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Title: An Epic of Women, and Other Poems

Author: Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy

Release date: August 6, 2021 [eBook #66002]

Language: English

Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN EPIC OF WOMEN, AND OTHER POEMS ***

AN EPIC OF WOMEN

AND

OTHER POEMS.

BY ARTHUR W. E. O’SHAUGHNESSY.

LONDON:

JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.

1870.

I Dedicate this Book

TO MY FRIEND,

J O H N   P A Y N E.

CONTENTS.

EXILE

9

A NEGLECTED HARP

13

I. IANOULA

17

II. THE FAIR MAID AND THE SUN

20

III. THE CYPRESS

23

A PRECIOUS URN

25

SERAPHITUS

26

THE LOVER

34

A WHISPER FROM THE GRAVE

46

BISCLAVARET

55

THOUGHT

65

THE STORY OF THE KING

66

PALM FLOWERS

71

I. CREATION

81

II. THE WIFE OF HEPHÆSTUS

86

III. CLEOPATRA, 1

93

IV. CLEOPATRA, 2

98

V. THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS

105

VI. HELEN

133

VII. A TROTH FOR ETERNITY

141

SONNET (1867)

162

DEATH

165

THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS

166

LOVE AFTER DEATH

170

SOWN SEED

171

A DISCORD

174

GALANTERIE

175

THE GLORIOUS LADY

178

LOST BLISSES

190

THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST

192

A FADING FACE

203

THE HEART’S QUESTIONS

204

(Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15, No. 3.)

BARCAROLLE

207

THE MINER: BALLAD

211

A WASTED LAND

214

CHARMED MOMENTS

217

(Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 37, No. 1.)

A LIFE-TOMB

219

THE SLAVE OF APOLLO

221

THE POET’S GRAVE

227

EXILE.

Des voluptés intérieures

Le sourire mystérieux.

VICTOR HUGO.

A COMMON folk I walk among;

I speak dull things in their own tongue:

But all the while within I hear

A song I do not sing for fear—

How sweet, how different a thing!

And when I come where none are near

I open all my heart and sing.

I am made one with these indeed,

And give them all the love they need—

Such love as they would have of me:

But in my heart—ah, let it be!—

I think of it when none is nigh—

There is a love they shall not see;

For it I live—for it will die.

And oft-times, though I share their joys,

And seem to praise them with my voice,

Do I not celebrate my own,

Ay, down in some far inward zone

Of thoughts in which they have no part?

Do I not feel—ah, quite alone

With all the secret of my heart?

O when the shroud of night is spread

On these, as Death is on the dead,

So that no sight of them shall mar

The blessèd rapture of a star—

Then I draw forth those thoughts at will;

And like the stars those bright thoughts are;

And boundless seems the heart they fill:

For every one is as a link;

And I enchain them as I think;

Till present, and remembered bliss,

And better, worlds on after this,

I have—led on from each to each

Athwart the limitless abyss—

In some surpassing sphere I reach.

I draw a veil across my face

Before I come back to the place

And dull obscurity of these;

I hide my face, and no man sees;

I learn to smile a lighter smile,

And change, and look just what they please.

It is but for a little while.

I go with them; and in their sight

I would not scorn their little light,

Nor mock the things they hold divine;

But when I kneel before the shrine

Of some base deity of theirs,

I pray all inwardly to mine,

And send my soul up with my prayers:

For I—ah, to myself I say—

I have a heaven though far away;

And there my Love went long ago,

With all the things my heart loves so;

And there my songs fly, every one:

And I shall find them there I know

When this sad pilgrimage is done.

A NEGLECTED HARP.

O HUSHED and shrouded room!

O silence that enchains!

O me—of many melodies

The cold and voiceless tomb;

What sweet impassioned strains,

What fair unearthly things,

Sealed up in frozen cadences,

Are aching in my strings!

Each time the setting sun,

At eve when all is still,

Doth reach a pale faint finger in

To touch them one by one;

O what an inward thrill

Of music makes them swell!

The prisoned song-pulse beats within

And almost breaks the spell.

Each time the ghostly moon

Among the shadows gleams,

And leads them in a mournful dance

To some mysterious tune;

O then, indeed, it seems

Strange muffled tones repeat

The wail within me, and perchance

The measure of the feet.

But often when the ring

Of some sweet voice is near,

Or past me the light garments brush

Soft as a spirit’s wing,—

O, more than I can bear,

I feel, intense, the throb

Of some rich inward music gush

That comes out in a sob.

For am I not—alas,

The quick days come and go—

A weak and songless instrument

Through which the song-breaths pass?

I would a heart might know,

I would a hand might free

These wondrous melodies up-pent

And languishing in me.

* * *

A sharp strange music smote

The night.—In yon recess

The shrouded harp from all its strings

Gave forth a piercing note:

With that long bitterness

The stricken air still aches;

’Twas like the one true word that sings

Some poet whose heart breaks.

THREE FLOWERS OF MODERN GREECE.

I.

IANOULA.

O SISTERS! fairly have ye to rejoice,

Who of your weakness wed

With lordly might: yea, now I praise your choice.

As the vine clingeth with fair fingers spread

Over some dark tree-stem,

So on your goodly husbands with no dread

Ye cling, and your fair fingers hold on them.

For godlike stature, and unchanging brow

Broad as the heaven above,

Yea, for fair mighty looks ye chose, I trow;

And prided you to see, in strivings rough,

Dauntless, their strong arms raised;

And little loth were ye to give your love

To husbands such as these whom all men praised.

But I, indeed, of many wooers, took

None such for boast or stay,

But a pale lover with a sweet sad look:

The smile he wed me with was like some ray

Shining on dust of death;

And Death stood near him on my wedding day,

And blanched his forehead with a fatal breath.

I loved to feel his weak arm lean on mine,

Yea, and to give him rest,

Bidding his pale and languid face recline

Softly upon my shoulder or my breast,—

Thinking, alas, how sweet

To hold his spirit in my arms so press’d,

That even Death’s hard omens I might cheat.

I found his drooping hand the warmest place

Here where my warm heart is;

I said, “Dear love, what thoughts are in thy face?

Has Death as fair a bosom, then, as this?”

—O sisters, do not start!

His cold lips answered with a fainting kiss,

And his hand struck its death chill to my heart.

II.

THE FAIR MAID AND THE SUN.

O SONS of men, that toil, and love with tears!

Know ye, O sons of men, the maid who dwells

Between the two seas at the Dardanelles?

Her face hath charmed away the change of years,

And all the world is fillèd with her spells.

No task is hers for ever, but the play

Of setting forth her beauty day by day:

There in your midst, O sons of men that toil,

She laughs the long eternity away.

The chains about her neck are many-pearled,

Rare gems are those round which her hair is curled;

She hath all flesh for captive, and for spoil,

The fruit of all the labour of the world.

She getteth up and maketh herself bare,

And letteth down the wonder of her hair

Before the sun; the heavy golden locks

Fall in the hollow of her shoulders fair.

She taketh from the lands, as she may please,

All jewels, and all corals from the seas;

She layeth them in rows upon the rocks;

Laugheth, and bringeth fairer ones than these.

Five are the goodly necklaces that deck

The place between her bosom and her neck;

She passeth many a bracelet o’er her hands;

And, seeing she is white without a fleck,

And, seeing she is fairer than the tide,

And of a beauty no man can abide—

Proudly she standeth as a goddess stands,

And mocketh at the sun and sea for pride:

And to the sea she saith: “O silver sea,

Fair art thou, but thou art not fair like me;

Open thy white-toothed dimpled mouths and try;

They laugh not the soft way I laugh at thee.”

And to the sun she saith: “O golden sun,

Fierce is thy burning till the day is done;

But thou shalt burn mere grass and leaves, while I

Shall burn the hearts of men up everyone.”

O fair and dreadful is the maid who dwells

Between the two seas at the Dardanelles:

As fair and dread as in the ancient years;

And still the world is fillèd with her spells,

O sons of men, that toil, and love with tears!

III.

THE CYPRESS.

O IVORY bird, that shakest thy wan plumes,

And dost forget the sweetness of thy throat

For a most strange and melancholy note—

That wilt forsake the summer and the blooms

And go to winter in a place remote!

The country where thou goest, Ivory bird!

It hath no pleasant nesting-place for thee;

There are no skies nor flowers fair to see,

Nor any shade at noon—as I have heard—

But the black shadow of the Cypress tree.

Cypress tree, it groweth on a mound;

And sickly are the flowers it hath of May,

Full of a false and subtle spell are they;

For whoso breathes the scent of them around,

He shall not see the happy Summer day.

In June, it bringeth forth, O Ivory bird!

A winter berry, bitter as the sea;

And whoso eateth of it, woe is he—

He shall fall pale, and sleep—as I have heard—

Long in the shadow of the Cypress tree.

A PRECIOUS URN.

THE great effulgence of the early days

Of one first summer, whose bright joys, it seems,

Have been to all my songs their golden themes;

The rose leaves gathered from the faded ways

I wandered in when they were all a-blaze

With living flowers and flame of the sunbeams;

And, more than all, that ending of my dreams

Divinely, in a dream-like thing,—the face

Of one belovèd lady once possest

In one long kiss that made my whole life burn:

What of all these remains to me?—At best,

A heap of fragrant ashes now, that turn

My heavy heart into a funeral urn

Which I have buried deep within my breast.

SERAPHITUS.

ALAS! that we should not have known,

For all his strange ethereal calm,

And thoughts so little like our own

And presence like a shed-forth balm,

He was some Spirit from a zone

Of light, and ecstasy, and psalm,

Radiant and near about God’s throne:

Now he hath flown!

The heaven did cleave on him alway;

And for what thing he chose to dwell

In a mere tenement of clay

With mortal seeming—who can tell?

But there in some unearthly way

He wrought, and, with an inner spell,

Miraculously did array

That house of clay.

The very walls were in some sort

Made beautiful, with many a fresque

Or carven filigree of Thought,

Now seen a clear and statuesque

Accomplishment of dreams—now sought

Through many a lovely arabesque

And metaphor, that seemed to sport

With what it taught.

Most bright and marvellously fair

Those things did seem to all mankind;

And some indeed, with no cold stare

Beholding them, could lift their mind

Through sweet transfigurement to share

Their inward light: the rest were blind,

And wondered much, yet had small care

Whence such things were.

And, day by day, he did invent

—As though nought golden were enough,

In manner of an ornament—

Some high chivalrous deed, above

All price, whereof the element

Was the most stainless ore of Love;

A boundless store of it he spent

With lavishment.

And when therewith that house became

All in a strange sort glorified;

For through whole beauty, as of flame,

Those things, resplendent far and wide,

Did draw unto them great acclaim;

Lo, many a man there was who tried

With base alloys to do the same,

And gat men’s shame.

But all about that house he set

A wondrous flowering thing—his speech,

That without ceasing did beget

Such fair unearthly blossoms, each

Seemed from some paradise, and wet

As with an angel’s tears, and each

Gave forth some long perfume to let

No man forget.

A new delicious music erred

For ever through the devious ways

Tangled with blooming of each word;

As though in that enchanted maze

Some sweet and most celestial bird

Were caught, and, hid from every gaze,

Did there pour forth such song as stirred

All men who heard.

Before him was perpetual birth

Of flowers whereof, aye, more and more,

The world begetteth a sad dearth;

And those rare balms man searcheth for,

Fair ecstasy, and the soul’s mirth:

Half grudgingly the angels bore

That one should waste on a lost earth

Things of such worth.

It may be, with a strange delight,

After an age of gazing through

That mirror of things infinite

That well nigh burns the veil of blue

Drawn down between it and our sight—

It may be, with a joy all new,

He sought the darkness and the light

Of day and night.

It may be, that, upon some wave

Which through the incense-laden skies

Scarce forced its ripple, there once clave

A thin earth-fragrance—in such wise

It smote his sense and made him crave

For that strange sweet: maybe, likewise,

The leaves their subtle perfume gave

Up from some grave:

And pleasant did it seem to heap

About the heart dim spells that lull

Profoundly between death and sleep,

To feel mid earthly soothings, dull

And sweet, upon the whole sense creep

The dream—life-long and wonderful,

That hath all souls of men to keep

Lest they should weep.

But often, when there seemed to fall

Bright shadows of half-blindness, thin,

And like fine films wrought over all

The flashing sights of Heaven within;

While that fair perishable wall

Of flesh so barred and shut him in

That scarce a silver spirit-call

Reached him at all—

O then the Earth failed not to bring,

Indeed through many a day and eve—

The strength of all her flowering

About him; nor forgot to weave,

With soft perpetual murmuring,

Her spells, that such a sweet way grieve,

And hold the heart to each fair thing,

Yea, with a sting:

And, sometimes, with strange prevalence

He felt those dim enchantments float

Most soothingly upon his sense;

While faint in memory remote,

Brought down the heart knew not from whence,

The thought of heaven within him smote—

And many a yearning did commence

Vague and intense—

Fair part of that unknown disease

Of dull material love, whereby

The luring flower-semblances

Of earthliness and death would try

To bind his heart beyond release

To each fair mortal sympathy,

That Death at length might wholly seize

Him with all these.

And, surely, on some shining bed

Of flowers in full summer’s gleam;

Or when the autumn time had shed

Its wealth of perfume and its dream

On some rich eve—no thing of dread

To all his spirit did it seem,

To dream on, feeling sweet earth spread

Over his head.

* * *

But, one long twilight—hushed and dim—

The blue unfathomable clime

Of heaven seemed wholly to o’erbrim

With presence of the Lord—sublime;

And voices of the Seraphim

Fell through the ether like a chime:

He rose: his past way seemed to him

Like a child’s whim.

THE LOVER.

I WAS not with the rest at play;

My brothers laughed in joyous mood:

But I—I wandered far away

Into the fair and silent wood;

And with the trees and flowers I stood,

As dumb and full of dreams as they:

—For One it seemed my whole heart knew,

Or One my heart had known long since,

Was peeping at me through the dew;

And with bright laughter seemed to woo

My beauty, like a Fairy prince.

Oh, what a soft enchantment filled

The lonely paths and places dim!

It was as though the whole wood thrilled,

And a dumb joy, because of him,

Weighed down the lilies tall and slim,

And made the roses blush, and stilled

The great wild voices in half fear:

It was as though his smile did hold

All things in trances manifold;

And in each place as he drew near

The leaves were touched and turned to gold.

And well I seemed to know, the while,

It was for me and for my sake,

He wrought that magic with his smile,

And set the unseen spells to make

The lonely ways I loved to take

So full of sweetness, to beguile

My heart and keep me there for hours;

And sometimes I was sure he lay

Beside me hid among the flowers,

Or climbed above me, and in play

Shook down the white tree-bloom in showers.

But more and more he seemed to seek

My heart: till, dreaming of all this,

I thought one day to hear him speak,

Or feel, indeed, his sudden kiss

Bind me to some great unknown bliss:

Then there would stay upon my cheek

Full many a light and honied stain,

That told indeed how I had lain

Deep in the flowery banks all day;

And round me too there would remain

Some strange wood-blossom’s scent alway.

’Twas not the bright and fond deceit

Of that first summer,—whose great bloom

Quite overcame me with its sweet,

And seemed to fill me and consume

My very brain with its perfume;—

’Twas no false spell made my heart beat

With such a joy to be alone

With all the bloom and all the scent:

It was a thing I dared not own,

Already whispered there and known,

Already with my whole life blent.

It was this secret, vast, sublime,

Too full of wonder to be told—

Whose extreme rapture from that time

Doth ever more and more enfold

My spirit, like a robe of gold,

Or, as it were, the magic clime

Of some fair heaven about me shed—

Wherein are songs of unseen birds,

And whispers of delicious words

More sweet than any man hath said

Of all the living or the dead.

—O, the incomparable love

Of him, my Lover!—O, to tell

Its way and measure were above

The throbbing chords of speech that swell

Within me!—Doth it not excel

All other, sung or written of?

Yea now, O all ye fair mankind—

Consider well the gracious line

Of those your lovers; call to mind

Their love of you, and ye shall find

Not one among them all like mine.

It seems as though, from calm to calm,

A whole fair age had passed me by,

Since first this Lover, through a charm

Of flowers, wooed so tenderly,

I had no fear of drawing nigh,

Nor knew, indeed, that—with an arm

Closed round and holding me—he led

My eager way from sight to sight

Of all the summer magic—right

To where himself had surely spread

Some pleasant snare for my delight.

And now, in an eternal sphere,

Beneath one flooding look of his—

Wherein, all beautiful and dear,

That endless melting gold that is

His love, with flawless memories

Grows ever richer and more clear—

My life seems held, as some faint star

Beneath its sun: and through the far

Celestial distances for miles,

To where vast mirage futures are,

I trace the gilding of his smiles.

And, in the long enthralling dream,

That, ever—through each purer zone

Of love translating me—doth seem

To bring my spirit near his own,

I hear the veiled angelic tone

Of many voices; as I deem,

Assuring me of something sweet,

And strange, and wondrous, and intense;

Which thing they evermore repeat

In fair half parables, from whence

I draw a vague all-blissful sense.

For, one by one, e’en as I rise,

And feel the pure Ethereal

Refining all before my eyes:

Whole beauteous worlds material

Are seen to enter gradual

The great transparent paradise

Of this my dream; and, all revealed,

To break upon me more and more

Their inward singing souls, and yield

A wondrous secret half concealed

In all their loveliness before.

And so, when, through unmeasured days,

The far effulgence of the sea

Is holding me in long amaze,

And stealing with strange ecstasy

My heart all opened silently;—

There reach me, from among the sprays,

Ineffable faint words that sing

Within me,—how, for me alone,

One who is lover—who is King,

Hath dropt, as ’twere a precious stone,

That sea—a symbol of his throne.

And now, indeed, some precious time

It hath,—all inexpressible!

All rapture!—yea, through many a rhyme

Of wordless speech made fairly well,

And beauteous worlds’ whole visible

Unbosomings of love sublime—

It hath some blessèd while become

Familiar, how all things take part

For him to whose love I am come,

And in their ways—not weak nor dumb—

Are ever calling on my heart.

And, through the long charmed solitude

Of throbbing moments, whose strong link

Is one delicious hope pursued

From trance to trance, the while I think

And know myself upon the brink

Of His eternal kiss,—endued

With part of him, the very wind

Hath power to ravish me in sips

Or long mad wooings that unbind

My hair,—wherein I truly find

The magic of his unseen lips.

And, so almighty is the thrill

I feel at many a faintest breath

Or stir of sound—as ’twere a rill

Of joy traversing me, or death

Dissolving all that hindereth

My thought from power to fulfil

Some new embodiment of bliss,—

I do consume with the immense

Delight as of some secret kiss,

And am become like one whose sense

Is used with raptures too intense!

O like some soft insidious breath,

Whose first invasion winneth quite

To all its madness or its death

The heart, resisting not the might

And poison of its new delight,—

E’en so is this that entereth

In whispers, or through subtly wrought

Enchantment snaring every thought;

Yea, by the whole mysterious pore

Of life,—this joy surpassing aught

That heart of man hath known before.

And, though, indeed, a hapless end

Of damning ruin were but sure,

Yet could I none of me defend

From such a sweet and perfect lure;

But must, as long as they endure,

To all these sorceries still lend

My heart; believing how I stand

Nigh some unearthly bliss that lies

Dissembled all before my eyes;—

Do I not see a radiant Hand

Transmuting earth, and air, and skies?

—And is not the great language mute

The stars’ deep looks are wont to melt

Upon my soul, the very suit

Of this unearthly wooer—felt

So clearly pleading—I have knelt

Full oft, most dreading to pollute

The holy rapture with a sigh?

And doth not every accent nigh

Consume each Past to a thin shred;

While endless visions glorify

My sight, and haloes touch my head?

Yea, mystic consummation! yea,

O Wondrous suitor,—whosoe’er

Thou art; that in such mighty way,

In distant realms, athwart the air

And lands and seas, with all things fair,

Hast wooed me even till this day;—

It seems thou drawest near to me;

Or I, indeed, so nigh to thee,

I catch rare breaths of a delight

From thy most glorious country, see

Its distant glow upon some height.

At times there is vouchsafed me, e’en

Some sign that certainly foretells

Of thee at hand: so I have seen—

Caught by no earthly clash of bells—

A gleam of silver citadels;

Distant, and radiant with such sheen

As only on high virgin snows,

Or from the diamond one knows;

Displayed a moment, without shroud,

Eclipsing all the night’s fair shows

From some dim pinnacle of cloud:

Or, through a calm hushed interval

Of most charmed thinking, there hath passed,

And with no rumour or footfall,

A troop of blonde ones who surpassed

All tales of loveliness amassed

In my child’s dreamland; costumed all

As for a bridal; who did shine

With such a splendour on each face,

And light upon the garments fine,

I knew them surely of a race

That dwells in that fair realm of thine.

O thou my Destiny! O thou

My own—my very Love—my Lord!

Whom from the first day until now

My heart, divining, hath adored

So perfectly it hath abhorred

The tie of each frail human vow—

O I would whisper in thine ear—

Yea, may I not, once, in the clear

Pure night, when, only, silver shod

The angels walk?—thy name, I fear

And love, and tremble saying—GOD!

A WHISPER FROM THE GRAVE.

MY life points with a radiant hand,

Along a golden ray of sun

That lights some distant promised land,

A fair way for my feet to run:

My Death stands heavily in gloom,

And digs a soft bed in the tomb

Where I may sleep when all is done.

The flowers take hold upon my feet;

Fair fingers beckon me along;

I find Life’s promises so sweet

Each thought within me turns to song:

But Death stands digging for me—lest

Some day I need a little rest,

And come to think the way too long.

O seems there not beneath each rose

A face?—the blush comes burning through;

And eyes my heart already knows

Are filling themselves from the blue,

Above the world; and One, whose hair

Holds all my sun, is coming, fair,

And must bring heaven if all be true:

And now I have face, hair, and eyes;

And lo, the Woman that these make

Is more than flower, and sun, and skies!

Her slender fingers seem to take

My whole fair life, as ’twere a bowl,

Wherein she pours me forth her soul,

And bids me drink it for her sake.

Methinks the world becomes an isle;

And there—immortal, as it seems—

I gaze upon her face, whose smile

Flows round the world in golden streams:

Ah, Death is digging for me deep,

Lest some day I should need to sleep

And solace me with other dreams!

But now I feel as though a kiss

Of hers should ever give me birth

In some new heaven of life-long bliss;

And heedlessly, athwart my mirth,

I see Death digging day by day

A grave; and, very far away,

I hear the falling of the earth.

Ho there, if thou wilt wait for me

Thou Death!—I say—keep in thy shade;

Crouch down behind the willow tree,

Lest thou shouldst make my love afraid;

If thou hast aught with me, pale friend,

Some flitting leaf its sigh shall lend

To tell me when the grave is made!

And lo, e’en while I now rejoice,

Encircled by my love’s fair arm,

There cometh up to me a voice,

Yea, through the fragrance and the charm;

Quite like some sigh the forest heaves

Quite soft—a murmur of dead leaves,

And not a voice that bodeth harm:

O lover, fear not—have thou joy;

For life and love are in thy hands:

I seek in no wise to destroy

The peace thou hast, nor make the sands

Run quicker through thy pleasant span;

Blest art thou above many a man,

And fair is She who with thee stands:

I only keep for thee out here—

O far away, as thou hast said,

Among the willow trees—a clear

Soft space for slumber, and a bed;

That after all, if life be vain,

And love turn at the last to pain,

Thou mayst have ease when thou art dead.

O grieve not: back to thy love’s lips

Let her embrace thee more and more,

Consume that sweet of hers in sips:

I only wait till it is o’er;

For fear thou’lt weary of her kiss,

And come to need a bed like this

Where none shall kiss thee evermore.

Believe each pleasant muttered vow

She makes to thee, and see with ease

Each promised heaven before thee now;

I only think, if one of these

Should fail thee—O thou wouldst need then

To come away right far from men,

And weep beneath the willow trees.

And, therefore, have I made this place,

Where thou shouldst come on that hard day,

Full of a sad and weary grace;

For here the drear wind hath its way

With grass, and flowers, and withered tree—

As sorrow shall that day with thee,

If it should happen as I say.

And, therefore, have I kept the ground,

As ’twere quite holy, year by year;

The great wind lowers to a sound

Of sighing as it passes near;

And seldom doth a man intrude

Upon the hallowed solitude,

And never but to shed a tear.

So, if it be thou come, alas,

For sake of sorrow long and deep,

I—Death, the flowers, and leaves, and grass—

Thy grief-fellows, do mourn and weep:

Or if thou come, with life’s whole need

To rest a life-long space indeed,

I too and they do guard thy sleep.

Moreover, sometimes, while all we

Have kept the grave with heaviness,

The weary place hath seemed to be

Not barren of all blessedness:

Spent sunbeams rest them here at noon,

And grieving spirits from the moon

Walk here at night in shining dress.

And there is gazing down on all

Some great and love-like eye of blue,

Wherefrom, at times, there seem to fall

Strange looks that soothe the place quite through;

As though indeed, if all love’s sweet

And all life’s good should prove a cheat,

They knew some heaven that might be true.

—It is a tender voice like this

That comes to me in accents fair:

Well; and through much of love and bliss,

It seemeth not a thing quite bare

Of comfort, e’en to be possest

Of that one spot of earth for rest,

Among the willow trees down there.

BISCLAVARET.

Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan,

Garwall l’apelent li Norman.

Jadis le poët-hum oïr,

E souvent suleit avenir,

Humes plusurs Garwall devindrent

E es boscages meisun tindrent.

MARIE DE FRANCE: Lais.

IN either mood, to bless or curse,

God bringeth forth the breath of man;

No angel sire, no woman nurse

Shall change the work that God began:

One spirit shall be like a star,

He shall delight to honour one;

Another spirit he shall mar;

None shall undo what God hath done.

The weaker holier season wanes;

Night comes with darkness and with sins;

And, in all forests, hills, and plains,

A keener, fiercer life begins.

And, sitting by the low hearth fires,

I start and shiver fearfully;

For thoughts all strange and new desires

Of distant things take hold on me;

And many a feint of touch or sound

Assails me, and my senses leap

As in pursuit of false things found

And lost in some dim path of sleep.

But, momently, there seems restored

A triple strength of life and pain;

I thrill, as though a wine were poured

Upon the pore of every vein:

I burn—as though keen wine were shed

On all the sunken flames of sense—

Yea, till the red flame grows more red,

And all the burning more intense,

And, sloughing weaker lives grown wan

With needs of sleep and weariness,

I quit the hallowed haunts of man

And seek the mighty wilderness.

—Now over intervening waste

Of lowland drear, and barren wold,

I scour, and ne’er assuage my haste,

Inflamed with yearnings manifold;

Drinking a distant sound that seems

To come around me like a flood;

While all the track of moonlight gleams

Before me like a streak of blood;

And bitter stifling scents are past

A-dying on the night behind,

And sudden piercing stings are cast

Against me in the tainted wind.

And lo, afar, the gradual stir,

And rising of the stray wild leaves;

The swaying pine, and shivering fir,

And windy sound that moans and heaves

In first fits, till with utter throes

The whole wild forest lolls about:

And all the fiercer clamour grows,

And all the moan becomes a shout;

And mountains near and mountains far

Breathe freely: and the mingled roar

Is as of floods beneath some star

Of storms, when shore cries unto shore.

But soon, from every hidden lair

Beyond the forest tracts, in thick

Wild coverts, or in deserts bare,

Behold They come—renewed and quick—

The splendid fearful herds that stray

By midnight, when tempestuous moons

Light them to many a shadowy prey,

And earth beneath the thunder swoons.

—O who at any time hath seen

Sight all so fearful and so fair,

Unstricken at his heart with keen

Whole envy in that hour to share

Their unknown curse and all the strength

Of the wild thirsts and lusts they know,

The sharp joys sating them at length,

The new and greater lusts that grow?

But who of mortals shall rehearse

How fair and dreadfully they stand,

Each marked with an eternal curse,

Alien from every kin and land?

—Along the bright and blasted heights

Loudly their cloven footsteps ring!

Full on their fronts the lightning smites,

And falls like some dazed baffled thing.

Now through the mountain clouds they break,

With many a crest high-antlered, reared

Athwart the storm: now they outshake

Fierce locks or manes, glossy and weird,

That sweep with sharp perpetual sound

The arid heights where the snows drift,

And drag the slain pines to the ground,

And all into the whirlwind lift

The heavy sinking slopes of shade

From hidden hills of monstrous girth,

Till new unearthly lights have flayed

The draping darkness from the earth.

Henceforth what hiding-place shall hide

All hallowed spirits that in form

Of mortal stand beneath the wide

And wandering pale eye of the storm?

The beadsman in his lonely cell

Hath cast one boding timorous look

Toward the heights; then loud and well,

—Kneeling before the open book—

All night he prayeth in one breath,

Nor spareth now his sins to own:

And through his prayer he shuddereth

To hear how loud the forests groan.

For all abroad the lightnings reign,

And rally, with their lurid spell,

The multitudinous campaign

Of hosts not yet made fast in hell:

And us indeed no common arm,

Nor magic of the dark may smite,

But, through all elements of harm,

Across the strange fields of the night—

Enrolled with the whole giant host

Of shadowy, cloud-outstripping things

Whose vengeful spells are uppermost,

And convoyed by unmeasured wings,

We foil the thin dust of fatigue

With bright-shod phantom feet that dare

All pathless places and the league

Of the light shifting soils of air;

And loud, mid fearful echoings,

Our throats, aroused with hell’s own thirst,

Outbay the eternal trumpetings;

The while, all impious and accurst,

Revealed and perfected at length

In whole and dire transfigurement,

With miracle of growing strength

We win upon a keen warm scent.

Before us each cloud fastness breaks;

And o’er slant inward wastes of light,

And past the moving mirage lakes,

And on within the Lord’s own sight—

We hunt the chosen of the Lord;

And cease not, in wild course elate,

Until we see the flaming sword

And Gabriel before His gate!

O many a fair and noble prey

Falls bitterly beneath our chase;

And no man till the judgment day,

Hath power to give these burial place;

But down in many a stricken home

About the world, for these they mourn;

And seek them yet through Christendom

In all the lands where they were born.

And oft, when Hell’s dread prevalence

Is past, and once more to the earth

In chains of narrowed human sense

We turn,—around our place of birth,

We hear the new and piercing wail;

And, through the haunted day’s long glare,

In fearful lassitudes turn pale

With thought of all the curse we bear.

But, for long seasons of the moon,

When the whole giant earth, stretched low,

Seems straightening in a silent swoon

Beneath the close grip of the snow,

We well nigh cheat the hideous spells

That force our souls resistless back,

With languorous torments worse than hell’s

To the frail body’s fleshly rack:

And with our brotherhood the storms,

Whose mighty revelry unchains

The avalanches, and deforms

The ancient mountains and the plains,—

We hold high orgies of the things,

Strange and accursèd of all flesh,

Whereto the quick sense ever brings

The sharp forbidden thrill afresh.

And far away, among our kin,

Already they account our place

With all the slain ones, and begin

The Masses for our soul’s full grace.

THOUGHT.

THERE is no place at all by night or day,

Where I—who am of that hard tyrant Thought

The slave—can find security in aught,

But He, almighty, reaching me, doth lay

His hand upon me there, so rough a way

Assaulting me,—however I am caught,

Walking or standing still—that for support

I sometimes lean on anything I may:

Then when he hath me, ease is none from him

Till he do out his strength with me; cold sweat

Comes o’er my body and on every limb;

My arm falls weak as from a fierce embrace;

And, ere he leaveth me, he will have set

A great eternal mark upon my face.

THE STORY OF THE KING.

THIS is the story of the King:

Was he not great in everything?

He built him dwelling-places three:

In one of them his Youth should be;

To make it fair for many a feast

He conquered the whole East;

He brought delight from every land,

And gold from many a river’s strand,

And all things precious he could find

In Perse, or utmost Ind.

There, brazen guarded were the doors;

And o’er the many painted floors

The captive women came and went;

Or, with bright ornament,

Sat in the pillared places gay,

And feasted with him every day,

And fed him with their rosy kiss:

O there he had all bliss!

Then afterward, when he did hear

There was none like him anywhere,

He would behold the sight so sweet

Of all men at his feet:

And, since he heard that certainly

Not like a man was he to die,

For all his lust that palace vast

It seemed too small at last.

Therefore, another house he made,

So wide that it might hold arrayed

The thousands peers of his domain

And last his godlike reign;

And here he was a goodly span,

While before him came every man

To kneel and worship in his sight:

O there he had all might!

And yet, most surely, it befel

He tired of this house as well:

Was it too mighty after all?

Or still perhaps too small?

Strangely in all men’s wonderment,

He left it for a tenement

He had all builded in one year:

Now he is dwelling there.

He took full little of his gold;

And of his pleasures manifold

He had but a small heed, they say,

That day he went away:

—O, the new dwelling he hath found

Is but a man’s grave in the ground,

And taketh up but one man’s space

In the burial place.

And now, indeed, that he is dead,

The nations have they no more dread?

Lo, is not this the King they swore

To worship evermore?

Will no one Love of his come near

And kiss him where he lieth there,

And warm his freezing lips again?

—Is this then all his reign?

He must have longed ere this to rise

And be again in all men’s eyes;

For the place where he dwelleth now

Lonely it is I trow:

But, just to stand in his own hall

And feel the warmth there once for all—

O would he not give crowns of gold?

For the place is so cold!

But over him a tomb doth stand,

The costliest in all the land;

And of the glory that he bore

It telleth evermore.—

So these three dwellings he hath had,

And mighty he hath been and glad,

O hath he not been sad as well?

Perhaps—but who can tell?

This is the story of the King:

Was he not great in everything?

PALM FLOWERS.

IN a land of the sun’s blessing,

Where the passion-flower grows,

My heart keeps all worth possessing;

And the way there no man knows.

—Unknown wonder of new beauty!

There my Love lives all for me;

To love me is her whole duty,

Just as I would have it be.

All the perfumes and perfections

Of that clime have met with grace

In her body, and complexions

Of its flowers are on her face.

All soft tints of flowers most vernal,

Tints that make each other fade:

In her eyes they are eternal,

Set in some mysterious shade.

Full of dreams are the abysses

Of the night beneath her hair;

But an open dawn of kisses

Is her mouth: O she is fair.

And she has so sweet a fashion

With her languid loving eyes,

That she stirs my soul with passion,

And renews my breath with sighs.

Now she twines her hair in tresses

With some long red lustrous vine;

Now she weaves strange glossy dresses

From the leafy fabrics fine:

And upon her neck there mingle

Corals and quaint serpent charms,

And bright beaded sea-shells jingle

Set in circlets round her arms.

There—in solitudes sweet smelling,

Where the mighty Banyan stands,

I and she have found a dwelling

Shadowed by its giant hands:

All around our banyan bowers

Shine the reddening palm-tree ranks,

And the wild rare forest flowers

Crowded on high purple banks.

Through the long enchanted weather

—Ere the swollen fruits yet fall,

While red love-birds sit together

In thick green, and voices call

From the hidden forest places,

And are answered with strange shout

By the folk whose myriad faces

All day long are peeping out

From shy loopholes all above us

In the leafy hollows green,

—While all creatures seem to love us,

And the lofty boughs are seen

Gilded and for ever haunted

By the far ethereal smiles—

Through the long bright time enchanted,

In those solitudes for miles,

I and She—at heart possessing

Rhapsodies of tender thought—

Wander, till our thoughts too pressing

Into new sweet words are wrought.

And at length, with full hearts sinking

Back to silence and the maze

Of immeasurable thinking,

In those inward forest ways,

We recline on mossy couches,

Vanquished by mysterious calms,

All beneath the soothing touches

Of the feather-leaved fan-palms.

Strangely, with a mighty hushing,

Falls the sudden hour of noon;

When the flowers droop with blushing,

And a deep miraculous swoon

Seems subduing the whole forest;

Or some distant joyous rite

Draws away each bright-hued chorist:

Then we yield with long delight

Each to each, our souls deep thirsting;

And no sound at all is nigh,

Save from time to time the bursting

Of some fire-fed fruit on high.

Then with sudden overshrouding

Of impenetrable wings,

Comes the darkness and the crowding

Mysteries of the unseen things.

O how happy are we lovers

In weak wanderings hand in hand!—

Whom the immense palm forest covers

In that strange enchanted land;

Whom its thousand sights stupendous

Hold in breathless charmed suspense;

Whom its hidden sounds tremendous

And its throbbing hues intense

And the mystery of each glaring

Flower o’erwhelm with wonder dim;—

We, who see all things preparing

Some Great Spirit’s world for him!

Under pomps and splendid glamour

Of the night skies limitless;

Through the weird and growing clamour

Of the swaying wilderness;

Through each shock of sound that shivers

The serene palms to their height,

By white rolling tongues of rivers

Launched with foam athwart the night;

Lost and safe amid such wonders,

We prolong our human bliss;

Drown the terrors of the thunders

In the rapture of our kiss.

By some moon-haunted savanna,

In thick scented mid-air bowers

Draped about with some liana,

O what passionate nights are ours!

O’er our heads the squadron dances

Of the fire-fly wheel and poise;

And dim phantoms charm our trances,

And link’d dreams prolong our joys—

Till around us creeps the early

Sweet discordance of the dawn,

And the moonlight pales, and pearly

Haloes settle round the morn;

And from remnants of the hoary

Mists, where now the sunshine glows,

Starts at length in crimson glory

Some bright flock of flamingoes.

———

O that land where the suns linger

And the passion-flowers grow

Is the land for me the Singer:

There I made me, years ago,

Many a golden habitation,

Full of things most fair to see;

And the fond imagination

Of my heart dwells there with me.

Now, farewell, all shameful sorrow!

Farewell, troublous world of men!

I shall meet you on some morrow,

But forget you quite till then.

AN EPIC OF WOMEN.

I.

CREATION.

Nam non in hac ærumnosa miseriarum valle, in qua ad laborem ceteri mortales nascimur, producta est.

BOCCACCIO: DE CLARIS MULIERIBUS.

AND God said, “Let us make a thing most fair,—

A Woman with gold hair, and eyes all blue:”

He took from the sun gold and made her hair,

And for her eyes He took His heaven’s own hue.

He sought in every precious place and store,

And gathered all sweet essences that are

In all the bodies: so He made one more

Her body, the most beautiful by far.

Pure coral with pure pearl engendering,

Bore Her the fairest flower of the sea;

And for the wonder of that new-made thing

God ceaséd then, and nothing more made He.

So the beginning of her was this way:

Full of sea savours, beautiful and good,

Made of sun, sky, and sea,—more fair than they—

On the green margin of the sea she stood.

The coral colour lasted in her veins,

Made her lips rosy like a sea-shell’s rims;

The purple stained her cheeks with splendid stains,

And the pearl’s colour clung upon her limbs.

She took her golden hair between her hands;

The faded gold and amber of the seas

Dropped from it in a shower upon the sands;

The crispéd hair enwrapped her like a fleece;

And through the threads of it the sun lost gold,

And fell all pale upon her throat and breast

With play of lights and tracings manifold:

But the whole heaven shone full upon the rest.

Her curvéd shapes of shoulder and of limb,

Wrought fairly round or dwindling delicate,

Were carven in some substance made to dim

With whiteness all things carven or create.

And every sort of fairness that was yet

In work of man or God was perfected

Upon that work her bosom, where were set

In snows two wondrous jewelries of red.

The sun and sea made haloes of a light

Most soft and glimmering, and wreathed her close

Round all her wondrous shapes, and kept her bright

In a fair mystery of pearl and rose.

The waves fell fawning all about her there

Down to her ancles; then, with kissing sweet,

Slackened and waned away in love and fear

From the bright presence of her new-formed feet.

The green-gray mists were gathering away

In distant hollows underneath the sun

Behind the round sea; and upon that day

The work of all the world-making was done.

The world beheld, and hailed her, form and face;

The ocean spray, the sunlight, the pure blue

Of heaven beheld and wondered at her grace;

And God looked out of heaven and wondered too.

And ere a man could see her with desire,

Himself looked on her so, and loved her first,

And came upon her in a mist, like fire,

And of her beauty quenched his god-like thirst.

He touched her wholly with his naked soul,

At once sufficing all the new-made sense

For ever: so the Giver Himself stole

The gift, and left indeed no recompense.

All lavishly at first He did entreat

His leman; yea, the world of things create

He rolled like any jewel at her feet,

And of her changeful whim He made a fate.

He feasted her with ease and idle food

Of gods, and taught her lusts to fill the whole

Of life; withal He gave her nothing good,

And left her as He made her—without soul.

And lo, when he had held her for a season

In His own pleasure-palaces above,

He gave her unto man; this is the reason

She is so fair to see, so false to love.

II.

THE WIFE OF HEPHÆSTUS.

HE was not fair to look on as a god—

Her husband whom God gave her; for his face,

Not as the golden face of Phœbus glowed;

Nor in his body was there light or grace;

But he was rugged-seeming; all his brows

Were changed and smeared with the great human toil;

His limbs all gnarled and knotted as the boughs

And limbs of mighty oaks are: many a soil

Was on his skin, coarse-coloured as a bark;

Yea, he was shorn of beauty from the birth;

But strong, and of a mighty soul to work

With Fate and all the iron of the earth.

Thereto he had a heart even to love

That woman whom God gave him; and his part

Of fate had been quite blest—ay, sweet enough,

Having her beautiful and whole of heart.

But when he knew she was quite false and vain,

He slew her not because she was so fair;

Yea, spite of all the rest, had rather slain

Himself, than lost the looking on her hair.

For then the labouring days had seemed to last

Longer than ever: all had been too sore,

Not to be borne as erst,—the world so vast—

Vaster than ever it had seemed before!

But, when he knew it, heavily the ire—

Darkly the sorrow of it wrought on him;

The hollows of his eyes were filled with fire;

The fruitless sweat was dried upon each limb:

Raging he went, and full of lust to kill:

O he was fillèd with a great despair;

But added labour unto labour still,

And slew her not because she was so fair.

In all of life was nothing that atoned

For that hard fate: in hearing of all heaven,

About the iron mountain world he groaned;

But no return of pitying was given.

The iron echoes in a mighty blast

Flung up his voice toward the sweet abodes

In the blue heaven: his pain was known at last

In every palace of the painless gods.

He had no part but wholly to upbraid

Them,—meters of his evil measured fate,

Who first made fair, then spoiled the thing they made,

And mingled all their gifts with love and hate.

Yet he was moved at length some way to win

Vengeance, and all at once, on her and Him—

That god with whom she rather chose to sin

Than with a man to love: when earth was dim—

Full of unearthly shadows in the night,

He came upon those lovers unaware;

And fairly caught them locked in their delight:

Limb over limb he bound them in a snare.

For first with all his craft he did invent

A curious toil of meshes, strongly set

With supple fibrous thread and branches bent:

Full tightly they were bounden in that net.

Yet, not until with many a growing gray

And change that wrought among the shifting shade,

Day—softly changing all things—warned away

Their loves and sins, knew they the fate they had.

And when they were but striving to undo

Delicious bonds of love that needs no chain,

Then were they held:—though love had let them go

A stronger bond than love’s bade them remain.

And, spite of many a throe of sudden strength,

And all their tortuous striving to be free;

Yea, they were held:—till the sun came at length,

And all the gods came out of heaven to see.

For there they saw and knew Him from afar,

Vanquished and in no honourable plight,

No less a god than Ares god of war,

Ares the red and royal in all fight;

But now quite shorn indeed of arms and fame,

Spoiled of his helm and harness of each limb;

Yea, quite inglorious and brought to shame

For a mere love, with such rude stratagem!

The golden peals of god-like laughter brake

And rang down beautiful beneath the sun;

For well they saw, indeed, for whose fair sake

Their brother was so fallen and undone.

Phœbus himself, with many a secret pride

Of love—unshamed in any of his loves—

Leant on his golden bow, and laughed aside,

And made some fair light saying that still moves

From lips to lips at all the mirthful feasts

Of them above who have eternal rights

To joys and loves, and wine that never wastes,

And life never to end their days or nights.

And well they knew Hephæstus where, hard by,

He stood, inglorious, daring all their eyes:

The gods all beautiful—they laughed on high

At him, his woes and all his blasphemies.

But surely never was there such a play

For mirth of idle gods!—Nor such a shame

Ever become of love, as on that day

In sight of all the gods their love became!

Who were betrayed so,—in whatever sin

Lips could with lips, face could with face commit,

Yea lips or limbs of lovers could begin,—

That they were bound and kept quite close in it:

For vainly in the meshes of that snare

They strove, with shuddering limbs and starting cries,

Entangled more with many a mesh of hair

Caught in the manifold intricacies!

So She was found indeed most beautiful,

Yet full of shame and false in all she was;

So before gods who make and gods who rule,

And him her husband, she was found, alas!

Yet, after all, Hephæstus—he, her lord—

For all that sin, her death he would not have;

But, for his love’s sake and great Phœbus’ word,

Loosed her, and made her free, and all forgave.

III.

CLEOPATRA.

1.

Cleopatra Egyptia femina fuit, totius orbis fabula.

SHE made a feast for great Marc Antony:

Her galley was arrayed in gold and light;

That evening, in the purple sea and sky,

It shone green-golden like a chrysolite.

She was reclined upon a Tyrian couch

Of crimson wools: out of her loosened vest

Set on one shoulder with a serpent brooch

Fell one arm white and half her foamy breast.

And, with the breath of many a fanning plume,

That wonder of her hair that was like wine—

Of mingled fires and purples that consume,

Moved all its mystery of threads most fine—

Moved like some threaded instrument that thrills,

Played on with unseen kisses in the air

Weaving a music from it, working spells

We feel and know not of—so moved her hair:

And under saffron canopies all bright

With clash of lights, e’en to the amber prow,

Crept like enchantments subtle passing sight,

Fragrance and siren music soft and slow.

Amid the thousand viands of the feast,

And Nile fruits piled in panniers, where they vied

With palm-tree dates and melons of the East,

She waited for Marc Antony and sighed.

—Where tarries he?—What gift doth he invent

For costly greeting?—How with look or smile,

Out of love treasures not already spent

Prepares he now her fondness to beguile?

—But lo, he came between the whiles she sighed;

Scarce the wave murmurs troubling,—lo, most dear,

His galley, with the oars all softly plied,

Warned her with music distant, and drew near.

And on that night—for present,—he did bring

A pearl; and gave it her with kissing sweet:

“Would half the Roman empires were this thing,”

He said, “that I might lay them at your feet.”

Fairly then moved the magic all arrayed

About that fragrant feast; in every part

The soft Egyptian spells did lend their aid

To work some strange enamouring of the heart.

It was her whim to show him on that night

All she was queen of; like a perfect dream,

Wherein there should be gathered in one sight

The gold of many lives, as it might seem

Spent and lived through at once,—so she made pass

A splendid pageantry of all her East

Beauteous and captive,—so she did amass

The richness of each land in that one feast.

More jewelries than one could name or know,

Set in a thousand trinkets or in crowns

Each one a sovereignty, in glittering row

Numbered the suppliant lands and all her thrones.

And fairest handmaidens in gracious rank,

Their captive arms enchained with links of gold,

Knelt and poured forth the purple wine she drank,

Or served her there in postures manifold.

And beaded women of a yellow Ind

Stood at the couch, with bended hand to ply

Great silver feathered fans wherein the wind

Gat all the choicest fumes of Araby.

There in the midst, of shape uncouth and hard,

Juggled his arts some Ethiopian churl;

Changing fierce natures of the spotted pard

Or serpents of the Nile that creep and curl.

And many a minstrelsy of voice and string,

Twining sweet sounds like tendrils delicate,

Seemed to ensnare the moments—seemed to cling

Upon their pleasure all interminate.

But now at length she made them serve her wine

In the most precious goblet,—wine that shed

Great fragrance, in a goblet fair with shine

Of jewels: so they poured the wine out red:

And lo, to mark that more than any feast

And honour Antony,—or for mere pride

To do so proud a vanity, at least

The proudest, vainest, woman ever tried—

She took the unmatched pearl, and, taking, laughed;

And when they served her now that wine of worth

She cast it gleaming in; then with the draught

Mingling she drank it in their midst with mirth.

And all that while upon the ocean high,

The golden galley, heavy in its light,

Ruled the hoarse sea-sounds with its revelry—

Changing afar the purples of the night!

IV.

CLEOPATRA.

2.

WHEN Cleopatra saw ’twas time to yield

Even that love, to smite nor be afraid,

Since love shared loss,—yea, when the thing was sealed,

And all the trust of Antony betrayed;

And when, before his eyes and in full sight

Of the still striving ships, that gleaming line

Of galleys decked for no rude field of fight

Fled fair and unashamed in the sunshine;

Then, surely, he fell down as one but blind

Through sudden fallen darkness, even to grope

If haply some least broken he might find

Of all the broken ends of life and hope.

Well, out of all his fates now was there none

But Death, the utter end; and for no sake,

Save for some last love-look beneath the sun,

Had he delayed that end of all to take!

But now, because love—armed indeed of him

With utter rule of all his destinies—

Had chosen even to slay him for a whim,

And the mere remnant was none else than his,

And since, for sure, the sorest way of death

Were but to die not falling at the feet

Of that one woman who with look or breath

Could change it if she would and make it sweet;

He chose before all fame he might have caught

With death in foremost fighting, now to cling

Upon her steps who at this last had wrought

His death-wound shameful with a lover’s sting.

O how the memories seemed to throb and start

Welling from out the unstanched past!—seemed nigh

Already opening there in all his heart

The canker wound wherewith he was to die!

And so, though she were quite estranged, and now

He held no costlier gift to win her with;

Yet, following, he would find her, and, somehow,

Lay in her hands that latest gift—his death:

For now all piteously his heart relied

On a mere hope of love dwindled to this—

To fall some fair waste moment at her side

And feel perhaps a tear or even a kiss;

Since surely, in some waste of day or night,

He thought, the face of love out of the Past,

With look of his, should rise up in her sight

And make some kind of pleading at the last.

Therefore, when all the heavy heated day

Of rowing on the waters was nigh done,

And like a track of sweetness past away

Waned on the wave the last track of the sun,

At length with scarce a sound or warning cry,

Save of the rowers ceasing from the oar,

He reached her side and prayed her pass not by;

Yea, prayed her bear him yet a little more.

But truly this well-nigh availed to move

Her—Cleopatra—with remorse for all:

She knew not of such pardon, e’en from love;

Nor craved to look upon his utter fall.

And, first, when it was told her how he came

And sought to reach the galley where she was,

She faltered for a while with fear and shame,

And bade them scarce give way to let him pass:

Only at length he showed them the plain sight

How he was broken and so soon to die;

Then they fell back all grieved and gave him right,

And scarce believed the man was Antony.

And yet he could not speak; but lay forlorn

Crouched up about the gilded quivering prow,

Three days, from morn to night and night to morn,

As one whom a sore burden boweth low.

