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                            THE WHITE SAIL

                            And Other Poems




                            THE WHITE SAIL
                          AND OTHER POEMS. BY
                         LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                           TICKNOR & COMPANY
                          PUBLISHERS, BOSTON


                          _Copyright, 1887_,
                        BY TICKNOR AND COMPANY.

                        _All rights reserved._


                           University Press:
                    JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.




       _A SALUTE by night, than night’s own heart-beat stiller,
              From the dying to the living. Keats! I lay
           Here against thy moonlit, storm-unshaken pillar,
                         My garland of a day._




CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE

THE WHITE SAIL                                                        11


Legends.

TARPEIA                                                               35

THE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR                                             40

THE RISE OF THE TIDE                                                  44

CHALUZ CASTLE                                                         48

THE WOOING PINE                                                       51

THE SERPENT’S CROWN                                                   57

MOUSTACHE                                                             62

RANIERI                                                               65

SAINT CADOC’S BELL                                                    68

A CHOUAN                                                              76


Lyrics.

YOUTH                                                                 83

THE LAST FAUN                                                         85

KNIGHTS OF WEATHER                                                    87

DAYBREAK                                                              90

ON SOME OLD MUSIC                                                     91

LATE PEACE                                                            94

TO A YOUNG POET                                                       97

DE MORTUIS                                                            98

DOWN STREAM                                                           99

THE INDIAN PIPE                                                      103

BROOK FARM                                                           105

‘MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS’                                          107

GARDEN CHIDINGS                                                      108

FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM                                                      109

BANKRUPT                                                             110

A REASON FOR SILENCE                                                 112

TEMPTATION                                                           113

FOR A CHILD                                                          115

AGLAUS                                                               116

AN AUDITOR                                                           118

THE WATER-TEXT                                                       119

CYCLAMEN                                                             120

A PASSING SONG                                                       124

IN TIME                                                              125

THE WILD RIDE                                                        126

THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE                                               128

A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY                                               129

IMMUNITY                                                             130

PAULA’S EPITAPH                                                      131

JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX                                                132


Sonnets.

APRIL DESIRE                                                         137

TWOFOLD SERVICE                                                      138

IN THE GYMNASIUM                                                     139

A SALUTATION                                                         140

AT A SYMPHONY                                                        141

SLEEP                                                                142

THE ATONING YESTERDAY                                                143

‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS’                                             144

FOUR SONNETS FROM ‘LA VITA NUOVA’                                    145




          THE WHITE SAIL.


    HIGH on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry,
    The promontoried porch of Attica,
    Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair
    Down-glittered with the breaker’s volleying foam
    Visioned before him in the level dark:
    Ægeus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king.
    And round about his knees, and at his feet,
    In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight,
    Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups
    Sheer to the ocean’s edge, those liegemen fond
    Who with him wished and wept. As thro’ the hours
    Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill,
    Lies summer’s russet ruined panoply,
    Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds
    Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow
    Globes itself on the summit; so they clung
    Secure among the rangèd crevices,
    Month after month, and wakeful night on night
    Vigilant; ever neighbored and o’ertopped
    With that white presence, and the boding sky.

    And Ægeus prayed: ‘O give me back but him!
    My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount,
    My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace
    Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths
    Or into battle’s maw: my lad of Athens!
    With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show
    Infancy’s golden-silken underglow;
    The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea
    Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes
    In one close sombre file against his cheek,
    Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop,
    Wherethro’ gleams laughter as thro’ sorrow’s pale.
    And anger’s self doth tremble maidenly;
    The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth;
    The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride,
    As I so oft have marked, when from the chase,
    The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow,
    Heading the burdened company, he came,
    Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler
    Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus!
    Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation,
    Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty
    Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded
    Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear,
    And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming,
    Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods!
    Forasmuch as I love him and await him,
    Who from my youth have been your servitor,
    Yield my old age its boon of vindication:
    Haven the happy ship here, ere I die.’

    Still heedlessly the hushed moon bent her bow
    Over the unshorn forest oakenry
    And the dense gladiate leaves of Thoræ’s pine:
    The cold and incommunicable moon,
    Waxing and waning thro’ the barren time
    That brought not Theseus’ self, nor of him sign,
    Nor any waif of rumor out of Crete,
    Whereto, a year nigh gone, the ship had sped
    Forlorn; her decks enshrouded in plucked yew
    Strewn to the mizzen; and her oary props
    And halyards all with blossomed myrtle twined,
    And every sail dark as from looms of hell,
    In token of the universal dole.
    And on her heavèd anchor and spurred keel
    Cheers none, but protest, moans, and ire attended,
    When from the quay, in melancholy weather
    Forward she sobbed on black unwilling wing.

    But ere that going drear, one foot ashore,
    Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand,--
    The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed,
    Lifted his head, and met his father’s eyes,
    And out of morning ardor made this oath:
    ‘My people, stand not for our sakes in tears!
    No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike
    And overcome, Heaven’s favor for my shield.
    And when engirt with conquest I return
    (Or never else hies Theseus hitherward),
    That ye may read my heart while yet at sea,
    And know indeed that fate hath used me fair,
    That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home,
    Lo, I will set upon the central mast
    The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze,
    White to that fierce and alien coast, and white
    To your espial, from the horizon’s brink
    Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy.
    Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me.’

    And they believed and watched, albeit with dread,
    Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king,
    Who, taciturn and close-engarmented,
    From his nocturnal towered station leaned
    Pining against the unresponsive tide.
    And thro’ his brain, with hum processional,
    Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus,
    The race he won of yore, the song he sang;
    His truth, his eloquence, his April moods,
    And all his championship of trodden tribes,
    Since first he lit on Athens, like a star.

    For Ægeus, to the low-voiced Meta wed,
    Thereafter to Rhexenor’s daughter spouse,
    Childless, and by his brethren’s guile deposed,
    Led by a last mysterious oracle,
    Once, exiled, to Trœzene wandered down;
    And there, accorded Aphrodite’s grace,
    To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised,
    Atonement and conciliation sweet,
    Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway
    Bereavèd Æthra, of old Pelops’ race
    Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home.
    But with the auroral kiss of parting, he
    In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore
    Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock,
    And both the jewelled sandals from his feet,
    With lofty exhortation: ‘Bid my son,
    When he, with strength inherited of mine
    Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon,
    And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!’
    And Æthra bided, dreaming, at the court,
    Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes.

    And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves,
    Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly,
    Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb
    Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide,
    But with strange awe hang o’er him worshipping,
    As one that turns with passionate-praying lips
    East to the Delian shrine he shall not see:
    Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent
    In wicker-work of some swart soldier’s skill,
    With lisping promise aye to nourish it;
    And stroked his plaining bird for one long day,
    But on the morrow ceased his fostering,
    And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd
    Of water unreplenished. Then the child
    Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute;
    And Æthra held his innocent hand in hers
    With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw
    Remorse, and irremediable ache,
    And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves
    To the eased byways of forgetfulness.
    She, his hot brows caressing, so besought
    The weeping prince: ‘If thou, O little son!
    Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself,
    Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe.
    Be a trust broken but a small, small thing,
    Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.’
    And ere the dial veered, did Æthra speak
    His vanished father’s name and gave the charge,
    And led him to the rock, and in him fired
    The aspirations of his godlike race.

    Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he
    Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft
    Burst thro’ arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn,
    And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light,
    Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole
    The granite treasurer of those tokens twain:
    With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand,
    His cloud of yellow hair hanging before,
    Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee
    With obdurate sieges, into its hard side;
    Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb,
    Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours,
    Beating a moated way about that place
    Where the grim guardian held a fixèd foot;
    And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears,
    Stole back, o’ervanquished, to his quiet nooks.
    There would he woo his mother’s frequent tale,
    And urge her gentle prophecy, that he
    The kinsman of great Herakles, should too
    Rise, mighty, and o’er earth’s fell odds prevail.
    Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart
    To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew,
    Season on season, patient. And behold,
    When the tenth summer’s delicate keen dews
    Died from his shoreward path, at last befell
    One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock
    At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed,
    Clean to the sea’s verge rolled that doughty bulk!
    And Theseus, in his full inheritance,
    In the superb meridian of his youth,
    Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast,
    Climbed to his mother’s bower. Æthra laid
    Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned,
    Thereby apprised the destined hour had come,
    And having sped her boy upon his quest,
    Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died.

    Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland,
    All robber-plagues infesting those still glens
    Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed.
    Phæa, prodigious Crommyonian shape,
    Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew;
    And of his dominant valor overcame
    The smith-god’s son, who with the mortal mace
    Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur;
    Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge,
    He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb
    Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs;
    And him that thrust the lavers of his feet
    Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served
    By dint of hospitable precedent;
    Wide Marathonia’s lordly bull he led,
    Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose,
    To the knife’s edge at bland Apollo’s shrine;
    Last, guided to a grove sabbatical,
    Knelt to the chanting white Phytalidæ,
    And in their midst was chrismed, and purified
    From all the bloodshed of his troublous path.

    On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode,
    Docile to Æthra’s warning, that unnamed,
    And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire;
    For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held
    The city’s sovereignty; and overruled
    Their father’s childless brother, Ægeus old:
    The agile, able, proud Pallantidæ,
    Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir,
    Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war.
    Therefore, unheralded, with wary step,
    Chancing upon an open banquet-hall,
    Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed
    The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy;
    And straight, along the heaped board glancing down,
    Evil Medea, on her harmful track
    From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted.

    This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late
    Her tender brother’s slayer, whose vile spells
    Had promised Ægeus princes of his blood.
    Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon,
    Honor, the flood august of all his life:
    For he, distrustful of the oracles,
    Inasmuch as Trœzene flowered no hope,
    Now in the season of his utmost need,
    Subservient to the sorceress and her whims,
    Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her;
    And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine
    With golden incident and public pomp,
    Holding by night most sumptuous festival,
    Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned.
    Now Theseus knew that wily woman’s face,
    Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes,
    Shrank close to Ægeus, voluble with fear,
    And urged within his palm a carven bowl,
    That he should bid the young wayfarer drain
    Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught:
    Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell,
    Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth,
    And sprang to cower the temptress with a word.
    But at the instant, sprang her minions too,
    And riot and upbraidings dire began,
    Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging.
    Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro’ the fray,
    With love’s suspicion kindling in his veins,
    And gained that space before the startled host
    Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away:
    Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet,
    Shod with the shoon Ægean; and his arm
    Sabred with the one sword that Ægeus knew!
    Who, blanching ’neath roused memory’s ebb and flow,
    Among the wrangling merry-makers all,
    Clarioned ‘My own!’ and strained him to his breast.

