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Title: Apollo and Marsyas, and Other Poems

Author: Eugene Lee-Hamilton

Release date: January 1, 2022 [eBook #67069]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Elliot Stock, 1884

Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APOLLO AND MARSYAS, AND OTHER POEMS ***

APOLLO AND MARSYAS,

AND OTHER POEMS.

BY

EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON,

AUTHOR OF

‘THE NEW MEDUSA,’ ETC.

LONDON:

ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

1884.

[All Rights Reserved.]

To

A R A B E L L A   D U F F Y.

CONTENTS.

POEMS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION

1

APOLLO AND MARSYAS

5

SISTER MARY OF THE PLAGUE

18

THE BRIDE OF PORPHYRION

35

HUNTING THE KING

48

ABRAHAM CAREW

58

AN ODE OF THE TUSCAN SHORE

69

SWORD AND SICKLE

74

A PAGEANT OF SIENA

81

THE WONDER OF THE WORLD

87

IPSISSIMUS

108

AN ODE TO THE TRAVELLING THUNDER

114

SONNETS

IDLE CHARON

118

THE OBOL

119

LETHE

120

ACHERON

121

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION

122

LOST

123

MUSSET’S LOUIS D’OR

124

THE PHANTOM SHIP

125

SPRING

126

TO V. P., ABOUT TO VISIT OXFORD

127

BY THE FIRE

128

NIGHT

129

RIVER BABBLE

130

SUNKEN GOLD

131

ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL

132

ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS

133

ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH

134

STRANGLED

136

PROMETHEAN FANCIES

137

INTRODUCTION.

THE contest of the Satyr with the God,

Oh who shall end it? Who shall end the strife

That fills all Art, all Nature and all Life,

And give the right of flaying with a nod?

Oh who when radiant noontide’s last note dies,

And darkness with its mystery draws near,

Shall bid the strains of twilight not arise

That fill the soul with wistfulness or fear?

Man gives his love in turn, he knows not why,

To sun or gloom according to his mood;

His ear, his heart, alternately is woo’d

By Nature’s carol or by Nature’s sigh.

And Marsyas’ reed-pipe and Apollo’s lyre

Make endless competition upon earth,

As men prefer the charm of vague desire,

Or charm of bright serenity and mirth.

But not alone the wistful strains of eve

Mean unseen Marsyas speaking to the heart;

Nor is he near, in Nature and in Art,

Alone where yearning makes the bosom heave.

Often in tones more passionate he wails,

Pensive no more but fiercely wild and shrill,

And fills the soul with rapture as it quails,

And charms us with the very fear of ill.

Wherever lonely Nature claims her right

Upon man’s love, and her wild fitful voice

With flute-like wailings makes his ear rejoice

In the wild music of a stormy night;

Wherever haunting Fancy fills the gloom

With ghostly sounds, with evil spirits’ sobs,

And exiled souls seem to bewail their doom,

And, half seduced, the heart with vague fear throbs;

Wherever Poetry with magic word

Lets Passion’s loosened elements fly free,

And hiss and thunder like a storm-churned sea,

And rave and howl—there Marsyas’ note is heard.

Oh, I have felt his music in my soul

Outwail the wailing wind when every tone

Has made my fancy, bursting all control,

Create new realms as wild as are his own,

With shapes of fear, with dread fantastic spells,

And sights more wondrous than the restless stream

Of visions in a Haschish-eater’s dream,

Where whirl and eddy countless heavens and hells.

And yet I love the light, nor am I one

Bred in the darkness of Cimmerian caves,

Who shrinks with blinking eyelids from the sun,

When with the dawn he leaps on laughing waves,

The sounds which that great Dorian God, whose glance

Kindles the blushes of the pale sea foam,

Draws from his beam-stringed lyre come thrilling home,

And make the ripples of my spirit dance.

Outside, beyond my threshold, I can hear

The hum of sun-ripe Nature’s million strings,

The song of man’s frail happiness rise clear

Above the mutability of things;

And though I think, if you but listen well,

That here, upon this many voiced earth

There be less sounds of carol and of mirth

Than sounds of sigh and moan and dirge and knell;

And though what here I offer echoes less

Apollo’s lyre than Marsyas’ reedy fife,

Whose fitful wailing in the wilderness

Sounds through the chinks and crannies of my life,

Apollo’s name is sweet, and I were loth

To let the name of Marsyas stand alone

Engraven on this book, while I can own

Allegiance to both lords and love them both.

APOLLO AND MARSYAS.

MARSYAS.

Low, but far heard,

Across the Phrygian forest goes a sound

That seems to hush the pines that moan all round.

Is it the weird

Wail of a she-wolf plundered of her own?

Or some maimed Satyr left to die alone?

Or has great Pan, in lonely places feared,

To some belated wretch his wild face shown?

Oh strong rough Pan,

God of lone spots where sudden awe o’erwhelms

Weak souls, but never mine—I love thy realms!

I love the wan

Half-leafless glens, which Autumn’s plaint repeat

From tree to tree; I love the shy fawn’s bleat;

The cry of lynx and wood-cat safe from man;

The fox’s short sharp bark from sure retreat.

The deep lone woods

Which men call silent teem with voice: I hear

Vague wails, low calls, weird notes, now far, now near.

The storm-born floods

That sweep the glens, the gurgling hurrying springs

Impart dim secrets, vague prophetic things;

The whispering winds awake strange wistful moods.

But hush, my flute! Apollo, strike thy strings!

APOLLO.

The harvest-hymns

Rise from the fields, where, in the setting sun,

The reapers stretch by sheaves of golden dun

Their weary limbs;

While many a sunburnt lad or maiden weaves

With every corn-flower that the sickle leaves

Demeter’s harvest-crowns, or binds and trims

For the Great Mother her allotted sheaves.

The whole west glows

Like a vast sea of rosy molten ore

Where, here and there, great tracks of pearly shore

Or gleaming rows

Of crimson reefs and isles of amber blaze;

And through the whole a mighty fan of rays

Spreads as the sun approaches earth and throws

A farewell glance before he goes his ways.

A rich warm scent

Of summer ripeness fills the fertile plain;

The ox, unyoked, kneels chewing near the wain;

In one sound blent

The voices of the insect-swarms that fill

Each furrow, indefatigably trill

And chirp and hum; until the bright day spent,

Invokes the dusk to make the lone fields still.

MARSYAS.

What voice-like sounds

Off the Trinacrian coast, low, plaintive, sweet,

Blend with the breeze? or is it Fancy’s cheat?

There seem no grounds

For watch or fear: the waves have sunk to sleep

In twilight on the bosom of the deep.

The ship seems half becalmed, and eve surrounds

The crew with dolphins in perpetual leap.

But hark again!

Now here, now there, now all around the ship

The voices sound each from an unseen lip!

Dost hear the strain?

It charms, it lulls, it lures, yet seems to fill

The soul with something ominous of ill,

A strange vague song with which man strives in vain,

Which melts the heart while it benumbs the will.

The weird sounds float

Across the waters from the rocky shore;

The listless crew grow drowsy more and more.

No signs denote

A coming storm; but something slow and strong

Sucks unperceived those spell-bound men along:

Awake, awake! the whirlpool grasps the boat!

It seethes, it roars, it drowns the Sirens’ song!

APOLLO.

Out on thy strife

Of winds and birds!—See, see the golden spears

Gleam through the dust, and desperate charioteers

And Death and Life

Sweep by all wildly blent!—See, see how flash

The helmets in the sun, as onward dash

The waves of war! The very air seems rife

With goading Gods who wield an unseen lash!

O Sun, shine down

On Freedom’s ranks; pour strength into their hearts,

And blind the foe with thy resistless darts!

On, on! the crown

Is for you all, both those who live and die!

See, see, they waver! now they turn and fly

In wild mad rout and trample down their own,

While thick as autumn leaves their strewn dead lie.

And as decrease

The rattle and the roar, the crash and cries,

Triumphant hymns from all the vast plain rise,

And never cease

To shake the stars.—Sound high, sound high, my strings!

For from the bloodstained dust the laurel springs;

Ay, and the olive with its fruit of peace,

And freedom’s garnered grain and earth’s best things!

MARSYAS.

Right sweetly played!

But oh, I love the caves where all is mute

Save unseen dropping waters, or my flute,

Whose tones are made

So strange by echo, that, transformed, increased,

They ape the voice of some wild wounded beast

Or eager hounds; or wail in cavernous shade

Like souls in Hades wailing unreleased.

And not less well

I love deep gorges, whether, in the spring,

With crash of slipping snow their echoes ring;

Or they compel

A summer storm’s pent thunder, peal on peal,

To roll along them; or their rent flanks feel

Autumnal waters roar; or fierce howls tell

Of captive wintry winds in wild appeal.

Hark, hark! a scream

Of battling eagles o’er a sheer abyss,

And wind of wings above a torrent’s hiss.

The rock-pent stream

Catches the drops of blood, and whirls away

The slow rotating feathers from the fray;

While from the sky the smaller falcons seem

To watch their kings and circle without stay.

APOLLO.

The noon creeps slow,

And wraps the windless world in heat and glare,

And droning beetles stir alone the air;

While, soft and low,

A chant of women weaving at the loom

Falls on the ear from some cool darkened room,

Where flits the restless shuttle to and fro

Beneath bare arms that glimmer in the gloom.

A fresh clear chant

About frail clouds that sea-sprites weave in vain,

And woven rainbows, harbingers of rain

For things that pant;

About Arachne and her wondrous woof;

About grim Time who weaves white hairs in proof

That men grow old, and that life’s thread grows scant,

Weave, women, weave! still Hesperus holds aloof;

Still shoots the sun

His random shafts through leafy shade to rouse

The shepherd up, who seeks yet thicker boughs;

Still peep and run

The bright green lizard on the heated stones;

Still through the glare the whirling beetle drones;

Still noontide sleep may end sweet dreams begun.

Marsyas, resume thy flute. What say its tones?

MARSYAS.

Small lurid clouds

Veil and unveil the moon; while, through the lone

Wild Phrygian woods, hot gusts of storm-wind moan.

Each shadow shrouds

Some unknown conscious harm; and all around

Glide unseen rustling things upon the ground.

The air seems full of grabbing hands, and crowds

Of evil fancies wake at every sound.

Now in the night

The sorceress prowls, while others slumber deep,

Cursing the God who robs her of her sleep.

The moon’s vague light

Makes her knife gleam, as, muttering low,

She seeks the thrice-curst mandrake which uprooted shrieks,

Such shrieks as drive the unexpecting wight

Who hears them, mad, and blanch her own white cheeks.

Now sound strange sighs,

If it be true that evil spirits love,

And seek each other when the moon above

Half veils her eyes;

The woods repeat unhallowed coos and calls,

Kisses and sobs of love whose sound appals

Beyond all shrieks, all moanings and all cries,

While passion grows as deeper shadow falls.

APOLLO.

A golden haze

Has made the bright sea dreamy; and near coasts

Look far, and faint as sunshine-faded ghosts.

From neighbouring bays

A mingled sense of odoriferous wood

And fallen blossoms floats upon the flood

That scarcely heaves, save where the dolphins play;

While some few sea-gulls motionlessly brood.

And o’er that sea,

Bright, tepid, calm, the sunset breezes waft

A chant of sailors from a home-bound craft;

The white gulls flee

At its approach; while from the beach, where run

The tidings of return and riches won,

Come other chants to welcome distantly

The ship that seems to sail from out the sun.

Oh ply the oar,

Ye sun-tanned youths! does patient love not wait

With tight-strained heart, intent upon your fate?

The old loved shore

Is close, close, close! ye hear the lyre’s loud strings—

Ye almost hear the words that gladness sings.

Oh ply the oar with might, and each shall pour

Into Love’s lap the treasures that he brings!

MARSYAS.

Give ear—give ear!

From yonder grove in sudden gusts there comes

A sound of flutes, of cymbals and of drums;

And now I hear

Wild cries of Mænads who, with ivy crowned,

Toss their mad heads and whirl and leap and bound,

Brandishing snakes; while, in voluptuous fear,

The pale ecstatic votaries press around.

Whirl faster still,

Ye fierce flushed Mænads, lither than the asp,

Or gleaming adder writhing in your grasp!

The wild flutes fill

The air with madness! Let the hot shift slip,

And show the panting breast, the glistening hip!

Dance ever faster, though the dance should kill!

Whirl on, with flaming eye and quivering lip!

I come, I come,

O Cybele, great Cybele, that hast

Thy chief throne here, I come to thee at last!

From my far home

I bring at last to thy deep rustling grove

The wild pent fire that in my bosom strove;

I come to lift thy praise to heaven’s dome;

Perchance to die, on tasting thy dread love.

APOLLO.

Where sunshine clings

To Parian columns, what chaste marshalled throng

Brings thee, Athena, wreaths of flowers and song?

Thy pure fane rings

With measured chants; on horses small and fleet

Come stalwart youths; while with restrainèd feet

The troop of virgins climb the steps, that brings

The sacred olive and the sacred wheat.

Hark, never cease

The pure chaste hymns to hail the mighty child

Of the cleft brows of Zeus, all undefiled;

Armed friend of peace

From whose strong breastplate streams transcendent light,

Whose spear makes dim the meteors of the night;

Pure Patroness of plenty and increase,

Mistress of sunny cities walled and white!

And, oh, to-day,

Thou armed and placid Pallas, deadly foe

Of all things lewd and wild who once didst throw

In scorn away

The lewd wild flute, too base for thy pure breath,

And doom whoe’er should find it to slow death,

Come to my aid, and let my pure lyre play

Such bright chaste sounds as shall deserve the wreath!

SISTER MARY OF THE PLAGUE.

I.

IN her work there is no flagging,

And her slight frame seems of steel;

And her face and eyes and motions,

Tried by countless nights of watching,

Nor fatigue nor pain reveal.

Yet the Sisters say she eats not,

Spurning food as ne’er did saint,

And they murmur: “She is nourished

By a miracle of Heaven;

God allows not she should faint.”

Through the darkened wards she passes

On her round from bed to bed;

And the sick who wait her coming

Cease their groaning, smiling faintly

As they hear her light quick tread.

Through the gabled lanes she hurries;

And the ribald men-at-arms

Hush their mirth, and stepping backward

Let her pass to soothe some death-bed,

Safe from insults and alarms;

And the priests and monks and townsfolk

Whom she passes greet her sight

With a strange respectful pleasure

As she nears in dark blue flannel

And huge cap of spotless white.

Oh, the busy Flemish city

Knows its Sister Mary well;

And the very children show her

To the stranger as she passes,

And her story all can tell:

How she won a lasting glory,

Cleaving to the dread bedside

When the Plague with livid pinions

Lighted on the crowded alleys,

And all others fled or died.

How alone she made men listen

In their fear, and do her will;

Making help and making order

When the customary rulers

Trembled helpless, and stood still.

How she had the corpses buried

When they choked canal and street;

When alone the shackled convicts,

Goaded on with pike and halberd,

Cared to near with quaking feet.

But those days of fear are over,

And the pure canal reflects

Barges decked with pots of flowers

And long rows of tile-faced gables

Which no breeze of death infects.

And once more the city prospers

Through the cunning of its guilds;

While the restless shuttles clatter,

And in peace the busy Fleming

Weaves and tans and brews and builds;

And the bearded Spanish troopers,

Sitting idly in the shade,

Toss their dice with oath and rattle,

Or crack jokes with girls that pass them,

Laughing-eyed and unafraid.

II.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,

In thy soul there is some change:

For thy face the while thou watchest

By a pale young Spanish soldier

Works with struggle strong and strange.

Thou hast watched a hundred death-beds

Ever calm without dismay;

Fighting like a steady fighter

While the shade of Death pressed onward

Night on night and day on day;

And when Death had proved the stronger

Thou wouldst heave one sigh at most,

And then turn to some new moaner,

Ready to resume the battle,

Just as steady at thy post.

Now thy soul is filled with anguish

Strange and wild, thou know’st not why;

While a voice unknown and inward

Seems to whisper, far and faintly,

“If he dies, thou too wilt die,”

Many months has he been lying

In thy ward and rises not;

Youth and strength avail him nothing;

Growing daily whiter, whiter;

Dying of men know not what.

And he murmurs: “Sister Mary,

Now the end is nearing fast;

Thou hast nursed me like God’s Angel,

But the hand of God is on me

And thy care must end at last.

“I have few, few days remaining;

Now I scarce can draw my breath;

See my hand: no blood is in it;

And I feel like one who slowly,

Slowly, slowly, bleeds to death.”

And his worn and heavy eyelids

Close again as if in sleep;

While thou lookest at his features

With a long and searching anguish

In thy eyes—that dare not weep.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,

Watch him closer, closer still!

There be things within the boundless

Realm of Horror, unsuspected—

Things that slowly, slowly, kill!

In his face there is no colour,

And his hand is ivory-white;

But upon his throat is something

Like a small red stain or puncture,

Something like a leech’s bite.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,

Dost thou see that small red stain?

Hast thou never noticed something

Like it on the throats of others

Whom thy care has nursed in vain?

Have no rumours reached thee, Sister,

Of a Thing that haunts these wards

When the scanty sleep thou takest

Cheats the sick of the protection

Which thy vigilance affords?

When, at night, the ward is silent

And the night-lamp’s dimness hides,

And the nurse on duty slumbers

In her chair with measured breathing,

Then it glides, and glides, and glides,

Like a woman’s form, new risen

From the grave with soundless feet,

Clad in something which the shadows

Of the night-lamp render doubtful

Whether robe or winding-sheet.

And its eyes seem fixed and sightless,

Like the eyeballs of the dead;

But it gropes not and moves onward

Sure and silent, seeking something,

In the ward, from bed to bed.

And if any, lying sleepless,

Sees it, he becomes as stone;

Terror glues his lips together,

While his eyes are forced to follow

All its movements, one by one.

And he sees it stop, and hover

Round a bed, with wavering will,

Like a bat which, ere it settles,

Flits in circles ever smaller,

Nearer, nearer, nearer still.

Then it bends across the sleeper

Restless in the sultry night,

And begins to fan him gently

With its garment, till his slumber

Groweth deep, and dreamless quite;

And its corpse-like face unstiffens

And its dead eyes seem to gloat

As, approaching and approaching,

It applies its mouth of horror

Slowly, firmly, to his throat.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,

Has no rumour told thee this?

What if he whose life thou lovest

Like thine own, and more, were dying

Of that long terrific kiss?

III.

From the Hospital’s arched window,

Open to the summer air,

You can see the monks in couples

All returning home at sunset

Through the old cathedral square.

On the steps of the cathedral,

In the weak declining sun

Sit the beggars and the cripples;

While faint gusts of organ-rolling

Tell that vespers have begun.

Slowly creeps the tide of shadow

Up the steps of sculptured front,

Driving back the yellow sunshine

On each pinnacle and buttress

Which the twilight soon makes blunt.

Slowly evening grasps the city,

And the square grows still and lone;

No one passes save, it may be,

Up the steps and through the portal,

Some stray monk or tottering crone.

In this room, which seems the study

Of the Hospital’s chief leech,

There is no one; but the twilight

Makes all objects seem mysterious,

Like a conscious watcher each.

Here the snakes whose venom healeth

Stand in jars in hideous file;

While the skulls that crown the book-shelves

Seem to grin; and from the ceiling

Hangs the huge stuffed crocodile.

Here be kept the drugs and cordials

Which the Jew from Syria brings,

And perchance drugs yet more precious,

Melted topaz, pounded ruby

Such as save the lives of kings.

All is silent in the study;

But the door-hinge creaks anon,

And a woman enters softly

Seeking something that seems hidden—

One unnaturally wan.

What she seeks is not in phials

Nor in jars, but in a book;

And she mutters as she searches

Through the book-shelves with a kind of

Brooding hurry in her look;

And she finds the book, and takes it

To the window for more light;

And she reads a passage slowly

With constrained and hissing breathing

And dark brow contracted tight.

“Most of them,” it says, “are corpses

That have lain beneath the moon,

And that quit their graves at midnight,

Prowling round to prey on sleepers;

But the daybreak scares them soon.

“But the worst, called soulless bodies,

Plague the world but now and then;

They have died in some great sickness;

But reviving in the moonbeams

Rise once more and mix with men.

“And they act and feel like others,

Never guessing they be dead,

Common food of men they love not;

But at night, impelled by hunger,

In their sleep they quit their bed;

“And they fasten on some sleeper,

Feeding on his living blood;

Who, when life has left his body,

Must in turn arise, and, prowling,

Seek the like accursed food.”

And the book slips from her fingers

And she casts her down to pray;

But convulsions seize and twist her,

And delirious ramblings mingle

With the prayers she tries to say.

In her mouth there is a saltness,

On her lips there is a stain;

In her soul there is a horror;

In her vitals there is something

More like raging thirst than pain;

And she cries, “O God, I knew it:

Have I not, at dead of night,

Waking up, looked round and found me

On the ledge of roofs and windows

In my shift, and shrunk with fright?

“Have I not, O God of mercy,

Passed by shambles in the street,

And stopped short in monstrous craving

For the crimson blood that trickled

In the gutter at my feet?

“Did I not, at last Communion,

Cough the Holy Wafer out?

Blood I suck, but Christ’s blood chokes me.

O my God, my God, vouchsafe me

Some strong light in this great doubt!”

And she sinketh crushed and prostrate

In the twilight on the floor,

While the darkness grows around her,

And her quick and laboured breathing

Grows convulsive more and more.

IV.

Sister Mary, all is quiet

In thy wards, and midnight nears:

Seek the scanty rest thou needest;

Seek the scanty rest thou grudgest,

All is hushed and no one fears.

But, though midnight, Sister Mary

Thinks it yet not time to go;

And the night-lamps shining dimly

Show her vaguely in the shadow

Moving softly to and fro.

What is it that she is doing,

Flitting round one sleeper’s bed;

Is she sprinkling something round it,

Something white as wheaten flour,

And on which she will not tread?

And at last the work is over,

And she goeth to her rest;

And she sleeps at once, exhausted

By long labour, and, it may be,

By strong struggles in her breast.

Nothing breaks upon the stillness

Of the night, except, afar,

Some faint shouts of ending revel

Or of brawling, in the quarters

Where the Spanish soldiers are.

Time wades slowly through the darkness

Till at last it reaches day,

And the city’s many steeples

Buried in the starless heaven

Grow distinct in sunless grey.

And the light wakes Sister Mary,

And she dresses in strange haste,

Giving God no prayer, and leaving

On her bed the beads and crosses

That should dangle from her waist.

And with unheard steps she hurries

Through the ward where all sleep on

To the bed in which is lying

He who day by day is growing

More inexorably wan.

All around the bed is sprinkled

Something white, like thin fresh snow,

Where a naked foot has printed

In the night a many footprints,

Sharp and clear from heel to toe:

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,

Dost thou know thy own small foot?

Would it fit those marks which make thee

Turn more pale than thy own paleness

If upon them it were put?

And the dying youth smiles faintly

Pleasure’s last accorded smile;

And he murmurs as he hears her,

“Sister Mary, I am better;

Let me hold thy hand awhile:

“Sister Mary, I would tell thee

Fain one thing before I die;

For a dying man may utter

What another must keep hidden

In the fastness of a sigh.

“Sister Mary, I have loved thee—

Is it sin to tell thee this?

And I dreamt—O God, be lenient

If ’tis sin—that thou didst give me

On the throat a long, long kiss.”

THE BRIDE OF PORPHYRION.

DIOCLEA.

PASS on, pass on, and seek thy lair, lone man,

If neighbouring lair thou hast. Night falls; and God

For whom thou once didst snap all human ties

Requires thy evening prayer.

PORPHYRION.

Oh, if I stop

Upon my path and bandy words with woman—

I who for years have shunned man, woman, child,

But woman most—I would not have thee think

In error that thy old familiar voice,

Which seems to come from out the past, has called

Emotion back to life, or that I care

To take advantage of the freak of chance

Which brings us face to face and makes us stand

Each like a spectre in the other’s eyes.

But I suspect thee of a rash design

Abhorrent to the Christian; and I ask,

Woman, once more, what brings thee here at dusk—

Here by the deep lone Nile, when rise the mists

Heavy with death, when prowl devouring beasts,

And when God’s lonely dweller in the waste

Alone has nought to fear?

DIOCLEA.

What brings me here?

The Nile flower is closing with the day;

The Nile bird hastens to her bulrush nest;

All Nature that is not of night and evil

Is seeking rest; and why should not I too,

If I am weary, find repose at dusk

Where rolls the deep dark stream?

PORPHYRION.

Because the Lord,

Through my unworthy voice, has bid thee quit

This perilous brink, and bear such heavy load

As He, whom none shall judge, may choose to heap

Upon thy head.

DIOCLEA.

Resume thy path, lone man—

Resume thy path in peace. Oh, thou art rash

To linger out this meeting of dead souls!

Art thou not that Porphyrion who escaped

Into the waste to shun the sight of woman,

However pure and spotless she might be?

Then leave me to myself; go seek thy lair,

And leave me to the darkness and the night;

Else will I tell thee in one monstrous word

What she now is who once was Dioclea,

And make thy desert-nurtured chastity

Shrink back in fear as from a gust from hell!

PORPHYRION.

Oh, I have wrestled with the Fiend too long

And placed my heel too oft upon his neck

To fear contamination from thy breath!

I care not what thou wast, nor what thou art,

Now that my soul is safe and that long years

Of ruthless castigation of the flesh

Have put me out of reach of woman’s snare;

But, as a Christian servant of the Lord,

I may not let thee do the thing thou wouldst,

And which God hates. Thy soul is on the brink

Of the abyss; and God now bids me stretch

My hand to save it.

DIOCLEA.

Oh, not thine, not thine!

The wanton hand that broke the precious vessel

Shall not attempt to mend it.

PORPHYRION.

What I did

Upon that day, I did at God’s command.

DIOCLEA.

Upon my bridal morn my father’s house

Was full of song; my heart was full of sun;

Yea, and of earnest love and brave intent:

Less snowy was the linen I had woven

With my own hands for thee; less fresh the wreaths

The bridesmaids still were twining; and less pure

The gold of bridal gifts which guest-friends brought,

Than was the heart that waited to be thine.

PORPHYRION.

Upon thy bridal morn my heart was filled

With doubt and fear. My hounded spirit groped

Like one who fears pursuers in the dark

And knows no issue. Yea, within my breast,

Like captive eagles in a cage too narrow,

The love of God, the love of thee, did fight.

I cursed the perilous lustre of thy eyes;

I cursed thy smile and laugh; and cursed myself

That loathed them not. The sounds of mirth and song

That filled the house fell grating on my ear;

The nuptial cakes smacked bitter in my mouth,

Ay, worse than gall; the dewy bridal wreaths

Stank in my nostrils, while an inner voice

Kept thundering in my soul: “Away, away!

The howling waste awaits thee. Not for thee

Are care and kiss of woman; not for thee

Are hearth and home, and kith and kin and friend;

But scourge and shirt of hair!”

DIOCLEA.

And like a thief,

After the priest had blessed us and before

The feast was over, thou didst skulk away,

And all at once convert the sound of song

Into the hum of pity and derision.

I sat alone upon my empty bed,

Wrapped in the double gloom of night and woe.

The pillars of my faith in human good

Had given way; the roof had fallen in

Upon my life. Oh how I cursed the night

For dragging out its black and silent creep!

And when dawn came, oh how I cursed the dawn

For its intrusive stare! And yet that night

Was but the first of many equal nights;

That dawn was but the first of many dawns

In ushering in a loathed and lonely day.

I held aloof from every happier woman,

Suspiciously and silently to brood;

Grudging to one her husband’s look of love,

And to the next the infant at her breast;

Grudging to all their house, their home, their hearth,

Their dignity, their duties, and their cares:

And shunning, I was shunned, and, as it were,

Marked out for future shame.

PORPHYRION.

If like a thief

I stole away unseen, oh it was not

To spend that night in any rival’s arms!

Rock, hard and wind-swept, was my marriage bed;

The wilderness my bride; the starry sky

My roof; the distant, interrupted howl

Of beasts of prey my nuptial lullaby.

Before me lay the waste, strewn here and there

With ribs of men and camels, or the wreck

Of perished cities; yea, and thirst and pain

In vaguely measured sum. But in my soul

The voice of thunder cried: “Push on, push on

Into the waste, Porphyrion! thou art still

Too near to human haunts, too far from God!”

And I pushed on; and in an empty tomb

In a deserted city of the dead

I made my lair, alone with stones and God;

Living off locusts and such scanty herbs

As grew in clefts of rock and empty wells.

Oh what a silence, what a loneliness!

The temple columns and the huge carved stones

Cast long black shadows on the sun-baked sand

In endless rows; and through the livelong day

No moving shadow crossed them save my own,

As, like a leper whom his sores have doomed

To lead the lonely life, I prowled for food.

Oh, it was hard! For knowing that the Fiend

Would come ere long to scare and tempt me back

To human haunts, I sought with prayer, and scourge,

And thirst, and hunger, and restricted sleep

To arm myself against him and his strength;

And come he did. He prowled at first at night,

Shaped as a roaring lion, round and round

My lonely cell; but his re-echoing roar

Deterred me not, nor stopped a single prayer.

And then he came with soft insidious step

During my sleep, and strove to tempt the flesh

In woman’s guise—yea, in thy very shape—

And sought to lure me to caress and kiss,

Taking thy face, thy eyes, thy very voice

In all their beauty and their blandishment;

But I defied him, and he howling fled,

And changed his plan. He made the solid ground

Lurch ever and anon beneath my feet;

He made me shiver in the blazing sun

With mortal cold; and sometimes, in the dusk

He made the huge stone heads of sphinxes nod

And gibber as I passed them. Oh, for years

I wrestled with him in the awful waste;

But I o’ercame his strength.

DIOCLEA.

And dost thou think

That I, in that worse waste, which was not strewn

Like thine with stones, but with the wreck of hopes

And wreck of love, was not sought out by fiends

As well as thou? Ay, ay, they came, the fiends;

They whispered in my ear that I was young,

And that my youth was passing unenjoyed;

They whispered in my ear that I was fair—

Fairer than any other far or near,

And that the beauty that a fool had spurned

Would wane before its time. They said: “Look up!

Thou mournest Love whom thou believest dead,

And Love, hard by, is waiting for one word,

One motion of encouragement, one glance.

Give but the signal, and the lonely one

Whom maid and matron scorn, and who now holds

Suspiciously aloof from life and joy,

Will be a very Empress new-enthroned,

And waste her life no more.” But oh, I clung

To the dull honour of my broken life;

I struggled with the Tempter long and hard;

I said unto myself that after all

Thou mightst at last return to me; and strove

With all my strength to keep me pure for thee.

But years went by and still thou didst not come,

And round and round my heart the Tempter prowled,

Nearer and ever nearer with new arts,

New wiles, new snares, new whispers, day by day,

And proved at last the stronger of the two.

I fled my father’s house for ever more;

I loved; was loved; I saw luxurious cities

Where pleasure triumphed—Alexandria,

Antioch and Athens, ay, and even Rome—

Courted where’er I went; until the day

When he proved false, and when once more I sat

Upon my lonely bed and prayed for dawn.

And yet I loved again; yea, twice and thrice.

Down, down the winding stair of love I went,

Until the slippery and precipitous steps

Became so dark and noisome all at once

That I threw up my arms and shrieked in fear;

But all my strength was gone, and heaven’s faint light

Too far above my head. Oh, since we two

Last saw each other’s eyes, not thou alone

Hast felt the scourge alight upon thy back,

Not thou alone hast known the howling waste;

For I have felt that nine times knotted scourge

Which makes the soul and not the body writhe.

Descending on me fiercely; and have found

In men’s embrace a loneliness more dread,

A desert more terrific and more bare

Than any which thy bruised unsandalled foot

Has ever trodden yet.

PORPHYRION.

The worse for thee.

I freed thee from the weight of human ties;

I pointed out the path that leads to heaven

Across life’s wreck; and if, instead of God,

Thou chosest Satan, what is that to me?

Thou mightst have built a mansion for thy soul

Upon the ruins of an earthly home;

Thou mightst like me have wrestled with the Fiend,

And felt the pride of bruising with thy heel

The Tempter’s head; thou mightst like me have felt

The fierce voluptuous pleasure of the scourge;

Nay, even, like myself thou mightst, with time,

Have sought to snatch from Heaven’s hand the crown,

The glorious crown of martyrdom: for if

Upon this day thou meetest me so near

The haunts of men, it is because I wait

For some fresh outburst of the Pagan’s wrath

Against our sect, to court the lingering death.

But lo, we waste our words; for I have warned

And summoned thee to leave the perilous brink

Of this dark circling water; and if thou

Still cleavest to thy heathenish design

Of self-destruction, not upon my soul

Shall fall the wrath of Heaven for the deed.

Once more I bid thee, woman, leave the brink;

For see, the night has come; and, as thou say’st,

God needs my evening prayer.

DIOCLEA.

Ay, ay, the night

Has wrapped us round: I scarce can see the flowers

That glimmered on the current; though I hear

The sweet faint rustling of the stream-bent reeds.

Pass on thy way, lone man—pass on in peace;

There is no link between us, and no love.

Go, find thy rest, as I at last find mine;

And leave me here, beside the deep lone Nile,

Where woe will sink, and haply leave no trace.

HUNTING THE KING.

1792.

AND the two in the twilight spurred fiercely again,

While behind them went trooping the trees,

And the darkening rutty cross-roads of Champagne,

With their patches of wood and their patches of grain,

Grew more solemn and lone by degrees.

Like the hurrying ghosts of two riders they rode,—

For the few whom they met, indistinct;

And the lights that sprang up few and far away showed

Where, to right or to left, lay a human abode;

And more stars overhead came and winked.

Through the maze of cross-roads they went ever more fast,

As if he who led on never doubted;

Till the other by dint of hard spurring at last

Brought his horse alongside, and between them there passed

Hurried words that were broken and shouted.

“Slacken pace! slacken pace!” “Spur him on without stay!

What’s a horse to the saving of France?”

“Art thou sure of the place where they change the relay?”

“At Varennes, nigh on twelve. Trust to me for the way!

France is saved if we get in advance!”

And the postmaster Drouet once more shot ahead,

Closely followed by Guillaume his friend;

Never seeming to waver or doubt as he led,

Or to see less distinct the invisible thread

Of short-cut on short-cut without end.

But the roads and the fields and the low hedges grew

Every minute more lonely and dark,

While his horse, nearly merged in the darkness, now drew

From the flint of the road with its thundering shoe

Every minute more brilliant a spark.

But he thought in his heart: “If the moon does not rise

When we get to the woods, I shall doubt;

And he’ll get to the army and German allies,

And the land, unprepared, will be caught by surprise,

And the great revolution stamped out.”

But a glow, faint at first, and then brighter, was spread

In the sky, and the moon showed her face,

And the plain and the hills were lit up far and wide;

And a galloping shadow appeared at his side,

And took part all at once in the race.

Oh the moon that plays tricks with the shadows she throws

Might have given that shadow the shape

Of the Rider who rides us all down, friends and foes,

And was now ere their time coming down upon those

Who had trusted to God for escape.

Hurry on, ye postillions, so royally paid,

That suspect not a King and a Queen!

Though ye never have heard in the course of your trade

Of a thing that the doctors of Paris have made,

Of a thing that they call Guillotine!

Hurry on to the chopper-shaped square of Varennes

Where your fellow-postillions await!

Hurry on! hurry on, ye dull whip-cracking men!

For each stride that ye take, there is one who takes ten,

And who gallops like Death and like Fate!

He caught sight of a face in the dark carriage-hood

As ye rolled from his door and were gone,

And he looked with a closeness that boded no good

At the crumpled bank-note where that face graven stood—

Hurry on! hurry on! hurry on!

There were clouds near the moon, and they girt her about

As if trying to screen and to save,

And the darkness one moment filled Drouet with doubt;

But she baffled them all and shone brilliantly out

To abet with the light that she gave.

And the stems of the corn flashed metallic and bright

And like bayonets distantly blue,

And the breeze-rippled patches of grain in the light

Looked like distant battalions restrained from the fight

That a thrill of impatience runs through.

But the patches of grain grew more scanty anon,

And the road grew more hard to discern;

And they entered the lonely dark woods of Argonne

Where the moon through the branches could ill help them on,

And they trampled on brushwood and fern.

As they galloped each oak with its black knotty arm

Seemed to grab at the two like a claw;

While the air seemed all full of destruction and harm,

And the one who rode second felt vaguely alarm

At each shadow and shape that he saw.

But the other dashed on, as with hounds on the scent

In his thundering, thundering speed;

Giving neither a thought to his horse nearly spent

Nor a look to his comrade, but solely intent

On a prey that was royal indeed.

Did no angel of life, as he spurred yet more fast,

Cry, “O God, for a slip or a stumble

That shall save from the block the heads sinking at last

Into sleep, now that fear of pursuers is past,

And the heads of a many more humble!

“O Thou God for a doubt that shall bring to a stop,

For a stone in the shoe to retard,

Or more heads in the basket of sawdust will drop

Than the bunches of grapes that the vintagers lop

On a day that their labour is hard;

“And the fields will be lashed not by tempests of rain,

But by tempests of iron and lead;

And manured year by year with fresh blood all in vain,

And each summer will bring not a harvest of grain,

But a harvest of cripples and dead;

“And the nations in carnage will ceaselessly strive

With a roar that disperses the clouds;

Where the trains of artillery furiously drive

And the gun-wheels make ruts through the dead and the live,

And the balls make long lanes through the crowd.

“Let his horse break a vein or his saddle a girth,

Trip him up on the rough, hardened mud!

For each drop from the rowel that falls to the earth

If he reaches Varennes, O Thou God, will give birth

To an ocean of innocent blood!”

Or did spirits invisible fly by his side

And in whispers excite him and goad

And exulting foretell him the end of his ride,

As his spur-mangled horse with his long fatal stride

One by one killed the miles of the road.

Did they cry: “Lash him on, as in lightness of heart

They have ridden the people to death;

Lash him on, as the Saviour of France that thou art;

Lash him on, till the blood from his nostrils shall start;

Lash him on! never think of his breath!”

Did they cry: “Lash him on without mercy or stay!”

As his arm, numb with lashing, desisted;

“Lash him on, as the quarterers lashed on the day

When their horses ’mid clapping of hands tugged away,

And the live limbs of Damiens resisted!

“Lash him on, for the freedom of nations depends

On the flag which at last is unfurled!

Lash him on, lash him on, till his very life ends!

Lash him on, lash him on, for the breath that he spends

Is for Freedom, and France, and the World!

“So shall Kellermann’s steed at Marengo be spurred

When the earth by his squadrons is shaken,

And the thunder of man o’er God’s thunder is heard,

And there runs from the Alps to the Tiber one word,

And the lands from their torpor awaken!

“So the couriers shall spur and the miles disappear

From the Oder, the Elbe, and the Po,

When the victories follow each other so near

That the bearers of tidings are filled with a fear

Lest another their tidings outdo!

“Lash him on, lash him on! and the three-coloured flag

That has sprung from the black Paris gutter

Shall be carried by plain and by valley and crag

And, all riddled by bullets, a mere tattered rag,

From Alhambra to Kremlin shall flutter!”

And he lashed, and he left his companion behind

And sped furiously on all alone,

With the sinister shadow the moon had designed

Flitting on just in front of him, vaguely defined,

At a pace that was wild as his own.

And as midnight was nearing, at last there appeared

The faint lights of Varennes far ahead,

And then only it was, as he finally cleared

The last miles of the road, that he suddenly feared

That his horse might fall suddenly dead.

But his horse did not drop; and with thundering feet

He dashed on to the inn of the Post;

While he shouted to all that his eye chanced to meet,

“Sound the tocsin! the tocsin! all up the long street!

Bar the Bridge! bar the Bridge! or all’s lost!”

And the patriots crouched in the shade of the old

Narrow archway, all holding their breath;

Till a carriage and four was heard coming, and rolled

Slowly, heavily, in; while the tocsin still tolled

Like a knell that anticipates death.

ABRAHAM CAREW.

YE righteous Judges of this Christian state,

Ye bid me speak; ye bid me show good cause

Why I, whose hand is red with Christian blood,

Yea, even with the blood of my own child,

Of my own Edith, should not be condemned

To die upon the scaffold, nor be locked

For life within a mad-house: and I speak.

I fear not death; for now that she is dead,

Now that dull silence hath replaced her voice,

Life hath but little charm; and were it not

That to consent to ignominious death

For having acted by command of God

Would be unfit, and might call down His wrath

Upon the land, I think I scarce should take

The pains to plead; but strength hath narrow bounds,

And I confess intolerable fear

Lest ye condemn me to complete my years

Among the mad. O Thou Almighty God

Who for Thy purposes inscrutable

Hast pushed me on and nerved my quaking arm

To slay my child, preserve from such dread fate

One who has offered up what most he loved

Here upon earth, and give unto my tongue

Such eloquence as may convince these men

That I am sane!

I am a self-made man

Grown rich by building engines for the rail,

A man of little learning; one whose youth

Was spent in striking sparks from reddened iron

Amid the roar and clanging of a forge;

Knowing no books except the Book of books,

Whose sacred pages when my work was done

I turned with grimy hands, therein to learn

The will and orders of a jealous God,

A God of wrath, a God whose unseen hand

Falls heavily and chasteningly on all,

And most on them He loveth. Little time

Did I bestow on pleasure and those sports,

Unseemly for the most part, which divert

The spirit from obedience, and prevent

The growth of labour’s fruit; and God allowed

That I should prosper in my worldly wealth.

And that the name of Abraham Carew

Should hold high credit in the market-place,

And that my fellow-townsmen one and all

Should put their faith in my integrity,

Electing me an Elder of the Church

And civil Magistrate. But, as I say,

The Lord doth love to chasten; and He laid,

As years went by and multiplied my store,

Great tribulations on me. One by one

I saw the godly household which had grown

Around me, fall as fell the summer flowers

Around an aged tree when winter nears,

And leave him in his listless loneliness.

One child alone, one twining clinging flower—

Edith, my latest born—remained unnipped,

And in my rash presumption I believed

That God would spare her; for upon her cheek

The hectic spot appeared not which had marked

Her mother and her brethren; and I saw

With sinful joy how she increased in strength

As grew her beauty and her loveliness—

Yea, yea, a sinful joy which was to rouse

The jealousy of God. But if my tongue

Is to convince you of the thing I tell

And justify His ways, oh let me speak—

Oh let me tell you how I loved my child!

I loved her as an old man loves the sun

Which warms his limbs and keeps the palsy off;

I loved her as the plundered miser loves

The small secreted heap that yet remains;

I loved her as the shipwrecked drowning wretch

Loves the frail plank which each approaching wave

May tear from his embrace.

No vain gold chain,

No gaudy ribbon decked her nut-brown hair;

But in such sober raiment as befits

The virgin-mistress of a godly house

She went the round of her domestic duties,

In need of no adornment to enhance

The chaste and holy beauty which she wore

Unconscious to herself, and lived her life

Of cheerfulness and thrift, beloved by all;

Reading at morn and eve the Bible page

To our assembled servants, in a clear

And reverent voice; devoting patient hours

To teaching little children; and by help

Of her own needle, plied while others slept,

Providing winter clothing for the poor

Before the earliest chill of autumn came.

A grave and gracious girl, whose smile of love

Was as a light for my declining years;

Who prized the walks which we were wont to take

Together, through the lanes and ripening corn,

Above all routs and shows. Too great, too great

To please a jealous God, had grown the love

For Edith in my bosom; and at times

I felt a cruel tightening of the heart,

And a prophetic something seem to say

Unto my spirit: “Abraham, beware!

The Lord will claim His rights, and ask again

For that which He hath given unto thee.

Thy love is given to an earthly thing;

A common, natural instinct rules thy life,

And not the love of God.” But on her cheek

The ruddiness of health diminished not,

And I loved on.

There came a Sabbath day,

On which it chanced that at the Meeting House

The Scripture page was read in which it said

How he whose name I bear, in days of yore

Obeyed the dire injunction of the Lord,

And offered up his Isaac. By my side

Edith was sitting listening to the words

With fixed attention, as was e’er her wont.

The light athwart the high and narrow window

Streamed down upon her, lighting up her hair

With golding streakings, just as rays of sun

Light up the seaweed in a tide-left pool,

And played upon her features—ne’er before

Had she appeared so lovely. As my eyes

Were resting thus upon her sitting there,

A fear flashed through my spirit, and I thought:

“What if the Lord were to demand her life,

And bid thee offer up thy only child

As Abraham did Isaac?” and I felt

A strange and frightful struggle stir my soul—

Yea, stir my nature to its inmost depths.

I listened little to the words of prayer;

And on our homeward way, when Edith asked

What made my brow so suddenly o’ercast,

I answered not.

Ye wise and upright men

Who sit to-day deciding on my fate,

Ye wonder at the measure of my speech

Ye miss what ye expected ye would find,

A madman’s incoherence, or the glare

And desperate wild defence of guilt at bay?

Confess, confess, I speak not like the mad.

Oh, I have drilled and disciplined my tongue

In these long months of prison; I

From morn to eve within my narrow cell

Taming my own excitement, so that if,

When came the day of trial, God should make

No outward revelation of the truth

To save His servant, I might yet convince

My judges and the world. He hath not deigned

To make the attestation at my prayer.

No thunder from the blue unclouded sky,

No quaking of the earth hath helped my cause,

And God hath left me only earthly means

To prove to men that what they call a crime

I did by His command.

It came, it came,

That dread command! I had not long to wait;

I seemed to feel it coming; day and night

The frightful expectation filled my soul;

And by a natural instinct, thrice accurst,

The more I dreaded that an angry God,

Roused by the sinful greatness of my love,

Would claim her life, the more my love increased.

It came, it came, the awful summons came!

It was the dead of night: I lay awake;

And in the soundless darkness, all at once,

While on my flesh the hair from fear stood up,

I heard the awful voice: it cried, “Arise,

Take up thy knife, and sacrifice thy child

Whom I bestowed; for I the Lord thy God,

I am a jealous God, and bid thee strike.”

Then came three days of human agony;

The flesh contending with the will of God,

And writhing upward like a trodden snake

Beneath religion’s heel: for I believed

That God would pardon me three days’ delay

To conquer human nature. Once I thought

To tell her all—to ask her for her life—

To call on her obedience to submit—

To shift upon her shoulders half the weight

Of agony and horror; but I looked

Upon her face and set aside the plan,

Misdoubting woman’s strength. In Edith’s eyes

I saw a strange suspicious look—a look

Which told me that the tempest in my soul

Was finding outward vent upon my face.

I caught her watching me, and understood

That if I struck not soon, perchance my arm

Would be restrained by man; so I prepared.

There was a spot beside the sedgy stream,

A solitary spot, which in our walks

We sometimes crossed. I led her out that way.

It was a hot close day; no ray of sun

Shone through the lowering clouds, and now and then

The thunder’s distant rumble met the ear.

We reached the lonely river-bank. I stopped,

And was about to do it, when she laid

Her hand upon my arm with a caress,

And asked me in her sweet familiar voice

To pluck a water-lily, which I did,

And then walked on, for somehow I was balked;

I could not do it.

With the fall of night

The pent-up tempest burst; and in its roar

I seemed to hear God’s formidable wrath.

I heard it in the howling of the wind;

I heard it in the pelting of the rain

Against the windows; and each rattling peal,

Each burst of rolling echo in the dark

Which made me cower like a chastened hound

Recalled me to obedience. But the flesh,

The strong rebellious flesh, oh how it writhed

Against the spirit! How the natural love,

The common human instinct, fought and fought,

And, backed by Satan’s whisper, held its own!

At length the spirit conquered, and I rose

To do the will of God; but, in my crushed

And humbled anguish, I implored the Lord

To stay my lifted arm, and at the last

To save her life as Isaac’s had been saved.

Then I went up the stairs, as if each step

Were a delay, a respite, and a hope,

And sought the chamber where my Edith slept.

The walk had worn her limbs; her sleep was deep.

The storm had not aroused her; nor did I.

I kissed her, and I slew her; for the Lord

Did not vouchsafe to stay His servant’s arm.

For one short moment after she was dead,

I thought perchance that He would bring her back

To life. But all was silent there.

And now,

Ye righteous judges of this Christian land,

Ye godly Elders, look me in the face.

Ye know ye dare not hang me. Will ye dare

To place me in the madhouse for a deed

Which God Himself exacted—which ye teach

Your children to revere in Abraham

From year to year? Ye know ye dare not do it.

And if ye ask me how I knew God’s voice,

Ask of the shepherd’s watch-dog how he knows

His master’s call when darkness girds the fold!

Ye know that Abraham of old, if now

He stood before you, could at your command

Give you no other answer. It was God

Who, putting to the test His servant’s faith,

Impelled my hand. Ye may not judge this deed.

AN ODE OF THE TUSCAN SHORE.

WHEN the Spirits that are masters

Of the ever-ready storm,

And that love to hound the waters,

To destroy and to deform,

See a mortal in their power

They prepare a joyous hour,

Venting their primeval hatred

Of the thing whose blood is warm.

And they lay on ocean’s surface

Their innumerable hands,

And each hand creates a billow

That advances and expands;

Till, amid the petrel’s screaming,

Rope and tattered sail are streaming

High above the seething water

From the mast that still withstands.

But then hate is blind: they know not

What each human prey is worth:

Not more cruel than impartial

Is their elemental mirth:

And their fury is not keener

O’er the greater than the meaner,

Though their victim were a Shelley

And the glory of the earth.

Look around thee in the sunshine;

Watch this satin-surfaced deep,

Which alone some rolling dolphins

Stir out yonder in its sleep,

Till upon the sea shall settle

Sunset hues of molten metal,

Red and bright as crater gleamings,

And the noon shall cease to creep.

Here was washed ashore the greatest

Of the victims snatched away

By the Spirits that are masters

Of the wind and of the spray;

When the waves might have exulted

O’er the body they insulted

With a shriller wilder clamour

Than since Nature’s earliest day!

Cæsar braved the great Sea Spirits,

And he bade his men row on;

And he cried: “Ye carry Cæsar:

Then why tremble and turn wan?”

And the great waves roared more loudly;

But his galley sailed out proudly

From the peril of the tempest

Like an onward-hurried swan.

Yet the world would scarce have missed him—

There be Cæsars more than one:

But a poet like to Shelley,

Where be such beneath the sun?

And mankind had lost a treasure

Past all mourning and all measure,

When the beach-waves gently shelved him

With a moan for what was done.

For an English ear, the breakers

On this fatal Tuscan shore

Seemed to lisp the name of Shelley,

And to mourn it evermore;

And the name appears to mingle

With the rolling of the shingle

And with every sound of Nature

Which he lived but to adore.

Oh, I hear it in the murmur

Of the fragrant woods of pine

As the sea-breeze softly hurries

Through their long-extended line;

And I hear it faintly coming

From the never-ending humming

Of the world of busy insects

That the undergrowths confine.

’Tis the spot; and nought discordant

Mars its beauty and repose.

All along the tideless margin

Pine or bay or ilex grows,

Filled with an eternal warble;

While Carrara’s crags of marble,

Bare and lofty, print the azure,

And, to landward, all enclose.

All is peace and glorious sunshine;

Nature seems redeemed from war.

Nothing stirs from beach to offing,

Where a few feluccas are,

Waiting for the breeze that’s lazy;

While beyond, where all is hazy,

Like the ghost of dwindled power

Loometh Elba, faint and far.

But his genius knew no Elba,

And his star, without decline,

Was extinguished at its zenith

In the wild and tossing brine;

Not war’s red and lurid planet

As of incandescent granite,

But a star of whiter radiance,

Clear, effulgent and divine.

Mighty treasures lie for ever

In each slimy ocean cave;

Galleons with their gold lie buried

Where the dark depth knows no wave;

But the total of their measure

Matches not the matchless treasure

That in yonder stretch of water

Has for ever found a grave:

There the great unwritten poems

Of a mighty poet lie—

Unborn children of a lineage

Which, once born, may never die.

But the water mirrors heaven

With the smile of one forgiven,

While the breakers in the sunshine

Sing an endless lullaby.

SWORD AND SICKLE.

“’Mid the harvest-shining plain

Where the peasant heaps his grain

In the garner of his foe.”

IN the noontide, safe and free,

Basks the plain of Lombardy.

Never now, nor near nor far

Looms the lurid form of War

That to overspread it came

With her wings of smoky flame.

Unmanured with blood the plain

Yields in peace its yearly grain;

And the milk-white broad-browed pair

Of huge bullocks in the glare

Drag the fruit of Freedom’s tillage

Through each straggling Lombard village

Which no Croat thirsts to pillage.

Not a foe, save where unseen

In the rice-swamp’s treacherous green

Fever lurks, while wade and reap

Through the sparkling waters deep

Girls ill-sheltered from the sun,

Which shoots down to scorch and stun,

By their crimson kerchiefs light,

And who there in Fever’s spite

Cheer their souls with laugh and song

As the noontide creeps along;

Not a foe, save when o’erflows

Adige big with melted snows,

Or when Po’s dark whirling foam

Threatens many a thriving home,

Rolling all its bridges under

With a dull unceasing thunder,

Till it sweeps ere close of day

Bridge and dyke and home away.

Through the broad Subalpine plain

Peace and work and freedom reign.

Here and there in monstrous heaps

Some vast ossuary keeps

For men’s wondering eyes the bones

Of the nation’s slaughtered sons;

But no other traces show

Where a few short years ago

Countless balls of iron ploughed

Through the serried quivering crowd—

Where the broadcast Austrian lead

Fell on furrows live and dead—

Where for miles and miles were heaped

The human harvests freshly reaped—

Where the routed fled like chaff

At the canon’s thunderous laugh,

While the gun-wheels made red mud

Of men weltering in their blood.

Times are changed, and memories hold

In the breasts but of the old.

On Custozza’s once red earth

By the Lombard peasant’s hearth

Now the Austrian may sit

Where no brows with hate shall knit:

Who would dream that there can be

Such a thing as tyranny?

Italy appeals no longer

To God’s throne against the stronger;

And the Poet loves her now

For the beauty of her brow,

Not for that great crown of woe

Whence the blood-drops used to flow.

Lands are freed, and lands enslaved;

But your name is there engraved

In the hearts of those now freed

Ye who helped them in their need!

Nor do they remember now

Those who lent them all the glow

Of their genius and their feeling,

And Compassion’s balm that’s healing,

And the thunder of their curse

In a heaven-shaking verse.

Reckon not on thanks for long,

Ye who fight with sword or song

For the weak against the strong:

Give your help for justice’ sake,

Caring no reward to take.

Freedom’s face is not less fair

For remembering not your share;

And the sheaves of sacred wheat,

Which spring up beneath her feet

From the liberated plain,

Not less full of golden grain.

Years ago one day I stood,

In the autumn’s sunset flood,

Looking down with sweeping sight

From a bastion’s terraced height

On the then unconquered plain

Of the fair and French Lorraine.

Scarce was autumn’s first leaf yellow;

Ripened Earth had made air mellow.

Like a snake inert and blue,

Winding slowly corn-fields through,

Wound the broad Moselle afar

To the horizon’s utmost bar,

Catching on each burnished fold

Restless gleams of molten gold

Till the sun was near to sink,

When it caught a flaming pink

From the crimson clouds slow sailing

Where the amber light was failing.

And surveying that expanse,

What, I thought, is fair as France?

Now the Prussian sentries stand

Where I stood, and scan the land,

Which for ever seems their own,

With their ugly Prussian frown;

And the sullen land has nought

But the freedom of its thought,

Of its thought that hopes and hates

And from year to year awaits.

And what of thee upon whose head

All evil’s phials have been shed—

Thou whom those who now have gotten

Their own freedom, have forgotten—

Thou whose name is never heard,

Thou whose hope is aye deferred,

Thou whose tongue thy foes outroot,

Thou whose sons they chain and shoot—

Poland, heiress of the knout?

Lo, the century grows old

And thy hour has not yet tolled.

On thy form benumbed and bruised,

Whence the life-blood half has oozed,

Lies the dark Colossus still

Whom his own sons now would kill—

Tormentors that like vipers start

From his huge frame’s every part;

But he holds thee all the tighter

While thy bloodless face grows whiter,

And his limbs that on thee weigh

Grow more rotten day by day.

Hark! I hear a muffled sound

Deep beneath the frozen ground

Where a buried Poland pines

In the dark Siberian mines,

In the sunless vaults that ape

Those of Hell in gloom and shape,

Where the gangs who death await

Unlearn to think, but not to hate:

Is’t a growl of joy that runs

Where are chained half Poland’s sons?

Ay, a growl of joy it is

To each mine’s extremities,

And for once Despair has laughed

In each black pestiferous shaft:

He who sent them there lies dead

On his gory Imperial bed—

He who made them walk in chains,

In long goaded staggering trains,

Through the endless snow-clad plains

To the grave in which they lie,

Not yet dead, but soon to die:

Even he has found his hour,

Murdered in his boundless power

By his own, and rots in death

As they rot who here draw breath.

A PAGEANT OF SIENA.

THE old red, towered walls climb round the hills

On which Siena stands in lonely state,

Scanning the ridgy plain, where gleam no rills

And loom no towns, but only endless lines

Of livid furrowed hillocks which the great

White, ploughing bullocks speck. From gate to gate

A few tall cypresses and scattered pines

Climb too, where, guarding streets that silence fills,

The old red, towered walls climb round the hills.

Silent and empty in the August glare

The old depopulated city sleeps;

Its dizzy belfry climbs the fiery air

Into the sky’s inexorable blue;

Across its great scooped shell-shaped square there creeps

No living soul, nor up the high paved steeps

That be its streets; perhaps some carts sway through

Its dusty gates, behind a huge-horned pair,

Creaking and empty in the August glare.

O for the pageantry of olden days,

Thou silent square—ye palaces that wind

Up to the still cathedral, where the rays,

Now gentler, kiss the marble and the gold!

O for the throngs that Time has left behind,

Ye buttressed lanes, ye lofty archways lined

With faded saints; show those ye used to hold

When the strong prosperous city loved displays

And gaudy pageantry in olden days.

I hear a hum of men, a tramp and tread;

The city’s Districts muster. First appears

The District of the Panther—white and red

Its men-at-arms and pages, fifes and drums;

And next the yellow-liveried troop that bears

The Ghibelline standard of the Eagle nears;

Then Tortoise, Hedgehog, Snail and Glowworm come;

And the Guelf She-Wolf, with her arms ahead

All black and silver, comes with tramp and tread.

The Districts muster for the August race,

And take their glossy racers to be blessed,

Each in its own rich church, where, held in trace

Of gold, the startled barb with hoof-steps loud

Is led through flaunting banner, shield and crest

To the high altar’s rail, where kneel close pressed

The pages and the soldiers and the crowd,

Who scan the gleaming limbs that shall efface

Last year’s defeat and win the August race.

The huge old square scooped like a palmer’s shell,

Siena’s forum and its hippodrome,

Echoes a roar that drowns the mighty bell

From battlemented belfry in the sky;

The ring of olden palaces, become

Ablaze with crimson hangings, looks like some

Enchanted Coliseum, in which vie

Scutcheon and standard; so you scarce could tell

The strange old square scooped like a palmer’s shell.

In bright procession ere the race is run

The rival Districts wind around the course,

Each with its banner in the evening sun,

Its clarions, and its Captain capped with steel,

Its pages and its men that lead the horse

Caparisoned and guarded by a force

Of gaudy pikemen; while the clarions peal

And the crowd cheers the Panther that has won

Its fickle favour ere the race is run.

And as the standard-bearers one and all

March by in motley blazonry, they cast

Their standards high in air, and as they fall

Catch them above the throng with rapid hand

And twirl and twist them dexterously and fast

In one unceasing play, until at last

The whole vast square is by the bright silk fanned,

And they have marched before the great Town Hall

Where stand the city’s rulers one and all.

Then comes, drawn by six bullocks of huge size

All white as milk, with many-coloured strings

About their horns, broad brows and large black eyes,

The old Republic’s standard-bearing wain,

With its great Martinella bell that rings

Oft o’er the battle’s roar, and whose sound brings

Fear to the heart of her who plots in vain,

Perfidious Florence. From its high mast flies

Siena’s She-Wolf’s standard of huge size.

And now the course is clear, and those who don

The colours of the Panther feel no fear;

A hundred thousand partizans look on

With inborn urban rivalry, and hail

The horses one by one as they appear,

And hoot the Shell, or Wave, or wildly cheer

The Hedgehog, or the Dragon, or the Snail,

Or the great Eagle that so oft has won,

Whose knaves and rider yellow colours don.

At last they start, and at terrific pace

In dreadful crush adown the slope they tear,

The Tortoise leading for a little space;

Then from the crowd the Panther shooting out,

Maintains the lead thrice round the perilous square;

Then suddenly a great shout rends the air:

“The Snail! The Snail!” all cry; and in hushed doubt

All watch the two. The Snail has won the race,

And slowly slackens its terrific pace.

And in the District of the Snail to-night

Is revelry and feasting in the street;

From great wrought-iron torch-holders the light

Falls red and flaring on grim palace walls

Decked with bright banners; boards where all may eat

Who care, are crowded; while the old repeat

Many an oft-told story that recalls

What things the Snail had done in race and fight.

Sleep shuns the District of the Snail to-night.

THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.

WHEN this shall reach you I shall be no more;

For do not men in presence of some score

Too great for payment constantly prefer

Quick death to base insolvency, and spur

A trembling self across life’s brink. And yet

They owe but gold—perhaps a paltry debt

To some vile Jew; while I, alas, alas!

Owe all mankind a thing which did surpass

All other treasures; a grand peerless thing

Beyond all pricing and all wondering,

Which should be man’s, but which to save my own

Mean life I sacrificed. And days have grown

To be long months, and months to be long years;

And with each year the frightful debt appears

More insupportable. Oh, how immense

Has grown its weight! How horrible the sense

Of utter helplessness! But I have now

To tell the fatal tale of when and how

I lost it for the world, and not to speak

Of these sad days when conscience loves to wreak

Her retribution on me in such vast

And unremitting anguish.

I had passed

Six idle years since taking my degree,

When I fell in at Athens casually

With one called Richard Strongclyffe, who had been

My college friend, but whom I had not seen

Since then, and who meanwhile had made a name

Through study of Greek Art. We soon became

As intimate as of old; and as no claim

Of work or pleasure summoned me elsewhere,

He let me roam through Greece with him, and share

His own strong daily life—the sheer reverse

Of my accustomed life of waste, and worse

Than waste, the aimless life of which my soul

Was more than sick; it had become so foul.

He had an iron will; his hand was rough;

His heart was gentle. God had used strong stuff

In making him—weak stuff in making me.

And yet I was not worthless utterly.

Spite all my sins there were some better strings

In my weak heart; the wind of angels’ wings

Made them vibrate—but with faint echo, like

Æolian chords that gusts too fitful strike.

Mine is a double nature, which depends

Wholly on its surroundings, and which blends

With good or evil, with the low or high,

With the same drifting weak facility.

In Strongclyffe’s hands my nature’s worthier side

Alone found vent; pure tastes that had not died

Grew strong, while half-forgotten culture found

A sudden use, and from all things around

Increased its wealth. I think that he enjoyed

His power over me; his strong soul toyed

With my soft malleable mind, which had,

In spite of degradations many and sad,

Affinities of taste, and could admire

And understand him. Oh what strength and fire

Beneath his quiet ways! What scorn could burst

From his cold lip! what ceaseless ceaseless thirst

He had for knowledge! Even as my mind

Grew intimate with his, new worlds defined

Their shape on my horizon, like the grey

Faint, shadowy Greek Isles which far away

Loomed through the mists of dawn, but which became,

As we approached them in the sunrise flame,

Each minute more distinct.

We seldom stayed

Long in one self-same spot; but we obeyed

The needs of Strongclyffe’s studies, which entailed

Research in many places; and we sailed

From isle to isle, or rode from place to place,

Now in the less-known parts of Greece and Thrace,

And now in rocky Lydia. Oh, what fields

Where men dig gold, what far Golconda yields

Such wealth, such gems, as those impoverished plains

In which the spade turns up the scant remains

Of bygone genius; where the obedient earth,

Summoned to yield her buried dead, gives birth,

As if compelled by an enchanter’s rod,

To what is ever young—now to some god

In all his strength and beauty, now to some

Fantastic child of Pan, who seems fresh come

From dewy woods that long have ceased to be?

And Strongclyffe had the art to make one see

The hidden through the seen—to reconstruct

Past life and loveliness, and to conduct

The mind through perished worlds; and everywhere

He showed the same keen interest and a rare

Persistence of research. Yet what he did

Seemed somehow trifling; oft I thought it hid

Higher preoccupation—some great aim

Which time was ripening; so that when there came

One day a sudden change in him—when all

Was thrown aside, and when I heard him call

Upon my help, with triumph on his lips,

In a great enterprise which should eclipse

Even the greatest, I received his words

Not wholly unprepared.

How my heart’s chords

Vibrate as I recall them! ’Twas about

The third year’s close; and we were sitting out

Upon our terrace looking on the sea

At Thyna, after sundown. Purposely,

As I now fancy, Strongclyffe had led on

Our idle talk to what might yet be won

Back by mankind, of the great wreck we call

Antiquity; and then we talked of all

That splendid half of antique art which must

From the materials used have turned to dust

Almost as soon as did the artist’s hands.

Where be thy works, Apelles? where now stands,

Phidias, thy gold and ivory gems, renowned

Through the broad world? and where stands she who owned

As her fit seat the new-born Parthenon,

Thy gold and ivory Pallas? What would man

Not give to-day if only he could scan

In one short glimpse the splendour of that shape

Which Fancy’s restorations vainly ape,

If he for one short minute could behold

That ivory face, that drapery of gold

As Phidias modelled it?

“And yet,” I said,

“That Art was not so frail; for I have read

That that same effigy of Pallas, spared

From age to age, existed unimpaired

Till the Crusaders, under Baldwin, took

And sacked Constantinople.”

A strange look

Flashed out from Strongclyffe’s eyes. “There is no truth

In that old tale,” he answered; “and Time’s tooth

Still spared the statue when it many a year

Had gnawed the bones of Baldwin in his bier,

Ay, and of Baldwin’s sons.”

“How know you that?”

I asked.

He left the bench on which we sat,

And with a strange excitement he began

To pace the terrace. “I am not the man,”

He cried, “to make rash statements; yet I say

Deliberately, Percy, that to-day

That Pallas still exists. Oh, Earth has still

Surprises for mankind; and with God’s will

And patient work, the world shall see her yet!

Think not that I am mad: wait till I set

My proofs before your eyes. When you behold

The text in John Ionides, the old

Byzantine Chronicler, which had defied

All guesses to this day, and by its side

A certain passage in the life of Paul

Of Trebizond—and when you’ve counted all

The links of evidence which year by year

I have augmented both at home and here,

Until I now have found the very spot—

Then call me mad. ’Tis years since I have got

The certainty that long ere Baldwin’s sack

The Emperor, in fear of some attack

Upon the palace, had her safe conveyed

By vessel to a distance, and (by aid

Of trusty workmen) carefully concealed

In crypts beneath a temple. Nought revealed

The secret at the time; the Emperor died

Soon after; and, none caring to unhide

The statue, men forgot her. But where lay

The temple—or the ruins which to-day

No doubt replace it? Here I seemed to lose

My way and reach mere nothing. All my clues

Led to one spot—Thelopis; and that spot,

In spite of all my search, I found it not.

Oh, with what patience in these three long years

Have I not sought! Oh, with what hopes and fears

Have I not searched the present and the past

To find that place Thelopis! And at last

I have found out. Thelopis was a town,

If town it could be called, that was burnt down

Ten centuries ago, and where has grown

The present village Thos—the place that is

Nearest the temple of Peripolis:

The temple is Peripolis. And see,

The distance and direction both agree:

The passage says, ‘a five days’ eastward sail,

And then three days of road.’ No clues now fail;

There under Peripolis, girt round

By solitude and silence, will be found

The gold and ivory Pallas. Oh, I know

That you will answer that she long ago

Must have become mere shapeless mouldering dust—

That after seven centuries she must

Have blent with earth; and yet I say she stands

As grand and splendid as when all Greek lands

First hailed her beauty! Do you think that they

Who used such pains, in safety to convey

And hide her in that distant spot, would spare

The slight pains needed to exclude the air

And ward away the damp? Again I say

She lives—she lives!”

And so the following day

We started for Peripolis—a long

And arduous journey; for it lies among

Wild unfrequented mountains, in a small

And fever-stricken plain. The hills are all

Possessed by tribes which, though uncouth and wild,

Are not unfriendly. When you once have toiled

Through the last defiles, and behold the lone

Still distant ruins below you, that seem thrown

There to die slow, like those whom in its haste

A routed host abandons in the waste,

There creeps across your soul a sort of fear,

A sense of isolation such as ne’er

Has filled your heart. The broken columns throw

Their shadows on bare shingle; nought will grow

For miles around save thin scorched grass that feeds

A few lean goats, and some few clumps of reeds

Where there is water. Oh, the tract around

Speaks utter desolation; and we found

The task not easy even to collect

The workmen we required. The heaps of wrecked

And weed-grown marble where the spade was tried

Had more than once been searched, and seemed to hide

Nought worth men’s pains—at most some shattered bit

Of Greco-Roman sculpture; but we lit

On some strange crypts; and in a few more days

We had discovered a bewildering maze

Of subterranean chambers, large and small,

And catacomb-like passages, which all

Were cut in soft dry stone, and stretched away

Far underground, beyond the ruins that lay

In the sun’s light; and all were wholly bare.

Strongclyffe at once, pretending not to care

For empty crypts, employed the men elsewhere;

While he and I, by torch-light and alone,

Explored the maze. But sometimes, as loose stone

Obstructed here and there the way, we had

A boy to help—a dull half-witted lad

Of whom we felt no fear. For days we sought

With boundless care, but all our searching brought

Nothing to light; we sounded every wall,

We grew familiar with each inch of all

The lonely crypts; and even Strongclyffe seemed

To grow depressed. But suddenly there gleamed

Fresh ardour in his eyes: “Look there!” he said,

And showed me something like an arrow’s head

Cut in the wall; a small, scarce visible mark

Which led to others like it through the dark

Perplexing crypt; and where the last marks were

We scrutinized the wall with greater care,

And found its surface rougher, as if there

It had been tampered with. “This is the spot,”

He whispered. “She is here;” and having got

A pick, he struck. And as, beneath the stroke

Of Vulcan’s hammer once, the aching brow

Of Zeus was cleft for Pallas’ birth, so now

The stricken cloven stone exposed to sight

The long-sought Goddess; and the flickering light

Of the red torch flashed in a tremulous flood

Upon her golden breastplate as she stood

Intact, in all the glory and the glow

Of her incomparable beauty.

So

Was she discovered; I must now compel

My weak and miserable self to tell

How she was lost. There was no time to lose,

And we agreed, or rather Strongclyffe chose

That he should start at once for the chief town

Of that wild province, as he long had known

The there commanding Pasha, to obtain

A guard of men; while I was to remain

To watch the workmen. He was to be back

Within three days. Alas! I had no lack

Of buoyant thoughts at first; my soul was filled

With our immense success; my nerves still thrilled

With triumph and delight; and the first day

Of Strongclyffe’s absence lightly passed away.

The men worked on as usual, and my mind

Conceived no fear. But when the sun declined

There crept across my spirit, with the tide

Of slowly creeping shadow as day died,

A vague uneasiness; and my hands felt

For the revolver hanging at my belt,

I thought; and I remembered that when we

Had found the prize, we were not two but three.

The boy had seen the whole; and though I knew

That he was dull of wit and had no clue

To find the spot again in that vast maze

Of hidden crypts and subterranean ways,

I wished he had not seen. The men had gone

Back to their distant huts. I sat alone

Upon a broken column; one by one

The large stars twinkled forth from out the blue;

The shattered standing columns dusky grew,

And very solemn; and the wakening bat

Began to flit around me. As I sat,

I thought of Strongclyffe’s generosity;

How he had said ere setting out that I,

His faithful friend, must have an equal share

In the world’s praise; that it would not be fair

That I——

O God!

I gave a strangled shout

And fell, dragged backwards by a noose about

My throat. Three men were kneeling on my chest

Binding me tight with cords, while others pressed

All round about me, uttering no sound

As if all dumb. When I was firmly bound

All save my feet, which, purposely let loose

To let me walk, were in a running noose,

One of the men addressed me: “Listen well

To what I say,” he said. “If you rebel

We take your life; and none can help you now.

We have no wish to harm you; but we know

That you have found a treasure, and have got

The clue. Lead on.”

“I understand you not,”

I said.

He took a pistol from his sash

And held it at my ear. “Come, be not rash,”

He said, “but lead the way.” Oh, would to God

That he had fired! But though like a mere clod

I still moved not, he did not fire, but placed

Once more the gleaming pistol in his waist,

And whispered with the others; then they drew

The cords still tighter round my limbs, and threw

My unresisting body on the bed

In my own hut hard by. “Mark well,” they said,

“Ere dawn we come. Thy blood be on thy head!”

At first I had no thoughts, nought but the sense

Of cramped and swelling limbs, and an intense

Desire to burst my bonds. But by-and-by

A sense of infinite calamity

Began to weigh upon me; and at last,

The sense came home that time was slipping fast,

That I was there to make an awful choice

’Twixt Life and Death; and then an inner voice

Began to state the argument each way,

Not clearly, coldly, as I may to-day

Do in this letter, but confused, close-pressed,

Repeated and repeated in my breast

In every shape, until my weary brain,

Exhausted by the conflict and the pain,

Yielded to sleep. And even in my sleep

The struggle still went on; I felt it keep

Possession of my dreams, and take the shape

Of shifting nightmare, leaving no escape.

