Part 6

Yet in truth it needs must be The flight of her is old; Yet in truth it needs must be, For her nest, the earth, is cold. No more in the poolèd Even Wade her rosy feet, Dawn-flakes no more plash from them To poppies ’mid the wheat. She has muddied the day’s oozes With her petulant feet; Scared the clouds that floated, As sea-birds they were, Slow on the coerule Lulls of the air, Lulled on the luminous Levels of air: She has chidden in a pet All her stars from her; Now they wander loose and sigh Through the turbid blue, Now they wander, weep, and cry— Yea, and I too— ‘Where are you, sweet July, Where are you?’

Who hath beheld her footprints, Or the pathway she goes? Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, Which of you knows? Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic Night of the rose? Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow On the lily’s snows? Gales, that are all-visitant, Find the runaway; And for him who findeth her (I do charge you say) I will throw largesse of broom Of this summer’s mintage, I will broach a honey-bag Of the bee’s best vintage. Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, None of them knows! How then shall we lure her back From the way she goes? For it were a shameful thing, Saw we not this comer Ere Autumn camp upon the fields Red with rout of Summer.

When the bird quits the cage, We set the cage outside, With seed and with water, And the door wide, Haply we may win it so Back to abide. Hang her cage of earth out O’er Heaven’s sunward wall, Its four gates open, winds in watch By reinèd cars at all; Relume in hanging hedgerows The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out On the gale’s warm heaving bosom; Shake the lilies till their scent Over-drip their rims; That our runaway may see We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out For her travelled limbs; Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, There will—O not doubt her!— The lovely sleepy lady lie, With all her stars about her!

TO A SNOW-FLAKE

WHAT heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?— ‘God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour, To lust of His mind:— Thou could’st not have thought me! So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly, Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost.’

NOCTURN

I walk, I only, Not I only wake; Nothing is, this sweet night, But doth couch and wake For its love’s sake; Everything, this sweet night, Couches with its mate. For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun Is the naked moon Tremulous and elate? The heaven hath the earth Its own and all apart; The hushèd pool holdeth A star to its heart. You may think the rose sleepeth, But though she folded is, The wind doubts her sleeping; Not all the rose sleeps, But smiles in her sweet heart For crafty bliss. The wind lieth with the rose, And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: The wind hath the rose, And the rose her kiss. Ah, mouth of me! Is it then that this Seemeth much to thee?— I wander only. The rose hath her kiss.

A MAY BURDEN

THROUGH meadow-ways as I did tread, The corn grew in great lustihead, And hey! the beeches burgeonèd. By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! It is the month, the jolly month, It is the jolly month of May.

God ripe the wines and corn, I say And wenches for the marriage-day, And boys to teach love’s comely play. By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! It is the month, the jolly month, It is the jolly month of May.

As I went down by lane and lea, The daisies reddened so, pardie! ‘Blushets!’ I said, ‘I well do see, By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! The thing ye think of in this month, Heigho! this jolly month of May.’

As down I went by rye and oats, The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats Of birds turned kisses into notes; By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! The kiss it is a growing flower, I trow, this jolly month of May!

God send a mouth to every kiss, Seeing the blossom of this bliss By gathering doth grow, certes! By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant Tells—but I tell not, wanton May!

NOTE. The first two stanzas are from a French original—I have forgotten what.

A DEAD ASTRONOMER

(FATHER PERRY, S.J.)

STARRY amorist, starward gone, Thou art—what thou didst gaze upon! Passed through thy golden garden’s bars, Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars.

She, about whose moonèd brows Seven stars make seven glows, Seven lights for seven woes; She, like thine own Galaxy, All lustres in one purity:— What said’st thou, Astronomer, When thou did’st discover _her_? When thy hand its tube let fall, Thou found’st the fairest Star of all!

‘CHOSE VUE’

A METRICAL CAPRICE

UP she rose, fair daughter—well she was graced As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;— Lapsing like music, wavery as water, Slid to her waist.

‘WHERETO ART THOU COME?’

‘FRIEND, whereto art thou come?’ Thus Verity; Of each that to the world’s sad Olivet Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, Seeking her that he may lay hands on her; Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed. Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely; This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o’-love, To know, and having known, to make his brag. But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, And not estates her in his housing life, Mother of all his seed! So he betrays, Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself: And with his kiss’s rated traitor-craft, The Haceldama of a plot of days He buys, to consummate his Judasry Therein with Judas’ guerdon of despair.

HEAVEN AND HELL

’TIS said there were no thought of hell, Save hell were taught; that there should be A Heaven for all’s self-credible. Not so the thing appears to me. ’Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights, And hell too possible that proves; For all can feel the God that smites, But ah, how few the God that loves!

TO A CHILD

WHENAS my life shall time with funeral tread The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; When I you love am no more I you love, But go with unsubservient feet, behold Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— A new man, mockèd with misname of old; When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! When, ceremented in mouldering memory, Myself is hearsèd underneath myself, And I am but the monument of me:— O to that tomb be tender then, which bears Only the name of him it sepulchres!

HERMES

SOOTHSAY. Behold, with rod twy-serpented, Hermes the prophet, twining in one power The woman with the man. Upon his head The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower The cloud’s own virtue—change and counterchange, To show in light, and to withdraw in pall, As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange From Zeus, Truth’s sire, and maiden May—the all- Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare That ’tis the nether self transdeified, And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear The poet Olympusward. In him allied Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely feature.

HOUSE OF BONDAGE

I

WHEN I perceive Love’s heavenly reaping still Regard perforce the clouds’ vicissitude, That the fixed spirit loves not when it will, But craves its seasons of the flawful blood; When I perceive that the high poet doth Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars, That even Urania of her kiss is loath, And Song’s brave wings fret on their sensual bars; When I perceived the fullest-sailèd sprite Lag at most need upon the lethèd seas, The provident captainship oft voided quite, And lamèd lie deep-draughted argosies; I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys The wit of man to purposes of boys.

II

The spirit’s ark sealed with a little clay, Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; {190} The hand pontifical to break away That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea Which did englut great Egypt and his war, Nor all the desert-drownèd sepulchres. Love’s feet are stained with clay and travel-sore, And dusty are Song’s lucent wing and hairs. O Love, that must do courtesy to decay, Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt, How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way? Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt! Had Jacob’s toil full guerdon, casting his Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel’s kiss?

THE HEART

TWO SONNETS

(To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase—‘The heart’s burning floors.’)

I

THE heart you hold too small and local thing, Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, The mighty Love has been impalaced there; That has she given him as his wide demesne, And for his sceptre ample empery; Against its door to knock has Beauty been Content; it has its purple canopy A dais for the sovereign lady spread Of many a lover, who the heaven would think Too low an awning for her sacred head. The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink— Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled.

II

O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, That to the imminent heaven of his high soul Responds with colour and with shadow, can Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph Be mighty through its mighty habitants; If God be in His Name; grave potence if The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; All’s vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm Nature is whole in her least things exprest, Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.

A SUNSET

FROM HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’

I LOVE the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, In numerous leafage bosomed close; Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds’ commotion, Their unimagined shapes accord: Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through, As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze; Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament’s swept track Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, A triple row of pointed teeth? Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates—the vision flees. Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice Ruins immense in mounded wrack: Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows, Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, ’Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red Into the furnace stirred to fume, Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire The vaporous and inflamèd spume.

O contemplate the heavens! whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil, With love that has not speech for need; Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night Fantasy them with starry brede.

HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN

FROM HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’

HAVE you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise Up to the mountain’s summit, in the presence of the skies? Was’t on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast? And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed? And there, leaned o’er the wave and o’er the immeasurableness, Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says! One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicensèd to muse, Had drooped its wing above the beachèd margent of the ooze, And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity, Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. I harkened, comprehended,—never, as from those abysses, No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this is!

A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused, Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused, Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips, And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions’ brazen lips. Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep, Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed young, Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and number. Like to another atmosphere with thin o’erflowing robe, The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe: And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony, Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the harmony.

And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea.

Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound.

The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal speech! That was the voice o’ the surges, as they parleyed each with each. The other, which arose from our abode terranean, Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man; And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night resound, Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound.

Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, Most like in Sion’s temples to a psaltery psaltering, And to creation’s beauty reared the great lauds of his song. Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell; And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell, When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed. Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest, At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed; And I, t’ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad, Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of God.

Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fan-faronnade, The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed, Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t’ward night, The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on flight. What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? Alas! the sound was earth’s and man’s, for earth and man were weeping.

Brothers! of these two voices, strange most unimaginably, Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly, Harkenèd of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, The one voice uttereth: NATURE! and the other voice: HUMANITY!

Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering sprite Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight, Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn: And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water’s roll, And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul. And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear; What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind?

(The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. The splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after the manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; with the occasional triplet, and even the occasional Alexandrine, represented by a line of eight accents—a treatment which can well extend, I believe, the majestic resources of the metre.)

ULTIMA

LOVE’S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE

O YOU, love’s mendicancy who never tried, How little of your almsman me you know! Your little languid hand in mine you slide, Like to a child says—‘Kiss me and let me go!’ And night for this is fretted with my tears, While I:—‘How soon this heavenly neck doth tire Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!’ Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, That the most strainedest charity of earth Distasteth soon to render back the whole Of thine inflamèd sweets and gentilesse! Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou Gnaw’st on thyself for famine’s bitterness, And leap’st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how Little a linking of the hand to you! Though I should touch yours careless for a year, Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. But little food love’s beggars needs must serve, That eye your plenteous graces from the street. A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, To mock me, of your beauty. That you might Be lover for one space, and make essay What ’tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught The famine which these craving lines avouch! Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, How know’st thou poor men’s hunger?—Misery! When I go doleless and unfed by thee!

A HOLOCAUST

‘_No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been torn up by the roots_.’

WHEN I presage the time shall come—yea, now Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me, Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow Faith of kin genius unrebukably, Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; When I presage that none shall hear the voice From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, That sullen envy bade the churlish choice Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel Rolleth some dog in middle street, or fresh Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel; If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry When the red agony oozed on Olivet! Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I, Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady. How could you hope, loose dealer with my God, That I should keep for you my fealty? For still ’tis thus:—because I am so true, My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you!

BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH

PHŒBUS, who taught me art divine, Here tried his hand where I did mine; And his white fingers in this face Set my Fair’s sigh-suggesting grace. O sweetness past profaning guess, Grievous with its own exquisiteness! Vesper-like face, its shadows bright With meanings of sequestered light; Drooped with shamefast sanctities She purely fears eyes cannot miss, Yet would blush to know she _is_. Ah, who can view with passionless glance This tear-compelling countenance! He has cozened it to tell Almost its own miracle. Yet I, all-viewing though he be, Methinks saw further here than he; And, Master gay! I swear I drew Something the better of the two!

AFTER HER GOING

THE after-even! Ah, did I walk, Indeed, in her or even? For nothing of me or around But absent She did leaven, Felt in my body as its soul, And in my soul its heaven.

‘Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, Essenced,’ I sighed, ‘with bliss!’ And the blackbird held his lutany, All fragrant-through with bliss; And all things stilled were as a maid Sweet with a single kiss.

For grief of perfect fairness, eve Could nothing do but smile; The time was far too perfect fair, Being but for a while; And ah, in me, too happy grief Blinded herself with smile!

The sunset at its radiant heart Had somewhat unconfest: The bird was loath of speech, its song Half-refluent on its breast, And made melodious toyings with A note or two at best.

And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! Methinks, throughout the world ’twere right I had been sad alone; And yet, such sweet in all things’ heart, And such sweet in my own!

MY LADY THE TYRANNESS

ME since your fair ambition bows Feodary to those gracious brows, Is nothing mine will not confess Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? Though use to the white yoke inures, Half-petulant is Your loving rebel for somewhat his, Not yours, my love, not yours!

Behold my skies, which make with me One passionate tranquillity! Wrap thyself in them as a robe, She shares them not; their azures probe, No countering wings thy flight endures. Nay, they do stole Me like an aura of her soul. I yield them, love, for yours!