Harshly the sea-sounds taunted him at will,

And seemed in mocking choruses combined;

Each bitter inward thought was uttered shrill

On shrieking tongues of many a thwart-blown wind.

And where with onward beak the galley clave

Full many a silver mouth in the blue mere,

The turned up whitened lips of every wave

Rang out a bitter cadence on his ear.

But first awhile his thoughts were taking leave

Sadly of Rome, and all the pageant days;

For now at length he saw and would believe

The end of triumphs and the end of praise.

And now he did survey, apart from wrath,

The various fates of men both great and small;

How little reign or glory any hath;

And how one end comes quickly upon all;

And thought if love had been—had been quite love,

One little thing in each man’s life for bliss,

Then had the grief been paid with sweet enough

And a lost crown forgotten for a kiss;

While now, as though men played with fall and rise

Of mere base monies of the common mart,

To-day they strove for love as for a prize,

To-morrow compassed fame with every art;

And one who should but half trust any face

Of seeming fame, or follow love too well,

To set his heart a moment in love’s place—

That man should fall,—yea, even as he fell.

And he thought how, since the first fate began,

The lot of every one hath been so cast:

One woman bears and brings him up a man,

Another woman slays him at the last;

While all so hardly leaguered are men’s ways

And love so sharp a snare for them contrives,

The fleeting span of one fair woman’s days

Sufficeth many heroes’ loves and lives!

—But now, when he had thought all this and more,

He lay there and yet moved not from his place;

The love of her was in him like a sore,

And he lived waiting to behold her face.

At length they drew nigh to a land by name

Tænarus; and the third day, at its eve,

In guise of one who mourneth the Queen came

Weeping, and prayed him rise up and forgive.

V.

THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.

MY heart is heavy for each goodly man

Whom crownéd woman or sweet courtezan

Hath slain or brought to greater shames than death.

But now, O Daughter of Herodias!

I weep for him, of whom the story saith,

Thou didst procure his bitter fate:—Alas,

He seems so fair!—May thy curse never pass!

Where art thou writhing? Herod’s palace-floor

Has fallen through: there shalt thou dance no more;

And Herod is a worm now. In thy place,

—Salome, Viper!—do thy coils yet keep

That woman’s flesh they bore with such a grace?

Have thine eyes still the love-lure hidden deep,

The ornament of tears, they could not weep?

Thou wast quite perfect in the splendid guile

Of woman’s beauty; thou hadst the whole smile

That can dishonour heroes, and recal

Fair saints prepared for heaven back to hell:

And He, whose unlived glory thou mad’st fall

All beautiful and spotless, at thy spell,

Was great and fit for thee by whom he fell.

O, is it now sufficing sweet to thee—

Through all the long uncounted years that see

The undistinguished lost ones waste away—

To twine thee, biting, on those locks that bleed,

As bled they through thy fingers on that day?

Or hast thou, all unhallowed, some fierce need

Thy soul on his anointed grace to feed?

Or hast thou, rather, for that serpent’s task

Thou didst accomplish in thy woman-mask,

Some perfect inconceivable reward

Of serpent’s slimy pleasure?—all the thing

Thou didst beseech thy master, who is Lord

Of those accursèd hosts that creep and sting,

To give thee for the spoil thou shouldest bring?

He was a goodly spoil for thee to win!

—Men’s souls and lives were wholly dark with sin;

And so God’s world was changed with wars and gold,

No part of it was holy; save, maybe,

The desert and the ocean as of old:—

But such a spotless way of life had he,

His soul was as the desert or the sea.

I think he had not heard of the far towns;

Nor of the deeds of men, nor of kings’ crowns;

Before the thought of God took hold of him,

As he was sitting dreaming in the calm

Of one first noon, upon the desert’s rim,

Beneath the tall fair shadows of the palm,

All overcome with some strange inward balm.

But then, so wonderful and lovely seemed

That thought, he straight became as though he dreamed

A vast thing false and fair, which day and night

Absorbed him in some rapture—very high

Above the common swayings of delight

And general yearnings, that quite occupy

Men’s passions, and suffice them till they die:

Yea, soon as it had entered him—that thought

Of God—he felt that he was being wrought

All holy: more and more it filled his heart;

And seemed, indeed, a spirit of pure flame

Set burning in his soul’s most inward part.

And from the Lord’s great wilderness there came

A mighty voice calling on him by name.

He numbered not the changes of the year,

The days, the nights, and he forgot all fear

Of death: each day he thought there should have been

A shining ladder set for him to climb

Athwart some opening in the heavens, e’en

To God’s eternity, and see, sublime—

His face whose shadow passing fills all time.

But he walked through the ancient wilderness.

O, there the prints of feet were numberless

And holy all about him! And quite plain

He saw each spot an angel silvershod

Had lit upon; where Jacob too had lain

The place seemed fresh,—and, bright and lately trod,

A long track showed where Enoch walked with God.

And often, while the sacred darkness trailed

Along the mountains smitten and unveiled

By rending lightnings,—over all the noise

Of thunders and the earth that quaked and bowed

From its foundations—he could hear the voice

Of great Elias prophesying loud

To Him whose face was covered by a cloud.

Already he was shown so perfectly

The awful mystic grace and sanctity

Of all the earth, there was no part his feet

With sandal covering might dare to tread;

Because that in it he was sure to meet

The fair sword-bearing angels, or some dread

Eternal prophet numbered with the dead.

So he believed that he should purify

His body, till the sin of it should die,

And the unfailing spirit and great word

Of One—who is too bright to be beheld,

And in his speech too fearful to be heard

By mortal man—should come down and be held

In him as in those holy ones of eld.

And to believe in this was rapture more

Than any that the thought of living bore

To tempt him: so the pleasant days of youth

Were but the days of striving and of prayer;

And all the beauty of those days, forsooth,

He counted as an evil or a snare,

And would have left it in the desert there.

Ah, spite of all the scourges that had bit

So fiercely his fair body, branding it

With many a painful over-written vow

Of perfect sanctity—what man shall say

How often, weak with groanings, he would bow

Before the angels of the place, and pray

That all his body might consume away?

For through whole bitter days it seemed in vain

That all the mighty desert had no stain

Of sin around him; that the burning breaths

Went forth from the eternal One, and rolled

For ever through it, filling it with deaths,

And plagues, and fires; that he did behold

The earthquakes and the wonders manifold:

It seemed in vain that all the place was bright

Ineffably with that unfading light

No man who worketh evil can abide;

That he could see too with his open eyes

Fair troops of deathless ones, and those that died

In martyrdoms, or went up to the skies

In fiery cars—walk there with no disguise;—

It seemed in vain that he was there alone

With no man’s sin to tempt him but his own;—

Since in his body he did bear about

A seeming endless sin he could not quell

With the most sharp coercement, nor cast out

Through any might of prayer. O, who can tell—

Save God—how often in despair he fell?

The very stones seemed purer far than he;

And every naked rock and every tree

Looked great and calm, composed in one long thought

Of holiness; each bird and creeping thing

Rejoiced in bearing some bright sign that taught

The legend of an ancient minist’ring

To some fair saint of old there sojourning.

Yea, all the dumb things and the creatures there

Were grand, and some way sanctified; most fair

The very lions stood, and had no shame

Before the angels; and what time were poured

The floods of the Lord’s anger forth, they came

Quite nigh the lightnings of the Mount and roared

Among the roaring thunders of the Lord:

Yet He—while in him day by day, divine,

The clear inspirèd thought went on to shine,

And heaven was opening every radiant door

Upon his spirit—He, in that fair dress

Of weak humanity his senses bore,

Did feel scarce worthy to be there, and less

Than any dweller in the wilderness.

Wherefore his limbs were galled with many a stone;

And often he had wrestled all alone

With their fair beauty, conquering the pride

And various pleasure of them with some quick

And hard inflicted pain that might abide,—

Assailing all the sense with constant prick

Until the lust or pride fell faint and sick.

Natheless there grew and stayed upon his face

The wonderful unconquerable grace

Of a young man made beautiful with love;

Because the thought of God was wholly spread

Like love upon it; and still fair above

All crownèd heads of kings remained his head

Whereon the halo of the Lord was shed.

Ah, how long was it, since the first red rush

Of that surpassing thought made his cheek blush

With pleasure, as he sat—a tender child—

And wondered at the desert, and the long

Rough prickly paths that led out to the wild

Where all the men of God, holy and strong,

Had dwelt and purified themselves—how long?—

Before he rose up from his knees one day,

And felt that he was purified as they;

That he had trodden out the sin at last,

And that the light was filling him within?

How many of the months and years had past

Uncounted?—But the place he was born in

No longer knew him: no man was his kin.

O then it was a most sweet, holy will

That came upon him, making his soul thrill

With joy indeed, and with a perfect trust,—

For he soon thought of men and of the king

All tempted in the world, with gold and lust,

And women there, and every fatal thing,

And none to save their souls from perishing—

And so he vowed that he would go forth straight

From God there in the desert, with the great

Unearthliness upon him, and adjure

The nations of the whole world with his voice;

Until they should resist each pleasant lure

Of gold and woman, and make such a choice

As his, that they might evermore rejoice.

Thus beautiful and good was He, at length,

Who came before King Herod in his strength,

And shouted to him with a great command

To purify himself, and put away

That unclean woman set at his right hand;

And after all to bow himself and pray,

And be in terror of the Judgment Day!

He never had seen houses like to that

Fair-columned, cedar-builded one where sat

King Herod. Flawless cedar was each beam,

Wrought o’er with flaming brass: along the wall

Great brazen images of beasts did gleam,

With wondrous flower-works and palm trees tall;

And folded purples hung about it all.

He never had beheld so many thrones,

As those of ivory and precious stones

Whereon the noble company was raised

About the king:—he never had seen gems

So costly, nor so wonderful as blazed

Upon their many crowns and diadems,

And trailed upon their garments’ trodden hems:

But he had seen in mighty Lebanon

The cedars no man’s axe hath lit upon;

And he had often worshipped, falling down

In dazzling temples opened straight to him,

Where One who had great lightnings for His crown

Was suddenly made present, vast and dim

Through crowded pinions of the Cherubim!

Wherefore he had no fear to stand and shout

To all men in the place, and there to flout

Those fair and fearful women who were seen

Quite triumphing in that work of their smile

To shame a goodly king. And he cast, e’en

A sudden awe that undid for a while

The made-up shameless visages of guile.

And when Herodias—that many times

Polluted one, assured now in all crimes

Past fear or turning—when she, her fierce tongue

Thrice forked with indignation, hotly spoke

Quick wild beseeching words, wherewith she clung

To Herod, praying him by some death-stroke

To do her vengeance there before all folk—

Ah, spite of every urging that her hate

Did put into her lips,—so fair and great

Seemed that accuser standing weaponless,

Yet wholly terrible with his bright speech

As ’twere some sword of flaming holiness,

That no man dared to join her and beseech

His death; but dread came somehow upon each.

For he was surely terrible to see

So plainly sinless, so divinely free

To judge them; being in a perfect youth,

Yet walking like an angel in a man

Reproving all men with inspired truth.

And Herod himself spoke not, but began

To tremble: through his soul the warning ran.

—Then that Salome did put off the shame

Of her mere virgin girlhood, and became

A woman! Then she did at once essay

Her beauty’s magic, and unfold the wings

Of her enchanted feet,—to have men say

She slew him—born indeed for wondrous things.

Her dance was fit to ruin saints or kings.

O, her new beauty was above all praise!

She came with dancing in shy devious ways,

And while she danced she sang.

The virgin bandlet of her forehead brake,

Her hair came round her like a shining snake;

To loving her men’s hearts within them sprang

The while she danced and sang.

Her long black hair danced round her like a snake

Allured to each charmed movement she did make;

Her voice came strangely sweet;

She sang, “O, Herod, wilt thou look on me—

Have I no beauty thy heart cares to see?”

And what her voice did sing her dancing feet

Seemed ever to repeat.

She sang, “O, Herod, wilt thou look on me?

What sweet I have, I have it all for thee;”

And through the dance and song

She freed and floated on the air her arms

Above dim veils that hid her bosom’s charms:

The passion of her singing was so strong

It drew all hearts along.

Her sweet arms were unfolded on the air,

They seemed like floating flowers the most fair—

White lilies the most choice;

And in the gradual bending of her hand

There lurked a grace that no man could withstand;

Yea, none knew whether hands, or feet, or voice,

Most made his heart rejoice.

The veils fell round her like thin coiling mists

Shot through by topaz suns, and amethysts,

And rubies she had on;

And out of them her jewelled body came,

And seemed to all quite like a slender flame

That curled and glided, and that burnt and shone

Most fair to look upon.

Then she began, on that well-polished floor,

Whose stones seemed taking radiance more and more

From steps too bright to see,

A certain measure that was like some spell

Of winding magic, wherein heaven and hell

Were joined to lull men’s souls eternally

In some mid ecstasy:

For it was so inexplicably wrought

Of soft alternate motions, that she taught

Each sweeping supple limb,

And in such intricate and wondrous ways

With bendings of her body, that the praise

Lost breath upon men’s lips, and all grew dim

Save her so bright and slim.

And through the swift mesh’d serpents of her hair

That lash’d and leapt on each place white and fair

Of bosom or of arm,

And through the blazing of the numberless

And whirling jewelled fires of her dress,

Her perfect face no passion could disarm

Of its reposeful charm.

Her head oft drooped as in some languid death

Beneath brim tastes of joy, and her rich breath

Heaved faintly from her breast;

Her long eyes, opened fervently and wide,

Did seem with endless rapture to abide

In some fair trance through which the soul possest

Love, ecstasy, and rest.

But lo—while each man fixed his eyes on her,

And was himself quite fillèd with the stir

His heart did make within—

The place was full of devils everywhere:

They came in from the desert and the air;

They came from all the palaces of sin,

And each heart they were in:

They lurked beneath the purples, and did crawl

Or crouch in unseen corners of the hall,

Among the brass and gold;

They climbed the brazen pillars till they lined

The chamber fair; and one went up behind

The throne of Herod—fearful to behold—

The Serpent king of old.

Yea, too, before those blinded men there went

Some even to Salome; and they lent

Strange charms she did not shun.

She stretched her hand forth, and inclined her ear;

She knew those men would neither see nor hear:

A devil did support her head, and one

Her steps’ light fabric spun.

O, then her voice with singing all unveiled,

In no trained timid accents, straight assailed

King Herod’s open heart:

The amorous supplication wove and wound

Soft deadly sins about it; the words found

Fair traitor thoughts there,—singing snakes did dart

Their poison in each part.

She sang, “O look on me, and look on Love:

We three are here together, and above—

What heaven may there be?

None for thine heart without this spell of mine,

Yea, this my beauty, yea, these limbs that shine

And make thy senses shudder; and for me,

No heaven without thee!

“O, all the passion in me on this day

Rises into one song to sweep away

The breakers of Love’s bond;

For is it not a pleasant bond indeed,

And made of all the flowers in life’s mead?

And is not Love a master fair and fond?

And is not Death beyond?

“O, who are these that will adjure thee, King,

To put away this tender flower-thing,

This love that is thy bliss?

Dost thou think thou canst live indeed, and dare

The joyless remnant of pale days, the bare

Hard tomb, and feed through cold eternities

Thy heart without one kiss?

“Dost thou think empty prayers shall glad thy lips

Kept red and living with perpetual sips

Of Love’s rich cup of wine?

That thy fair body shall not fall away,

And waste among the worms that bitter day

Thou hast no lover round thy neck to twine

Fond arms like these of mine?

“I say they are no prophets,—very deaths,

And plagues, and rottenness, do use their breaths

Who speak against delight;

Pale distant slayers of humanity

Have tainted them, and sent them forth to try

Weak lures to make man give up joyous right

Of days for empty night.

“I tell thee, in their wilderness shall be

No herbs enough for food for them and thee,

No rock to give thee drink;

I tell thee, all their heavens are a cheat,

Or but a mirage to betray thy feet,

And draw thee quicker to some grave’s dread brink

Where thou shalt fall and sink.

“Turn rather unto me, and hear my voice

Against these desert howlings, and rejoice:

Now surely do I crave

To treble this my beauty, and embalm

My words with deathless thrill, singing the psalm

Of pleasure to thee, King,—so I may save

Thy fair days from this grave.

“Yea, now of all my beauty will I strive

With these mad prophesiers till I drive

Their ravings from thine ear:

Against their rudeness I will set my grace,

My softness, and the magic of my face;

And spite of all their curses thou shalt hear

And let my voice draw near:

“Against their loud revilings I will try

The long low-speaking pleadings of my sigh,

All my heart’s tender way;

Against their deserts—here, before thine eyes

My love shall open thee a paradise,

Where, if thou comest, thou shalt surely stay

And seek no better way:

“And rather than these haters of thy joy

Should anyhow allure thee to destroy

Thy heart’s prosperity,—

O, I will throw my woman’s arms entwined

About thy body; ere thy lips can find

One word of yielding, I will kiss them dry:

—And failing, let me die!

“But look on me, for it is in my soul

To make the measure of thy glory whole—

With many goodly things

To crown thee, yea, with pleasure and with love,

Till there shall scarcely be a name above

King Herod’s, in the mouth of one who sings

The fame of mighty kings:

“For see how great and fair a realm is this—

My untried love—the never conquered bliss

All hoarded in my breast;

My beauty and my love were jewels meet

To make the glory of a king complete,

And I,—O thou of kingship half-possest—

Can crown thee with the rest!

“I stand before thee—on my head the crown

Of all thou lackest yet in thy renown—

Ah, King, take this of me!

And in my hand I bear a brimming cup

That sparkles; to thine eyes I hold it up:

A royal draught of life-long pleasure—see,

The wine is fit for thee!

“Ah, wilt thou pass me? Wilt thou let me give

Thy fair life to some meaner man to live?

Nay, here—if I am sweet—

Thou shalt not. I will save thee with the sight

Of all my sweetness, save thee with the might

And charm of all my singing lips’ deceit,

Or with my dancing feet.

“I have indeed some power. A lure lies

Within my tender lips—behind my eyes—

Concealed in all my way;

And while I seem entreating, I compel,

Yea, while I do but plead, I use a spell—

Ah secretly—but surely. Who are they

That ever turn away?

“Now, thou hast barely seen bright glittering

The gilded cup of pleasures that I swung

Before thy reeling gaze,—

The deep beginnings of sweet drunkenness

Are in thy heart already, more or less,

And on thy soul deliciously there preys

A thirst no joy allays.

“Dost thou not feel, each time my long hair sweeps

The glowing floor, how through thy being creeps

A vague yet sweet desire?—

How writhes in every sense a tiny snake

Of pleasure biting till it seems to wake

A fever of sharp lusts that never tire,

Unquenchable as fire?

“Is there not wrought a madness in thy brain

Each time my thin veils part and close again—

Each time their flying ring

Is seen a moment’s space encircling me

With filmy changes—each time, rapidly

Rolled down, their cloud-like gauzes billowing

About my limbs they fling?

“Ah, seek not in this moment some cold will;

Attend to no false pratings that would kill

Thy heart, and make thee fall:

But now a little lean to me, and fear

My charming. Ah, thy fame to me is dear!

Some wound of mine, when me thou couldst not call,

Might slay thee after all.

“For even while I sing, the unseen grace

Of Love descending hath filled all this place

With most strong prevalence;

His miracle is raging in the breasts

Of all these men, and mightily he rests

On me and thee. His power is too intense,

No curse shall drive him hence.

“—O, Love, invisible, eternal God,

In whose delicious ways all men have trod,

This day Thou truly hast

My heart: thy inspiration fills my tongue

With great angelic madness; I have sung

Set words that in my bosom thou hast cast—

Thine am I to the last!

“My feet are like two liquid flames that leap

For joy at thee; I feel thy spirit sweep—

Yea, like a southern wind—

Through all the enchanted fibres of my soul;

I am a harp o’er which thy vast breaths roll,

And one day thou shalt break me: none shall find

A wreck of me behind.

“And now all palpitating, O I pray

Thy utmost passion while I cry—away

With all Love’s enemies!

A man—borne up between the closing wings

Of two eternities of unknown things,

May catch this seraph charmer as he flies,

And hold him till he dies;

“And yet some bitter ones, whom coming night

Hath wholly entered, grudge man this small right

Of joy, and seek to fill

His rushing moment with the monstrous hiss

Of shapeless terrors, poisoning the bliss

Brief nestled in his bosom—merely till

Forced out by its death chill!

“What voice is this the envious wilderness

Hath sent among us foully to distress

And haunt our lives with fear?

What vulture, shrieking on the scent of death—

What yelping jackal—what insidious breath

Of pestilence hath ventured to draw near,

And enter even here?

“No kindred flesh of fair humanity

Yon fiend hath, seeking through lives doomed to die

Death’s foretaste to infuse:

His body is but raised up from the slain

Unburied thousands that long years have lain

About the desert: Death himself doth choose

His pale disguise to use.

“But, even though he be from some new God,

He shall not turn us who love’s ways have trod,

Nor make us break love’s vow.

Nay, rather, if a single beauty dwells

In me, if in that beauty there be spells

To win my will of any man—O thou,

King Herod, hear me now!—

“Let it be for his ruin! Ah, let me,

With all in me thou countest fair to see,

Procure this and no more!

If yet, with tender prevalence, my voice

May ask a thing of thee—this is my choice,

Though thou wouldst buy my sweets with all thy store—

This all I sell them for.

“Yea, are there lures of softness in my eyes?

My eyes are—for his death. Is my heart’s prize

A seeming fair reward?

My virgin heart is—for his blood here shed;

Its passion—for the falling of his head;

And on that man my kiss shall be outpoured

Who slays him with the sword!”

Invisible—in supernatural haze,

Of shapes that seem not shapes to human gaze—

The devils were half awed as they did stand

Around her; each one in his separate hell

All inwardly was forced to praise her well:

And every man was fain to lose his hand

Or do all that sweet woman might command.

There was a tumult.—Cloven foot and scale

Of fiend with iron heel and coat of mail

Were rolled and hustled in the rage to slay

That fair young Saviour: when they murdered him

And brought his head, still beautiful—though dim

And drenched with blood—the aureole did play

Above it, slowly vanishing away.

I weep to think of him and his fair light

So quenched—of him thrust into some long night

Of unaccomplishment so soon, alas!

And Thou, who on that ancient palace floor

Didst dance, where dost thou writhe now evermore—

Salome, Daughter of Herodias?

O woman-viper—may thy curse ne’er pass!

VI

HELEN.

AFTER long years of all that too sweet sin

That held her ever in the far strange land,

She felt her heart was stricken, felt begin

Great strokes of sorrow smiting like a hand.

She turned away from all the long delight

Which had so filled and blinded all the past;

The sweet sin rose up bitter in the night

And turned the love to sickness at the last.

She and her lover in their goodly halls

Gazed on each other no more the old way;

About the face of each clung shadowy palls

Of sadness all unchanged through many a day.

And now, along the fair courts marble-floored,

Each met the looks of other all aghast

With rueful thoughts unstanched yet ne’er outpoured;

And their trailed robes touched mournful as they passed.

Into the lonely paths of Ida sweet

For sorrow, dark and very sweet with leaves,

Came Helen: weary at her bosom beat

The sad thoughts all the summer noons and eves.

Strange: as her eyes sought where the sea was held

Gathered into dim distances of blue,

Down in her heart a dim Past she beheld,

Wherein were memories like an ocean too.

And strange, there, long up-pent, the memories stirred

Like waves long rolling: in her heart at length

All the fair time from which her years had erred

Came up against her now with all its strength.

Back from the earliest love-time there was sent

A tide of all the long untasted sweet

Of days forgotten, summers that were spent,

And eves when love and lover used to meet;

And heavy wafts of perfume that was known

E’en from those dark familiar laurel trees

That hid where love and lover were alone

Rolled back upon the heart with sore disease:

And from the early home there came no less

Than the reproach of each remembered gaze

Of friends, and want of all the happiness

They gave her in their simple Spartan ways.

And now her heart strove, longing, to divine

The several thoughts of her they had devised

In separate years that passed by with no sign;

Yea, to have known their pain she would have prized:

For now when toward them her heart was wrought

Quite weak, and from no tenderness forbore,

They seemed all strong against her, with hard thought

And faces turning from her evermore.

And with the vision of them so deceived

Came piteous memories of the waning face

Of the Old man who sat all shamed and grieved

Lonely beside the hearth’s familiar place.

Before her soon in very semblance gleamed

The Spartan homestead there unaltered, plain,

With all the household things; yea, till she dreamed

All were yet to begin that way again,

And Menelaus the next golden morn

Were still to come for her with wedlock blest,

As though not all deserted and forlorn

He strayed—the lone man without love or rest.

But most she yearned between her fear and love,

To see him now—divining what was due

To wrath and sorrowing to change and move

His features from the fashion that she knew:

For now the first time after all those years

The face seemed anyhow her way to seek;

—But turned upon her now with all its tears

And vengeance of reproach at length to wreak;

—And seemed to hold her through her love come back,

Unforeseen, and how come, she could not tell;

So that the wrath of it, the grief could rack

Her heart,—yet her heart craved therewith to dwell.

He was her husband—it should ever seem;

And that home, surely it was still her home;

And years since some long voyage or a dream;

And now no more the heart was fain to roam:

Nay, but was true to where it felt begin

Love and the rosy ecstasies so brief;

And that was surely love and the rest sin,

That all delight and all the other grief.

