached familiar lands, And saw grey clouds slow gathering for the night, Above sweet fields, whence the June mowers strolled Homewards with girls who chatted down the lane.

Is this the secret lying round the world? A Dread One watching with unlidded eye Slow century after century from his heaven, And that great lord, the worm of the red plain, Cold in mid sun, strenuous, untameable, Coiling his solitary strength along Slow century after century, conscious each How in the life of his Arch-enemy He lives, how ruin of one confounds the pair,-- Is this the eternal dual mystery? One Source of being, Light, or Love, or Lord, Whose shadow is the brightness of the world, Still let thy dawns and twilights glimmer pure In flow perpetual from hill to hill, Still bathe us in thy tides of day and night; Wash me at will a weed in thy free wave, Drenched in the sun and air and surge of Thee.

THE MORNING STAR

I

Backward betwixt the gates of steepest heaven, Faint from the insupportable advance Of light confederate in the East, is driven

The starry chivalry, and helm and lance, Which held keen ward upon the shadowy plain, Yield to the stress and stern predominance

Of Day; no wanderer morning-moon awane Floats through dishevelled clouds, exanimate, In disarray, with gaze of weariest pain;

O thou, sole Splendour, sprung to vindicate Night’s ancient fame, thou in dread strife serene, With back-blown locks, joyous yet desperate

Flamest; from whose pure ardour Earth doth win High passionate pangs, thou radiant paladin.

II

Nay; strife must cease in song: far-sent and clear Piercing the silence of this summer morn I hear thy swan-song rapturous; I hear

Life’s ecstasy; sharp cries of flames which burn With palpitating joy, intense and pure, From altars of the universe, and yearn

In eager spires; and under these the sure Strong ecstasy of Death, in phrase too deep For thought, too bright for dim investiture.

Of mortal words, and sinking more than sleep Down holier places of the soul’s delight; Cry, through the quickening dawn, to us who creep

’Mid dreams and dews of the dividing night, Thou searcher of the darkness and the light.

III

I seek thee, and thou art not; for the sky Has drawn thee in upon her breast to be A hidden talisman, while light soars high,

Virtuous to make wide heaven’s tranquillity More tranquil, and her steadfast truth more true, Yea even her overbowed infinity.

Of tenderness, when o’er wet woods the blue Shows past white edges of a sundering cloud, More infinitely tender. Day is new,

Night ended; how the hills are overflowed With spaciousness of splendour, and each tree Is touched; only not yet the lark is loud,

Since viewless still o’er city and plain and sea Vibrates thy spirit-wingèd ecstasy.

A CHILD’S NOONDAY SLEEP

Because you sleep, my child, with breathing light As heave of the June sea, Because your lips soft petals dewy-bright Dispart so tenderly;

Because the slumbrous warmth is on your cheek Up from the hushed heart sent, And in this midmost noon when winds are weak No cloud lies more content;

Because nor song of bird, nor lamb’s keen call May reach you sunken deep, Because your lifted arm I thus let fall Heavy with perfect sleep;

Because all will is drawn from you, all power, And Nature through dark roots Will hold and nourish you for one sweet hour Amid her flowers and fruits;

Therefore though tempests gather, and the gale Through autumn skies will roar, Though Earth send up to heaven the ancient wail Heard by dead Gods of yore;

Though spectral faiths contend, and for her course The soul confused must try, While through the whirl of atoms and of force Looms an abandoned sky;

Yet, know I, Peace abides, of earth’s wild things Centre, and ruling thence; Behold, a spirit folds her budded wings In confident innocence.

IN THE GARDEN

I. THE GARDEN

Past the town’s clamour is a garden full Of loneness and old greenery; at noon When birds are hushed, save one dim cushat’s croon, A ripen’d silence hangs beneath the cool Great branches; basking roses dream and drop A petal, and dream still; and summer’s boon Of mellow grasses, to be levelled soon By a dew-drenchèd scythe, will hardly stop At the uprunning mounds of chestnut trees. Still let me muse in this rich haunt by day, And know all night in dusky placidness It lies beneath the summer, while great ease Broods in the leaves, and every light wind’s stress Lifts a faint odour down the verdurous way.

II. VISIONS

Here I am slave of visions. When noon heat Strikes the red walls, and their environ’d air Lies steep’d in sun; when not a creature dare Affront the fervour, from my dim retreat Where woof of leaves embowers a beechen seat, With chin on palm, and wide-set eyes I stare, Beyond the liquid quiver and the glare, Upon fair shapes that move on silent feet. Those Three strait-robed, and speechless as they pass, Come often, touch the lute, nor heed me more Than birds or shadows heed; that naked child Is dove-like Psyche slumbering in deep grass; Sleep, sleep,--he heeds thee not, you Sylvan wild Munching the russet apple to its core.

III. AN INTERIOR