Part 4
Then,--while the plague-sore grew [_Ep._ 6. Two darkling decades through, And rankled in the festering flesh of time,-- Where darkness binds and frees The wildest of wild seas In fierce mutations of the unslumbering clime, There, sleepless too, o'er shuddering wrong One hand appointed shook the reddening scourge of song. 240
And through the lightnings of the apparent word Dividing shame's dense night [_Str._ 7. Sounds lovelier than the light And light more sweet than song from night's own bird Mixed each their hearts with other, till the gloom Was glorious as with all the stars in bloom, Sonorous as with all the spheres in chime Heard far through flowering heaven: the sea, sublime Once only with its own Old winds' and waters' tone, 250 Sad only or glad with its own glory, and crowned With its own light, and thrilled with its own sound, Learnt now their song, more sweet than heaven's may be, Who pass away by sea; The song that takes of old love's land farewell, With pulse of plangent water like a knell.
And louder ever and louder and yet more loud Till night be shamed of morn [_Ant._ 7. Rings the Black Huntsman's horn Through darkening deeps beneath the covering cloud, 260 Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all Lower than his fortune fall; 270 The wolfish waif of casual empire, born To turn all hate and horror cold with scorn.
Yea, even at night's full noon [_Ep._ 7. Light's birth-song brake in tune, Spake, witnessing that with us one must be, God; naming so by name That priests have brought to shame The strength whose scourge sounds on the smitten sea; The mystery manifold of might Which bids the wind give back to night the things of night. 280
Even God, the unknown of all time; force or thought, [_Str._ 8. Nature or fate or will, Clothed round with good and ill, Veiled and revealed of all things and of nought, Hooded and helmed with mystery, girt and shod With light and darkness, unapparent God. Him the high prophet o'er his wild work bent Found indivisible ever and immanent At hidden heart of truth, In forms of age and youth 290 Transformed and transient ever; masked and crowned, From all bonds loosened and with all bonds bound, Diverse and one with all things; love and hate, Earth, and the starry state Of heaven immeasurable, and years that flee As clouds and winds and rays across the sea.
But higher than stars and deeper than the waves Of day and night and morrow [_Ant._ 8. That roll for all time, sorrow Keeps ageless watch over perpetual graves. 300 From dawn to morning of the soul in flower, Through toils and dreams and visions, to that hour When all the deeps were opened, and one doom Took two sweet lives to embrace them and entomb, The strong song plies its wing That makes the darkness ring And the deep light reverberate sound as deep; Song soft as flowers or grass more soft than sleep, Song bright as heaven above the mounting bird, Song like a God's tears heard 310 Falling, fulfilled of life and death and light, And all the stars and all the shadow of night.
Till, when its flight hath past [_Ep._ 8. Time's loftiest mark and last, The goal where good kills evil with a kiss, And Darkness in God's sight Grows as his brother Light, And heaven and hell one heart whence all the abyss Throbs with love's music; from his trance Love waking leads it home to her who stayed in France. 320
But now from all the world-old winds of the air [_Str._ 9. One blast of record rings As from time's hidden springs With roar of rushing wings and fires that bear Toward north and south sonorous, east and west, Forth of the dark wherein its records rest, The story told of the ages, writ nor sung By man's hand ever nor by mortal tongue Till, godlike with desire, One tongue of man took fire, 330 One hand laid hold upon the lightning, one Rose up to bear time witness what the sun Had seen, and what the moon and stars of night Beholding lost not light: From dawn to dusk what ways man wandering trod Even through the twilight of the gods to God.
From dawn of man and woman twain and one [_Ant._ 9. When the earliest dews impearled The front of all the world Ringed with aurorean aureole of the sun, 340 To days that saw Christ's tears and hallowing breath Put life for love's sake in the lips of death, And years as waves whose brine was fire, whose foam Blood, and the ravage of Neronian Rome; And the eastern crescent's horn Mightier awhile than morn; And knights whose lives were flights of eagles' wings, And lives like snakes' lives of engendering kings; And all the ravin of all the swords that reap Lives cast as sheaves on heap 350 From all the billowing harvest-fields of fight; And sounds of love-songs lovelier than the light.
The grim dim thrones of the east [_Ep._ 9. Set for death's riotous feast Round the bright board where darkling centuries wait, And servile slaughter, mute, Feeds power with fresh red fruit, Glitter and groan with mortal food of fate; And throne and cup and lamp's bright breath Bear witness to their lord of only night and death. 360
Dead freedom by live empire lies defiled, [_Str._ 10. And murder at his feet Plies lust with wine and meat, With offering of an old man and a child, With holy body and blood, inexpiable Communion in the sacrament of hell, Till, reeking from their monstrous eucharist, The lips wax cold that murdered where they kissed, And empire in mid feast Fall as a slaughtered beast 370 Headless, and ease men's hungering hearts of fear Lest God were none in heaven, to see nor hear, And purge his own pollution with the flood Poured of his black base blood So first found healing, poisonous as it poured; And on the clouds the archangel cleanse his sword.