    Theseus, in those fresh days of his return,
    Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste
    Bore down on the usurping lords of state,
    Juniors and kin of his discrownèd sire;
    Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld
    Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor,
    And Ægeus, o’er the wreckage of their reign
    Exalted, with calm brows indiademed.
    Then was the sacred and sequestered prime
    Of liberation, benison, and peace;
    When the round heaven, in summer’s ministrance
    Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end
    Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue,
    Comely and yet with rains ingerminate,
    Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent
    His nimble princeling. In a fortnight’s span,
    The island lad, competing in the games,
    Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob
    Made rude revolt, and took upon itself
    The barbarous dishonor of his death.
    And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town,
    Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise:
    ‘Athens shall yearly proffer unto me
    Her virgin tribute of patrician seed,
    Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot,
    Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur.’
    Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head.

    So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro’ the realm,
    Aye of its dearest blood depopulate,
    And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year,
    Youngest of all departed, full thirteen
    Faltered aboard the deck calamitous;
    And with them Theseus, best-belovèd Theseus,
    The king’s sole-born, whom last the doom befell.
    But as no sister-galley e’er set out
    To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse
    Returning with her steersman, went this ship,
    Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt
    To thread the maze Dædalian, and destroy
    The pampered monster, holding harm at bay
    From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash
    Homeward, to chime of oar-compellèd waves,
    Signalling with the white exultant sail!
    ‘So that I live, this thing,’ he said, ‘is sworn:
    Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me.’

    Such tales of Theseus’ youth his father’s mind
    Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night,
    Deep pondering on each noble circumstance,
    As a man shifteth, thro’ an idle hour,
    Anon with hand in light, anon in shade,
    The lustres of his one memorial gem.
    And oft the king, with a foreboding throe
    Called, urging eld’s unserviceable sight:
    ‘Shines the white sail yet?’ Spake the murmurous ring:
    ‘Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on.’
    Then the fond voice of Ægeus, askingly:
    ‘Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.’

    Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth
    The king had cherished, from a mossy seat,
    The anxious faces turned his happy way;
    And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm,
    Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained
    Against the diapason of the sea.

    ‘Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces,
    Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free:
    Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces,
    The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee.

    ‘My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing
    Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day!
    And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging,
    Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away.’

    But the king hid his brow in both wan hands,
    Sighing: ‘That song at her beguiling feet,
    Out of my brief enslavement, did I make
    The year that Theseus on our revels stole.
    It sears me like a brand with fires o’erpast:
    Be silent, my Alcamenes! spare it me.
    Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain
    With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal
    That sets the dull blood dancing.’ Theron smiled,
    Masking suspense (for he was Theseus’ friend),
    Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin
    Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king,
    In trolling of an agitated lay.

    ‘I drowse in the grass, to the crickets’ elfin strings,
    With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book,
    At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs,
    Cydippe’s hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill!
    Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look,
    My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill,
    In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook:
    Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill!
    My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings,
    Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there.
    See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings
    Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe’s hand thro’ my hair.’

    Again, with swift uneasy gesturing
    Turned Ægeus, chiding, and protested ere
    The whipped-up courage of that roundel’s close:
    ‘Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song,
    A song of retribution.’ For he thought:
    ‘So retribution dogs my bruisèd age;
    Still, still Medea’s soft and deadly name
    Stings all the leafy splendor of my life,
    And daunts the morrow’s bud. And if there be
    A reckoning I must pay for follies past,
    Must it be--O not that, not now, not here!’
    And drawing to his height, he cried: ‘The sail?
    Comes the sail from the south?’ They chorused ‘Naught
    Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull.’
    And Ægeus, craving solace, urged once more:
    ‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul,
    In numbers honey-clear.’ Now Rhodalus
    The poet, too, was loyal sentinel;
    A fiery patriot, wont to domineer
    The moods of Athens; very potent he,
    And flexile-throated as the nightingale.
    With all his fingers knit about his knee,
    And head against a hoary pillar raised,
    Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge,
    Riddling the unintelligible space,--
    Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives,
    And interstellar agonies of midnight;
    To him the king’s voice throbbed a second time:
    ‘Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul.’
    Who, grave with poesy’s most candid mien,
    Answered the summons softly: ‘Sire, I cannot.
    The music of my brothers is amiss,
    So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested
    From their discreet and silvern vassalage,
    Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus’ sake.
    I cannot sing. But O you holy stars!
    Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory;
    Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits;
    You domèd guardians of this tear-bound earth,
    You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands
    Hale rank on rank, thro’ warless cities riding!
    Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven,
    Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs
    That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace,
    Bide thro’ the watches with us; shine; exhale not!’
    And the dense quiet bound them.

                                        Cautiously,
    In his far corner, one behind the king
    At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush,
    With nervous finger twitched his neighbor’s sleeve,
    And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue,
    And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced
    Towards twilight’s gracious advent, crept in awe
    With arm extended, to his fellow’s side;
    And the two thrilled alike, immovable,
    Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye,
    Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked,
    Piloting his keen sight across the main,
    And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan,
    And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes
    The apprehensive company dropped aghast
    Out on the reeling ragged precipice
    Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide:
    Till Ægeus, slow-divining dupe of hope,
    Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne,
    Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked
    In gyral passage, like Ixion’s wheel,
    Spoke on accursèd spoke, portending woe.
    But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle
    Called like a ghost from walled eternity:
    ‘What of the sail? What cheer?’ Their lips congealed
    Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on.
    Intolerable arid east-blown wave
    Vaulting on wave thro’ all her caverns loud,
    Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea.

    Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate,
    Spied leaning o’er the crags the frenzied king,
    Rending his garment to the paling moon;
    And yet evasive of those pleading eyes,
    Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast,
    Adjured him: ‘O most reverend, O most dear!
    The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain.
    Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black.’
    And all the trancèd host burst into moan.

    Old Ægeus, like a dreamer, muttered ‘Aye,’
    Passive; and from his brain the fever fell,
    And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen
    Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear.
    Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white;
    The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead
    In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead;
    Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty
    Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead!
    And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf
    All winter gibbeted upon that bough
    Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery!
    Inert, of his own broken heart impelled,
    From the steep, solitary trysting-place,
    King Ægeus, like a stone, dropped in the sea.

    A wraith of smoke, fast-driven against a flame,
    Yon by the crimsoning east the dark ship moved,
    Her herald noises strangely borne ashore:
    ‘Joy, joy!’ and interlinked: ‘O joy, O joy,
    Athens our mother! joy to all thy gates!’
    And thunderous firm acclaim of minstrelsy,
    Laughter, and antheming, and salvos wild
    Outran the racing prow. But mute they lay,
    The blinded watchers, spent beyond desire,
    Wounded beyond this wonder’s balsaming.

    Yet ever, thro’ the trembling lovely light,
    Known voice on voice re-echoed, face on face
    Uprose in resurrection. They were safe,
    And Athens, hark! from her long thraldom free!
    And Theseus, victor, sang and sailed with them,
    The pale unsistered Phædra for his bride,
    For whom was constant Ariadne cast
    On Naxos, where a god did comfort her.
    Theseus! who when his bark the shallows grazed,
    Leaped in the gentle waves for boyish glee,
    Gained the thronged highway, crossed it at a bound,
    Scaling the cliffs; and stood among them there,
    Clausus, and his dear Theron, and the rest,
    Nodding upon the clamorous crowd below;
    But they, as soon, had turned them blunt away,
    In hot resentment of that false one. He,
    O’erbrimming with frank welcomes, in dismay,
    Stricken with sight of unresponsive hands,
    Scenting disaster, reining up his tongue,
    Asked sharply for the king.

                                He understood
    After mad struggle and bewilderment,
    And gloomy gazing on the absent deeps.
    Down on the penitential rock he sank,
    All his fair body palpitant with shame,
    Syllabing agony: ‘Ægeus, Ægeus! ah,
    Glory of Hellas! dead for trust in me.
    Life-giver, irrecoverable friend,
    My father! ah, ah, loving father mine,
    Ah, dear my father!... I forgot the sail.’

    And the great morn burst. On a hundred hills
    The marigold unbarred her casement bright.




          LEGENDS




          TARPEIA.


    WOE: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam!
    Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!

    Lo, now it was night, with the moon looking chill as she went:
    It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent.

    The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird;
    She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.

    Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light;
    All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.

    The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee;
    The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:

    Exquisite artifice, whorls of barbaric design,
    Frost’s fixèd mimicry; orbic imaginings fine

    In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them,
    The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.

    And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye.
    ‘I had never such trinkets!’ she sighed,--like a lute was her sigh.

    ‘Were they mine at the plea, were they mine for the token, all told,
    Now the citadel sleeps, now my father the keeper is old,

    ‘If I go by the way that I know, and thou followest hard,
    If yet at the touch of Tarpeia the gates be unbarred?’

    The chief trembled sharply for joy, then drew rein on his soul:
    ‘Of all this arm beareth I swear I will cede thee the whole.’

    And up from the nooks of the camp, with hoarse plaudit outdealt,
    The bearded Sabini glanced hotly, and vowed as they knelt,

    Bare-stretching the wrists that bore also the glowing great boon:
    ‘Yea! surely as over us shineth the lurid low moon,

    ‘Not alone of our lord, but of each of us take what he hath!
    Too poor is the guerdon, if thou wilt but show us the path.’

    Her nostril upraised, like a fawn’s on the arrowy air,
    She sped; in a serpentine gleam to the precipice stair,

    They climbed in her traces, they closed on their evil swift star:
    She bent to the latches, and swung the huge portal ajar.

    Repulsed where they passed her, half-tearful for wounded belief,
    ‘The bracelets!’ she pleaded. Then faced her the leonine chief,
    And answered her: ‘Even as I promised, maid-merchant, I do.’
    Down from his dark shoulder the baubles he sullenly drew.

    ‘This left arm shall nothing begrudge thee. Accept. Find it sweet.
    Give, too, O my brothers!’ The jewels he flung at her feet,

    The jewels hard, heavy; she stooped to them, flushing with dread,
    But the shield he flung after: it clanged on her beautiful head.

    Like the Apennine bells when the villagers’ warnings begin,
    Athwart the first lull broke the ominous din upon din;

    With a ‘Hail, benefactress!’ upon her they heaped in their zeal
    Death: agate and iron; death: chrysoprase, beryl and steel.

    ’Neath the outcry of scorn, ’neath the sinewy tension and hurl,
    The moaning died slowly, and still they massed over the girl
    A mountain of shields! and the gemmy bright tangle in links,
    A torrent-like gush, pouring out on the grass from the chinks,

    Pyramidal gold! the sumptuous monument won
    By the deed they had loved her for, doing, and loathed her for, done.

    Such was the wage that they paid her, such the acclaim:
    All Rome was aroused with the thunder that buried her shame.

    On surged the Sabini to battle. O you that aspire!
    Tarpeia the traitor had fill of her woman’s desire.

    Woe: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam!
    Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!




          THE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR.


          I.

    SCORNER of the pleading faces,
    In the first year of his reign,
    From the lean crowd and its traces

    Down the open orchard-lane
    Walked young Mahmoud in his glory,
    In his pomp and his disdain

    And beyond all oratory,
    Music’s sweetness, ocean’s might,
    Fell a voice from branches hoary:

    ‘He whose heart is at life’s height,
    Who has wisdom, love, and riches,
    Islam’s greatest, dies this night.’

    And he crossed the rampart ditches
    Blinded, and confused, and slow;
    High in palaced nooks and niches

    Clanged his fathers’ shields a-row;
    And their turrets triple-jointed
    Shook with tempests of his woe.

    Long past midnight, disanointed,
    Prone upon his breast he lay,
    Warring on that hour appointed:

    But behold! at break of day,--
    As if heaven itself had spoken,--
    Blown across the bannered bay,

    Over mart and mosque outbroken,
    Came the silver-solemn chime
    For some parted spirit’s token!

    Mahmoud, with free breath sublime,
    Summoned one whose snow-locks heaving
    Made the vision of hoar Time;

    And the red tides of thanksgiving
    On his lifted brow, he said:
    ‘In my city of the living,

    Which, proclaimed of bells, is dead?’
    And the gray beard answered: ‘Master,
    One who yesternight for bread

    At thy gateway’s bronze pilaster
    Begged in vain: blind Selim, he,
    Victim of the old disaster.’

    And the vassal suddenly
    Looked on his hard lord with wonder,
    For those tears were strange to see.


          II.

    Yet again, where boughs asunder
    Held the wavy orchard-tent,
    Sun-empurpled clusters under

    In changed mood the Caliph went;
    And anew heard sounds upgather,
    (Chidings with caressings blent,

    As the voice once of his father):
    ‘Haughty heart! not thou wert wise,
    Rich, belovèd; Selim, rather,

    ‘Islam’s prince in Allah’s eyes!
    Even the meek, in his great station,
    Freehold had of Paradise.’


          III.

    When the plague-wind’s desolation
    Pierced Bassora’s burning wall,
    Circled with a kneeling nation

    Whom his mercies held in thrall,
    Died the Caliph, whispering tender
    Counsel to his liegemen tall:

    ‘One last service, children! render
    Me, whose pride the Lord forgave:
    Not by our supreme Defender,

    ‘Not beside the holy wave,
    Not in places where my race is
    Lay me! but in Selim’s grave.’




          THE RISE OF THE TIDE.


    A FISHERMAN gray, one night of yore,
    His nets upgathered, plied the oar,
    Right merrily heading for a haven,
    While summer winds blew blithe before.

    He sat beneath his pennon white;
    His arms were brown, his eye was bright;
    Twice twenty years his breast had carried
    A ribbon from Lepanto’s fight.

    A cove he spied at sunset’s edge,
    With pleasant trees and margin-sedge;
    And barefoot went by stakes down-driven
    Thro’ shallows wading from the ledge,

    The boat drawn after; but behold!
    A check fell on his venture bold:
    He stood imprisoned, vainly leading
    The ropes in whitening fingers old.

    Within that black and marshy sound
    His weight had sunken; he was bound
    Knee-deep! and as he beat and struggled,
    The mocking ripples danced around.

    Long since the wood-thrush ceased her song;
    The summer wind grew fierce and strong;
    The shuddering moon went into hiding;
    Down came the storm to wreak him wrong.

    Against the prow he leaned his chin,
    Thinking of all his strength had been;
    Then turned, and laughed with courage steady:
    ‘O ho! what straits we twain are in!’

    And strove anew, unterrified,
    But lastly, wearied wholly, cried
    For succor, since his laden wherry
    Rocked ever on the coming tide.

    *       *       *       *       *

    ‘I hear a cry of anguish sore!’
    But straight his love had barred the door:
    ‘Bide here; the night bodes naught but danger.’
    Loud beat the waves along the shore.

    A bedded child made soft behest:
    ‘So loud the voice I cannot rest.’
    ‘It is the rain, dear, in the garden.’
    The cruel water binds his breast.

    ‘A lamp, a lamp! some traveller’s lost!’
    But thro’ the tavern roared the host:
    ‘Nay, only thunder rude and heavy.’
    Close to his lips the foam is tossed.

    ‘O listen well, my liege and king!
    Hark from gay halls this grievous thing!’
    ‘Strange how the wild wind drowns our music!’
    About his head the eddies swing.

    At stroke of three the abbot meek
    Moved out among his flock to speak
    This word, with tears of doubt and wonder:
    ‘I had a dream; come forth and seek.’

    With torch and flagon, forth they sped:
    The fisher glared from the harbor-bed!
    The tide, from his white hair down-fallen,
    All kindly ebbed, now he was dead.

    Lepanto’s star shone fast and good;
    The sea-kelp wrapped him like a hood;
    His arms were stretched in woe to heaven;
    The boat had drifted: so he stood.

    The Unavenged he seemed to be!
    Then fell each monk upon his knee:
    ‘Lord Christ!’ the abbot sang, awe-stricken:
    ‘Rest my old rival’s soul!’ sang he.




          CHALUZ CASTLE.


    THERE sped, at hint of treasure
    Dug from the garden-mould,
    Word to the doughty vassal:
    ‘Thy sovereign claims the gold!’
    ‘Nay, Richard, come and wrest it!’
    Said Vidomar the bold.

    Uprose the Lionhearted,
    He locked his armor on:
    And over seas that morrow
    Around his gonfalon,
    The crash and hiss of battle
    Blazed up, and mocked the sun.

    King Richard led his bowmen
    By Chaluz dark and high;
    Like rain and rack they followed
    His flashing storm-blue eye:
    Forth peered Bertrand de Gourdon
    From the turret stair thereby.

    Thro’ morris-pikes and halberds
    The king rode out and in,
    His horse in gaudy trappings,
    His sabre drawn and thin:
    Down knelt Bertrand de Gourdon
    His strongbow at his chin.

    O shrill that arrow quivered!
    And fierce and awful broke
    Acclaim in billowy thunder
    From all the foreign folk,
    At mighty Richard fallen
    Beneath a foreign oak!

    Then leaped his English barons,
    Converging from afar,
    And loosed the flood of slaughter
    To the gates of Vidomar;
    And seized Bertrand de Gourdon,
    As clouds enmesh a star.

    They brought the bright-cheeked archer
    Who scoffed not, neither feared,
    To the tent ringed in with faces
    That menaced in their beard;
    But the king’s face lay before him
    In the lamplight semisphered.

    The king’s self, stern and pallid
    Gazed on the lad that day,
    And as if dreams were on him
    Besought him gently: ‘Say,
    Bertrand de Gourdon! wherefore
    Thou tak’st my life away?’

    ‘To venge my martyr-father,
    My foster-brethren three:
    In the name of thy dead foemen
    This thing I did to thee!’
    And Richard perished, sighing:
    ‘Forgive him. Set him free!’

    Alas for that late loving
    By seneschals betrayed!
    While yet upon his lashes
    The holy tear delayed,
    They bound Bertrand de Gourdon,
    They slew him in the glade.

    Alas for noble spirits
    Whom fates perverse befall!
    Whence David in his beauty
    Gave healing unto Saul,
    The jeering wind beats ever
    On Chaluz castle wall.




          THE WOOING PINE.


    THERE was a lady, starshine in her look,
    Of lineage fierce, yet tremulous and kind
    As the field-gossamer, that down the wind
    Floats gleamingly from some enthistled nook;
    And wayward as her beauty was her mind
    That evermore bright errant journeys took.

    Her father’s houndish lords she moved among,
    From feud and uproar dewily distraught;
    Winnowed her harp of its least pain; and brought
    Delight’s full freshet to a beggar’s tongue,
    Or spun amid her maids with chapel-thought
    That on a crystal pivot burned and swung.

    But night on night, an exile from sleek rest,
    She nestled warm before her hearth-fire low,
    To watch its little wind-born planets go
    Orbing; and from the martyr-oak’s charred breast,
    In spirit-blue flame, in quintuple wild glow,
    The tossing leaves prolong their summer zest.

    And ailingly, she needs must often sigh,
    Perplexèd out of her rich wonted glee,
    Whereof some unseen warder kept the key,
    And quell the dark defiance of her eye
    In patience, as a torch dips in the sea.
    And so, in brooding, went the white days by.

    Unto the horsemen brave in war’s array
    She waved no token from her latticed house,
    Nor yet of princelings bare upon her brows
    Love’s salutation; but from such as they
    Turned, as a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs,
    And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away

    Her sealèd sense beheld no man, nor heard,
    Nor lent its troth to any mortal bond,
    But lived heart-full of vital light beyond,
    And with miraculous tides of being stirred,
    Lingering tho’ eager, till the forest fond
    Winged to its own pure peace this homing bird.

    For, sad with rains of unrevealed desire,
    And heavy with predestined glory’s beam,
    She to the water-girdled wood’s extreme
    Stole from her suitors’ pleas, her father’s ire,
    Far from their brambly ways to sit and dream,
    And make sweet plaint, in daylight’s dying fire;

    When, one with lilt of her own veins, there rose
    Across remote and jasmine-pillared space,
    A voice of so persuasive, piteous grace
    That all her globèd sorrow did unclose
    To fragrant helpfulness in that still place,
    And sought, in tears, the breather of such woes.

    And peering, of the level-shafted sun
    Evasive, listening from a mossy knoll,
    To kindling quiet sank her gentle soul,
    In awe at some high venture to be done,
    As when outpeals from Fame’s coercive pole,
    Too soon, on ears too weak, her clarion.

    Burst in the golden air a wide and deep
    Torrent of harmony, that with clang and shock
    Might wreck a pinnace on an Afric rock,
    And on the ruin foamily o’erheap
    Bright reparation: ’twas a strength to mock
    Itself with swoons, and idle sobs, and sleep.

    A splendor-hoary pine, of kingliest cheer,
    Enrooted ’neath her thrilling footfall, stood;
    Suffused with youth and gracious hardihood,
    Sown of the wind from heaven’s memorial sphere,
    With the red might of centuries in his blood,
    Unscarred and straight against the battling year,

    From whose great heart those noble accents flowed,
    And from the melancholy arms outspread
    Whereon the aching winter long had snowed:
    ‘Come, sister! spouse! whom Love hath strangely led
    From bondage, come!’ And her most blessèd head
    She laid upon his breast as her abode.

    O wonderful to hearing, touch, and gaze!
    This was of soul’s unrest and spirit’s scar
    Solving and healing; this the late full star
    Superillumining the hither ways,
    And the old blind allegiance set ajar
    Like a dark door, against its flooded rays.

    All intertangled fell their dusky hair
    In tender twilight’s bowery recess;
    And that fair bride of her heart-heaviness
    Was disenthralled in love’s Lethean air,
    Where orchids hung upon the wind’s caress,
    And the first tawny lily made her lair.

    Dear minions served them in the covert green:
    The squirrel coy, the beetle in his mail,
    The moth, the bee, the throbbing nightingale,
    And the gaunt wolf, their vassal; to them e’en
    The widowed serpent, on her vengeful trail,
    Upcast an iridescent eye serene.

    The last tired envoy from the realm bereaved
    Blew at the drawbridge, riding castlewards;
    The fisher-folk along the beachen shards
    Pierced, calling, the cool thickets silvern leaved;
    And grandams meagre, and road-roaming bards
    Shared her sad theme, for whom men vainly grieved.

    But lad and lass, with parted mouth a-bloom,
    Who strayed thereby in April’s misty prime,
    A vision freshening to the after-time
    Caught thro’ the rifts of uninvaded gloom,--
    A maiden, honey-lipped as Tuscan rhyme,
    And her young hunter, with his sombre plume.

    For dynasties tho’ passing-bells be tolled,
    Theirs is the midmost ecstasy of June,
    Her music, her imperishable moon;
    While Time, that elsewhere is so rough and cold,
    Like a soft child, flower-plucking all forenoon,
    Gathers the ages from this garden old.

    Calm housemates with them in their forest lone
    Do Freedom, Innocence and Joy, abide:
    And aye as one who into Heaven hath died
    Thro’ mortal aisleways of melodious moan,
    The boatman sees, at dusk, from Arno’s tide,
    The Everlasting Lover with his own!




          THE SERPENT’S CROWN.


    SAID he:

    ‘O diligent rover! browned under many a heaven,
    Treasure and trophy you carry, spoils from the east and the west;
    Yet I fear that you passed it over, the chief clime out of the seven,
    My wonder-land and my island, where the chance of a knight is best.

    ‘There from the black mid-forest, past hemlock guards in waiting
    (Heard you not of the legend?), when the wide sun winks at noon,
    On the rock-ways sharpest, hoarest, warily undulating,
    A star-dappled serpent hurries, with the odorous grace of June.

    ‘Over her human forehead, reared among glens abysmal,
    Glitters a crown gold-gossamer; only a moment’s arc
    Crosses the creature torrid, flexile, palpitant, prismal,
    Then breaks on the earth, a terror spiralling into the dark.

    ‘Every to-day and to-morrow, as the foreign old belfries tremble
    With the hammer-hard heels of noon, just that instant, nor more nor less,
    In the blue witch-reptile’s furrow her shape stands to dissemble,
    And the barbed tongue tempts and entices, and the fire-eyes acquiesce.

    ‘Once she was a wily woman, whose glory the gods have finished,
    Whose handicraft still is ruin, whose glee is to snare and kill,
    Defier of spearman and bowman, her empery undiminished;
    But whoso can overcome her, shall bend the world to his will!

    ‘Therefore the knights importune to spur thro’ the jungles fruity,
    Many a lad and a hunter and a dreamer there ventureth;
    For the king tends power and fortune to the slayer of that demon-beauty,
    And awards him her crown thrice-charmèd whose captor can outwit Death,

    ‘Aye, ride above storm and censure, and lord it o’er time and distance,
    In the maddening-sweet assurance of bliss like a rose-rain shed,
    All for a wood-path venture, a gallant alert resistance,
    And a stroke of the steel in circle about that exquisite head!

    ‘A task for your young drilled muscle!’
                              But the other, in soft derision

    Answered him:

    ‘Oh, I had once some wild schemes under my hat:
    Some thrill for this same snake-tussle, and the heirdom of life Elysian,
    Long peace, long loving, long praises: but I’ve kindled
         and cooled on that!

    ‘Ten years have I been a ranger, I have hewn all dread to the centre;
    I have learned to sift out values; my soul is at rest and free.
    If that be your boon for danger, on a dull safe youth to enter,
    Tho’ some may covet the guerdon, ’tis a poor enough thing to me.

    ‘I choose, might I come and return so, to a cause, a friend and a foeman
    Staunch, to endure for the rest but as a moth, or a marigold!
    Let the philosophers yearn so, the king bribe squire and yeoman!
    Not for my lease immortal the serpent shall be cajoled.

    ‘To strike her down avenges her slain; but is evil ended?
    The fashion dies; the function abides, and has fresher scope.
    What is to be won? He cringes who would seize, were the choice extended,
    For the risk elsewhere of living, here only survival’s hope!

    ‘I would keep my lot mine purely, cast in with men’s forever;
    Their transient tempest sooner than these Sybaritic calms;
    Tho’ against the cobra, surely, I would pit my soul’s endeavor,
    Her crown and its lonely meaning I would scorn to take in alms.

    ‘Rather than ease unshaken, durance that sloth unhallows,
    Once and for all, in honor, an end: what’s the forfeit crown
    If the chance of my short term taken run plump on the axe or the gallows,
    So one brother’s fetter be loosened, or one tyrant trampled down?

    ‘Why, see! this diadem’s pleasure a Turk might sigh to inherit,--
    Heart-beats thrumming; a torpid and solitary cheer;
    No call to arms, no measure of progress! Well, let him wear it
    Unquestioned ... I spurned the bauble when I killed your snake
          last year.’




          MOUSTACHE.


    A FRIENDLESS pup that heard the fife
    Sprang to the column thro’ the clearing,
    And on to Switzerland and strife
        Went grenadiering.

    Much he endured, and much he dared
    The long hot doomsday of the nations:
    He wore a trooper’s scars; he shared
        A trooper’s rations;

    Warned pickets, seized the Austrian spies,
    Bore the despatches; thro’ the forces
    From fallen riders, prompt and wise,
        Led back the horses;

    Served round the tents or in the van,
    Quick-witted, tireless as a treadle:
    ‘This private wins,’ said Marshal Lannes,
        ‘Ribbon and medal.’

    (‘Moustache, a brave French dog,’ it lay
    Graven on silver, like a scholar’s;
    ‘Who lost a leg on Jena day,
        But saved the colors!’)

    At Saragossa he was slain;
    They buried him, and fired a volley:
    End of Moustache. Nay, that were strain
        Too melancholy.

    His immortality was won,
    His most of rapture came to bless him,
    When, plumed and proud, Napoleon
        Stooped to caress him.

    His Emperor’s hand upon his head!
    How, since, shall lesser honors suit him?
    Yet ever, in that army’s stead,
        Love will salute him.

    And since not every cause enrolls
    Such little, fond, sagacious henchmen,
    Write this dog’s moral on your scrolls,
        Soldiers and Frenchmen!

    As law is law, can be no waste
    Of faithfulness, of worth and beauty;
    Lord of all time the slave is placed
        Who doth his duty.

    No virtue fades to thin romance
    But Heaven to use eternal moulds it:
    Mark! Some firm pillar of new France,
        Moustache upholds it.




          RANIERI.


    TO the lute Ranieri played,
    Once beneath the jasmine shade
    In a June-bright bower imprisoned,
    Many a Pisan beauty listened,
    Velvet-eyed, with head propped under
    Her gold hair’s uncoifed wonder;
    Like the rich sun-blooded roses
    Whom the wind o’ertakes in poses
    Of some marble-still delight,
    On the dewy verge of night.

    ‘Merrily and loud sang he,
    With the fairest at his knee,
    Sky-ringed in that garden nest!
    Who, save sorcerers, had guessed
    Whither sylph and minstrel came
    From the awful Archer’s aim?
    Or that, glossy-pined below,
    Lay the city in her woe,
    For her sins, as it was written,
    Desolate and fever-smitten?

    ‘Apt Ranieri was, and young,
    Love’s persuasion on his tongue;
    And his high-erected glance,
    Softened into dalliance,
    Laughed along its haughty level:
    Foremost in all skill and revel,
    Steeled against the laws that seemed
    Monkish figments idly dreamed,
    Early dipping his wild wing
    In the pools of rioting,
    With the moaning world shut out,
    With the damosels about;
    Crimson-girdled, in the sun
    Regnant, as if he were one
    For whom Death himself was mute;--
    So he sat, and twanged his lute.’
    (Placid, in her novice veil,
    Sister Claudia told the tale.)

    ‘When, across the air of June,
    Like a mist half-risen at noon,
    Or a fragrance barely noted,
    A Judæan Vision floated!
    Who, midway of music’s burst,
    Pleadingly, as if athirst,
    Long athirst, and long unsated,
    Sighed: “Ranieri!” sighed and waited.

    ‘Ah, the Prodigal that heard
    Fell to ashes at the word!
    But with broken murmurings
    Putting by the wreathèd strings,--
    From the safe and craven places,
    From the fond, bewildered faces,
    Trembling with the rush of thought,
    With contrition overwrought,
    At a royal gesture, down
    Straight to the dismantled town;
    Girt with justice, chaste and tender,
    To all risks himself to render,
    Of all sorrows rude and froward
    To be prop and cure henceforward;
    By no lapse of irksome duty
    Swerving from the Only Beauty,
    By no olden lure enticed;--
    Saint Ranieri followed Christ!’
    (Said the little nun: ‘Amen:
    Christ who calleth, now as then.’)




          SAINT CADOC’S BELL.


          I.

    SAILOR! with wonder thou hearest me,
    Moored where the roots of thine anchors be,
    Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.

