Chapter 2

All these things heard and seen and sung of old, He heard and saw and sang them. Once again Might foot of man tread, eye of man behold Things unbeholden save of ancient men, Ways save by gods untrodden. In his hold The staff that stayed through some Ætnean glen The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as then Became a prophet's rod, A lyre on fire of God, Being still the staff of exile: yea, as when The voice poured forth on us Was even of Æschylus, And his one word great as the crying of ten, Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong, Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song.

32.

Him too whom none save one before him ever Beheld, nor since hath man again beholden, Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giver Of all gifts back to man by time withholden, Shakespeare--him too, whom sea-like ages sever, As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden To landward, from our songs that find him never, Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden-- Him too this one song found, And raised at its sole sound Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden Legends forlorn of breath, Up from the deeps of death, Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden, The wise divine strong soul, whom fate Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great.

33.

Nor stands the seer who raised him less august Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe, Less constant or less loving or less just, But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith, Holding all high and gentle names in trust Of time for honour; so his quickening breath Called from the darkness of their martyred dust Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth, Revived and reinspired With speech from heavenward fired By love to say what Love the Archangel saith Only, nor may such word Save by such ears be heard As hear the tongues of angels after death Descending on them like a dove Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love.

34.

All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things, All generous names and loyal, and all wise, With all his heart in all its wayfarings He sought, and worshipped, seeing them with his eyes In very present glory, clothed with wings Of words and deeds and dreams immortal, rise Visible more than living slaves and kings, Audible more than actual vows and lies: These, with scorn's fieriest rod, These and the Lord their God, The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the skies As they Lord Gods of earth, These with a rage of mirth He mocked and scourged and spat on, in such wise That none might stand before his rod, And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or God.

35.

For of all souls for all time glorious none Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best, Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest, Of all words heard on earth the noblest one That ever spake for souls and left them blest: GLADLY WE SHOULD REST EVER, HAD WE WON FREEDOM: WE HAVE LOST, AND VERY GLADLY REST. O poet hero, lord And father, we record Deep in the burning tablets of the breast Thankfully those divine And living words of thine For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest With strokes engraven past hurt of years And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears.

36.

But who being less than thou shall sing of thee Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn? Who sing the golden garland woven of three, Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn, More godlike than the graven gods men see Made all but all immortal, human born And heavenly natured? With the first came He, Led by the living hand, who left forlorn Life by his death, and time More by his life sublime Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn, And even for mourning praise Heaven, as for all those days These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn By memory till all time lie dead, And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head.

37.

Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours, Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace, And verier daughter of his most perfect hours Than any of latter time or alien place Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers Only, nor wearing on her statelier face The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers That graced and guarded round that holiest race, That heavenliest and most high Time hath seen live and die, Poured all their power upon him to retrace The erased immortal roll Of Love's most sovereign scroll And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace, The scroll that on Aspasia's knees Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.

38.

Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air, Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third, With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird The walls engirdling with a circling stair My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word Fell from her flowerlike mouth Not sweet with all the south; As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred And spake, as o'er it shone That bright Pentameron, And his own vines again and chestnuts heard Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme.

39.

No lovelier laughed the garden which receives Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves, Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies, Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs, In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes What yet the wisest of the starriest wise Whom Greece might ever hear Speaks in the gentlest ear That ever heard love's lips philosophize With such deep-reasoning words As blossoms use and birds, Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise Far off, in no wise over far, Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.

40.

What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire, Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night, Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre That makes time's face pale with its reflex light And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire, A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might Alternating wore ever shapes more dire Nor manifest in all men's awful sight In form and face that wore Heaven's light and likeness more Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height More fearful, since man first Slaked with man's blood his thirst, Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight, Till tower on ruining tower was hurled Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world.

41.

Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand Who carved their several praise in words of gold To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand, Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold For price of blood or incense, dust or sand, Triumph or terror. He that sought of old His father Ammon in a stranger's land, And shrank before the serpentining fold, Stood in our seer's wide eye No higher than man most high, And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold Fast as a scripture furled The scroll of all the world Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold First thief of empire, round whose head Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1]

42.

As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss, He saw the light of death, riotous and red, Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, The steely snows of Russia, for the tread Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss The snaky lines of blood violently shed. Like living creeping things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of lust, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change her high bright spirit and clear, For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.

43.

As light that blesses, hallowing with a look; He saw the godhead in Vittoria's face Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took, Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace, A strength more heavenly to confront and brook All ill things coiled about his worldly race, From the bright scripture of that present book Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace Comfort more sweet than youth, And hope whose child was truth, And love that brought forth sorrow for a space, Only that she might bear Joy: these things, written there, Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place, Perused with eyes whose glory and glow Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo.

44.

With balms and dews of blessing he consoled The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang, Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang On her fair hand, even till the stain of old Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang From other strings divine Ere his rekindling line With yet more piteous and intolerant pang Pierced all men's hearts anew That heard her passion through Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts, Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests.

45.

He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth And majesty of meanest men born free, That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth The whole world worthier of the sun to see: The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth Wherein souls festered by the servile sea That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth Thronged round with worship in Parthenope. His hand bade Justice guide Her child Tyrannicide, Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be; And pierced with Tyrrel's dart Again the riotous heart That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee: And oped the cell where kinglike death Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth.

46.

Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one, For the base heart that soiled the starry mind Stern, for the father in his child undone Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed With their sweet image visibly set on As by God's hand, clear as his own designed The likeness radiant out of ages gone That none may now destroy Of that high Roman boy Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son True-born of sovereign seed, Foredoomed even thence to bleed, The stately grace of bright Cæsarion, The head unbent, the heart unbowed, That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud.

47.

With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus At once by service and similitude, Service devout and worship emulous Of the same golden Muses once they wooed, The names and shades adored of all of us, The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood, Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed With blessings bright like tears From the old memorial years, And loves and lovely laughters, every mood Sweet as the drops that fell Of their own oenomel From living lips to cheer the multitude That feeds on words divine, and grows More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.

48.

Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story, The silent music that no strange note jars, Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary With much long warfare, and with gradual bars Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory, Broke, and the power came back that passion mars: And at the lovely last Above all anguish past Before his own the sightless eyes like stars Arose that watched arise Like stars in other skies Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars The Dioscurian songs divine That lighten all the world with lightning of their line.

49.

He sang the last of Homer, having sung The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung About the day-star, doubtful to divide, Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried, Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung, Homer, and grey Laertes at his side Kingly as kings are none Beneath a later sun, And the sweet maiden ministering in pride To sovereign and to sage In their more sweet old age: These things he sang, himself as old, and died. And if death be not, if life be, As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.

50.

Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind And all bright words and all sweet works thereof; Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind; Heart that no fear but every grief might move Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind; The purest soul that ever proof could prove From taint of tortuous or of envious mind; Whose eyes elate and clear Nor shame nor ever fear But only pity or glorious wrath could blind; Name set for love apart, Held lifelong in my heart, Face like a father's toward my face inclined; No gilts like thine are mine to give, Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.

[1] Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write? Time, in his children's blood who takes delight.

_From the Greek of Landor._

NOTES.

6. See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor.

10. The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir.

13. Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este.

14, 15. Poems 'on the Dead.'

16. Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.

17, 18. Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris Aram.

19, 20. Imaginary Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; Æschines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and Marvell; Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania.

21, 22, 23. Hellenics: To Corinth.

24. Hellenics: Regeneration.

25. The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.

26. The Shades of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia.

27. Enallos and Cymodameia.

28. The Children of Venus.

29. Cupid and Pan.

30. The Death of Clytemnestra; The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of Orestes.

32. The Last of Ulysses.

33. Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt.

35. _Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos._

36. The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.

37. Pericles and Aspasia.

38. The Pentameron.

39. Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.

40. Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio Æmilianus, Polybius, and Panætius.

41. Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the Senate.

42. The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff.

43. Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti.

44. Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five Scenes (Beatrice Cenci).

45. Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (_Imaginary Conversations_) Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge Wolfgang and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (_The Last Fruit off an Old Tree_): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn.

46. Essex and Spenser (_Imaginary Conversations_): Essex and Bacon: Antony and Octavius (_Scenes for the Study_).

47. Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus.

48, 49. Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha.

'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or half our obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible genius of the great man whose life and whose labour lasted even from the generation of our fathers' fathers to our own? Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so deeply as I feel the inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect gratitude to the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but 'such as I had have I given him.'

GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS

FROM

ARISTOPHANES

_Attempted in English verse after the original metre._

I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapæstic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language; and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees: and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line--which I doubt--could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause, in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who

'dance as 'twere to the music Their own hoofs make.'

I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation: but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes.

_THE BIRDS._

(685-723.)

Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations, That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations, Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures fast fleeing, Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being: Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts are eternal; That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things aright as to matters supernal, Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of streams, and the dark beyond reaching, Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus pack with his preaching.

It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and hell's broad border, Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb of the dark without order First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched in her bosom, Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a blossom, Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning. He, after his wedlock with Chaos, whose wings are of darkness, in hell broad-burning, For his nestlings begat him the race of us first, and upraised us to light new-lighted. And before this was not the race of the gods, until all things by Love were united; And of kind united with kind in communion of nature the sky and the sea are Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the gods everlasting and blest. So that we are Far away the most ancient of all things blest. And that we are of Love's generation There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings, and with us have the Loves habitation; And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom of them ended, Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued, by the help of us only befriended, With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb staring and splendid.

All best good things that befall men come from us birds, as is plain to all reason: For first we proclaim and make known to them spring, and the winter and autumn in season; Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric, in shrill-voiced emigrant number, And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season, and slumber; And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs if it freezes. And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the breezes, And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. Then does the swallow Give you notice to sell your greatcoat, and provide something light for the heat that's to follow. Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you, Dodona, nay, Phoebus Apollo. For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in all things your carriage, Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any one's marriage. And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to discerning prediction: Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon: you sneeze, and the sign's as a bird for conviction: All tokens are 'birds' with you--sounds too, and lackeys, and donkeys. Then must it not follow That we ARE to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in prophetic Apollo?

_October 19, 1880._

_OFF SHORE._

When the might of the summer Is most on the sea; When the days overcome her With joy but to be, With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free,

But for hours upon hours As a thrall she remains Spell-bound as with flowers And content in their chains, And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes;

Then only, far under In the depths of her hold, Some gleam of its wonder Man's eye may behold, Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold.

Still deeper and dimmer And goodlier they glow For the eyes of the swimmer Who scans them below As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and snow.

Soft blossomless frondage And foliage that gleams As to prisoners in bondage The light of their dreams, The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams.

Not as prisoners entombed Waxen haggard and wizen, But consoled and illumed In the depths of their prison With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen,