Part 2
As the lone searcher, crouching o’er his glass, Beside the window while the light is high, Doth moved therein the forms of things descry Invisible else to common vision crass; Spirilla, the amœba’s sprawling mass, With gliding infusoria sailing by-- And marks each vestige with entranced eye, Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass; So in that optic lens, where never yet The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall, One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit By the eye’s own pure light, a swarm of small And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit, Trivial, yet entrancing to recall.
RASTATT, _9th May_
VII
Oft at the hour when night’s aërial spring Waters with dew the beauty of the morn, What time another rosy day is born, Along these lanes the echoing footsteps ring Of marching men, who to their marching sing, Deep-voiced, light-hearted. Yet they do not scorn Due pause and measure, and the theme well-worn From the full heart of Germany they bring. But we, whose fathers once in songs as fine Unburdened hearts as full, and with the power Of our dear country pulsing in each line, Scorn to remember England, and to our Incomparable heritage of song Prefer the tinkle of some mean ding-dong.
RASTATT, _9th May_
VIII
All is not well with England. Her great heart Beats faultily and to no music set. She hath her moods, suspicions, and doth fret The daylong hour, by night doth toss and start. Oft she stands dreaming in the crowded mart. ’Tis true that this distemper doth not yet The deeper functions of her life beset, And mightily she plays her mighty part. Yet sometimes in this tempest the heart fears Whether, so faulted, the old anchor grips. And shall we find, we ask, when the sky clears, England still mightier than England’s slips? Let our own past proclaim it. Let the years Advance and set their trumpets to their lips.
RASTATT, _9th May_
IX
The root of our infirmity is found In English liberty, grandly achieved, Yet little understood and ill conceived, And sprouting rank from the uncultured ground. Too much the thought prevails that man unbound Is man made free, a life oft unretrieved From chaos by a content; undeceived Only when licence runs the ship aground. O England! Mother! whom thine every child Loves, surely, to the last, forgive that some Must fear the loss of thy benignant strength Through the mind’s error--lest, too freely wild, Thy liberty of indifference become A liberty of impotence at length.
RASTATT, _9th May_
X
There is no single foot of English soil, Howe’er defaced, that is not holy ground. There is no spot where great souls more abound, Or where man’s greatness is more truly royal. Who hath o’ertopped our Shakespeare? Who by toil Of kingly thought more lofty, more profound, Than Newton e’er from heaven’s majestic round Brought home at night a more stupendous spoil? One thing I find not well. In our reserve We oft-times cloak our excellence, ashamed Not of our imperfections, but our Best; And what is finest, most our own, we serve In some mean dish, or pass it by unclaimed, Leaving the noble in us unexpressed.
RASTATT, _9th May_
HESEPE
I
A lonely camp and small amidst the miles Of the Westphalian plain, where islanded In the green waste our simple lives are led Out of the troubled world. Here morning smiles Splendidly, and the mustering twilight wiles To a strange sense of peace consummated Over these low-hung woods, where setting red And oval the sun the yearning eye beguiles. Then as the white and sheeted vapour steals Along the flats lagoon-like, comes a breath Of anguish from the void, where still is hurled Nation on nation; and the spirit feels A tidal presence of o’erwhelming death Stir through this weird backwater of the world.
HESEPE, _19th May_
II
How hard it is to think upon this shoal Of Inanition that the world’s ablaze. How hard to link these lazy summer days With ends and issues that will not unroll Their length in æons--mankind’s furthest goal, Perpending in the thick and murderous haze Of yonder battle-hurricane that lays Legions to rest till the last tattoo roll. On sun-beat sand the busy ants deploy; Industrious spiders ply their little looms; With brush and pencil or with book we toy. The quiet evening nears; the beetle booms. God blazes at the world. Hell gapes for joy. And Europe whitens with those nameless tombs.
HESEPE, _30th May_
III
Scanted of life and vented on this shore, Where but the salt and sailless ocean plies His tide of time with soulless fall and rise, We conn the unfeatured waste from pole to pole. Daily the gray remorseless waters roll Out of the blank of gray remorseless skies, And nothing happens. Then we close sick eyes, And sadly the soul communes with the soul-- When often o’er night’s face a sudden glow Of Boreal splendour palpitating plays, And the long runners, shaking tress-like, show Our life’s plan in a vision which betrays Our secrets to our pillows; and we know Our selves more clearly than in happier days.
HESEPE, _4th June_
IV
When in this deep Re-entrant’s sullen shade, What hour night’s middle watches change reliefs, The mind compiles the roster of its griefs, Before the inward eye there oft parade Life’s serried loves, appointed and arrayed For high inspection, potentates and chiefs, And armed retainers whom some bond enfeoffs, And all precisely marshalled grade by grade. Then we discern at length where each doth stand, In front or rear, and what the rank they bear; The acquainted Mass, the Intimates, the band Of such as do the forward stations share. And last the One with none on either hand. And thou art She, whose ring and seal I wear.
HESEPE, _4th June_
V
What time in empty hour awhile relaxed, Around my cage’s circuit I have paced, Sunk in myself, and broodingly have traced These late appalling issues, I have taxed My country with a weakening will: “Thou slack’st Thy effort, England.” Then some sight hath braced My soul, and from my mind the doubt effaced. England, it is not energy thou lack’st! I felt it when one morn there sudden flew Around the camp new life and boisterous cheer, Unlike the mood of those who hitherto Our wants supplied, and something did endear The noise of labour to us, and we knew That English orderlies at length were here.
HESEPE, _20th June_
VI
My Countrymen! The years that have gone by Since Hengist came with Horsa from the sea, Find the same substance in you, fiercely free, Yet of that fundamental liberty, The soul’s state, oft unable to descry The deeper import, your simplicity, Your limit, only natural chivalry Redeeming what your insight doth deny. Unskilled to conn the inwardness of things, There is a health about you keeps you clean, Derisive of all high pretence that chimes Not with your plainness, sound. Your laughter rings Over hard toil, and all things grandly mean Your humour shatters, punctures, or sublimes.
HESEPE, _22nd June_
VII
With little tasks we wile the hours away, Each bringing shyly forth his piteous store Of erudition, oft-times dubious lore, Since memory cupboards all we dare to say. One tells us how to mine, one how to lay A crop of good Rhodesian maize. Nay more, The skirts of metaphysics we explore, And touch the dread fringe of psychology. O to be hidden here amongst the seams Of History’s garment, while the whole world rocks Upon its base! When every day that gleams Tells us that England still against all shocks Raises her front; and starting from our dreams, Each morning Hesepe the lonely mocks!
HESEPE, _30th May_
THOUGHTS OF HOME
I
As are the features of some well-loved face, On which a life’s prolixity is writ In moving characters much conned and fit Across a single soulful ground to trace Feeling and thought and purpose, like the grace Which motion adds to loveliness (there flit The spirit’s shades, and there the lamp is lit That lights twin souls to a lifelong embrace); So to the city-dweller hath the town, Much conned, its moving physiognomy, Which oft in exile, as the sun goes down, Teams in the caverned dusk of memory With haunting visions of dear streets, that crown Night’s sorrow with entrancing imagery.
HESEPE, _19th May_
II
Does the slant touch of early light awake The sirens on the Clyde, and fling the door Wide on the city’s rousing all-day roar? Are the streets well a-clatter? Do they break From tram and train, that travelling host, and take The town by storm? Does gathering traffic pour Over the tide-line of night’s silent shore, Into the spaces, till the cobbles quake? While down the river, crowded to the brink With huddled shipyards, many a loaded quay, Ten hundred thousand volleying hammers clink; And the slow homing liner booms to see The ever-coiling waters still a-wink With mirrored shipping freighted for the sea.
HESEPE, _19th May_
III
Ah me, I dream of what they do at home This Sabbath sunrise of the early prime! The slumbering city waking to the chime Of opening church-bells, when the sun hath clomb Full half-way up the hollow of heaven’s dome; The leisured family muster, the sublime Jollity and the uplift of the time That sets the week-worn spirit free to roam; The walking to the kirk, the solemn hour With the Creator, lapsing at the close Into the sweet expansiveness that plays Round the church door, when from the too tense power Of prayer and praise the natural spirit flows Back to its level.--That was in past days.
HESEPE, _19th May_
IV
What do they do _to-day_? What form of fear Haunts the now voided chambers of their life, Troubling its ancient tenor, parent, wife, Survivors of the broken circle dear In the old home enisled, as in some drear Interspace of existence, till the strife Is overblown, and but the echoes rife Volley adown the days still left them here? How they must suffer!--Yet these later shocks Displace not from my brain the life it knew Before the Power that our planned journey mocks, Over our faring war’s dark glory drew; And when my miser mind its store unlocks, It takes out treasures rather old than new.
HESEPE, _20th May_
V
So thus I picture it, not as life lies Now writhing, but as when the days and nights Followed each other in unmarked delights; Nor noted we the measure of the prize Till all was over. Now the spirit cries, What time encroaching Inanition blights, For but the phantom of its past, and fights Extinction with its memories. Let them rise! Let me dissemble that as in past days The crystal fountain with delicious flow Of bursting social joy unconscious plays Over the garden close, where row by row The flowers of life in such profusion blaze That their own loveliness they do not know.
HESEPE, _20th May_
VI
Day follows night, and night returns to day Through all the enchanting stages of the spring; And exile lengthens out to months that fling Their shadow further, and my life grows gray; Grays even with the sun’s increasing ray; While forward still the heading heats do wing Into the year, that softly rounds his ring To midsummer, and June is on the way: The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent Airs of the evening gently swaying close Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent; While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows, And sends the wildering roses over Kent.
HESEPE, _21st May_
INFLUENCES
I
When in the waking visions of the night I travel back the miles my feet have worn Since with a cry my spirit was reborn, There stirs again the anguish and delight Felt first as each new vista on the sight Swam in the luminous duskiness of morn, And the soul quested down the long leagues, torn With its own thirst for vision and more light. One realm in thought I near with awe profound, Where hangs the Slav for ever on his tree, Bedewed with sorrow, with contrition crowned, And thorns of perfected humility, The holy flowering of that cursed ground; And at the mighty portals Titans three.
HESEPE, _21st May_
II
Russia, thy bitter sorrows partly spring From the deep cleavage which, as with a knife, Severs what is most native in thy life From what thy troubled history doth bring Out of dark days that threatened once to wring That life itself from thee. The very strife That heals our Europe through thy pains, is rife With thine own Tragedy, still on the wing. Here stand thine institutes, designed to sway A local life within thee, Zemstvo, Mir, And Duma, people’s parliaments; and here The iron empire with the feet of clay, That froward issue of the Olden day When Ivan’s legions laid the Tartar spear.
HESEPE, _22nd May_
III
The other cause behind the ages lies, A-swelter in the elemental yeast, Where yet thou lay’st fermenting for the feast Of nationality, thine opening eyes Turned longingly to where the sun doth rise, And thy great spirit, when the ferment ceased, For ever oriented to the East, Mysterious, helpless, beautiful and wise. Thence while the bitter ages onward run, And the fierce West doth rend a path through time, Thou for the nations from the healing sun Draw’st healing still, and in the teeth of crime Provest by many a bloodless victory won, Than this world’s pride of power Love more sublime.
HESEPE, _22nd May_
IV
Who is it loometh o’er the Steppes at e’en, A giant from the sunrise of man’s race, Statured of eld, that immemorial face Hewn out of Ararat, in which we glean, And in the froward, patriarchal mien, An old tale told in many a furrowed trace, Moulded before the Sphynx crouched in her place, By passion uncontrollable and clean. For he hath sat with Abram in the tent, And gazed on Hebron, till the blue heaven broke Over them into stars. Then he went on Down all the ages ageless and unbent, Till in this later world of lesser folk ’Mongst men he towers the eternal Mastodon.
HESEPE, _23rd May_
V
And all that man hath felt since man hath known Life first within him, aye, and woman too, Conceived and manifolded in him, drew To limitless creation, widely sown On teaming soil o’er which his breath had blown. Magnificently carnal, through and through. Each taste of the green earth, the brown, he knew, And tasted deep, and joyed, and made his own: The boundless steppe, to which the sky bends down, The forest where the eternal shadows sleep, The sowing and the mowing and the frost; The village and the pleasures of the town, And birth and death and love, and the starred deep Of heaven by night; and here his soul was lost!
HESEPE, _23rd May_
VI
Tolstoy is great in art, in thought not great. Yet his thought troubles, oft-times shivering through With icy barb the best that thought can do. And when we ponder o’er his latter state, And note its argument, backed by the fate That marked his greatness down, we feel here too That Something elemental, vast and true To which all things at length capitulate. And ye who sadly ponder to behold The ruin of such greatness, grieved to see How the child in him acted, thought and spoke, Perchance will wonder, when the tale is told, Whether ’twas not a mightier Thing than he On which the Titan stumbled when he broke.
HESEPE, _24th May_
VII
So Tolstoy passed, and passing left behind Not great themes only, but himself a great And tragic Theme. Another shares his state, Supreme within the kingdom of the mind, As he where soul and body meet, combined In lovely earth-forms. Dostoievsky, late Thou cam’st into thine own, thy bitter fate To be an exile; for the world is blind. But in thy mantic cavern, undismayed Amongst thy spirits, named and known so well, Each a familiar, and thyself a shade, By whitest light of heaven, by reddest hell, Unscorched, unblinded, wrapt yet unafraid, And true to thine own Passion, thou dost dwell.
HESEPE, _26th May_
VIII
Deep-sounding, subtle, pitiful, profound, Dredger of human nature, versed in crime, Mated with every grief, who in the slime Divinest well where purest pearls abound; Where darkness mostly reigneth thou dost found A kingdom of the light, O soul sublime, Most pure, most Christ-like spirit of thy time; And where thy feet have trod is holy ground-- Holy, yet haunted, and a realm of fright, Not to be traversed but with flying feet, And beating heart and racing brain alight With fire from hell, and heated with hell’s heat, Till in the cooler spaces of the night The o’erwrought spirit finds a safe retreat.
HESEPE, _27th May_
IX
Here is thy limit, mightiest of thine age An under- and an over-world to paint, Peopled with epileptic and with saint, The murderer’s, ogre’s, and the gambler’s rage: Too much of fever in thee to assuage Our average human restlessness, the taint Of a charmed subtlety oft rendering faint The sense of man’s salvation in thy page. Perchance in thy heroic spirit, fraught With too much tragedy, the causes lie; That spirit unembittered, overwrought, In which a something fitful we descry, A fretfulness, as in thine image caught By Sonia Kovalevsky’s soulful eye.
HESEPE, _28th May_
X
Turgenev, gentlest of the sons of pain, Who in a line, as Homer wont, distillest The essence of all pathos, thou who fillest A human place ’twixt the Cyclopean twain, ’Tis not with hell-fire driven o’er the brain, Nor stretched titanic canvas that thou thrillest, But by the plotted garden-space thou tillest, Making man’s middle courses thy domain. Here once more we discern how still great art Meets nature greatly. Elemental powers Pulse in thy perfect pages. Souls depart With awe upon them to the silent bowers. The world is ever with thee, its great heart Laid to thy beating own, as thine to ours.
HESEPE, _21st May_
XI
Wordsworth, above all poets in thee I find What in the greatest we too seldom see, The crowning virtue of tranquillity, Effectual o’er the sorrows of the mind. Others to gain such peace have left behind This hard world for the realm of fantasie, Or in a past remote found sanctuary, Or in the end thought’s burden have resigned. One above all by daily struggle rose Into a blue empyrean of the brain, Self-mastering might, yet such as never knows The deeper calm that masters. There remain Nature’s anointed dynasts. Only those Whose peace is fundamental truly reign.
HESEPE, _30th May_
XII
Of these thou art. And, Wordsworth, it is not That thou hast missed man’s feverish heritage. Strange passions thou hast known, and noble rage, Nor in Romance an anodyne hast sought. And if to souls in trouble thou hast brought Strength and relief, ’tis not thy sauntering page, Nor oft-times common theme that doth assuage The anguish of the spirit overwrought. Rather it is that, deeply moved, thou sink’st Deeply in nature’s homeliness, thy rime Plain as her face; but, stooping as thou drink’st, The eternal from beyond the hills of Time Is on thee ere thou know’st it, and thou link’st Thy being with it, suddenly sublime.
HESEPE, _31st May_
XIII
Herein is thy celestial wisdom shown, That thou, divining Godhead scarce concealed In nature’s plain immediacy, dost yield To her the soul of poetry and thine own. Until thou cam’st no son of time had known The measure of the glory now revealed In common things, the beauty of the field, The moving grace of planet and of stone. What bliss it was to feel as at the first, But with that insight now supremely thine, The trailing clouds upon a world accurst In all their fresh and pristine splendour shine; While into that familiar face there burst The expression of the Countenance divine.
HESEPE, _31st May_
XIV
Sweetly at length, like faithful love abused By cold neglect, in this domed interval Of silent time returns with soft footfall The echo of a music long disused. Ah me, before such strains I stand accused, So early known, and then my all in all, And with the magic of the morning’s call And ethos of my children interfused-- A nameless sense of youth that will not die, While Homer’s volleying dactyls surging send The music of the wind-entangled seas Around the world, and as the billows fly, Shouldering each other shorewards, metely blend His harping with the thunderous centuries.
HESEPE, _8th June_
XV
Oft have I risen before the night hath flown, To catch the hour of deepest silence sweet, And through that hush to list in my retreat The solemn voice of Æschylus intone, His great Iambic, till the tale hath grown Into a passion over me, where meet Huge forms archaic, and on stately feet Move to swift doom in Æginetan stone. High over all in simple grandeur bold, With crest on crest against the morning skies, Yet in eternal shadow, I behold The massif of the _Agamemnon_ rise, And through its marble caverns shuddering hear The haunting voice of Clytæmnestra’s fear.
HESEPE, _9th June_
XVI
--Infatuate queen, who oft as lingering day Rounds to his close, and passion’s hour is nigh, Through Atreus’ halls on soundless foot doth hie, And from the tower the purpling east survey-- Lest in the still and fearful night’s thick play, While by her beating side doth sweltering lie Sallow Ægisthus with the hawking eye, Swift Fate prepare a swifter stroke than they; And while love’s maddening vintage they partake, A sudden flame should redden all the land, And beacon call to beacon, where they break From the lone watchman on the Ægean strand. “The ship! the ship! His ship comes tossing o’er The wine-dark sea. The King is at the door.”
HESEPE, _9th June_
XVII
I paced entranced the mourne, melodious shore Where Sophocles unwinds with matchless art Life’s tangled error, pondering in my heart The tragic theme that middle diction bore-- The end not hopeless, when, all wanderings o’er, By still Colonus in that place apart The thunder rolled, and while the earth did start, The old man of the sorrows was no more. And I have felt the moving of the strings Beneath the fingers of that troubled soul, Third in the triple dynasty of kings, Whose tenderness, beyond his art’s control, Over life’s mutilated torso wrings Fierce protest, agonizing for the Whole.
HESEPE, _10th June_
XVIII