I saw the glorious Pallas, calm no more,

But threatening and terrific, kneeling o’er

My prostrate body, with red eyes that gleamed

So fiery in the darkness, that it seemed

As if one of the Furies had put on

Her golden panoply. Then, wild and wan,

I saw the face of Strongclyffe looming out

From a black whirling gulf; and heard him shout

Like some spent swimmer half sucked down.

And there

I think I woke, and with a vague despair

Resumed the pleadings of each adverse side;

While, ever louder, something in me cried:

“Choose death, choose death! in fifty years from this,

When thou art swallowed in the dark abyss

Of Time, what will it be to thee or thine

Whether thou diedst to-day at twenty-nine,

Or knew’st old age? But man whom Time devours

Not, and who lives by centuries, not hours,

Will be possessed of one transcendent gift,

To add to his small store of things that lift

The soul to higher spheres—a gift from which

Will flow perennial charm for poor and rich,

For young and old. If but mankind could know

That some great treasure lost long, long ago—

A famed Greek play, for instance—had been lost

Because a certain man had grudged the cost

Of his brief life to save it, that man’s name,

For ever handed down in scorn and shame,

Would be all nations’ by-word. Who can say

That some great work which man enjoys to-day—

The Melos statue, Hamlet or Macbeth,

Or the Gioconda—was not saved from death,

In some great unknown peril that it ran,

By some unknown, unthanked and nameless man

Who gave his life instead? And then, in place

Of something rarer yet, wouldst have the face

To give the world thy mean half-wasted life

With which it can do nought? Thou hast no wife,

No child to need thy care. Choose death, choose death,

While yet ’tis time!”

But oh the pleasant breath

Of life; the strong, strong stream of youth and health

That bounds along the veins; the unused wealth

Of what we call the Future, with its schemes,

Emotions, friendships, loves, surprises, dreams;

The thing we call Identity, the I

To which the wretched cling, they know not why,

And which no evils press me to destroy;

The simple pleasures which I now enjoy—

What, give up all? What right has Fate, what right,

To thrust me from Life’s hearth into the night,

The darkness and the cold? What right or need

Has Fate to come, and while I sit and read

Life’s pleasant page, to summon me to shut

The open book, and leave two thirds uncut?

Who dares to tell me that a living man

Whom God has made, who feels the cool winds fan

His heated brow, is not in God’s sight worth

A thing that is man’s work, upon this earth?

My life is mended now; each passing day

Now rolls, though idly, harmlessly away.

The bright green fields, the flowers and the trees,

The rippling streams, the sun, the passing breeze,

The million things that in their life rejoice

And gladden mine, call out with mighty voice,

“Choose life, choose life!”

And when at dawn they came,

And bade me show the spot—O shame! O shame!

I nodded an assent. Oh let me now,

With shame’s familiar brand upon my brow,

For once spare my base self, and hurry by

Those monstrous minutes! Slowly, silently,

I led them to the spot. I saw their eyes

With excusable rapture scan the prize

To which their souls were dead. I saw them take

Their hatchets in their impious hands, and break

Into small fragments hideous to behold,

And shapeless dust of ivory and of gold,

The beauty which the world would have despaired

To match, and twenty centuries had spared

In vain—in vain! Awhile, I think, I heard

Ferocious wrangling, oath and threatening word

Over the booty; but my sickened brain

Took little note. And when I sought again

To see and hear and think, all sounds had ceased;

I was alone, and free.

And—O mean beast,

Mean coward that I was!—I dared not face

The sight of Strongclyffe; but I fled the place,

Leaving a letter; and in guilt and fear,

Just like a thief, stole back to England here,

Alone with my incomparable debt.

He never saw me more; although we met

In these o’er-crowded London streets one day,

And oh how changed he was—how old and grey

He had become, though scarce two years had passed

Over his head since I had seen him last!

He saw me not, but passed with vacant eye;

While I, as if to vanish bodily

Into the solid stones, shrank to the wall.

He now is dead—and I? Oh, does not all

Compel me too to die? What have I done,

In these ten years of anguish, to atone

For having chosen life? What use—what good

Have I been to mankind since first I stood

So fatally and wholly in its debt?

What drops of compensation have I yet

Wrung out of my weak worthless self, and cast

Into the deep abyss? Oh, I have passed

A cruel, cruel time! And year by year

I feel less wish to live, less strength to bear

The weight of my immense insolvency.

And in the street as each man passes by

I mutter to myself, “If he but knew

What he has lost, would he not stop and sue

For what can ne’er be paid, and cry, ‘Come forth!

And show thyself to men, what thou art worth!

Thou art the thing which men have got instead

Of the Incomparable: raise thy head!’ ”

IPSISSIMUS.

THOU Priest that art behind the screen

Of this confessional, give ear:

I need God’s help, for I have seen

What turns my vitals limp with fear.

O Christ, O Christ, I must have done

More mortal sin than anyone

Who says his prayers in Venice here!

And yet by stealth I only tried

To kill my enemy, God knows;

And who on earth has e’er denied

A man the right to kill his foes?

He won the race of the Gondoliers;

I hate him and the skin he wears—

I hate him and the shade he throws.

I hate him through each day and hour;

All ills that curse me seem his fault:

He makes my daily soup taste sour,

He makes my daily bread taste salt;

And so I hung upon his track

At dusk to stab him in the back

In some lone street or archway vault.

But oh give heed! As I was stealing

Upon his heels, with knife grasped tight,

There crept across my soul a feeling

That I myself was kept in sight;

Each time I turned, dodge as I would,

A masked and unknown watcher stood

Who baffled all my plan that night.

What mask is this, I thought and thought,

Who dogs me thus when least I care?

His figure is nor tall nor short,

And yet has a familiar air.

But oh, despite this watcher’s eye,

I’ll reach my man yet by-and-by,

And snuff his life out yet, elsewhere.

And though compelled to still defer,

I schemed another project soon;

I armed my boat with a hidden spur

To run him down in the lagoon.

At dusk I saw him row one day

Where lone and wide the waters lay,

Reflecting scarce the dim white moon.

No boat, as far as sight could strain,

Loomed on the solitary sea;

I saw my oar each minute gain

Upon my death-doomed enemy,

When lo, a black-masked gondolier,

Silent and spectre-like, drew near,

And stepped between my deed and me.

He seemed from out the flood to rise,

And hovered near to mar my game;

I knew him and his cursed guise,

His cursed mask: he was the same.

So, balked once more, enraged and cowed,

Back through the still lagoon I rowed

In mingled wonder, wrath, and shame.

Oh, were I not to come and pray

Thee for thy absolution here

In the Confessional, to-day

My very ribs would burst with fear.

Leave not, good Father, in the lurch

A faithful son of Mother Church,

Whose faith is firm and soul sincere.

Behind St. Luke’s, as the dead men know,

A pale apothecary dwells,

Who deals in death both quick and slow,

And baleful philters, withering spells;

He sells alike to rich and poor,

Who know what knocks to give his door,

The yellow dust that rings the knells.

Well, then, I went and knocked the knock

With cautious hand, as I’d been taught;

The door revolved with silent lock,

And I went in, suspecting nought.

But oh, the self-same form stood masked

Behind the counter, and unasked

In silence proffered what I sought.

My knees and hands like aspens shook:

I spilt the powder on the ground;

I dared not turn, I dared not look;

My palsied tongue would make no sound.

Then through the door I fled at last

With feet that seemed more slow than fast,

And dared not even once look round.

And yet I am an honest man

Who only sought to kill his foe:

Could I sit down to see each plan

That I took up frustrated so,

When as each plan was marred and balked,

And in the sun my man still walked,

I felt my hate still greater grow?

I thought, “At dusk with stealthy tread

I’ll seek his dwelling, and I’ll creep

Upstairs and hide beneath his bed,

And in the night I’ll strike him deep.”

And so I went; but at his door

The figure, masked just as before,

Sat on the step as if asleep.

Bent, spite all fear, upon my task,

I tried to pass: there was no space.

Then rage prevailed; I snatched the mask

From off the baffling figure’s face,

And oh, unutterable dread!

The face was mine, mine white and dead,

Stiff with some frightful death’s grimace.

What sins are mine, O luckless wight,

That doom should play me such a trick

And make me see a sudden sight

That turns both soul and body sick?

Stretch out thy hands, thou priest unseen

That sittest there behind the screen,

And give me absolution, quick!

O God, O God, his hands are dead!

His hands are mine, O monstrous spell!

I feel them clammy on my head.

Is he my own dead self as well?

Those hands are mine—their scars, their shape:

O God, O God, there’s no escape,

And seeking Heaven, I fall on Hell!

AN ODE TO THE TRAVELLING THUNDER.

(Suggested by a line in the magnificent opening description of Miss A. MARY F. ROBINSON’S “Janet Fisher.”)

GOD’S wrath is travelling overhead,

God’s wrath upon the wing,

Which makes man cower in his bed

If he has heaven’s strength to dread,

And hides some guilty thing.

The booming peals of thunder shake

These walls and the black night;

They make the mountains thrill and quake:

I listen as I lie awake,

While Earth and Heaven fight.

What seek’st thou with repeated stroke,

Wrath, as thou hurriest past?

Is it, through night’s scorched riven cloak,

Some huge old solitary oak

Or some doomed storm-bent mast?

The mountains court thy blow and each

Unfathomable abyss,

Where thy white blasting stroke may reach

Some Titan still unstruck whose speech

Is the wild torrent’s hiss.

There mayst thou, where presumptuous pines

To climb God’s sky aspire,

Do battle ’gainst their serried lines,

And ere the lurid storm-dawn shines,

Strike dead their kings with fire.

There may thy peal, enclosed by rock,

Long struggle and die slow;

And while it seeks some gorge’s lock,

Growl, laugh and roar, and fiercely mock

Each sound of human woe.

Along the backs of the mountain chain

Where thou awhile mayst cling,

O’er the boundless sea and the endless plain,

With driven hail and sheeted rain

Thick shaken from thy wing,

Thou hurriest on, black cloud of wrath,

Thou hater of human walls,

Shaking men’s souls upon thy path

As thou dost shake the beams, like lath,

In battlemented halls;

Or pausing, broodest o’er the night,

In silence gathering strength;

While, ever and anon, the light

Quivers from out thee, dazzling bright,

And shows earth’s breadth and length.

So have I seen thee, dreaded Power,

Show Venice in her sleep

More vivid than at noon’s fierce hour,

With every palace, dome, and tower

That rises from the deep;

Tinting the briny city pink,

In one long quivering flash;

Then snatching back, ere you could think,

All into darkness black as ink—

Dumb save the ceaseless plash.

Then on, and on, black cloud of fire,

Upon thy stormy ways,

To vault the shaken sky with ire,

To shatter the presumptuous spire,

To make the forest blaze.

To roll in folds of lurid steam

O’er ocean’s rolling waves,

With rolling peals of sound that seem

To ask account for the dead that teem

In all its oozy caves.

By sea or land, by night or day,

Thy savage booming voice

Makes, as thou hurriest on thy way,

And all earth’s shaken pillars sway,

My awe-struck soul rejoice.

Even as stormy passions here,

Battling with God above,

Revenge and wrath, despair and fear,

Make glorious music to my ear,

Beyond all songs of love.

SONNETS.

IDLE CHARON.

THE shores of Styx are lone for evermore,

And not one shadowy form upon the steep

Looms through the dusk, far as the eye can sweep,

To call the ferry over as of yore;

But tintless rushes all about the shore

Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep,

Hoar-bearded Charon lies; while pale weeds creep

With tightening grasp all round the unused oar.

For in the world of Life strange rumours run

That now the Soul departs not with the breath,

But that the Body and the Soul are one;

And in the loved one’s mouth, now, after death,

The widow puts no obol, nor the son,

To pay the ferry in the world beneath.

THE OBOL.[A]

SCARCE have I rhymed of Charon looming grey

Amid pale rushes through the dusky air,

And of the obol we no longer care

To put in dead men’s mouths as ferry-pay,

When, lo, I find, amongst some pence, to-day

Received as common change, I know not where,

A stray Greek obol, seeming Charon’s fare

To put between my lips when I be dead.

Poor bastard Obol, even couldst thou cheat

The shadowy Boatman, I should scarcely find

The heart to cross: extinction seems so sweet.

I need thee not; and thou shalt be consigned

To some old whining beggar in the street,

Whose soul shall cross, while mine shall stay behind.

[A] The coin referred to in this sonnet was a modern Greek piece of five lepta, rather smaller than a halfpenny, and bearing the word Obolos on the reverse.

LETHE.

I had a dream of Lethe, of the brink

Of leaden waters, whither many bore

Dead, pallid loves, while others, old and sore,

Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink.

And, having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink

Their load of love or guilt for evermore,

Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore

That lay beyond, no more to think and think.

Oh, who will give me, chained to Thought’s dull strand,

A draught of Lethe, salt with final tears,

Were it no more than fills the hollow hand?

Oh, who will rid me of the wasted years,

The thought of Life’s fair structure vainly planned,

And each false hope, that mocking re-appears?

ACHERON.

WHERE rolls in silent speed through cave on cave

Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light

Evokes the rocks from an eternal night

Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave,

Shall men not meet, and have one chance to crave

Forgiveness for rash deeds—one chance to right

Old earthly quarrels, and in Death’s despite

Unsay the said, and kill the pang they gave?

See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled bark

That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face,

And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms.

But heeding not, they whirl into the dark,

Bound for a sea beyond all time and space,

Which neither life nor love nor sunlight warms.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.

I SAW a vast bare plain; with, overhead,

A half-chilled sun, that shed a sickly light;

And all around, till out of reach of sight,

The earth’s thin crust heaved with the rising dead,

Who, as they struggled from their dusty bed,

At first mere bones, by countless years made white,

Took gradual flesh, and stood all huddled tight

In mute, dull groups, as yet too numb to dread.

And all the while the summoning trump on high

With rolling thunder never ceased to shake

The livid vault of that unclouded sky,

Calling fresh hosts of penitents to take

Each his identity; until well-nigh

The whole dry worn-out earth appeared to wake.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE BINDING OF THE LOST.

IN boundless caves, lit only by the glare

Of pools of molten stone, the lost are pent

In countless herds, inextricably blent,

Yet each alone with his own black despair;

While, through the thickness of the lurid air,

The bat-winged fiends, from some far, unseen vent,

Bring on their backs the damned in swift descent,

To swell the crowds that wait in silence there.

And then begins the binding of the lost

With snaky thongs, before they be transferred

To realms of utter flame or utter frost;

And, like a sudden ocean boom, is heard,

Uprising from the dim and countless host,

Pain’s first vague roar, Hell’s first wild useless word.

MUSSET’S LOUIS D’OR.

ASLEEP, a little fisher-girl one day

Lay on the sands, within an old boat’s shade;

Her skirt was tattered, and the sea-breeze played

With her brown loosened hair a ceaseless play.

A poet chanced to pass as there she lay;

Her sun-burnt face, her tatters he surveyed;

A golden coin between her lips he laid,

And, letting her sleep on, he went his way.

What came of that gold windfall? Did it breed

Those long-loved coins which patient thrift can show

With proud pure smile to meet the household need?

Or stolen gold? or those curst coins which grow

Each year more sought, more loathed, and are the meed

Of women’s loveless kisses? Who can know?

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

WE touch Life’s shore as swimmers from a wreck

Who shudder at the cheerless land they reach,

And find their comrades gathered on the beach

Watching a fading sail, a small white speck—

The phantom ship, upon whose ample deck

There seemed awhile a homeward place for each.

The crowd still wring their hands and still beseech,

But see, it fades, in spite of prayer and beck.

Let those who hope for brighter shores no more

Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek

What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore.

The strong must build stout cabins for the weak;

Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store;

For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak.

SPRING.

FOR those who note the fate of earthly things

There lurks a sadness in the April air,

A dreamy sense of what the future brings

To things too good, too hopeful, and too fair.

The spring brings greenness to the recent grave,

But brings no solace to the mourning heart;

Nor will its rustling and its piping save

A single pang to him who must depart.

The ivy bloom is full of humming bees;

The linnets whistle in the leaves on high;

Around the stems of all the orchard trees

In flaky heaps the fallen blossoms lie:

But every leaf upon each new-clad tree

Tells but of boundless mutability.

TO V. P.,

ABOUT TO VISIT OXFORD.

SO you will see what I can see no more:

The broad quadrangles where the sunlit sward,

At which you peep through some old oaken door,

Is girt around by stone-work black and scarred;

The sedgy Isis, which the swift Eight cleaves

With mighty stroke, all rippled by the breeze;

The narrow Cherwell, gliding under leaves;

The City’s towers rising o’er the trees.

All this, alas, for me is fading fast,

And dimness seems descending on those walls

While Cherwell slowly glides into the Past.

The throng in cap and gown which filled those halls

Is turning into ghosts, whose names at last

I shall forget, as twilight round me falls.

BY THE FIRE.

I SAT beside the fire, ten years ago,

And in the dusk wreathed fancies in its flare,

Meting the Future out, to each his share,

While danced the restless shadows to and fro.

And when at last the yellow flame grew low

And leapt and licked no more, I still sat there

Watching with eyes fast fixed, but mind elsewhere

The darkening crimson of the flameless glow.

And lo, at dusk, I watch once more to-day

The slowly-sinking flame, the faint dull crash

Of crumbling embers deadening into grey;

But see alone the Past, misspent and rash,

And wasted gifts, and chances thrown away.

The Present and the Future? All is ash.

NIGHT.

THOU heedest not, inexorable Night,

Whether besought from some lone prison cell

To stay thy hours, by one whose scaffold-knell

Will sound not later than return of light,

Or prayed to urge them by some suffering wight

Who notes their creep as wearily and well

As men not for eternity in Hell

May note the purging flames’ decreasing height.

Hark! in the street I hear a distant sound

Of music and of laughter and of song,

As go a band of revellers their round:

And under prison-walls it comes along,

And under dull sick-rooms, where moans abound;

For who shall grudge their strumming to the strong?

RIVER BABBLE.

THE wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase

Away despair from each untasted day,

And, on my soul, I pray of Time to stay

His hand, when I be dead, and not efface.

Yet would I tear them all, could that replace

The fly-rod in my hand, this day of May,

And watch unmoved their fragments float away

Into oblivion, on a trout-stream’s face.

Alas, thou fool! thou weary, crippled fool!

Thou never more wilt leap from stone to stone,

Where rise the trout in every rocky pool!

Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone

Girt round by gurgling waters, in the cool,

While dance the flies, and make the trout thy own!

SUNKEN GOLD.

IN dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships,

While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell

Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell

With Love’s gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips.

And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips

And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,

Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,

And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.

So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,

Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,

In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes.

They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold

In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,

The gleam of irrecoverable gold.

ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.

FROM out the depths of crocus-coloured morn

With rush of wings the strong Archangel came

And glistening spear; and leapt as leaps a flame

On Satan unprepared and earthward borne;

And rolled the sunless Rebel, bruised and torn,

Upon the earth’s bare plain, in dust and shame,

Holding awhile his spear’s suspended aim

Above the humbled head in radiant scorn.

So leaps within the soul on Wrong or Lust

The warrior Angel whom we deem not near,

And rolls the rebel impulse in the dust,

Scathing its neck with his triumphal tread,

And holding high his bright coercing spear

Above its inexterminable head.

ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS,

FOUND AT TRIPOLI VECCHIO, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE.

ONE day in the world’s youth, long, long ago,

Before the golden hair of Time grew grey,

The bright warm sea, scarce stirred by the dolphins’ play,

Was swept by sudden music soft and low;

And rippling, as ’neath kisses, parted slow,

And gave a new and dripping goddess birth,

Who brought transcendent loveliness on earth,

With limbs more pure than sunset-tinted snow.

And lo, that self-same sea has now upthrown

A mutilated Venus, rolled and rolled

For ages by the surf, and that has grown

More soft, more chaste, more lovely than of old,

With every line made vague, so that the stone

Seems seen as through a veil which ages hold.

ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.

I.

WHAT stony, bloodless Judith hast thou made,

Mantegna? Draped in many a stony fold,

What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold

A stony head and an unbloody blade?

In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid

To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold

In open street, and paint the heads that rolled

Beneath the axe, in every square displayed?

No, no; not such was Judith, on the night

When, in the silent camp, she watched alone,

Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light

Her sleeping prey; nor, when her deed was done,

She seized the head, and with intent delight

Stared in a face as quivering as her own.

II.

There was a gleam of jewels in the tent

Which one dim cresset lit—a baleful gleam—

And from his scattered armour seemed to stream

A dusky, evil light that came and went.

But from her eyes, as over him she bent,

Watching the surface of his drunken dream,

There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam,

A look in which her life’s one lust found vent.

There was a hissing through her tightened teeth,

As with her scimitar she crouched above

His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath,

While ever and anon she saw him move

His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath

His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.

STRANGLED.

THERE is a legend in some Spanish book

About a noisy reveller who, at night,

Returning home with others, saw a light

Shine from a window, and climbed up to look,

And saw within the room, hanged to a hook,

His own self-strangled self, grim, rigid, white,

And who, struck sober by that livid sight,

Feasting his eyes, in tongue-tied horror shook.

Has any man a fancy to peep in

And see, as through a window, in the Past,

His nobler self, self-choked with coils of sin,

Or sloth or folly? Round the throat whipped fast

The nooses give the face a stiffened grin.

’Tis but thyself. Look well. Why be aghast?

PROMETHEAN FANCIES.

I.

WHEN on to shuddering Caucasus God pours

The phials of his anger hoarded long,

Plunging in each abyss his fiery prong

As if to find a Titan; when loud roars

The imprisoned thunder groping for the doors

Of never-ending gorges; when, among

The desperate pines, Storm howls his battle-song—

Then wakes Prometheus, and his voice upsoars.

Yea, when the midnight tempest hurries past,

There sounds within its wail a wilder wail

Than that which tells the anguish of the blast;

And when the thunder thunders down the gale,

A laugh within its laugh tells woe so vast

That God’s own angels in the darkness quail.

II.

Prometheus—none may see him. But at night

When heaven’s bolt has made some forest flare

On Caucasus, and when the broad red glare

Rushing from crag to crag at infinite height

Stains sleeping wastes of snow, or, ruby bright,

Runs sparkling up the glacier crests to scare

The screaming eagles out of black chasms, where

But half dislodged the darkness still clings tight—

Then on some lurid monstrous wall of rock

The Titan’s shadow suddenly appears

Gigantic, flickering, vague; and, storm-unfurled,

Seems still to brave, with hand that dim chains lock,

Midway in the unendingness of years,

The Author of the miscreated world.

THE END.

Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE NEW MEDUSA, AND OTHER POEMS. 8s.

“We should have to go to great names among contemporary poets before we found a volume of verse with a message so clear and so touching.... There is in the lines quoted a directness of speech due partly to the situation of the writer and partly to the rare gift which, above all others, makes a man a poet—a gift of truthful and sincere utterance. We have quoted from the more personal parts of the book because we have been greatly touched by them. But it is on the dramatic power displayed in such poems as ‘The Raft’ that the writer’s position will have to rest.”—Athenæum.

“The power which every capable reader of Mr. Lee-Hamilton’s previous work, must have recognised is still more apparent in the New Medusa.... The imaginative power which reproduces and dramatises a certain mood of mind is very noteworthy. It is in this faculty of what may be called psychography, of drawing the landscape of moods with atmosphere and environment suitable and complete, that Mr. Lee-Hamilton’s poetic power chiefly consists.”—Academy.

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Table of Contents

APOLLO AND MARSYAS, AND OTHER POEMS.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

APOLLO AND MARSYAS.

SISTER MARY OF THE PLAGUE.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

THE BRIDE OF PORPHYRION.

HUNTING THE KING. 1792.

ABRAHAM CAREW.

AN ODE OF THE TUSCAN SHORE.

SWORD AND SICKLE.

A PAGEANT OF SIENA.

THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.

IPSISSIMUS.

AN ODE TO THE TRAVELLING THUNDER.

SONNETS.

IDLE CHARON.

THE OBOL.[A]

LETHE.

ACHERON.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE BINDING OF THE LOST.

MUSSET’S LOUIS D’OR.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

SPRING.

TO V. P., ABOUT TO VISIT OXFORD.

NIGHT.

RIVER BABBLE.

SUNKEN GOLD.

ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.

ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS, FOUND AT TRIPOLI VECCHIO, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE.

ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.

I.

II.

STRANGLED.

PROMETHEAN FANCIES.

I.

II.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE