Chapter 2

But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see, Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more be Where lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.

SHELLEY’S SKYLARK (_The neighbourhood of Leghorn_: _March_, 1887)

SOMEWHERE afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies— A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal through times to be;— Though it only lived like another bird, And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell— A little ball of feather and bone; And how it perished, when piped farewell, And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view, Maybe it throbs in a myrtle’s green, Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find That tiny pinch of priceless dust, And bring a casket silver-lined, And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein, And consecrate it to endless time; For it inspired a bard to win Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE (_April_, 1887)

I TRACED the Circus whose gray stones incline Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin, Till came a child who showed an ancient coin That bore the image of a Constantine.

She lightly passed; nor did she once opine How, better than all books, she had raised for me In swift perspective Europe’s history Through the vast years of Cæsar’s sceptred line.

For in my distant plot of English loam ’Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find Coins of like impress. As with one half blind Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home In that mute moment to my opened mind The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

ROME: ON THE PALATINE (_April_, 1887)

WE walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, And passed to Livia’s rich red mural show, Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, We gained Caligula’s dissolving pile.

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile The outer sense, and shape itself as though It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.

When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh over-head, Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss: It stirred me as I stood, in Cæsar’s house, Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,

And blended pulsing life with lives long done, Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

ROME BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER (_April_, 1887)

THESE numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.

And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”

And yet within these ruins’ very shade The singing workmen shape and set and join Their frail new mansion’s stuccoed cove and quoin With no apparent sense that years abrade, Though each rent wall their feeble works invade Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.

ROME THE VATICAN—SALA DELLE MUSE (1887)

I SAT in the Muses’ Hall at the mid of the day, And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away, And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun, Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She was nor this nor that of those beings divine, But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine; With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place, A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

“Regarded so long, we render thee sad?” said she. “Not you,” sighed I, “but my own inconstancy! I worship each and each; in the morning one, And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

“To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?” —“Be not perturbed,” said she. “Though apart in fame, As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.

—“But my loves go further—to Story, and Dance, and Hymn, The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim— Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!” —“Nay, wight, thou sway’st not. These are but phases of one;

“And that one is I; and I am projected from thee, One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be— Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall, Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!”

ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS (1887)

WHO, then, was Cestius, And what is he to me?— Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word Of anything he did; For me he is a man who died and was interred To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest Not with its first design, Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe, Slew, breathed out threatening; I know not. This I know: in death all silently He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet With marble finger high To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street, Those matchless singers lie . . .

—Say, then, he lived and died That stones which bear his name Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide; It is an ample fame.

LAUSANNE IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN: 11–12 P.M. _June_ 27, 1897

(_The_ 110_th_ _anniversary of the completion of the_ “_Decline and Fall_” _at the same hour and place_)

A SPIRIT seems to pass, Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal: He contemplates a volume stout and tall, And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed, With “It is finished!” And at the alley’s end He turns, and soon on me his glances bend; And, as from earth, comes speech—small, muted, yet composed.

“How fares the Truth now?—Ill? —Do pens but slily further her advance? May one not speed her but in phrase askance? Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?

“Still rule those minds on earth At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled: ‘_Truth like a bastard comes into the world_ _Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth_’?”

ZERMATT TO THE MATTERHORN (_June_-_July_, 1897)

THIRTY-TWO years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height, And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done, And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight To that day’s tragic feat of manly might, As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon Thou watch’dst each night the planets lift and lower; Thou gleam’dst to Joshua’s pausing sun and moon, And brav’dst the tokening sky when Cæsar’s power Approached its bloody end: yea, saw’st that Noon When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

THE BRIDGE OF LODI {290} (_Spring_, 1887)

I

WHEN of tender mind and body I was moved by minstrelsy, And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi” Brought a strange delight to me.

II

In the battle-breathing jingle Of its forward-footing tune I could see the armies mingle, And the columns cleft and hewn

III

On that far-famed spot by Lodi Where Napoleon clove his way To his fame, when like a god he Bent the nations to his sway.

IV

Hence the tune came capering to me While I traced the Rhone and Po; Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me From the spot englamoured so.

V

And to-day, sunlit and smiling, Here I stand upon the scene, With its saffron walls, dun tiling, And its meads of maiden green,

VI

Even as when the trackway thundered With the charge of grenadiers, And the blood of forty hundred Splashed its parapets and piers . . .

VII

Any ancient crone I’d toady Like a lass in young-eyed prime, Could she tell some tale of Lodi At that moving mighty time.

VIII

So, I ask the wives of Lodi For traditions of that day; But alas! not anybody Seems to know of such a fray.

IX

And they heed but transitory Marketings in cheese and meat, Till I judge that Lodi’s story Is extinct in Lodi’s street.

X

Yet while here and there they thrid them In their zest to sell and buy, Let me sit me down amid them And behold those thousands die . . .

XI

—Not a creature cares in Lodi How Napoleon swept each arch, Or where up and downward trod he, Or for his memorial March!

XII

So that wherefore should I be here, Watching Adda lip the lea, When the whole romance to see here Is the dream I bring with me?

XIII

And why sing “The Bridge of Lodi” As I sit thereon and swing, When none shows by smile or nod he Guesses why or what I sing? . . .

XIV

Since all Lodi, low and head ones, Seem to pass that story by, It may be the Lodi-bred ones Rate it truly, and not I.

XV

Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi, Is thy claim to glory gone? Must I pipe a palinody, Or be silent thereupon?

XVI

And if here, from strand to steeple, Be no stone to fame the fight, Must I say the Lodi people Are but viewing crime aright?

XVII

Nay; I’ll sing “The Bridge of Lodi”— That long-loved, romantic thing, Though none show by smile or nod he Guesses why and what I sing!

ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES

I

MY ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim them free From that long drip of human tears Which peoples old in tragedy Have left upon the centuried years.

II

For, wonning in these ancient lands, Enchased and lettered as a tomb, And scored with prints of perished hands, And chronicled with dates of doom, Though my own Being bear no bloom I trace the lives such scenes enshrine, Give past exemplars present room, And their experience count as mine.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

THE MOTHER MOURNS

WHEN mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time, And sedges were horny, And summer’s green wonderwork faltered On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell’ham-Firs way, where dimly Came wheeling around me Those phantoms obscure and insistent That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me A low lamentation, As ’twere of a tree-god disheartened, Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather That Nature herself there Was breathing in aërie accents, With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days, Had grieved her by holding Her ancient high fame of perfection In doubt and disdain . . .

—“I had not proposed me a Creature (She soughed) so excelling All else of my kingdom in compass And brightness of brain

“As to read my defects with a god-glance, Uncover each vestige Of old inadvertence, annunciate Each flaw and each stain!

“My purpose went not to develop Such insight in Earthland; Such potent appraisements affront me, And sadden my reign!

“Why loosened I olden control here To mechanize skywards, Undeeming great scope could outshape in A globe of such grain?

“Man’s mountings of mind-sight I checked not, Till range of his vision Has topped my intent, and found blemish Throughout my domain.

“He holds as inept his own soul-shell— My deftest achievement— Contemns me for fitful inventions Ill-timed and inane:

“No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape, My moon as the Night-queen, My stars as august and sublime ones That influences rain:

“Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching, Immoral my story, My love-lights a lure, that my species May gather and gain.

“‘Give me,’ he has said, ‘but the matter And means the gods lot her, My brain could evolve a creation More seemly, more sane.’

—“If ever a naughtiness seized me To woo adulation From creatures more keen than those crude ones That first formed my train—

“If inly a moment I murmured, ‘The simple praise sweetly, But sweetlier the sage’—and did rashly Man’s vision unrein,

“I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners, Whose brains I could blandish, To measure the deeps of my mysteries Applied them in vain.

“From them my waste aimings and futile I subtly could cover; ‘Every best thing,’ said they, ‘to best purpose Her powers preordain.’—

“No more such! . . . My species are dwindling, My forests grow barren, My popinjays fail from their tappings, My larks from their strain.

“My leopardine beauties are rarer, My tusky ones vanish, My children have aped mine own slaughters To quicken my wane.

“Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes, And slimy distortions, Let nevermore things good and lovely To me appertain;

“For Reason is rank in my temples, And Vision unruly, And chivalrous laud of my cunning Is heard not again!”

“I SAID TO LOVE”

I SAID to Love, “It is not now as in old days When men adored thee and thy ways All else above; Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,” I said to Love.

I said to him, “We now know more of thee than then; We were but weak in judgment when, With hearts abrim, We clamoured thee that thou would’st please Inflict on us thine agonies,” I said to him.

I said to Love, “Thou art not young, thou art not fair, No faery darts, no cherub air, Nor swan, nor dove Are thine; but features pitiless, And iron daggers of distress,” I said to Love.

“Depart then, Love! . . . —Man’s race shall end, dost threaten thou? The age to come the man of now Know nothing of?— We fear not such a threat from thee; We are too old in apathy! _Mankind shall cease_.—So let it be,” I said to Love.

A COMMONPLACE DAY

THE day is turning ghost, And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, To join the anonymous host Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe, To one of like degree.

I part the fire-gnawed logs, Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends Upon the shining dogs; Further and further from the nooks the twilight’s stride extends, And beamless black impends.

Nothing of tiniest worth Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise, Since the pale corpse-like birth Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays— Dullest of dull-hued Days!

Wanly upon the panes The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet Here, while Day’s presence wanes, And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set, He wakens my regret.

Regret—though nothing dear That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime, Or bloomed elsewhere than here, To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime, Or mark him out in Time . . .

—Yet, maybe, in some soul, In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose, Or some intent upstole Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows The world’s amendment flows;

But which, benumbed at birth By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be Embodied on the earth; And undervoicings of this loss to man’s futurity May wake regret in me.

AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE

THY shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine In even monochrome and curving line Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry With the torn troubled form I know as thine, That profile, placid as a brow divine, With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show, Nation at war with nation, brains that teem, Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

THE LACKING SENSE

SCENE.—_A sad-coloured landscape_, _Waddon Vale_

I

“O TIME, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours, As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, As of angel fallen from grace?”

II

—“Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly: In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves. The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly, Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun Such deeds her hands have done.”

III

—“And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures, These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves, Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights, Distress into delights?”

IV

—“Ah! know’st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience, Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves? That sightless are those orbs of hers?—which bar to her omniscience Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones Whereat all creation groans.

V

“She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour, When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves; Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever; Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch That the seers marvel much.

VI

“Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction; Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves; And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction, Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may, For thou art of her clay.”

TO LIFE

O LIFE with the sad seared face, I weary of seeing thee, And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would’st tell Of Death, Time, Destiny— I have known it long, and know, too, well What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array Thyself in rare disguise, And feign like truth, for one mad day, That Earth is Paradise?

I’ll tune me to the mood, And mumm with thee till eve; And maybe what as interlude I feign, I shall believe!

DOOM AND SHE

I

THERE dwells a mighty pair— Slow, statuesque, intense— Amid the vague Immense: None can their chronicle declare, Nor why they be, nor whence.

II

Mother of all things made, Matchless in artistry, Unlit with sight is she.— And though her ever well-obeyed Vacant of feeling he.

III

The Matron mildly asks— A throb in every word— “Our clay-made creatures, lord, How fare they in their mortal tasks Upon Earth’s bounded bord?

IV

“The fate of those I bear, Dear lord, pray turn and view, And notify me true; Shapings that eyelessly I dare Maybe I would undo.

V

“Sometimes from lairs of life Methinks I catch a groan, Or multitudinous moan, As though I had schemed a world of strife, Working by touch alone.”

VI

“World-weaver!” he replies, “I scan all thy domain; But since nor joy nor pain Doth my clear substance recognize, I read thy realms in vain.

VII

“World-weaver! what _is_ Grief? And what are Right, and Wrong, And Feeling, that belong To creatures all who owe thee fief? What worse is Weak than Strong?” . . .

VIII

—Unlightened, curious, meek, She broods in sad surmise . . . —Some say they have heard her sighs On Alpine height or Polar peak When the night tempests rise.

THE PROBLEM

SHALL we conceal the Case, or tell it— We who believe the evidence? Here and there the watch-towers knell it With a sullen significance, Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.

Hearts that are happiest hold not by it; Better we let, then, the old view reign; Since there is peace in it, why decry it? Since there is comfort, why disdain? Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines humanity’s joy and pain!

THE SUBALTERNS

I

“POOR wanderer,” said the leaden sky, “I fain would lighten thee, But there be laws in force on high Which say it must not be.”

II

—“I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried The North, “knew I but how To warm my breath, to slack my stride; But I am ruled as thou.”

III

—“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,” Said Sickness. “Yet I swear I bear thy little ark no spite, But am bid enter there.”

IV

—“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say; “I did not will a grave Should end thy pilgrimage to-day, But I, too, am a slave!”

V

We smiled upon each other then, And life to me wore less That fell contour it wore ere when They owned their passiveness.

THE SLEEP-WORKER

WHEN wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see— As one who, held in trance, has laboured long By vacant rote and prepossession strong— The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;

Wherein have place, unrealized by thee, Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong, Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song, And curious blends of ache and ecstasy?—

Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes All that Life’s palpitating tissues feel, How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise?—

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame, Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame, Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?

THE BULLFINCHES

BROTHER Bulleys, let us sing From the dawn till evening!— For we know not that we go not When the day’s pale pinions fold Unto those who sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale, Whence the green-gowned faeries hail, Roosting near them I could hear them Speak of queenly Nature’s ways, Means, and moods,—well known to fays.

All we creatures, nigh and far (Said they there), the Mother’s are: Yet she never shows endeavour To protect from warrings wild Bird or beast she calls her child.

Busy in her handsome house Known as Space, she falls a-drowse; Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming, While beneath her groping hands Fiends make havoc in her bands.

How her hussif’ry succeeds She unknows or she unheeds, All things making for Death’s taking! —So the green-gowned faeries say Living over Blackmoor way.

Come then, brethren, let us sing, From the dawn till evening!— For we know not that we go not When the day’s pale pinions fold Unto those who sang of old.

GOD-FORGOTTEN

I TOWERED far, and lo! I stood within The presence of the Lord Most High, Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win Some answer to their cry.

—“The Earth, say’st thou? The Human race? By Me created? Sad its lot? Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: Such world I fashioned not.”—