Chapter 6

I MARVEL not Bassanio was so bold To peril all he had upon the lead, Or that proud Aragon bent low his head Or that Morocco’s fiery heart grew cold: For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold Which is more golden than the golden sun No woman Veronesé looked upon Was half so fair as thou whom I behold. Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield The sober-suited lawyer’s gown you donned, And would not let the laws of Venice yield Antonio’s heart to that accursèd Jew— O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due: I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

II QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA

TO ELLEN TERRY

IN the lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain: The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, War’s ruin, and the wreck of chivalry To her proud soul no common fear can bring: Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King, Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy. O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face Made for the luring and the love of man! With thee I do forget the toil and stress, The loveless road that knows no resting place, Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s dread weariness, My freedom, and my life republican!

III CAMMA

TO ELLEN TERRY

AS one who poring on a Grecian urn Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made, God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid, And for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn And face the obvious day, must I not yearn For many a secret moon of indolent bliss, When in midmost shrine of Artemis I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

And yet—methinks I’d rather see thee play That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery Made Emperors drunken,—come, great Egypt, shake Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay, I am grown sick of unreal passions, make The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony!

PANTHEA

NAY, let us walk from fire unto fire, From passionate pain to deadlier delight,— I am too young to live without desire, Too young art thou to waste this summer night Asking those idle questions which of old Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know, And wisdom is a childless heritage, One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow,— Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage: Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy, Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!

Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale, Like water bubbling from a silver jar, So soft she sings the envious moon is pale, That high in heaven she is hung so far She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,— Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring moon.

White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream, The fallen snow of petals where the breeze Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these Enough for thee, dost thou desire more? Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour For wasted days of youth to make atone By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never, Hearken they now to either good or ill, But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease, Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine, They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine, Mourning the old glad days before they knew What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

And far beneath the brazen floor they see Like swarming flies the crowd of little men, The bustle of small lives, then wearily Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again Kissing each others’ mouths, and mix more deep The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

There all day long the golden-vestured sun, Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze, And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon, And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead, Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must, His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

There in the green heart of some garden close Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side, Her warm soft body like the briar rose Which would be white yet blushes at its pride, Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

There never does that dreary north-wind blow Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare, Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow, Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare To wake them in the silver-fretted night When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring, The violet-hidden waters well they know, Where one whose feet with tired wandering Are faint and broken may take heart and go, And from those dark depths cool and crystalline Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

But we oppress our natures, God or Fate Is our enemy, we starve and feed On vain repentance—O we are born too late! What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed Who crowd into one finite pulse of time The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

O we are wearied of this sense of guilt, Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair, Wearied of every temple we have built, Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer, For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high: One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand, No little coin of bronze can bring the soul Over Death’s river to the sunless land, Victim and wine and vow are all in vain, The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

We are resolved into the supreme air, We are made one with what we touch and see, With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair, With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

From lower cells of waking life we pass To full perfection; thus the world grows old: We who are godlike now were once a mass Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold, Unsentient or of joy or misery, And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn To water-lilies; the brown fields men till Will be more fruitful for our love to-night, Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite.

The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell, The man’s last passion, and the last red spear That from the lily leaps, the asphodel Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear Of too much beauty, and the timid shame Of the young bridegroom at his lover’s eyes,—these with the same

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth Not we alone hath passions hymeneal, The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth At daybreak know a pleasure not less real Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood, We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.

So when men bury us beneath the yew Thy crimson-stainèd mouth a rose will be, And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew, And when the white narcissus wantonly Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain In some sweet flower we will feel the sun, And from the linnet’s throat will sing again, And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes will run Over our graves, or as two tigers creep Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

And give them battle! How my heart leaps up To think of that grand living after death In beast and bird and flower, when this cup, Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, And with the pale leaves of some autumn day The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey.

O think of it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun, The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear

The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow, And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun On sunless days in winter, we shall know By whom the silver gossamer is spun, Who paints the diapered fritillaries, On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows If yonder daffodil had lured the bee Into its gilded womb, or any rose Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree! Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring, But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing.

Is the light vanished from our golden sun, Or is this dædal-fashioned earth less fair, That we are nature’s heritors, and one With every pulse of life that beats the air? Rather new suns across the sky shall pass, New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar, Critics of nature, but the joyous sea Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be Part of the mighty universal whole, And through all æons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, The Universe itself shall be our Immortality.

THE FOURTH MOVEMENT

IMPRESSION

LE RÉVEILLON

THE sky is laced with fitful red, The circling mists and shadows flee, The dawn is rising from the sea, Like a white lady from her bed.

And jagged brazen arrows fall Athwart the feathers of the night, And a long wave of yellow light Breaks silently on tower and hall,

And spreading wide across the wold Wakes into flight some fluttering bird, And all the chestnut tops are stirred, And all the branches streaked with gold.

AT VERONA

HOW steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread, And O how salt and bitter is the bread Which falls from this Hound’s table,—better far That I had died in the red ways of war, Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, Than to live thus, by all things comraded Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.

‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this? He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss Of his gold city, and eternal day’— Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars I do possess what none can take away My love, and all the glory of the stars.

APOLOGIA

IS it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

Is it thy will—Love that I love so well— That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure, And sell ambition at the common mart, And let dull failure be my vestiture, And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

Perchance it may be better so—at least I have not made my heart a heart of stone, Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast, Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

Many a man hath done so; sought to fence In straitened bonds the soul that should be free, Trodden the dusty road of common sense, While all the forest sang of liberty,

Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air, To where some steep untrodden mountain height Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.

Or how the little flower he trod upon, The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun Content if once its leaves were aureoled.

But surely it is something to have been The best belovèd for a little while, To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars, Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!

QUIA MULTUM AMAVI

DEAR Heart, I think the young impassioned priest When first he takes from out the hidden shrine His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,

Feels not such awful wonder as I felt When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, And all night long before thy feet I knelt Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.

Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow’s heritor, Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.

Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal, Tread on my heels with all his retinue, I am most glad I loved thee—think of all The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

SILENTIUM AMORIS

AS often-times the too resplendent sun Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won A single ballad from the nightingale, So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead On wings impetuous some wind will come, And with its too harsh kisses break the reed Which was its only instrument of song, So my too stormy passions work me wrong, And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung; Else it were better we should part, and go, Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, And I to nurse the barren memory Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

HER VOICE

THE wild bee reels from bough to bough With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, Now in a lily-cup, and now Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, In his wandering; Sit closer love: it was here I trow I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one As long as the sea-gull loved the sea, As long as the sunflower sought the sun,— It shall be, I said, for eternity ’Twixt you and me! Dear friend, those times are over and done; Love’s web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees Sway and sway in the summer air, Here in the valley never a breeze Scatters the thistledown, but there Great winds blow fair From the mighty murmuring mystical seas, And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams, What does it see that we do not see? Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams On some outward voyaging argosy,— Ah! can it be We have lived our lives in a land of dreams! How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say But this, that love is never lost, Keen winter stabs the breasts of May Whose crimson roses burst his frost, Ships tempest-tossed Will find a harbour in some bay, And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do But to kiss once again, and part, Nay, there is nothing we should rue, I have my beauty,—you your Art, Nay, do not start, One world was not enough for two Like me and you.

MY VOICE

WITHIN this restless, hurried, modern world We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I, And now the white sails of our ship are furled, And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan, For very weeping is my gladness fled, Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion, And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell Of viols, or the music of the sea That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

TÆDIUM VITÆ

TO stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear This paltry age’s gaudy livery, To let each base hand filch my treasury, To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair, And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom,—I swear I love it not! these things are less to me Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, Less than the thistledown of summer air Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

HUMANITAD

IT is full winter now: the trees are bare, Save where the cattle huddle from the cold Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day From the low meadows up the narrow lane; Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream And back again disconsolate, and miss The bawling shepherds and the noisy team; And overhead in circling listlessness The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack, Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, And hoots to see the moon; across the meads Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; And a stray seamew with its fretful cry Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings His load of faggots from the chilly byre, And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings The sappy billets on the waning fire, And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air;

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow, And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow, For with the first warm kisses of the rain The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears, And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie, And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly Across our path at evening, and the suns Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

Dance through the hedges till the early rose, (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!) Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose The little quivering disk of golden fire Which the bees know so well, for with it come Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

Then up and down the field the sower goes, While close behind the laughing younker scares With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows, And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears, And on the grass the creamy blossom falls In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals

Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine, That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply, And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes, Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise, And violets getting overbold withdraw From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.

O happy field! and O thrice happy tree! Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea, Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour, The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind, And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.

Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring, That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine, And to the kid its little horns, and bring The soft and silky blossoms to the vine, Where is that old nepenthe which of yore Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!

There was a time when any common bird Could make me sing in unison, a time When all the strings of boyish life were stirred To quick response or more melodious rhyme By every forest idyll;—do I change? Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek To vex with sighs thy simple solitude, And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood; Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!

Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul Takes discontent to be its paramour, And gives its kingdom to the rude control Of what should be its servitor,—for sure Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’

To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect In natural honour, not to bend the knee In profitless prostrations whose effect Is by itself condemned, what alchemy Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harmony, And for its answering brother waits in vain Sobbing for incompleted melody, Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain, A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes, Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.