        A bell was I of Pagan lands
        Forged and welded in might and beauty,
        But captured by Christian chivalry,
        And set in a belfry by godly hands,
        With chrisms and benedictions three,
        For a fourfold consecrated duty:
    To summon to pray, to peal for the fray,
    To measure the hours, to moan for the dead;
        To moan for the dead, ah me! ah me!
        Where the wild gold parasites suck and spread,
        Where the sea-flower rears her dreamy head;
        In the grots of immortality
        The cool weird singing mermaids dwell in;
        In the still city, with its empurpled air
        Shaken upon the eye from bastions fair
        Of coral, and pearl, and unbought jasper’s glisten,
        I toll and wail, I burst and fail, ah, listen!
        I, the holy bell, the gift of the Lord Llewellyn,
        Now the keel of a Cornish ship looms over my prison,
        Call from the underworld in mine old despair.


          II.

        They brought me in my virgin fame
        To the carven minster wonder-high,
        Close to the glorious sun and sky,
        With song, and jubilee, and acclaim:
    The fountains brimming with wine sprayed out on the crowd;
    In the chapel-porches the viols and harps clanged loud,
    And the slim maids danced a solemn measure, ever and aye the same,
    Singing: ‘Behold, we hang our bell in
    The freedom of spring, in the golden weather,
        The gift of the Lord Llewellyn,
    Redeemed from heathenry and strange shame,
    The lion-strong bell, for our service at last led hither,
    Flower-woven, caressed, and in Christ made willing and tame.’
        But ere the pleased stir of the people had died,
    Llewellyn, fresh home from the wars, with his soldierly stride
    Climbed, bearded and splendid in mail, and his only young child
    Held up from his shoulder in sight of them all; till they cried
    Peal on peal of delight when the rosy babe turned, and her lip
        Laid sweetly upon me in benison mild.
    Yea, sailor! and thou that hearest my voice from thy ship,
    Thou knowest my sorrow’s beginning, thou knowest, ah me!
    Whence my tolling and wailing, my breaking and failing, afar
          in the heart of the sea.


          III.

        I served the Lord ten years and a day,
        In Saint Cadoc’s church by the surging bay;
        And housed with the gathering webs and must,
        ’Mid whirring of velvety wings outside,
        In calm and in wind, brooding over the tide,
        And the bright massed roofs, and the crags’ array,
        My strong life, innocent and just,
        Fell of a sudden to ashes and dust,
    And on my neck hotly the demon laid the bare rod of his sway!

        How it befell, I know not yet,
        (Sailor, with wonder thou hearest me),
        Save that a passionate sharp regret,
        An exile’s longing, o’ermastered not,
        Seared thought like a pestilential spot,
        And sent my day-dreams traitorously
        Back to the place where my life began,
        To the long blue mornings, blown and wet,
        To the pyre by the sacred rivulet,
        And the chanting Cappadocian.
        No more a Christian bell was I!
        For all became, which seemed so good,
        Vile thraldom, in my bitter mood
        That thrust the old conformance by.
        Sullen and harsh, to the acolyte
        I answered of a Sabbath night,
    And sprang on the organ’s withdrawing peal
    To shatter its pomp, like a charge of steel.
        The good monks puzzled and prayed, I trow:
        But against their Heaven I set my brow.


          IV.

        To me, by the ancient, triple-roped,
        Lone, tortuous stair, whereby I made
    A tingling silence, a heavy concentric shade,
    The twelve-years’ child of the Lord Llewellyn groped:
    With May-wreaths laden, the loving strange child came!
    And my pulses that throbbed at sight of her, ten years gone,
    Chilled and recoiled at her delicate finger-touch, guessing
    Along my brazen-wrought margin, the laud and the blessing
    Traced, thro’ the vine, thro’ the tangle of star and of sun,
    By her dead father’s name, by Llewellyn’s magnificent name.
    And even as she stood in the dark, the doom and the horror rushed on me;
        (I had weakened my soul, and they won me!)
    I felt the desire at my vitals, the unbearable joy that is pain:
    With one mad tigerish spring against the dim rafter,
    I smote the sweet child in my rage, I smote her with laughter,
        And a sound like the rain
    Whirled east on the casement, died after:
    And I knew that the life in her brain
    I had quenched at the stroke, and flung even my darling of yore
    Down the resonant, tottering stair, down, down to the centuried door!
        Then the swift hurricane,
    The clamoring army thronged up from below, my
    allegiance to claim!
    Lean goblins, brown-flecked like a toad, the gnomic horned ghosts,
    Imps flickering, quarry-sprites grim, all the din of the dolorous hosts,
    All the glory and glee of the cursèd hissed round me and round,
          as a flame.
    And they loosened my hold from the tower, and my hope from the hem
    Of the garment of Him who could save, as they jeered! and with speed
    Crashed down past the rocks and the wrecks; and the horrible deed
    Was done. I was theirs; and I gave up my spirit to them.


          V.

        In a mossy minaret
        Fathoms under, I am set.
        All the sea-shapes undulating
        At my gates forlorn are waiting,
        All the dreary faint-eyed people
        Watch me in my hollow steeple,
        While the glass-clear city heaves
        Oft beneath its earthy eaves.
        So in sorrow, sorrow, sorrow
        Yestereven and to-morrow,
        Thro’ the æons, in a cell
        Hangs Saint Cadoc’s loveless bell,
        Orbèd, like a mortal’s tear,
        On the moony atmosphere,
        Bearing, the refrain of time,
        Memory, and unrest, and crime.
        Thou that hast the world sublime!
    I that was free, I am lost, I am damned, I am here!
    And whenever a child among men by a blow is dead,
    Docile for aye from the deeps must I lift my head,
        And from the heathen heart of me that breaks,
        The unextinguishable music wakes,
        Naught availing, naught deterred.
        And the sailor heareth me,
        Even as thou, alas! hast heard,
        Fallen in awe upon thy knee,
    Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the ominous sea.




          A CHOUAN.


    FROM the school-porch at Vannes
    Weaponed, the children ran;
    One little voice began,
          Lark-like ascended:

    ‘Treason is on the wing,
    Black vows, and menacing:
    March, boys! God save the King!’
          Allio ended.

    Singing, with sunny head,
    Battleward straight he led,
    Stones for his captain’s bed,
          Herbs for his diet:

    He and his legion brave,
    Trouble enough they gave!
    Ere the Blues’ bullets drave
          Them into quiet.

    Spared, with a few as bold,
    Once the storm over-rolled,
    Allio, twelve years old,
          Crept from the clamor;

    Came, when the days were brief,
    To the old desk in grief,
    Thumbing anew the leaf
          Of the old grammar.

    Kings out!... rang the chime,
    Kings in!... answered Time.
    In his ignoring clime,
          Silent, he studied;

    Till, ere his youth was done,
    For him, the chosen one,
    Shepherd disclaimed of none,
          Aaron’s rod budded.

    Long, in unbroken round,
    Peace on his paths he found;
    Saw the glad Breton ground
          Husbanded, quarried:

    Blessed it, the record saith,
    All the years he had breath,
    Till the dim eightieth
          Snowed on his forehead.

    President!... Emperor!...
    President!... On the floor
    Spake a sharp Senator
          Widening his ranges:

    ‘From Paris I impeach
    Vannes for disloyal speech;
    Send thither troops to teach,
          How the world changes!’

    Down on the peasants then
    Rode the Republic’s men,
    Trampling the corn again,
          Miring the flowers;

    Hewed thro’ the rebels nigh,
    Scoffed at the women’s cry,
    Set the tricolor high
          On the church towers.

    Pale in his cot that day,
    Dying, the pastor lay,
    Where still his eye could stray
          Up valleys gleaming;

    Watchers were at his side;
    Prayer unto prayer replied:
    Hush! what was that he spied,
          Pinnacle-streaming?

    (Nothing was he aware
    In his deaf Breton air,--
    So gray traditions there
          Throve unforgotten,--

    That, by a final chance,
    Kings all were led a dance;
    Long since, in fickle France,
          Sceptres were rotten!)

    Sprang the old lion, still
    Live with prodigious will,
    To his stone casement-sill;
          Foolish and true one!

    Snatched up the blade he bore,
    Rough with its rust of yore,
    Kissed it, a saint no more--
          Only a Chouan!

    Barred from the charging mass
    In the choked market-pass,
    All he could do, alas!
          Now, was to clang it:

    Nay, more:--‘God save the King!’
    With a last clarion ring,
    Shot ere he ceased to sing,
          Allio sang it.




          LYRICS




          YOUTH.


    LET us hymn thee for our silent brothers,
    Freely as the wild impellent wind blows,
    Briefly, rudely, in the smoky pauses
    Of a battle, in the stress and scourging
    Of the sail apast thy heavenly margin;
    Let us hymn thee, while the gallant pulses
    In high heart and limbs one kingliest instant,
    Boom and flash thy name and their allegiance;
    ‘Once, and for one only,’ let us hymn thee,
    O Delight, O Sunrise, O sole Answer,
    Empery unbought, supreme Adventure,
    Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.

    Let us hymn thee, we, the passing, dying,
    Out of bondage by a vision lifted,
    Since by chance sublime, in secret places,
    Goddess! we, Aktaion-like, have seen thee.
    Tho’ our voice as a spent eagle’s voice is,
    Let us hymn thee, while the doom is forging;
    Holding, losing, thro’ one first last moment,
    One mad moment worth dull life forever,
    Triumphing in anguish, let us hymn thee!
    Thine, beholden Beauty, thine this heart-break,
    Thine, O Hope forsworn! this salutation,
    Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.




          THE LAST FAUN.


    HOW hath he stumbled hither, in search of love and praise,
    A tardy comer and goer across the world’s highways,
    A kind shape from the thicket, a wanderer all his days?

    He finds a rocky seat where the moiling town recedes:
    The altered shepherds flout him; but O he little heeds!
    Incredulous he swings there, and drones upon his reeds.

    He stamps his cloven heel, and he laughs adown the wind,
    With eye that wanes and waxes at doings of mankind.
    Slow, slow creeps the invader upon that happy mind.

    The apple breasts his fellow; doves wheel by two and three,
    And ever dance in circle the shallops on the sea;
    The goats and deer are many; but playmate none hath he,
    Nor nymph nor child to follow upon his signals rude;
    He smiles: there is no frolic; he snarls: there is no feud.
    He feels his poor heart sinking at every interlude.

    His shaggy ear and freakish resents the wail and din;
    Earth’s rumors chill his veins with their ghostly gliding in;
    He aches to slip these tethers, and be where he hath been.

    Elsewhere is waking glory, and here the dream, the thrall.
    Hush! hear the sunless waters, the wrestling leaves that call!
    He lops the grass, and whistles; and while he cheats them all,

    Obeys, is gone, gone wholly. From alien air too cold,
    The Faun, with garlands flying, with sylvan ditties trolled,
    Being homesick, being patient, regains his greenwood old.




          KNIGHTS OF WEATHER.


    WHEN down the filmy lanes
    The too wise sun goes grieving,
    A wake of splendor leaving
    Upbillowed from the ground;
    When at the window-panes
    The hooded chestnuts rattle,
    And there is clash of battle
    New England’s oaks around:
    Oh, then we knights of weather,
    We birds of sober feather,
    Fill up the woods with revel
    That summer’s pomp is slain;
    And make a mighty shouting
    For King October’s outing,
    The Saracen October
    Astride the hurricane!

    When dappled butterflies
    Have crept away to cover,
    And one persistent plover
    Is coaxing from the fen;
    When apples show the skies
    Their bubbly lush vermilion,
    And from a rent pavilion
    Laugh down on maids and men:
    Oh, then we knights of weather,
    We birds of sober feather,
    Fill up the woods with revel
    That summer’s pomp is slain;
    And make a mighty shouting
    For King October’s outing,
    The Saracen October
    Astride the hurricane!

    When pricks the winy air;
    When o’er the meadows clamber
    Cloud-masonries of amber;
    When brooks are silver-clear;
    When conquering colors dare
    The hills and cliffy places,
    To hold, with braggart graces,
    High wassail of the year:
    Oh, then we knights of weather,
    We birds of sober feather,
    Fill up the woods with revel
    That summer’s pomp is slain;
    And make a mighty shouting
    For King October’s outing,
    The Saracen October
    Astride the hurricane!




          DAYBREAK.


    THE young sun rides the mists anew; his cohorts follow from the sea.
    Let Aztec children shout and sue, the Persian lend a thankful knee:
    Those glad auroral eyes shall beam not anywhere henceforth on me.

    Up with the banners on the height, set every matin bell astir!
    The tree-top choirs carouse in light; the dew’s on phlox and lavender:
    Ah, mockery! for, worlds away, the heart of morning beats with her.




          ON SOME OLD-MUSIC.


    TO lie beside a stream, upon the sod
    At ease, while weary shepherds homeward plod,
    And feel benignly by, as daylight mellows,
    The mountains in their weathering period;
          Aye so, with silence shod
    To lie in depth of grass with man’s meek fellows,
    The cattle large and calm, aware of God,

    And, keen as if to flesh the spirit sprang,
    To hear,--O but to hear that silvern clang
    Of young hale melody! and hither rally
    The thrill, the aspiration, and the pang
          Again, as once it rang
    Sovereign and clear thro’ all the Saco valley,
    Whose slaves were we that heard, and he that sang!

    Happy the spot, the hour, the spanning strain
    Precious and far, the rainbow of the rain,
    The seal of patience, dark endeavor’s summing,
    The heaven-bright close of Pergolese’s pain!
          Sighs bid it back in vain,
    Nor win its peer, till craftsmen aftercoming
    Lost art, lost heart, from shipwrecked years regain.

    How, like an angel, it effaced the crime,
    The moil and heat of our tempestuous time,
    And brought from dewier air, to us who waited,
    The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime!
          As falls, at midnight’s chime
    To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated,
    The thought of Love’s remote sunshining prime.

    There flits upon the wind’s wing, as we gaze,
    Our northern springtime, virgin-green three days;
    The racy water shallowing, the glory
    Of jonquils strewn, the wafted apple-sprays:
          O let it be thy praise,
    Child-song too lovely and too transitory!
    Thou art as they; thy feet have gone their ways.

    O beauty unassailable! O bride
    Of memory! while yet thou didst abide
    The yester joy was ours, the joy to-morrow,
    Life’s brimming whole: and since to earth denied,
          Soft ebbed thy dreamy tide,
    To us the first, the full, the only sorrow,
    Wild as when Abel out of Eden died.




          LATE PEACE.


    AS a pool beset with lilies
    In the May-green copses hid,
    Far from wayfarers and wrongers,
    Clangors, rumors, disillusions,
    Neighbored by the wild-grape only,
    By the hemlock’s dreamy host,
    By the Rhodian nightingale,
    O remote, remote, O lonely!--
    So thy life is.

    Whence and wherefore is it
    Never peace may be co-dweller
    With my lakelet
    Too belovèd and too sheltered,
    That, secure from broil of cities,
    From a secret regnant spring
    To its own wild depth awaking,
    Makes but moaning and resistance,
    Undiminishable protest;
    Mimicking with pain and fury
    Of humanity the struggle;
    Fretting, foaming, pacing ever
    Round and round its fragrant cloister,
    All within itself perplexèd,
    Every heart-vein bruised but eager;
    And its clear soul, doubt-o’erladen,
    ’Neath the stirred and floating foulness,
    Long abased, long dumb, ah! long?--
    So thy life is.

    Comes the respite, comes the guerdon;
    The perfect truce arrives
    In the honey-dropping twilight,
    The southwestering pallid sunshine,
    The magian clouds a-fire,
    The mooring galleon-wind:
    At whose spell,
    Potent daily,
    The lulled water is beguiled
    Back to saneness, back to sweetness.
    All its arrowy hissing atoms
    Gather from the chase forsaken;
    The sphered galaxy of bubbles,
    Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful,
    Disunite, as to heard music,
    Like weird dancers, from their wreathings
    Each to its cool grotto swaying;
    Till there follows, on their fervor,
    Depth, and crystal clarity.
    So thy life is, so thy life!
    Darkling to beatitude,
    Shaken in the saving change.
    And the spirit made wise, not weary
    By the throes that youth endureth,
    When old age falls, evening-placid,
    On the mystery unriddled,
    Yet in empire, yet in honor,
    In submission not ignoble,
    Glistens to a central quiet,
    Leal to the most lovely moon.




          TO A YOUNG POET.


    SIGH not to be remembered, dear,
    Nor for Time’s fickle graces strive;
    Vex not thy spirit’s songful cheer
    With the sick ardor to survive.

    But be content, thou quick bright thing
    A while than lasting stars more fair:
    A lone high-flashing skylark’s wing
    Across obliterating air.

    O rich in immortality!
    Not thee Fame’s graven stones benight;
    But ever, to some world-worn eye,
    All Heaven is bluer for thy flight.




          DE MORTUIS.


    THE skilfullest of mankind!
    So praise him, reckoning
    By shot in the sea-gull’s wing,
    By doubts in boyhood’s mind.




          DOWN STREAM.


    SCARRED hemlock roots,
    Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots
      Spring’s first-knighted;
    Clinging aspens grouped between,
    Slender, misty-green,
      Faintly affrighted:

    Far hills behind,
    Sombre growth, with sunlight lined,
      On their edges;
    Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair,
    And the straight and fair
      Phalanx of sedges:

    Wee wings and eyes,
    Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies,
      Fearless rangers;
    Drowsy turtles in a tribe
    Diving, with a gibe
      Muttered at strangers;

    Wren, bobolink,
    Robin, at the grassy brink;
      Great frogs jesting;
    And the beetle, for no grief
    Half-across his leaf
      Sighing and resting;

    In the keel’s way,
    Unwithdrawing bream at play,
      Till from branches
    Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft,
    Graze them with their soft
      Full avalanches!

    This is very odd!
    Boldly sings the river-god:
      ‘Pilgrim rowing!
    From the Hyperborean air
    Wherefore, and O where
      Should man be going?’

    Slave to a dream,
    Me no urgings and no theme
      Can embolden;
    Now no more the oars swing back,
    Drip, dip, till black
      Waters froth golden.

    Musketaquid!
    I have loved thee, all unbid,
      Earliest, longest;
    Thou hast taught me thine own thrift:
    Here I sit, and drift
      Where the wind’s strongest.

    If, furthermore,
    There be any pact ashore,
      I forget it!
    If, upon a busy day
    Beauty make delay,
      Once over, let it!

    Only,--despite
    Thee, who wouldst unnerve me quite
      Like a craven,--
    Best the current be not so,
    Heart and I must row
      Into our haven!




          THE INDIAN PIPE.

(TO R. L. S.)


      YOUR bays shall all men bring,
        And flowers the children strew you.
    Once, as I stood in a thick west wood,
      I took from a fissure a precious thing,
        The homage whereof be to you!

      A thing pearl-pale, yet stung
        With fire, as the morning’s beam is;
    Hid underground thro’ a solar round,
      Hardy and fragile, antique and young,
        More exquisite than a dream is.

      No rose had so bright birth;
        No gem of romance surpassed it,
    By a minstrel-knight, for his maid’s delight,
      Borne from the moon-burnt marge of the earth,
        Where Paynim breakers cast it.

      Rude-named, memorial, quaint,
        The dews and the darkness mould it:
    Scarce twice in an age is our heritage
      This glory and mystery without taint.
        Dear Stevenson, do you hold it

      A text of grace, ah! much
        Beyond what the praising throng say:
    Only your art is its peer at heart,
      Only your touch is a wonder such,
        My wild little loving song says!




          BROOK FARM.


    DOWN the long road bent and brown,
    Youth, that dearly loves a vision,
    Ventures to the gates Elysian,
    As a palmer from the town,

    Coming not so late, so far,
    Rocks and birches! for your story,
    Nor to prate of vanished glory
    Where of old was quenched a star;

    Where, of old, in lapse of toil,
    Time, that has for weeds a dower,
    Bade the supersensual flower
    Starve in our New England soil.

    But to Youth, whose radiant eyes
    Shatter mists of grief and daunting,
    Lost glad voices still are chanting
    ’Neath those unremaining skies;
    Still the dreams of fellowship
    Beat their wings of aspiration;
    And a smile of soft elation
    Trembles from his haughty lip,

    If another dare deride
    Hopes heroic snapped and parted,
    Disillusion so high-hearted,
    All success is mean beside!




       ‘MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS.’


    ‘MY times are in Thy hands!’
    It rumbles from the sea;
    It jingles ever, inland far,
    From the reddening rowan-tree.

    Let me not sit inert,
    Let me not be afraid!
    Teach me to dare and to resist
    Like the first mortal made,

    To whom of fate’s dread strength
    No sickening rumors ran;
    Who with whatever grim event
    Grappled, as man with man.

    Seal to my utmost age
    What now my youth hath known:
    ‘My times are in Thy hands,’ O most!
    When wholly in my own.




          GARDEN CHIDINGS.


    THE spring being at her blessed carpentry,
    This morning makes a stem, this noon a leaf,
    And jewels her sparse greenery with a bud;
    Fostress of happy growth is she. But thou,
    O too disdainful spirit, or too shy!
    Passive dost thou inhabit, like a mole,
    The porch elect of darkness; for thy trade
    Is underground, a barren industry,
    Shivering true ardor on the nether air,
    Shaping the thousandth tendril, and all year
    Webbing the silver nothings to and fro.
    What wonder if the gardener think thee dead,
    When every punctual neighbor-root now goes
    Adventurously skyward for a flower?
    Up, laggard! climb thine inch; thyself fulfil;
    Thou only hast no sign, no pageantry,
    Save these fine gropings: soon from thy small plot
    The seasonable sunshine steals away.




          FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM.


    UNTO the constant heart whom saints befriend
    Afar in peace, what were our gaudy praise?
    His course is ended, and his faith is kept.
    Honor in silence to that memory! sweet
    Equally in the forum of the schools,
    And in the sufferer’s hovel. His, threefold,
    The lowliness of Isai’s chosen son,
    And zeal that fired the warring Macchabee,
    About him like a wedding-garment, worn
    The day of his acceptance; and we know
    That for the sake of some such soul as this,--
    So brave, so clean, compassionate and just,
    Alert in its most meek security,--
    Love beareth yet with all that stains the world.




          BANKRUPT.


    PAST the cold gates, a wraith without a name,
    Sullen and withered, like a thing half-tame
    Still for its jungle moaning, came by night,
    Before the Judgment’s awful Angel came.

    ‘Answer, Immortal! at my high decree
    Glory or shame shall flood thee as the sea:
    What of the power, the skill, the graciousness,
    The star-strong soul the Lord hath lent to thee?’

    But the lone spectre raised a mournful hand:
    ‘Call me not that! Release me from this land!
    What words are Heaven and Hell? They fall on me
    As on a sphere the fooled and slipping sand.

    ‘Discerning, thou the good mayst yet belie,
    By some last test, the sinner sanctify.
    My guilt is neutral-safe, like innocence:
    No boon nor bane of deathless days gain I,

    ‘Whose life is hollow shell and broken bowl,
    Of all which was its treasury, the whole
    Utterly, vilely squandered. O most Just!
    Put down thy scales: for I have spent my soul.’




          A REASON FOR SILENCE.


    YOU sang, you sang! you mountain brook
      Scarce by your tangly banks held in,
    As running from a rocky nook,
      You leaped the world, the sea to win,
    Sun-bright past many a foamy crook,
      And headlong as a javelin.

    Now men do check and still your course
      To serve a village enterprise,
    And wheelward drive your sullen force,
      What wonder, slave! that in no wise
    Breaks from you, pooled ’mid reeds and gorse,
      The voice you had in Paradise?




          TEMPTATION.


    I COME where the wry road leads
    Thro’ the pines and the alder scents,
    Sated of books, with a start,
    Sharp on the gang to-day:
    Scarce see the Romany steeds,
    Scarce hear the flap of the tents,
    When hillo! my heart, my heart
    Is out of its leash, and away.

    Gypsies, gypsies, the whole
    Tatterdemalion crew!
    Brown and sly and severe
    With curious trades in hand.
    A string snaps in my soul,
    The one high answer due
    If an exile chance to hear
    The songs of his fatherland.

... To be abroad with the rain,
    And at home with the forest hush,
    With the crag, and the flower-urn,
    And the wan sleek mist upcurled;
    To break the lens and the plane,
    To burn the pen and the brush,
    And, clean and alive, return
    Into the old wild world!...

    How is it? O wind that bears
    The arrow from its mark,
    The sea-bird from the sea,
    The moth from his midnight lamp,
    Fate’s self, thou mocker of prayers!
    Whirl up from the mighty dark,
    And even so, even me
    Blow far from the gypsy camp!




          FOR A CHILD.

          Schumann’s ‘Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.’


    IN memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made
    Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid,
                  Aye, truly, sore afraid:

    For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears,
    In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears
    Would yet be strong to break my song,
                  Thro’ all these after-years!




          AGLAUS.


    THE ash hath no perfidious mind;
    The open fields are just and kind;
    Tho’ loves betray, I hear this way
    The feathery step of the faithful wind.

    Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose
    Around me, talismanic, close:
    The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes,
    Are bulwarks twain of my year’s repose.

    No struggle, no delight, no moan,
    But at my hearthstone I have known!
    All thoughts that pass, as in a glass
    The gods have bared to me for mine own.

    Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed,
    Hath of her own will been my guest;
    Not smoking feud, but quietude
    My heart hath chosen, at her behest.

    ‘This is of men the happiest man
    Who hath his plot Arcadian,’
    Apollo cried, my gates beside,
    ‘Nor ever wanders beyond its span.’

    Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold;
    My hair is shaken in the cold;
    The night is nigh; but ere I die,
    Bear witness, brothers! that young and old,

    My name I wear without regret:
    The Home-Keeper am I, and yet
    At every inn my feet have been,
    Above all travellers I am set.

    Tho’ ocean currents by me purled,
    The sails of my desire were furled.
    What pilgrims crave, three acres gave;
    And I, Aglaus, have seen the world!




          AN AUDITOR.


    WHY chide me that mutely I listen, ah, jester?
          For either thou knowest
    Too much, or thou knowest not aught of this aching vexed
          planet down-whirling:
    Thou knowest?--Thy wit is but fortitude; would’st have me
          laugh in its presence?
    Thou knowest not?--Laugh I can never, for innocence also is sacred.




          THE WATER-TEXT.


    WATCHING my river marching overland,
    By mighty tides, transfigured and set free,--
    My river, lapped in idle-hearted mirth,
    Made at a touch a glory to the earth,
    And leaving, wheresoever falls his hand,
    The balm and benediction of the sea,--

    O soon, I know, the hour whereof we dreamed,
    The saving hour miraculous, arrives!
    When, ere to darkness winds our sordid course,
    Some glad, new, potent, consecrating force
    Shall speed us, so uplifted, so redeemed,
    Along the old worn channel of our lives.




          CYCLAMEN.


    ON me, thro’ joy’s eclipse, and inward dark,
    First fell thy beauty like a star new-lit;
    To thee my carol now! albeit no lark
    Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite.
                O would that song might fit
    These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting,
    Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing,
    Thou undefiled estray of earth’s o’ervanished spring!

    Here is the sunless clime, the fallen race;
    Down our green dingles is no peer of thee:
    Why art thou such, dear outcast, who hadst place
    With shrine, and bower, and olive-silvery
                Peaked islets in mid-sea?
    Thou seekest thine Achaian dews in vain,
    And osiered nooks jocose, at summer’s wane,
    With gossip spirit-fine of chill and widening rain.

      Thou wert among Thessalia’s hoofy host,
      Their radiant shepherd stroked thee with a sigh;
      When falchioned Perseus spied the Æthiop coast,
      Unto his love’s sad feet thy cheek was nigh;
                  And all thy blood beat high
      With woodland Rhœcus at the brink of bliss;
      Thy leaf the Naiad plucked by Thyamis,
    And she, the straying maid, the bride beguiled of Dis.

      These, these are gone. The air is wan and cold,
      The choric gladness of the woods is fled:
      But thou, aye dove-like, rapt in memories old,
      Inclinest to the ground thy fragile head,
                  In ardor and in dread.
      Searcher of yesternight! how wilt thou find
      In any dolven aisle or cavern blind,
    In any ocean-hall, the glory left behind?

      June’s butterfly, poised o’er his budded sweet,
      Is scarce so quiet-winged, betimes, as thou.
      Fail twilight’s thrill, and noonday’s wavy heat
      To kiss the fever from thy downcast brow.
                  Ah, cease that vigil now!
      No west nor east thine unhoused vision keeps,
      Nor yet in heaven’s pale purpureal deeps
    Of worlds unnavigate, the dream of childhood sleeps.

      Flower of the joyous realm! thy rivers lave
      Their once proud valleys with forgetful moan;
      Thy kindred nod on many a trodden grave
      Among marmorean altars overthrown;
                  For thou art left alone,
      Alone and dying, duped for love’s extreme:
      Hope not! thy Greece is over, as a dream;
    Stay not! but follow her down Time’s star-lucent stream.

      Less art thou of the earth than of the air,
      A frail outshaken splendor of the morn;
      Dimmest desire, the softest throb of prayer,
      Impels thee out of bondage to thy bourn:
                  Ere thou art half forlorn,
      Farewell, farewell! for from thy golden stem
      Thou slippest like a wild enchanter’s gem.
    Swift are the garden-ghosts, and swiftest thou of them!

      Yea, speed thy freeborn life no doubts debar,
      O blossom-breath of that which was delight!
      In cooling whirl and undulation far
      The wind shall be thy bearer all the night
                  Thro’ ether trembling-white:
      And I that clung with thee, as exiles may
      Whose too slight roots in every zephyr sway,
    Thy little soul salute along her homeward way!




          A PASSING SONG.


    WHERE thrums the bee and the honeysuckle hovers,
    Gather, golden lasses, to a roundelay;
    Dance, dance, yokefellows and lovers,
    Headlong down the garden, in the heart of May!
    Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.

    Dance! what if last year Winnie’s cheek were rounder?
    Dance! tho’ that foot, Hal, were nimbler yesterday.
    Spread the full sail! for soon the ship must founder;
    Flaunt the red rose! soon the canker-worm has sway:
    Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.

    See the dial shifting, hear the night-birds calling!
    Dance, you starry striplings! round the fountain-spray;
    With its mellow music out of sunshine falling,
    With its precious waters trickling into clay,
    Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away!




          IN TIME.


    HER little dumb child, for whom hope was none
    In any mind, she watched from sun to sun,
    Until three years her mighty faith had run;

    Then, in an agony of love, laid by
    The bright head from her breast, and went to lie
    ’Neath cedarn shadows, and the wintry sky,

    Not having, for her long desire and prayer,
    One sign from those shut lips, so rosy-fair
    It seemed all eloquence must nestle there.

    That day, to her near grave, thro’ frost and sleet,
    He, following from his toys on truant feet,
    Cried: ‘Mother, mother!’ joyous and most sweet.

    And as their souls ached in them at the word,
    The father lifted his new-wakened bird
    With one rapt tear, that now at last she heard!




          THE WILD RIDE.