As at the word unutterable that made [_Ant._ 10. Of day and night division, From vision on to vision, 379 From dream to dream, from darkness into shade, From sunshine into sunlight, moves and lives The steersman's eye, the helming hand that gives Life to the wheels and wings that whirl along The immeasurable impulse of the sphere of song Through all the eternal years, Beyond all stars and spheres, Beyond the washing of the waves of time, Beyond all heights where no thought else may climb, Beyond the darkling dust of suns that were, Past height and depth of air; 390 And in the abyss whence all things move that are Finds only living Love, the sovereign star.
Nor less the weight and worth [_Ep._ 10. Found even of love on earth To wash all stain of tears and sins away, On dying lips alit That living knew not it, In the winged shape of song with death to play: To warm young children with its wings, And try with fire the heart elect for godlike things. 400
For all worst wants of all most miserable [_Str._ 11. With divine hands to deal All balms and herbs that heal, Among all woes whereunder poor men dwell Our Master sent his servant Love, to be On earth his witness; but the strange deep sea, Mother of life and death inextricate, What work should Love do there, to war with fate? Yet there must Love too keep At heart of the eyeless deep 410 Watch, and wage war wide-eyed with all its wonders, Lower than the lightnings of its waves, and thunders Of seas less monstrous than the births they bred; Keep high there heart and head, And conquer: then for prize of all toils past Feel the sea close them in again at last.
A day of direr doom arisen thereafter [_Ant._ 11. With cloud and fire in strife Lightens and darkens life Round one by man's hand masked with living laughter, 420 A man by men bemonstered, but by love, Watched with blind eyes as of a wakeful dove, And wooed by lust, that in her rosy den As fire on flesh feeds on the souls of men, To take the intense impure Burnt-offering of her lure, Divine and dark and bright and naked, strange With ravenous thirst of life reversed and change, As though the very heaven should shrivel and swell With hunger after hell, 430 Run mad for dear damnation, and desire To feel its light thrilled through with stings of fire.
Above a windier sea, [_Ep._ 11. The glory of Ninety-three Fills heaven with blood-red and with rose-red beams That earth beholding grows Herself one burning rose Flagrant and fragrant with strange deeds and dreams, Dreams dyed as love's own flower, and deeds Stained as with love's own life-blood, that for love's sake bleeds. 440
And deeper than all deeps of seas and skies [_Str._ 12. Wherein the shadows are Called sun and moon and star That rapt conjecture metes with mounting eyes, Loud with strange waves and lustrous with new spheres, Shines, masked at once and manifest of years, Shakespeare, a heaven of heavenly eyes beholden; And forward years as backward years grow golden With light of deeds and words And flight of God's fleet birds, 450 Angels of wrath and love and truth and pity; And higher on exiled eyes their natural city Dawns down the depths of vision, more sublime Than all truths born of time; And eyes that wept above two dear sons dead Grow saving stars to guard one hopeless head.
Bright round the brows of banished age had shone [_Ant._ 12. In vision flushed with truth The rosy glory of youth 459 On streets and woodlands where in days long gone Sweet love sang light and loud and deep and dear: And far the trumpets of the dreadful year Had pealed and wailed in darkness: last arose The song of children, kindling as a rose At breath of sunrise, born Of the red flower of morn Whose face perfumes deep heaven with odorous light And thrills all through the wings of souls in flight Close as the press of children at His knee Whom if the high priest see, 470 Dreaming, as homeless on dark earth he trod, The lips that praise him shall not know for God.
O sovereign spirit, above [_Ep._ 12. All offering but man's love, All praise and prayer and incense undefiled! The one thing stronger found Than towers with iron bound; The one thing lovelier than a little child, And deeper than the seas are deep, 479 And tenderer than such tears of love as angels weep.
Dante, the seer of all things evil and good, [_Str._ 13. Beheld two ladies, Beauty And high life-hallowing Duty, That strove for sway upon his mind and mood And held him in alternating accord Fast bound at feet of either: but our lord, The seer and singer of righteousness and wrong Who stands now master of all the keys of song, Sees both as dewdrops run Together in the sun, 490 For him not twain but one thing twice divine; Even as his speech and song are bread and wine For all souls hungering and all hearts athirst At best of days and worst, And both one sacrament of Love's great giving To feed the spirit and sense of all souls living.
The seventh day in the wind's month, ten years gone [_Ant._ 13. Since heaven-espousing earth Gave the Republic birth, The mightiest soul put mortal raiment on 500 That came forth singing ever in man's ears Of all souls with us, and through all these years Rings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong, That on our souls hath shed itself in song, Poured forth itself like rain On souls like springing grain That with its procreant beams and showers were fed For living wine and sacramental bread; Given all itself as air gives life and light, Utterly, as of right; 510 The goodliest gift our age hath given, to be Ours, while the sun gives glory to the sea.
Our Father and Master and Lord, [_Ep._ 13. Who hast thy song for sword, For staff thy spirit, and our hearts for throne: As in past years of wrong, Take now my subject song, To no crowned head made humble but thine own; That on thy day of worldly birth Gives thanks for all thou hast given past thanks of all on earth. 520
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NOTES
_v._ 33. _Odes et Ballades_, 1822-1824.
57. _Les Orientales_, 1829.
69. _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, 1831.
71. _Les Chants du Crepuscule_, 1835.
73. _Les Voix Interieures_, 1837.
81. _Les Rayons et les Ombres_, 1840.
101. _Hernani_, 1830.
105. _Marion de Lorme_, 1831.
109. _Le Roi s'amuse_, 1832.
113. _Lucrece Borgia_, 1833.
121. _Marie Tudor_, 1835.
127. _Angelo, Tyran de Padoue_, 1835.
129. _La Esmeralda_, 1836.
133. _Ruy Blas_, 1838.
137. _Les Burgraves_, 1842.
153. _Cromwell_, 1827: _Etude sur Mirabeau_, 1834 (_Litterature et Philosophie melees_, 1819-1834).
177. _Han d'Islande_, 1823. _Bug-Jargal_, 1826.
182. _Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne_, 1829: _Claude Gueux_, 1834.
193. _Notre-Dame de Paris_, 1831.
205. _Le Rhin_, 1845.
216. _Napoleon le Petit_, 1852. _Chatiments_, 1853. _Histoire d'un Crime_, 1877. In this place I must take occasion to relieve my conscience from a sense of duty unfulfilled so long as I for one have not uttered my own poor private protest--worthless and weightless though it may seem, if cast as a grain into the scale of public opinion--against a projected insult at once to contemporary France and to the present only less than to past generations of Englishmen.
_On the proposed desecration of Westminster Abbey by the erection of a monument to the son of Napoleon III_
"Let us go hence." From the inmost shrine of grace Where England holds the elect of all her dead There comes a word like one of old time said By gods of old cast out. Here is no place At once for these and one of poisonous race. Let each rise up from his dishallowed bed And pass forth silent. Each divine veiled head Shall speak in silence with averted face. "Scorn everlasting and eternal shame Eat out the rotting record of his name Who had the glory of all these graves in trust And turned it to a hissing. His offence Makes havoc of their desecrated dust Whose place is here no more. Let us go hence."
Feb. 25, 1880.
297. _Les Contemplations_, 1856.
321. _La Legende des Siecles_. _Premiere serie_, 1859; _nouvelle serie_, 1877.
392. _Les Miserables_, 1862.
409. _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_, 1866.
417. _L'Homme qui Rit_, 1869.
433. _Quatre-vingt-treize_, 1874.
441. _William Shakespeare_, 1864.
448. _Actes et Paroles_; _Avant l'Exil_, 1841-1851; _Pendant l'Exil_, 1852-1870; _Depuis l'Exil_, 1870-1876.
452. _Paris_, 1867.
455. _Mes Fils_, 1875.
456. _Pour un Soldat_, 1875.
457. _Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois_, 1865.
462. _L'Annee Terrible_, 1872.
464. _L'Art d'etre Grandpere_, 1877.
470. _Le Pape_, 1878.
497. "Septidi ventose an X de la Republique (26 fevrier 1802)." _Victor Hugo raconte par un temoin de sa vie_, 1863, _tome_ 1, p. 28.
At the end of such a list, so incomparable as to seem incredible, of one great man's good works, we may be forgiven the alteration of a word even in a verse from AEschylus which we cannot choose but apply once more to this leader in the advance of men made perfect through doom of trial and long wayfaring, whose progress he furthers by example and stimulates by song:--
[Greek: kurios esti throein hodion kratos aision andron ekteleon; eti gar theothen katapneiei peitho molpan alkai sumphutos aion.]
AEsch. _Agam._ 104-8.