Chapter 4

No time casts down, no time upraises, Such loves, such memories, and such praises, As need no grace of sun or shower, No saving screen from frost or thunder To tend and house around and under The imperishable and fearless flower.

IV

Old thanks, old thoughts, old aspirations, Outlive men's lives and lives of nations, Dead, but for one thing which survives-- The inalienable and unpriced treasure, The old joy of power, the old pride of pleasure, That lives in light above men's lives.

IN MEMORY OF BARRY CORNWALL

(October 4, 1874)

I

In the garden of death, where the singers whose names are deathless One with another make music unheard of men, Where the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long breathless, And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or change again, Who comes now crowned with the blossom of snow-white years? What music is this that the world of the dead men hears?

II

Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey, Whose name in our ears and our fathers' ears was sweet, Like summer gone forth of the land his songs made sunny, To the beautiful veiled bright world where the glad ghosts meet, Child, father, bridegroom and bride, and anguish and rest, No soul shall pass of a singer than this more blest.

III

Blest for the years' sweet sake that were filled and brightened, As a forest with birds, with the fruit and the flower of his song; For the souls' sake blest that heard, and their cares were lightened, For the hearts' sake blest that have fostered his name so long; By the living and dead lips blest that have loved his name, And clothed with their praise and crowned with their love for fame.

IV

Ah, fair and fragrant his fame as flowers that close not, That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by night, As a thought in the heart shall increase when the heart's self knows not, Shall endure in our ears as a sound, in our eyes as a light; Shall wax with the years that wane and the seasons' chime, As a white rose thornless that grows in the garden of time.

V

The same year calls, and one goes hence with another, And men sit sad that were glad for their sweet songs' sake; The same year beckons, and elder with younger brother Takes mutely the cup from his hand that we all shall take.[1] They pass ere the leaves be past or the snows be come; And the birds are loud, but the lips that outsang them dumb.

VI

Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous, To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death; But the flower of their souls he shall take not away to shame us, Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath. For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell, Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.

[Footnote 1: Sydney Dobell died August 22, 1874.]

EPICEDE

(James Lorimer Graham died at Florence, April 30, 1876)

Life may give for love to death Little; what are life's gifts worth To the dead wrapt round with earth? Yet from lips of living breath Sighs or words we are fain to give, All that yet, while yet we live, Life may give for love to death.

Dead so long before his day, Passed out of the Italian sun To the dark where all is done, Fallen upon the verge of May; Here at life's and April's end How should song salute my friend Dead so long before his day?

Not a kindlier life or sweeter Time, that lights and quenches men, Now may quench or light again, Mingling with the mystic metre Woven of all men's lives with his Not a clearer note than this, Not a kindlier life or sweeter.

In this heavenliest part of earth He that living loved the light, Light and song, may rest aright, One in death, if strange in birth, With the deathless dead that make Life the lovelier for their sake In this heavenliest part of earth.

Light, and song, and sleep at last-- Struggling hands and suppliant knees Get no goodlier gift than these. Song that holds remembrance fast, Light that lightens death, attend Round their graves who have to friend Light, and song, and sleep at last.

TO VICTOR HUGO

He had no children, who for love of men, Being God, endured of Gods such things as thou, Father; nor on his thunder-beaten brow Fell such a woe as bows thine head again, Twice bowed before, though godlike, in man's ken, And seen too high for any stroke to bow Save this of some strange God's that bends it now The third time with such weight as bruised it then. Fain would grief speak, fain utter for love's sake Some word; but comfort who might bid thee take? What God in your own tongue shall talk with thee, Showing how all souls that look upon the sun Shall be for thee one spirit and thy son, And thy soul's child the soul of man to be?

_January 3, 1876._

INFERIAE

Spring, and the light and sound of things on earth Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; A time of passage or a time of birth Fourscore years since as this year, first and last.

The sun is all about the world we see, The breath and strength of very spring; and we Live, love, and feed on our own hearts; but he Whose heart fed mine has passed into the past.

Past, all things born with sense and blood and breath; The flesh hears nought that now the spirit saith. If death be like as birth and birth as death, The first was fair--more fair should be the last.

Fourscore years since, and come but one month more The count were perfect of his mortal score Whose sail went seaward yesterday from shore To cross the last of many an unsailed sea.

Light, love and labour up to life's last height, These three were stars unsetting in his sight; Even as the sun is life and heat and light And sets not nor is dark when dark are we.

The life, the spirit, and the work were one That here--ah, who shall say, that here are done? Not I, that know not; father, not thy son, For all the darkness of the night and sea.

_March 5, 1877_

A BIRTH-SONG

(For Olivia Frances Madox Rossetti, born September 20, 1875)

Out of the dark sweet sleep Where no dreams laugh or weep Borne through bright gates of birth Into the dim sweet light Where day still dreams of night While heaven takes form on earth, White rose of spirit and flesh, red lily of love, What note of song have we Fit for the birds and thee, Fair nestling couched beneath the mother-dove?

Nay, in some more divine Small speechless song of thine Some news too good for words, Heart-hushed and smiling, we Might hope to have of thee, The youngest of God's birds, If thy sweet sense might mix itself with ours, If ours might understand The language of thy land, Ere thine become the tongue of mortal hours:

Ere thy lips learn too soon Their soft first human tune, Sweet, but less sweet than now, And thy raised eyes to read Glad and good things indeed, But none so sweet as thou: Ere thought lift up their flower-soft lids to see What life and love on earth Bring thee for gifts at birth, But none so good as thine who hast given us thee:

Now, ere thy sense forget The heaven that fills it yet, Now, sleeping or awake, If thou couldst tell, or we Ask and be heard of thee, For love's undying sake, From thy dumb lips divine and bright mute speech Such news might touch our ear That then would burn to hear Too high a message now for man's to reach.

Ere the gold hair of corn Had withered wast thou born, To make the good time glad; The time that but last year Fell colder than a tear On hearts and hopes turned sad, High hopes and hearts requickening in thy dawn, Even theirs whose life-springs, child, Filled thine with life and smiled, But then wept blood for half their own withdrawn.[1]

If death and birth be one, And set with rise of sun, And truth with dreams divine, Some word might come with thee From over the still sea Deep hid in shade or shine, Crossed by the crossing sails of death and birth, Word of some sweet new thing Fit for such lips to bring, Some word of love, some afterthought of earth.

If love be strong as death, By what so natural breath As thine could this be said? By what so lovely way Could love send word to say He lives and is not dead? Such word alone were fit for only thee, If his and thine have met Where spirits rise and set, His whom we see not, thine whom scarce we see:

His there new-born, as thou New-born among us now; His, here so fruitful-souled, Now veiled and silent here, Now dumb as thou last year, A ghost of one year old: If lights that change their sphere in changing meet, Some ray might his not give To thine who wast to live, And make thy present with his past life sweet?

Let dreams that laugh or weep, All glad and sad dreams, sleep; Truth more than dreams is dear. Let thoughts that change and fly, Sweet thoughts and swift, go by; More than all thought is here. More than all hope can forge or memory feign The life that in our eyes, Made out of love's life, lies, And flower-like fed with love for sun and rain.

Twice royal in its root The sweet small olive-shoot Here set in sacred earth; Twice dowered with glorious grace From either heaven-born race First blended in its birth; Fair God or Genius of so fair an hour, For love of either name Twice crowned, with love and fame, Guard and be gracious to the fair-named flower.

_October 19, 1875._

[Footnote 1: Oliver Madox Brown died November 5, 1874, in his twentieth year.]

EX-VOTO

When their last hour shall rise Pale on these mortal eyes, Herself like one that dies, And kiss me dying The cold last kiss, and fold Close round my limbs her cold Soft shade as raiment rolled And leave them lying,

If aught my soul would say Might move to hear me pray The birth-god of my day That he might hearken, This grace my heart should crave, To find no landward grave That worldly springs make brave, World's winters darken,

Nor grow through gradual hours The cold blind seed of flowers Made by new beams and showers From limbs that moulder, Nor take my part with earth, But find for death's new birth A bed of larger girth, More chaste and colder.

Not earth's for spring and fall, Not earth's at heart, not all Earth's making, though men call Earth only mother, Not hers at heart she bare Me, but thy child, O fair Sea, and thy brother's care, The wind thy brother.

Yours was I born, and ye, The sea-wind and the sea, Made all my soul in me A song for ever, A harp to string and smite For love's sake of the bright Wind and the sea's delight, To fail them never:

Not while on this side death I hear what either saith And drink of either's breath With heart's thanksgiving That in my veins like wine Some sharp salt blood of thine, Some springtide pulse of brine, Yet leaps up living.

When thy salt lips wellnigh Sucked in my mouth's last sigh, Grudged I so much to die This death as others? Was it no ease to think The chalice from whose brink Fate gave me death to drink Was thine--my mother's?

Thee too, the all-fostering earth, Fair as thy fairest birth, More than thy worthiest worth, We call, we know thee, More sweet and just and dread Than live men highest of head Or even thy holiest dead Laid low below thee.

The sunbeam on the sheaf, The dewfall on the leaf, All joy, all grace, all grief, Are thine for giving; Of thee our loves are born, Our lives and loves, that mourn And triumph; tares with corn, Dead seed with living:

All good and ill things done In eyeshot of the sun At last in thee made one Rest well contented; All words of all man's breath And works he doth or saith, All wholly done to death, None long lamented.

A slave to sons of thee, Thou, seeming, yet art free; But who shall make the sea Serve even in seeming? What plough shall bid it bear Seed to the sun and the air, Fruit for thy strong sons' fare, Fresh wine's foam streaming?

What oldworld son of thine, Made drunk with death as wine, Hath drunk the bright sea's brine With lips of laughter? Thy blood they drink; but he Who hath drunken of the sea Once deeplier than of thee Shall drink not after.

Of thee thy sons of men Drink deep, and thirst again; For wine in feasts, and then In fields for slaughter; But thirst shall touch not him Who hath felt with sense grown dim Rise, covering lip and limb, The wan sea's water.

All fire of thirst that aches The salt sea cools and slakes More than all springs or lakes, Freshets or shallows; Wells where no beam can burn Through frondage of the fern That hides from hart and hern The haunt it hallows.

Peace with all graves on earth For death or sleep or birth Be alway, one in worth One with another; But when my time shall be, O mother, O my sea, Alive or dead, take me, Me too, my mother.

A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND

I hid my heart in a nest of roses, Out of the sun's way, hidden apart; In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is, Under the roses I hid my heart. Why would it sleep not? why should it start, When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred? What made sleep flutter his wings and part? Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes, And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart; Lie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes, And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art. Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart? Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred? What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart? Only the song of a secret bird.

The green land's name that a charm encloses, It never was writ in the traveller's chart, And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is, It never was sold in the merchant's mart. The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart, And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard; No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart, Only the song of a secret bird.

ENVOI

In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird.

CYRIL TOURNEUR

A sea that heaves with horror of the night, As maddened by the moon that hangs aghast With strain and torment of the ravening blast, Haggard as hell, a bleak blind bloody light; No shore but one red reef of rock in sight, Whereon the waifs of many a wreck were cast And shattered in the fierce nights overpast Wherein more souls toward hell than heaven took flight; And 'twixt the shark-toothed rocks and swallowing shoals A cry as out of hell from all these souls Sent through the sheer gorge of the slaughtering sea, Whose thousand throats, full-fed with life by death, Fill the black air with foam and furious breath; And over all these one star--Chastity.

A BALLAD OF FRANCOIS VILLON

PRINCE OF ALL BALLAD-MAKERS

Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, First of us all and sweetest singer born Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; When song new-born put off the old world's attire And felt its tune on her changed lips expire, Writ foremost on the roll of them that came Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!

Alas the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!

Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn! Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! What far delight has cooled the fierce desire That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame, But left more sweet than roses to respire, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name?

ENVOI

Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire; Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame. But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, Love reads out first at head of all our quire, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.

PASTICHE

Now the days are all gone over Of our singing, love by lover, Days of summer-coloured seas Blown adrift through beam and breeze.

Now the nights are all past over Of our dreaming, dreams that hover In a mist of fair false things, Nights afloat on wide wan wings.

Now the loves with faith for mother, Now the fears with hope for brother, Scarce are with us as strange words, Notes from songs of last year's birds.

Now all good that comes or goes is As the smell of last year's roses, As the radiance in our eyes Shot from summer's ere he dies.

Now the morning faintlier risen Seems no God come forth of prison, But a bird of plume-plucked wing, Pale with thoughts of evening.

Now hath hope, outraced in running, Given the torch up of his cunning And the palm he thought to wear Even to his own strong child--despair.

BEFORE SUNSET

In the lower lands of day On the hither side of night, There is nothing that will stay, There are all things soft to sight; Lighted shade and shadowy light In the wayside and the way, Hours the sun has spared to smite, Flowers the rain has left to play.

Shall these hours run down and say No good thing of thee and me? Time that made us and will slay Laughs at love in me and thee; But if here the flowers may see One whole hour of amorous breath, Time shall die, and love shall be Lord as time was over death.

SONG

Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rosy bed; And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.

And fear and sorrow and scorn Kept watch by his head forlorn, Till the night was overworn And the world was merry with morn.

And Joy came up with the day And kissed Love's lips as he lay, And the watchers ghostly and grey Sped from his pillow away.

And his eyes as the dawn grew bright, And his lips waxed ruddy as light: Sorrow may reign for a night, But day shall bring back delight.

A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER

I

O tender time that love thinks long to see, Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows, Be not too long irresolute to be; O mother-month, where have they hidden thee? Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands, I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours, The purplest of the prime; I lean my soul down over them, with hands Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers; I send my love back to the lovely time.

II

Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head? Veiled with what visions while the grey world grieves, Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves, What warm intangible green shadows spread To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed? What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives? Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet Its silver web unweave, Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve.

III

Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star, Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune, Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon; But where the silver-sandalled shadows are, Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar, Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon: Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims, The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath, The light is listening; They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs, Virginal, born again of doubtful death, Chill foster-father of the weanling spring.

IV

As sweet desire of day before the day, As dreams of love before the true love born, From the outer edge of winter overworn The ghost arisen of May before the May Takes through dim air her unawakened way, The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn. With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring, Lifts windward her bright brows, Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks, And kindles with her own mouth's colouring The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.

V

I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see, Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath Shall put at last the deadly days to death And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee And seaward hollows where my feet would be When heaven shall hear the word that April saith To change the cold heart of the weary time, To stir and soften all the time to tears, Tears joyfuller than mirth; As even to May's clear height the young days climb With feet not swifter than those fair first years Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.

VI

I would not bid thee, though I might, give back One good thing youth has given and borne away; I crave not any comfort of the day That is not, nor on time's retrodden track Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black That long since left me on their mortal way; Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath That comes with morning from the sun to be And sets light hope on fire; No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death, No flower nor hour once fallen from life's green tree, No leaf once plucked or once fulfilled desire.

VII

The morning song beneath the stars that fled With twilight through the moonless mountain air, While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head, Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead, The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were; These may'st thou not give back for ever; these, As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste, Lie deeper than the sea; But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease, And all its April to the world thou may'st Give back, and half my April back to me.

CHORIAMBICS

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love? What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?

What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave, Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

Ah, thy luminous eyes! once was their light fed with the fire of day; Now their shadowy lids cover them close, hush them and hide away.

Ah, thy snow-coloured hands! once were they chains, mighty to bind me fast; Now no blood in them burns, mindless of love, senseless of passion past.

Ah, thy beautiful hair! so was it once braided for me, for me; Now for death is it crowned, only for death, lover and lord of thee.

Sweet, the kisses of death set on thy lips, colder are they than mine; Colder surely than past kisses that love poured for thy lips as wine.

Lov'st thou death? is his face fairer than love's, brighter to look upon? Seest thou light in his eyes, light by which love's pales and is overshone?

Lo the roses of death, grey as the dust, chiller of leaf than snow! Why let fall from thy hand love's that were thine, roses that loved thee so?

Large red lilies of love, sceptral and tall, lovely for eyes to see; Thornless blossom of love, full of the sun, fruits that were reared for thee.