    _I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
    All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;
    All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._

    Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,
    Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion,
    With a stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.

    The road is thro’ dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;
    There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:
    What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!

    _I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
    All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;
    All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._

    We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;
    We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.
    Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow.




          THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE.


    BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;
    You pace the garden-walks secure and sensitive;
    You linger on the stair: Love’s lonely pulses leap!
    The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.

    Years after, and years after, you keep your heirdom still,
    Your winning youth about you, your joyous force and skill,
    Unvexed, unapprehended, with waking sense adored;
    And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.

    To every quiet inmate, strong in the cheer you brought,
    Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought;
    And unto whoso knocks, an awe-struck visitor,
    The sunshine that was you floods all the open door!




          A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY.


    EACH ninth hierarchal wave, a league of sound,
    To phantom shreds the hostile crags confound,
    To wreck on wreck forlorn. The crags remain.

    Smile at the storm for our safe poet’s sake!
    Not ever this ordainèd world shall break
    That mounting, foolish, foam-bright heart again.




          IMMUNITY.


    LEAF of the deep-leaved holly-tree,
      Long spared the weather-god’s disdain,
    Have not thy brothers borne for thee
      June’s inavertible raging rain?

    And they are beautiful and hale,
      Those sun-veined revellers; and thou
    Still crippled, still afraid and pale,
      Sole discord of the singing bough!




          PAULA’S EPITAPH.


    GO you by with gentle tread.
    This was Paula, who is dead:
    Eyes dark-lustrous to the look
    As a leaf-pavilioned brook,
    Voice upon the ear to cling
    Sweeter than the cithern-string;
    Whose shy spirit, unaware
    Loosed into refreshful air,
    With it took for talisman,
    Climbing past the starry van,
    Names to which the heavens do ope,
    Candor, Chastity, and Hope.




          JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX.


    COMPASSIONATE eyes had our brave John Brown,
    And a craggy stern forehead, a militant frown;
    He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley,
    The fool who redeemed us once of our folly,
    And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown!

    Too vehement, verily, was John Brown!
    For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown
    Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter
    Of freedmen; aye, call him fanatic and martyr:
    He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown.

    A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown,
    And a jeer; but ah! soon from the terrified town,
    In his bleeding track made over hilltop and hollow,
    Wise armies and councils were eager to follow,
    And the children’s lips chanted our lost John Brown.

    Star-led for us, stumbled and groped John Brown,
    Star-led, in the awful morasses to drown;
    And the trumpet that rang for a nation’s upheaval,
    From the thought that was just, thro’ the deed that was evil,
    Was blown with the breath of this dumb John Brown!

    Bared heads and a pledge unto mad John Brown!
    Now the curse is allayed, now the dragon is down,
    Now we see, clear enough, looking back at the onset,
    Christianity’s flood-tide and Chivalry’s sunset
    In the old broken heart of our hanged John Brown!




          SONNETS




          APRIL DESIRE.


    WHILE in these spacious fields is my sojourn,
    Needs must I bless the blossomy outbreak
    Of earth’s pent beauty, and for old love’s sake
    Trembling, the bees’ on-coming chant discern;
    Hail the rash hyacinth, the ambushed fern,
    High-bannered boughs that green defiance make,
    And watch from sheathing ice the brave Spring take
    Her broad, bright river-blade. Ah! then, in turn
    Long-hushèd forces stir in me; I feel
    All the most sharp unrest of the young year;
    Fain would my spirit, too, like idling steel
    Be snatched from its dull scabbard, for a strife
    With cold oppressions! straightway, if not here,
    In consummated freedom, ampler life.




          TWOFOLD SERVICE.


    CHAMPIONS of men with brawny fist and lung,
    You righteous! with eyes oped and utterance terse,
    Whose greed of energies would fain disperse
    Ere any mould be cast, or roundel sung,
    Your gentler brothers still at play among
    The smirch and jangle of the universe,
    Mere fool-blind trespassers for you to curse,
    The Sabbath-breakers, the unchristened young;--
    Peace! These, too, know: these are as ye employed,
    Nor of laborious help and value void,
    Living; who, faithful to their fellows’ need,
    Fling life away for truth, art, fatherland,
    Like a gold largess from a princely hand,
    Without one trading thought of heavenly meed.




          IN THE GYMNASIUM.


    I LEAN against a pillar in the sun,
    The sandals loose on mine arrested feet,
    While from their paths orbicular the fleet
    Slim racers drop like stars. O loveliest one,
    Lender of sixfold wings the while I run,
    Whose tortoise-lyre saves yet for me its sweet
    Cyllenic suasions old, to thy dim seat
    Glory and grace! the votive rites are done.
    Thy sole rememberer honey hath, nor palm,
    Libation none, nor lamb to lead to thee,
    Ah, Maia’s son! once god, and once aye-living.
    Here stood thy shrine: here chants my heart in calm
    Sad as the centralmost weird wave’s at sea,
    Hermes! thy last June pæan and thanksgiving.




          A SALUTATION.


    HIGH-HEARTED Surrey! I do love your ways,
    Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,
    All with inviolate honor sealed and blent,
    To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays:
    I love your youth, your friendships, whims, and frays;
    Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent,
    Heard as in dreams from some old harper’s tent,
    And stirring in the listener’s brain for days.
    Good father-poet! if to-night there be
    At Framlingham none save the north-wind’s sighs,
    No guard but moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,
    Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me,
    Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes
    Sought not one other down three hundred years!




          AT A SYMPHONY.


    OH, I would have these tongues oracular
    Dip into silence, tease no more, let be!
    They madden, like some choral of the free
    Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar.
    To earth the boast that her gold empires are,
    The menace of delicious death to me,
    Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree,
    Piercing the heart with beauty from afar!
    Music too winning to the sense forlorn!
    Of what angelic lineage was she born,
    Bred in what rapture?--These her sires and friends:
    Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe.
    Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so
    Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.




          SLEEP.


    O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide
    On whose moon-heaving breast my head hath lain,
    Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain
    Thro’ holy hours, be yet unsatisfied,
    Loose me betimes! for in my soul abide
    Urgings of memory; and exile’s pain
    Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain
    May throb for the old strife wherein he died.

    Often and evermore, across the sea
    Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of day
    O speed me! like that outworn king erewhile
    From kind Phæacia shoreward borne; for me,
    Thy loving healèd Greek, thou too shall lay
    Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle.




          THE ATONING YESTERDAY.


    YE daffodilian days, whose fallen towers
    Shielded our paradisal prime from ill,
    Fair past, fair motherhood! let come what will,
    We, being yours, defy the anarch powers.
    For us the happy tidings fell, in showers
    Enjewelling the wind from every hill;
    We drained the sun against the winter’s chill;
    Our ways were barricadoed in with flowers:

    And if from skyey minsters now unhoused,
    Earth’s massy workings at the forge we hear,
    The black roll of the congregated sea,
    And war’s live hoof: O yet, last year, last year
    We were the lark-lulled shepherdlings, that drowsed
    Grave-deep, at noon, in grass of Arcady!




       ‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS.’


    OF thraldom and the accursèd diadem
    In that vast snow-land, shout the passionate tale;
    Touch graybeards in the mart, bid braggarts quail,
    And rouse the student lone from his old phlegm
    To breathe the self-same sacred air with them,
    Spirits supreme, our brothers! whose avail
    Is sacrifice. Nay, make no woman’s wail:
    Rome is re-born! whom kings dare not contemn.
    On Neva’s shore-streets tho’ high blood be spent,
    There this lorn world’s renascent hopes are meeting:
    In camp is Mucius, at the bridge, Horatius;
    Regulus walks in gyves, magnificent;
    And thence men hear--O sound sublime and gracious!
    The unquelled heart of Cæsar’s Brutus beating.




          FOUR SONNETS FROM ‘LA VITA NUOVA.’


          I.

  ‘_Io mi sentii svegliar dentro allo core._’

    WITHIN my bosom, from long apathy,
    Love’s mood of tenderness extreme awoke,
    And spying him far off, mine eye bespoke
    Love’s self, so joyous scarce it seemèd he,
    Crying: ‘Now, verily, pay thy vows to me!’
    And bright thro’ every word his smile outbroke.
    Then stood we twain, I in my liege lord’s yoke,
    Watching the path he came by, soon to see
    The Lady Joan and Lady Beatrice
    Nearing our very nook, each marvel close
    Following her peer, all beauty else above;
    And Love said, in a voice like Memory’s:
    ‘The first is Spring; but she that with her goes,
    My counterpart, bears my own name of Love!’


          II.

  ‘_Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare._’

    SO chaste, so noble looks that lady mine
    Saluting on her way, that tongues of some
    Are mute a-tremble, and the eyes that clomb
    High as her eyes, abashed, their gaze decline.
    Thro’ perils of heard praise she moves benign,
    Armored in her own meekness, as if come
    Hither from Heaven, to give our Christendom
    Even of a miracle the vouch divine.
    So with beholders doth her worth avail,
    It sheds, thro’ sight, a sweetness on the soul,
    (Alas! how told to one that felt it never?)
    And from her presence seemeth to exhale
    A breath half-solace and of love the whole,
    That saith to the bowed spirit ‘Sigh!’ forever.


          III.

  ‘_Era venuta nella mente mia._’

    THERE came upon my mind remembrances
    Of my lost lady, who for her reward
    Is now set safe, by Heaven’s Most Highest Lord,
    In kingdoms of the meek, where Mary is.
    And Love, whose own are her dear memories,
    Called to the sighs in my heart’s wreckage stored:
    ‘Go!’ whereby outwardly, with one accord,
    Not having ever other vent than this,
    Plaining athwart my breast they flocked to air,
    With speech that, oft recalled, draws unaware
    The darkened tears into my mournful eyes;
    And those that came in greatest anguish thence
    Sang: ‘O most glorious Intelligence!
    Thou art one year this day in Paradise.’


          IV.

  ‘_Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate._’

    YE pilgrims, who with pensive aspect go
    Thinking, perhaps, of bygone things and dear,
    Come you from lands so very far from here
    As unto us who watch your port would show?
    For that you weep not outright, filing slow
    Thro’ the mid-highway of this city drear,
    You even as gentle stranger-folk appear,
    Who of the common sorrow nothing know!
    Would you but linger, would you but be told,
    Pledge with its thousand sighs my soul doth give
    That you, likewise, should travel on heart-broken:
    Ah, we have lost our Beatrice! Behold,
    What least soever word be of her spoken,
    The tears must follow now from all that live.

           University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.