Part 3
One scene, Euripides, throughout the years Clings to the moving skirts of memory, Among the images of things that lie In beauty perfected, too deep for tears. ’Tis where, to still his faithful matron’s fears Through lonely days and nights of agony, Having fulfilled his roving chivalry, At length the Paladin of eld appears, Thy Herakles; and wife and children stand ’Neath that majestic manhood pure from blame; The basket circulates from hand to hand. When of a sudden--_He was not the same_. There could no more, but with the dripping sword. And all that ruth impounded in a word!
HESEPE, _10th June_
XIX
While still that music pealed an alien strain Broke boisterous into sudden interplay, Troubling the soul with laughter and dismay; And chattering drolls appeared, expressly plain, And tingling to the immemorial vein Of the obscene in all things formed of clay. There pausing on the turmoiled scene that lay Before my eyes, a light broke on my brain, And vast Aristophanic laughter shook Each nerve within me, and a hand did part Some far-back curtain of the soul, and took A portion of my years; and I did start, Divining art’s new purport, to rebuke And humanize the stiffly pure of heart.
HESEPE, _11th June_
XX
It were not well with man did he not feel At home with his own nature, all we are Conspiring with our angel and our star To keep our being whole, or, broken, heal, Lest in some faulted mould the soul congeal. And oft-times ’tis the Highest that doth mar The Perfect in us, straining us too far, And overreaching Justice. Hence the peal Of that great cachinnation echoing woke Appreciation of the lofty use Of comedy, to shake the settling soul Out of itself. The Elemental spoke, And something broadened in me. The recluse Unstiffened, and I felt my nature whole.
HESEPE, _11th June_
XXI
Justice! the very sound brings back the throes Of that tremendous season when Youth sees His world collapse, and beaten to his knees He takes the bolt of doubt, all that he knows, That he knows nothing. Underneath the blows Of thought I laboured long in labouring seas, Pledging my soul to martyred Socrates; And o’er night’s face the star of Plato rose. This much of truth I still divined, that here Was internecine conflict; only doubt Strained to the uttermost a path could clear To that last Deep where wind and tide give out, And freighted Time drops softly out to sea, A moving image of Eternity.
HESEPE, _12th June_
XXII
Who to the visions of immortal Thought, Engendered by the music of the mind-- First in that place where our poor human kind Sit in the cave and watch the shadows wrought By firelight on the wall, obscurely caught; Then luring on to where the soul, half blind, Turns from the Splendour which itself divined-- With kinglier toil a loftier art hath brought, Than Plato? Who more haunted by the light Hath ever yet gone coasting with the sun, Or in the deep and constellated night, Claimed from the spheres their voices as they run? Or soaring where the Eternal Glories shine Hath stretched to earth a more majestic line?
HESEPE, _13th June_
XXIII
As deeply versed in that infinitude Where man his doom within himself doth find By no strait pedagogy, but divined Through some more massive sense of True and Good, A kind of Inspiration, the soul’s food, Derived from far, and working still behind All conscious reason, till the labouring mind ’Neath that profounder suasion sinks subdued. So Plato’s thought grows cosmic, by its own Illumination led and mystified, And haunted by a voice of purer tone Than reason’s groping motion e’er supplied; The beam refracted by the Forms and shown As coloured light wherein the soul is dyed.
HESEPE, _14th June_
XXIV
Thus do the greatest ever by sheer might Of natural penetration find their way Into the Innermost, where Being’s ray Burns unendurable, and in that light Their own with nature’s majesty unite To one high rhythm, stupendous interplay Of Thought and Being, perioded, gray With shadow, with serenest sunshine bright. So that old man of Koenigsberg profound, By night revolving two infinities, And so Spinoza, when his spirit found Intellect into Intuition rise, Envisaging creation from above, Where knowledge takes the perfect form of Love.[1]
HESEPE, _14th June_
[1] The “Amor Dei intellectualis.”
XXV
But thy peculiar greatness more than these, By thinking pregnant with creative art, Subduing chance and moulding part to part, Hath Cosmic in it, Plato, harmonies That wake the dim immortal memories We bring from the Eternal, whence we start The round of Being, bearing in our heart The echoes of the everlasting seas. Here stands no accidental word. And so, While theme with theme grows twisted and entwined, Is freedom perfected. We gaze, and lo, The argument is off before the wind, Like some great trireme tacking endlessly, Yet ever headed for Eternity.
HESEPE, _14th June_
WATCHWORDS AND MAXIMS
I
“Live dangerously.” No braver mandate yet, Nietzsche, nor charged with finer lightning ran Around the world. And true it is the man Who hath no menace in him, nor hath met A threatening Universe with counter-threat Is caitiff still. In those who lead the van The Headlong is the guide to each new plan, While lances leap, spears break, the ground is wet. One prayer I prayed: “Lord, if Thou hast discerned Within me ought of manliness, enroll Thy servant with the fighters, who have earned Their manhood’s charter where the thunders roll Over the field, that so I may have learned To taste this Element, and know my soul.”
HESEPE, _6th June_
II
There comes to me a memorable thought Borne on that voice, which like some wandering gleam Brings freshness into Hegel’s well-worn theme From Naples lately, Croce, he who taught That Art’s true nature is not to be sought In what is fitted only to redeem By strict initiation souls who dream Of beauty in some crafty pattern wrought, But in the apt Expression, wheresoe’er Expression apt is found, the Inward still Externalizing till the soul declare The thing within it, and divinely fill With sound or sign the habitable air-- A language universal as man’s will.
HESEPE, _18th June_
III
Thus language is the type wherein revealed Art’s universal function we behold, In sensuous forms appropriate to unfold Whate’er of meaning Individuals yield: A doctrine this which doth enlarge the field To every man who in himself doth hold But speech enough a simple thought to mould In words well wedded to the sense concealed. --Doubtless a truth, though strained beyond the Norm, If still the theme, with varying purport fraught, Loses itself entirely in the Form, And ugliness and beauty count for naught; And yet a truth, although a truth in part, All art expression, not all expression art.
HESEPE, _18th June_
IV
The Import counts. All great art greatly deals With themes not insignificant. The less Gives lesser art, howe’er the form express The sense of that the artist thinks or feels. And wonderful it is how life reveals The great theme near at hand, did we but press Our lives less fiercely, and our souls possess, When stirred, until the fitting word congeals. Art should not fail among us. All have eyes Which bring the star-sown heavens nightly home, And there are ever winds about the world. And no man but hath felt the mysteries Of birth and wedlock and death’s solemn gloam, Or seen the petals of a rose uncurled.
HESEPE, _19th June_
V
Of Tragedy the essence and the goal Is Vindication. Fear and pity close The tale with mourning, but the issue shows The moral order master of man’s soul. And as its slow and solemn waters roll Thunderingly through the scenes, a sense there grows Of some high Presence working in these throes, Whose Being is the topic and the whole. Thus not these personal griefs alone comprise The theme of Tragedy, that theme more vast Than its own content, deeper than the sighs Of the doomed Titan hounded home at last-- The Universe in action, and the cries Of Cosmic Vengeance closing with the Past.
HESEPE, _25th May_
VI
“Gehorsam.” It is seldom that one hears The German tongue commended. Yet I find No spell more swift, more potent to unbind The spirit’s shades in some fine phrase that clears An entrance to the import of the years, Where speech, unwinding as thought’s coils unwind, Makes landfall, and companioning man’s mind, Ends in the Innermost, whereto he steers. And many a haunting solitary sound In that strange tongue, with doubling content fraught, Booms at the ear of conscience, whose profound Responses in that energy are caught, And Teuton loyalty, that holds its ground, Sweeps Europe still, and sets a world at naught.
HESEPE, _4th July_
VII
Two other words contrasting well distil In two clear drops of sound significant, And flavoured to the thought, the crowning want That mars our enterprise--the English will, Steadfast of purpose, but unsteady still In the particular. Strange humours haunt The earnestness of battle, and we flaunt The eccentric in us even as we kill. A nobly erring pride is here, disdain Of death--and duty, when that duty chimes Not with our liking; and our stubbornness Wants sternness in it to perfect the grain. Of late to tragic heights the contrast climbs, Which “Ernst” and “Eigensinnigkeit” express.
HESEPE, _5th July_
VIII
Compel them to be free! A true word there Thou minted’st, Rousseau--half the human race Still unaspiring to that crowning grace, Still disinclined the easy yoke to wear. Oh, that at length our people would but dare To look their cancer fiercely in the face, Consenting on the foul and rotting place The short sharp anguish of the knife to bear. For there are powers upon us that still sap Our liberty and drain our manhood dry, Which if we clear not speedily, mayhap Our twilight follows and the end is nigh; Or else there rise a Strong One who will clap The Teuton iron on us, and we die.
HESEPE, _7th July_
IX
As when along a level land we pace, The scene, from where our forward-moving feet Touch ground, to where the earth and heaven greet, Seems to revolve in some vast wheel’s embrace, Whose spoke-wise turning slow the eye can trace From near-by hedges, wayside trees, that fleet With rick and steading by, till all lines meet And motion dwindles in far distant space-- There haply some majestic mountain mass By contrast travels with us as we go, And doth across the spirit, as we pass, The feeling of its omnipresence throw-- So o’er man’s fleeting and particular fate For ever omnipresent broods the State.
HESEPE, _30th June_
X
Unto man’s spirit thou art closely bound By natural drift and consanguinity, But more by long companionship, the tie That holds you twain together tightly wound First in his infancy, where thou art found Like some great watchdog that doth panting lie Stretched by his infant master, his dull eye Wakeful, his sharp ear cocked at every sound. Nay, for the bond is closer, ’twas thy face Bent over him at birth; thy kindly pains Steadied his childish feet. Nor can we trace What in his blood derives not from thy veins By long transfusion unprecipitate, Alive, organically intimate.
HESEPE, _19th July_
XI
Suppose a race (the vision first I saw Among the dark stern reasonings of Kant) Resolved its past for ever to recant, And from its island borders to withdraw: No man shall move--I heard that doom with awe-- Until the wretched, last, lorn miscreant By shameful death full reparation grant To the offended majesty of Law. So as man’s coming race prepares to leave The Island of its Present, where to-day Europe in crime lies sweltering, and to cleave A fresh path through the portals of the Day, At History’s bar the nations duly lined Await their judgment. Some remain behind.
HESEPE, _7th July_
XII
One thing upon the tablet of the mind By fire should be imprinted. Nations stand Only as to the touch of that great Hand Their substance answers, which when it outlined A cosmos on the waters, and designed Earth’s granite frame, and sundered sea and land, Laid in man’s heart a Law, more deeply planned Than that of nations, compassing his kind. And in that Law eternal stands revealed How by self-abnegation man at length Comes to himself, how to the meek is sealed The habitable earth, how human strength Is perfected in weakness, into dross Earth’s glory sinks confronted with Christ’s cross.
HESEPE, _25th July_
XIII
Protector of the spirit, who by night With hands bent round it lanthorn-like dost frame Against the wind a shelter for its flame, Thyself a thing of spirit and a light, The Commonwealth! Yet in thy sovereign right Thou may’st not unrebuked, unchallenged claim To be the First and Last, a holier Name Than thine intoning from a higher height. For blood is on thy hand and on thy head, And war’s black cloud upon thy deep dark brow; And in thy shadow Socrates lies dead. And though awhile it needs must be that thou For man’s unrighteousness shalt legislate, Man’s righteousness will yet become thy Fate.
HESEPE, _17th July_
ENGLAND AND OXFORD
I
Line after line the tale beneath the pen Moves on, and rodent Time with tireless tooth Works o’er our portion, till one day forsooth We tread the cool gray shadow, ageing men. This change I mark, and sadly pondering then Catch the soul’s murmur, accented with ruth: “Oh, let me hear upon the lips of youth ‘Eothen’ and ‘Eothen’ once again!” And Oxford, oh, do thou with soulful toil, While o’er our folk tumultuous ages throng, Mounted at night as o’er some priceless spoil, For us the fineness of this cult prolong, Still nurturing in our sweet English soil That glory from the Morningland of song.
HESEPE, _8th June_
II
Yet, Oxford, it is better thou should’st know That eyes which love thee in thy culture see The withering curse of long sterility. Rooted in England, thou hast ceased to grow Together with her growth. Thy waters flow Not with her broadening current to the sea, But murmuring their delicious melody They wander forth and wist not where they go. And thus thy fine-edged spirit, which in high Disdain hath never paltered with the pelf Of modern rapine, doth too often fly To endless crochets, wayward as an elf, Self-humouring and posturing and shy, And broods apart and lives unto itself.[2]
HESEPE, _8th June_
[2] It is hoped that it may not be thought too much of a liberty in an outsider to criticize anything so esoteric as the Oxford culture; but if so I should reply that it is just this esoteric quality which I wish to criticize. Admiration for Oxford and love of England alike compel me to deplore the fact that so typical a _product_ of our national life should be so little _representative_.
III
None than thyself more royally to-day Hath given to England in her hour of need. In every field where England’s children bleed Thine own have there more richly bled than they. And Oxford still incarnadines the clay To such a sanctity as doth o’erplead The voice of censure, silenced by the deed Of the great heart that laid them where they lay. ’Tis their’s, that murmur fluttering from the marge Of thither Acheron, where their cares they ply In deathless death: “O Mother mine, enlarge Thy life to England’s. Thou hast learned to die. But while thy life thou dost so grandly give, One thing thou lackest, Oxford: learn to live!”
HESEPE, _8th June_
IV
There is one source alone which can supply New life and impulse. ’Tis a voice that rolls Half inarticulate in English souls, From field and mine and factory, where they ply The single talent Fate did not deny, Their labour. Now they hear upon the shoals Of a sad life that there are other goals To man’s existence than they yet descry; And, scarcely yet discerned, they deeply feel A presence over them, a haunting sense Of music in the world, whose echoes steal Unto them from the spheres, where in the immense Circle of night and day the planets keep Measure and watch, while mortals toil and weep.
HESEPE, _15th June_
V
Thine be it to direct their steps aright Unto that bourne which doth not cease to haunt. They cry for it, not knowing what they want, Or what for man is best--the use of sight; Some inkling of the precious power of light, To glorify a mean existence gaunt, And check the bitter self-inflicted taunt That nothing worthy calls them home at night. And thou can’st set them questing, make them feel The nearness of true knowledge, where it lies In common things with which they daily deal, Yet ending in the Splendour of the skies; Or teach them in shunned volumes to detect The simplicity of letters unsuspect.
HESEPE, _16th June_
VI
Yet--for the kindly Mother may not quit Her cloistered sanctuary, where from the height Of scholarship’s remoteness day and night She strains truth’s fabric--it is those who sit A season at her feet, and learn to fit Their spirits to her own, who must requite These lofty cares, and carry out the light, And serve it round, and tend its burning, lit. But thine, O Kindly Mother, first to prove Thy ministers, and having chosen, tune, Bringing thy spirit o’er them, till they move Like one at thy behest--as to the moon, Passing soft influence from the quiet skies, The oceans with their weight of waters rise.
HESEPE, _16th June_
VII
One thing must be thine instant, anxious care, Which on thine honour thou dar’st not refuse. Long time our people now the habit lose Of speech consecutive (which man should wear Upon him like a garment, fit and fair) And through some faulting of the brain abuse Thought’s flowing vesture of a thousand hues, Oft shorn to shreds, all fluttering in the air. I mark and grieve; for in this lost control We trace the weakness of these breathless times, When man no longer keeps his nature whole, Nor governs his spirit; and it chimes With the unruly in us, deadliest threat Our English liberty hath fronted yet.
HESEPE, _17th June_
VIII
It is not for art’s sake this precious dower Of speech must be renewed, but for the sake Of life within. The expression doth not break Silence in vain, but with reflexive power To vitalize its source, and parting shower New riches on the donor. Thus we take Life’s counterthrust upon our souls, and shake The vessel, lest by standing Being sour. All life’s a language; but ’tis not enough To launch forth with it wildly into space, Adding one atom to the blinding drain, A pitiable froth-bell in the trough Of each new cause, wherein the striving race Tries issue with stern time--perchance in vain.
HESEPE, _20th June_
HOME THOUGHTS ONCE MORE
I
A week of nights and days once more brings round The Sabbath tide; and once again the heart Sets yearningly to homewards. Do they part At the church door to-day, as when the stound Of disillusioned fancy last unbound Memory’s deep wound, and in the bitter smart The vision vanished? Ah, the shadows start To life again across the haunted ground; The kindly farewells said, the sauntering walk Home through the sun-baked streets, by twos and twos, The friendly flow of pleasant secular talk, And personalities and trivial news. And the long winding prospect of the day, The feast of children yet shall wile away.
HESEPE, _26-27th May_
II
’Tis July, and a sunny stillness broods On our magnificent England. Misty skies Break into blue, and ripening harvests rise Over her bosom. Her majestic woods Ripple and sway before the varying moods Of the west wind. The roses sacrifice In every garden to the sun. There lies Deep peace o’er all: no sound profane intrudes. Far in the north the solemn mountains keep A sanctuary amongst the shades that dwell In the deep gloom of haunted Highland glens, Where silence awes, and where for ever sleep In lochs unfathomed and inscrutable The shadows of the everlasting Bens.
HESEPE, _2nd July_
III
There is another England, that which feeds Our sinews where the champing engines chide Beneath the settled darkness that doth hide Earth’s stricken face from Rotherham to Leeds. Deep in that gloom the blinding furnace bleeds A molten treasure: England is supplied; A million hammers roar along the Clyde; The transport of a million men proceeds. And all this horror of the work of man, Effacing God, I magnify and bless-- The way that leads out leading also through, While God goes round to compass His great plan, And out of ashes and of hideousness By curse of toil Creation blooms anew.
HESEPE, _3rd July_
INTERLUDE
I
My hundredth sonnet! Here I pause to brood A little by myself upon the theme Ere once again with the meandering stream Of my own thoughts I move. And it were good To give thanks for the labour that hath stood Between my soul and madness, like a gleam Of sunlight in the darkness of the dream Which passes over me, else scarce withstood. Wonderful is it how the heart o’erwrought Unloads in song, life’s passionate rebound ’Gainst agonies whose barb alone hath brought This bird of sorrows fluttering to the ground, And with these wild and wandering flowers of thought The portion of a prisoner metely crowned.
HESEPE, _23rd June_
II
I ponder on the form, and truth to tell, ’Twere scarcely to be deemed a sonnet chain Which did not in its forged length contain Some turn contemplative, where for a spell The smith might lay his hammer by, to dwell Upon the pattern, lest the octet strain The content, or the sextet court in vain A bigger thought than it can compass well. And oft when to the varying interplay Of partnered sounds I strive thought’s flower to train Upon this trellis, the perplexing way By lucky chance of rime lies sudden plain, And I cry out with Agathon: τέχνη τύχην ἔστερξε καὶ τύχη τέχνην.
HESEPE, _23rd June_
III