And now though none should render her heart’s right

In any fair place where she used to sit,

She would have prayed for a mere alien’s sight

Of all it was so little pain to quit:

Just to draw near, some silent hour, alone,

Unheralded, unwelcomed, and behold

Her husband and remember him her own,

And be quite near him only as of old:

And perchance, for some grief that was exprest

Plainly upon his face, she might have dared

To enter in, and after all been blest

Some remnant of his pity to have shared.

—Alas, too surely, for long years, all thought

And love of her had perished from his heart;

Until on all her memory were wrought

Dishonour, and with him she had no part;

—And this the while, so held of alien joys,

She spared no thought for him and for his pain,

Nor fancied the least echo of his voice

Sent forth a thousand times to her in vain;

When, might-be many a time, his earnest grief

Sent it so truly seeking her quite near,

Vainly it fell on some dumb flower or leaf

Beside her, never cherished in her ear.

And she thought how one day—she heeding nought—

The last voice on the fruitless air was borne

And died almost a taunt, and the last thought

Of her was changed to hate or utter scorn.

And she thought how since that time, day by day,

The man had learnt to live without her need,

And been quite happy perhaps many a way,

All without loving her or taking heed.

And that which was the great woe had scarce grown

In any gradual way; but with a burst

Her life was torn apart from peace, and thrown

Far from the love that seemed its own at first

All for a mere girl’s fancy too—a whim

For foreign faces and some ruddier south,

And no real choice to die away from him

Who won the truest troth in love and youth.

Now it was bitter to be quite outcast,

And bitter—when this thought of dying crost

Her heart—to reach him no more at the last

Than in mere rumour, as of one long lost.

She looked upon the great sea rolled between

Herself and Lacedæmon: but the Past,

The sins and all the falseness that had been

Seemed like an ocean deeper and more vast.

VII.

A TROTH FOR ETERNITY.

—SO, Woman! I possess you. Yes, at length.

Once wholly and for ever you are mine!

That cursèd burden on my memory,

Your whole past life’s betrayal—let it go:

Ay, let it perish, and, for me at least,

Let life begin this moment, though we die

But three hours hence!

Is this your little voice

My Love, enthralling, winning my whole faith

With mere increasing sweetness in its tones,

Dissolving, exorcising, as it used,

Ah too infallibly, the phantom thing,

The doubt, the dread within me? ah, my Sweet,

Is this once more your voice assuring me—

With some rare music rather than one word

Of those fair whispered oaths of constancy;

Yea, till, as ever, I am come to smile

And glory in you, and believe you pure—

All mine, for ever, past a change in thought?

But no! It is the little voice of the Steel

Here safe against my breast and fairly hid:

The Steel is singing to me, very low,

A tender song entrancing me;—O joy!

The Steel says you will ne’er escape me more;

You will be true to me; you will be mine;

No man shall touch you after me; no face,

However strangely fair, shall have the art

To draw one look from you, to charm and rouse

That wondrous little snake of treachery

That was for ever lurking for me—sure

To spring upon me out of the least look

Or promise, safe to be curled up beneath

The simplest seeming offering in your hand.

Yes, ’tis a thing at length as good as this

The steel is singing to me: did you hear,

You should but love it—since it pleads so well

It makes me put whole faith in you once more.

For now three days and nights indeed—while I,

Contending for you with the love I gave

Against the curse I owed you, raged and thought

It was my madness—O this little voice

Was striving with me, singing all the time,

Upon a low sweet soothing tune, strange words

Of promise that seemed like the distant taunts

Of all my past beliefs, and that I sought

To cover with my curses; till, last night,

My soul grew faint with hearing them—how sweet,

How full of good they were. Then I fell still,

Yea, stunned, and with my head upon the ground;

And through the shut bleared darkness of my eyes,

I seemed to see the room about me lit

And fearful, and the Sword from off the wall

Unscabbarded before me in the midst,

Most terrible and living, and in light—

Just like a great archangel with the glare

Of burning expiations full on him.

O then my soul did call upon the Steel;

And the Steel heard and swore to me. My soul

Tore forth the hidden-rooted love of thee,

Thy treasured words—each one a cruel worm

That gnaws me through for ever, thy fair face

From the first inmost shrine, thy early kiss,

Thy separate falsenesses, all my despair,

My utter helplessness—and flung them down,

The very writhing entrails of my life

Become one inward horror to be borne

No longer. And there came about me, loud,

The mocking of a thousand impious tongues,

That seemed to clash and rattle hideously

From ancient hollow sepulchres of men

Long buried and forgotten; for my love

Their gibe was, for my faith, for my despair,

For my long blindness: and at last I knew,

And, understanding, called with a great voice

Upon the Steel: and the Steel heard me there,

And swore to me—for you and me and God!

Sing on, O little voice: She cannot hear;

There is a pact between us.

Now I stand

And feel her eyes’ soft element within,

Upon, around me, melting away life

Into these few full throbbing moments.—Lo!

Her tears again—her disavowal clean

Of any thought of falseness. Lo! her words—

I might have lived beside her all these days

In perfect joy; words, blandishments and tears

Already staggering me with their old might

Of coiling fascinations; and one tear

A drop that, falling straight into my heart,

Fills it too full for speaking a long time

The ready thing of pardon and of love.

See! am I Lord here?—This fair sight of Her,

Working the whole impassioned prodigy

As ’twere of all her beauty, just to win

Me this time and, at any cost, be queen

Of this one present, as of many pasts—

Hath ever it been fairer, more complete?

Who else hath had her more and called her his

Than here I have her calling herself mine?

I would indeed he might draw near just now,

Yea, void of feigning, in some wonted way,

And feel a cold look from her plant him there

Outside the circle where this molten love

Of her whole smile is showered upon me,

And know her no more his now than mine then.

But what do I here with a thought like this?

Those men I deemed my rivals—what are they

To me now? Why I could put them to shame

And taunt them now myself for insolent

Pretenders who have never known what ’tis

To conquer love.—Ay, what compared with me

Seem all the famous lovers of great queens

Or splendid cruel mistresses, whose woes—

Deceived, betrayed, reviled—have made them shine

With some bright share of every age’s tears?

What but mere fools? weak sufferers of wrong

From creatures whom they held in their own hands?

Or passionless, or lacking any strength

To seize their fair worlds passing them so nigh

Rather than linger in some sickly trail

Of sweetness left behind and die of shame?

O all ye Messalinas of old time—

Ye Helens, Cleopatras, ye Dalilahs,

Ye Maries, ye Lucrezias, Catharines—

Fair crowned or uncrowned—courtezans alike

Who played with men a calculated game—

Your moves their heart-wounds, deaths and ruins—sure

Of your inconstancy and their soft loves,

Had I been lover in the stead of them,

Methinks the histories of you had been changed,

And some of your worst falsenesses redeemed

By flawless faithfulness to one last love.

But now I am content, I have love here;

And I thank God for love—yea, is it sweet?

Yea, is it best of all his gifts to man?

—I see her splendid smile there—feel her arms

Already coming round me!—Who but I

Can answer? Who but I have had it whole

Like this? (The Steel is singing to me now,

Still hidden in my breast—a low sweet song.)

Ah, this time there is no doubt! ’tis all true:

Her arms may fold me—fondle me, and I

May wholly yield myself to their caress

Quite sure it leaves no atom in reserve

For any other after me. And lo,

She is right worthy of a greater one

Than all the lovers that have ever loved

And, trembling, lost their women and themselves:

For splendour—such as stains for me and turns

My eyes disgusted from the vaunted white

Of many a bosom impudently bared—

Is in that bosom closely veiled, whose veils

I may undo—yea now, and with these hands;

It is my right. And then, O joy, to know

That this, so much more wonderful than those,

Shall ne’er be seen by anyone but me!

(Ah, sing on little voice!) But, as I said,

—Yes, she is worthy!—Come to me, my Sweet:

You have the greatest beauty God has made.

I think that. Let me kiss your forehead once,

Twice, thrice, and say it is diviner white,

And hallowed with a brighter radiant grace

Than Cleopatra’s was, and swear therewith

I kiss it with a passion greater far

Than Antony’s was: yea, let me write there

This thing in kisses that none can efface.

“Ah, you believe me now, dear love?” she says:

Yes: I say yes. (Sing on! ’Twas you sang: yes;

You bade me answer so. I trust you most.)

“Dear Love, let us go lie upon that bed.

I should delight to know it just the grave,

So I might keep this faith and happiness,

That yours—this mine—both safe for evermore,

So I might lie down sure that no mischance,

No doubt, no calumny, could come to change

Me—yours, you—mine, and peace for evermore.”

She says this, and she leads me by the hand.

Her head is like a lily drooping down.

—My passion! Yea I will not baulk thee now:

I need not: for I feel that what I am

Is something more than man, that conquers man.

What is it? I know not: a flame, a thought;

But cold, but calm, unalterable, pure,

As far above the fume of the base lust

That dulls and levels all men, as, perhaps,

Was that strange flame or thought that made Man first

And Woman then to bring the man to nought,

Which fate I, who indeed am not a god,

Who am not Hercules, nor Samson, no,

Nor Antony—which fate I yet will change.

Nay, passion, rather I will urge thee on;

For I shall be above thee all the time

A cold impartial watcher, hard to foil,

Attentive that thou gettest all thine own

Not tampered with—lest, in some little thing,

Thou art betrayed, or with a semblance served,

Yea, for a blind fool as thou ever wert.

—O take thy fill of looking on this snow

In which thy heart finds such delicious death;

Do out thine utmost revel on the bloom

Of this rare flower’s beauty, now at full;

Whose summer is just perfected to-night

And laid before thee, heightened with the tint

Of first mysterious sadness, like a touch

Of far-off autumns. Do not shun that mouth:

For there, indeed, a thing most dainty-sweet—

The last kiss that was sown a precious seed

By Love at the beginning—waits for thee,

The fullest, the most perfect of them all.

The earth will never fashion forth, and Love

Will never with his summer paint again

So beautiful a flower.

I am clasped

With such arms as I would might hold me so

For evermore in heaven. All around,

The strange unearthly fragrance of her hair

Is coming up, and, with an element

Divine as some transparent rosy cloud,

Enwrapping both of us; ay, and, as though—

A very cloud of magic—it had borne

Us, lifted far away from thought, and life,

And days, and earthliness—we seem to voyage

Through most ethereal atmospheres, and seas

Upon whose soft sustaining waves we drift,

And draw no sound from either distant shore

Of ending or beginning: and the bliss,

Unspeakable and perfect, that we feel

Seems making and remaking evermore

Our souls through this eternity.

Alas!

One little thread—I strive in vain to break—

Is holding me: a memory, a thought,

The pricking of a half-numbed wound through sleep,

The constant teazing of a wingéd thing,

The bitterness wherewith some ceaseless fang

Of life gnaws through, and breaks our dream of it—

Some such pursues and racks me. But ’tis well:

I know the dream is mine to make my own;

I know what dragon guards this paradise,

And with what paltry lies he fools mankind.

Ah, how the universe must jeer to see

All men so smoothly cheated of their own!—

And when I slay this dragon, I have all.

I cannot stir now. Many a knotted tress

Is on me, like a thousand-threaded chain

Twined many times about my limbs. I dream

No more: I feel her small and gliding hands

Seek mine; and while the burning rapid words

Her full heart furnishes hiss in mine ear,

My sight is peering blindly through the dark

Of her vast hair—a cavernous abyss

Of blackness traversed by mad shooting sparks

Or fearful gleams of blood.—What things she says!

“—Let this be as it were my bridal night,

If you doubt all the Past. I am yours now;

Take this for the beginning, and trust me;

I will be yours for ever,—not a look,

A word, a thought shall e’er dishonour you.”—

And, if I had not heard this very thing

Before, once, twice, innumerable times,

I should not plunge as I do now, my head

Still deeper in the fathomless dark hair,

And see tears falling from me—as it seems—

To fall on through a drear eternity.

But, hark, another voice! Whence comes it?—Whence?

From here, beneath the pillow; yes, ’tis harsh

And not like hers; but speaks a sweet thing—this:

I swear for Her it shall be so: trust Me!

Ah, yes—my Love, my own, I answer you;

I part with all the Past, forgive, deny,

Refuse to see it. All my soul is yours;

I never loved a moment in this world,

But what was love was wholly meant for you.

Yea, even before I saw you as you are,

Or knew your name, the vaguest breaths of love

Were but sent forward to me from the days

When you should come, preparing me for you.

I know in truth there never was a time

Wherein I saw no part of you—nor sign

To love you by; for all my sun, my light,

My flowers, my world would be the saddest blank,

The day you were not; you have these in you,

And are yourself in them; and, on the day

You go, you take them all away with you;

And so ’twas you I saw when I saw them

And said:—“That Lady mine shall have a head

Like yonder drooping lily on whose white

The summer’s breath may never set a stain;

And She shall have a heaven for her hair

As deep, and dark, and splendid, as the one

I dream beneath; and She shall have such eyes

As ever seem to me those still blue lakes

I come on in the twilight of the woods

And find wide open under the thick fringe

Of violets—that fascinate me so

With gazing on me; yes, and, for her smile,

She shall but use that magic of the sun

That so transfigures all the day with light,

And gives my heart already such a thrill

As if She smiled at me:”—my Love, ’twas you

I saw then, dreamed of, waited for; ’twas you;

My heart attests it, looking on you now.—

So this of mine is such a perfect love

You see, it could not change nor turn away;—

It is the only love God made for you,

As you He made for me and from the first

Revealed to me. Therefore it cannot be

That you are false to me,—that I no way

Can save and keep you mine—you whom He gave

To me for ever, to be brought as mine

Before Him at the last. My precious one,

You are all worthy of me—are my crown

Untarnished, perfect, for you have not sinned;

’Tis I have sinned,—not being strong at once

To save both pure in you. Did not your lips

Completely make you mine of your own will?

Did you not swear yourself to me at first,

Yea, in God’s name, before him? So that I—

Yes, I, have let you, all against your heart,

Be brought to do sad things you would have shunned;

Because I had the way, and used it not,

To keep you from them.—Ah, I curse myself!

—My own, my Love!—those gentle words of yours,

Those promises—repeat them; yes, once more:

You will be mine; you are mine; yes, my Love,

I do believe you now; I may, I can—

(For that sings under the pillow; believe Me!—)

I bless and kiss you for them all.

She sleeps.

The Steel is singing to me now; its voice

Creeps through and through;—go on, she cannot hear—

The things it sings are death and love; ay, love

That death keeps true;—She sleeps, she cannot hear.

There is no sort of madness in my brain;

But rather a great strength, a calm, as though

A more than human spirit dwelt with mine.

And yet I do perceive that, since last night,

My eyes have been bewildered with the glare

Of mighty blades and swords that seem to whirl

And strike around me, and transform the world

With an exceeding splendour cold and bare;

A thousand films are as it were cut through;

And all the beauty, supernatural

And real of things seems only to endure.

The Steel is an immense magician: yes—

Love, Beauty, Life—a touch can change them all

And make them wholly fit for me and great.

See now where it is gleaming through her hair!

’Tis like a fair barbaric ornament

Ablaze with glancing points of diamonds

Stuck in and out between the writhing black.

Or, rather, ’tis as fearful and as bright

As some fierce snake of azure lightning curled

Sinister under the dark mass of night,

That ever, with his sudden forkéd flash

Piercing some crevice, doth illumine it.

I could be gazing on this sight for hours.

O, Woman!—you are greatest in the world:

You have all fairest things; all joy is yours

To give and take away; you have all love;

Your beauty is to man’s heart as the sun

That doles out day and night to the whole earth;

You have strange gifts of passion and sweet words:

In truth you are right splendid,—and well fit,

I think, to be the leman of a god;

But all too fair, and yet not good enough,

To be the spouse and helpmate of one man.

—For this: there is a serpent in you hid;

It dwells in the invisible of thought,

Or crouches in some corner of your heart,

Or is engendered in the ardent flame

Of your quick passions,—where, it matters not;

But never doth it cease so to distil

Its wily poison into all you are

Or do or feel, it makes you turn and stab

Where most you thought to love,—it sets your lips

In league with falsehood to betray your heart,

Puts plotting in your heart against your lips.

You cannot will your heart to any man

But you must seek, for very wantonness—

As tempts the snake within you—just the straight

Betrayal of that man—his love, his faith,

As though you had not willed yourself at first:

And if you did not this somehow, your life

Would seem to you a nipped and withered thing,

Your beauty good for nought. You are made so.

—Therefore, my Love, I will not let you wake.

Nay—though you are so pure now and have sworn—

Lest you betray me as you did last time,

And times before that, having sworn as now.

But you are mine—my beautiful, my own!

And your lips said it while your heart beat here

Against mine—thrilling with a thought of me;

Your looks were almost piteous with a prayer

That I—that God would save you. Shall your mouth,

The chaste, the holy one that I have kissed

Be desecrate once more? Shall your own arms

Embrace and hug the very shame of you?

Shall this, your heart that made you mine, be false

—Go once more seeking out adulteries?

Not so: I strike the holy steel in it.

—It was the only way to keep her mine.

(1867.)

O WOMAN whose familiar face I hold

In my most sacred thought as in a shrine,

Who in my memories art become divine—

Dost thou remember now those years of old

When out of all thine own life thou didst mould

This life and breathe thy heart in this of mine,

Winning, for faith in that fair work of thine,

To rest and be in heaven?—Alas, behold!—

Another woman coming after thee

Hath had small pity,—with a wanton kiss

Hath quite consumed my heart and ruined this

The life that was thy work: O, Mother, see;

Thou hast lived all in vain, done all amiss;

Come down from heaven again, and die with me!

DEATH.

I CLOSE my eyes and see the inward things:

The strange averted spectre of my soul

Is sitting undivulged, angelic, whole,

Beside the dim internal flood that brings

Mysterious thought or dreams or murmurings,

From the immense Unknown: beneath him roll

The urging formless waves beyond control

And darkened by the vague foreshadowings

As heretofore; yea, for He hath not stirred.

Too weak was that my life, too poor each word

To lure my soul from all it waiteth for:

—I am with God who holds His purpose still

And maketh and remaketh evermore;

I am with God and waiting for His will.

THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS.

IF you go over desert and mountain,

Far into the country of sorrow,

To-day and to-night and to-morrow,

And maybe for months and for years;

You shall come, with a heart that is bursting

For trouble and toiling and thirsting,

You shall certainly come to the fountain

At length,—to the Fountain of Tears.

Very peaceful the place is, and solely

For piteous lamenting and sighing,

And those who come living or dying

Alike from their hopes and their fears;

Full of cypress-like shadows the place is,

And statues that cover their faces:

But out of the gloom springs the holy

And beautiful Fountain of Tears.

And it flows and it flows with a motion

So gentle and lovely and listless,

And murmurs a tune so resistless

To him who hath suffered and hears—

You shall surely—without a word spoken,

Kneel down there and know your heart broken,

And yield to the long curb’d emotion

That day by the Fountain of Tears.

For it grows and it grows, as though leaping

Up higher the more one is thinking;

And ever its tunes go on sinking

More poignantly into the ears:

Yea, so blesséd and good seems that fountain,

Reached after dry desert and mountain,

You shall fall down at length in your weeping

And bathe your sad face in the tears.

Then, alas! while you lie there a season,

And sob between living and dying,

And give up the land you were trying

To find mid your hopes and your fears;

—O the world shall come up and pass o’er you;

Strong men shall not stay to care for you,

Nor wonder indeed for what reason

Your way should seem harder than theirs.

But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting

Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,

Nor caring to raise your wet tresses.

And look how the cold world appears,—

O perhaps the mere silences round you—

All things in that place grief hath found you,

Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting,

May soothe you somewhat through your tears.

You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes

Your face, as though some one had kissed you;

Or think at least some one who missed you

Hath sent you a thought,—if that cheers;

Or a bird’s little song, faint and broken,

May pass for a tender word spoken:

—Enough, while around you there rushes

That life-drowning torrent of tears.

And the tears shall flow faster and faster,

Brim over, and baffle resistance,

And roll down bleared roads to each distance

Of past desolation and years;

Till they cover the place of each sorrow,

And leave you no Past and no morrow:

For what man is able to master

And stem the great Fountain of Tears?

But the floods of the tears meet and gather;

The sound of them all grows like thunder:

—O into what bosom, I wonder,

Is poured the whole sorrow of years?

For Eternity only seems keeping

Account of the great human weeping:

May God then, the Maker and Father—

May He find a place for the tears!

LOVE AFTER DEATH.

THERE is an earthly glimmer in the Tomb:

And, healed in their own tears and with long sleep,

My eyes unclose and feel no need to weep;

But, in the corner of the narrow room,

Behold Love’s spirit standeth, with the bloom

That things made deathless by Death’s self may keep.

O what a change! for now his looks are deep,

And a long patient smile he can assume:

While Memory, in some soft low monotone,

Is pouring like an oil into mine ear

The tale of a most short and hollow bliss,

That I once throbbed indeed to call my own,

Holding it hardly between joy and fear,—

And how that broke, and how it came to this.

SOWN SEED.

I WANDERED dreaming through a mead;

And it was sowing-season there;

As one who sows and takes no heed

I cast my dreams upon the air:

And each dream was a golden seed

That in my life some flower should bear.

—O sowing-season bright and gay,

To have you back I am most fain!

O sowing season find some way

To bring me here each golden grain

I cast upon the air that day,

That I may sow them all again.

For some, that fairest should have been,

About the world they have been tost

And borne no flowers that I have seen;

And some have taken wing and crost

The sea, or through the blue serene

Gone up to heaven and been lost.

O, sowing season, come once more,

Bring back each golden seed to me!

For one, indeed, grew up and bore

No flower of gladness, good to see—

A thing to look upon right sore

—A grief that in my life should be.

One other truly did beget

Some blossom of the June that fell

In May; and one, a violet

Whose death upon my heart doth dwell;

The last seed hath not blossomed yet:

Come back and bring this one as well.

—What! the whole sudden summer? Yea;

The last one hath come up a rose!

O sowing season, you may stay;

It is in my Love’s heart it grows;

And she hath shown it me to-day:

I keep this one and give up those.

A DISCORD.

IT came to pass upon a summer’s day,

When from the flowers indeed my soul had caught

Fresh bloom, and turned their richness into thought,

That—having made my footsteps free to stray—

They brought me wandering by some sudden way

Back to the bloomless city, and athwart

The doleful streets and many a closed-up court

That prisoned here and there a spent noon-ray.

O how most bitterly upon me broke

The sight of all the summerless lost folk!—

For verily their music and their gladness

Could only seem to me like so much sadness,

Beside the inward rhapsody of art

And flowers and Chopin-echoes at my heart.

GALANTERIE.

O ANGEL, that in some unmeasured region

Keepest the store of beauteous things unsaid!

Once more do thou take even from their legion

Verse of the sweetest, verse no man hath read;

And go with that—saying thou art from me—

Unto my Love wherever she may be;

And speak therewith all tender things and fair

Touching the beauty of her eyes and hair,

Her hands, her feet—all of Her thou may’st see,

E’en to the jewels she shall chance to wear.

As to her eyes, I think thou shalt have reason

Setting the azure of them far above

God’s blue of heaven; yea, who shall know thy treason

But I who teach it thee and She my love?

And therefore, fear thou nowise to express,

Touching her hair, how much its every tress

Doth shine above all gold that the sun yields

And the fair colour of the harvest fields:

But scarce shalt thou be slow to praise, I guess,

Soon as thou know’st what spell her beauty wields.

And, if so be she cease that she is doing,

And give thee welcome for thy verses’ sake,

Do thou with some most tender sort of wooing

Engage her hand, and cause it to forsake

Its silken task or pastime on the lute;

For of its beauty thou shouldst not be mute,

But celebrate it soon in such a strain

Thenceforward it shall be no longer fain

To do its lightest toil: so for thy suit

My Lady’s whole attendance thou shalt gain.

Then, howsoe’er thou dost behold that wonder,

The rare imperial foot of Her my queen;

—Yea, if thou may’st but glimpse it nestled under

The broidered border of her robe, or e’en

If haply, some unguarded hour of rest,

Thou hast such bliss as I have never possest,

To see that spotless Lady all reclined

And through dim tumbled veils with thine eye find

Her spirit-slender foot,—then do thy best,

And be thou neither faint of heart nor blind!

But so with every spell of piteous pleading,

And the full magic that was wont of old

To fill my verse and charm all men to heeding,

Frame thou thy praise of that thou dost behold—

That her most matchless foot shall even start

Out of its languishment and take my part,

To bring my Love not otherwhere than here,

To me, and to the place where she is dear:

Go now and do this, if thou still hast art;

And I shall wait the while in love and fear.

THE GLORIOUS LADY.

“La gloriosa donna della mia mente.”

DANTE.

I.

I SEE You in the time that’s fled,

Long dead;

I see you in the years to be

After me;

And for all solace I am given,

Night or day,

To dream or think of you in heaven

Far away.

I have the colour of your hair

Everywhere;

I have your beauty all by heart,

Cannot part

From aught of you—I love you so—

Though I try,

I know I shall not find you though

Till I die.

When I have darkened all the day,

Put away

The world and the world’s sights and sweets

—Mere deceits,

The blinding blaze of the false lights

That arise

Between my spirit and the heights

And the skies—

When I have turned from the pale face,

Sickly grace,

Faint hair and hue of heart, thin smiles

That cover wiles

Of looks that fail and lips that chill,

—All the drear

And pallid cheats of love that kill

The heart here—

Then do I dream—oh far away—

Another day;

Another light where truer hues,

Reds and blues,

Live as in living eyes and cheeks;

Where love lives,

And all my spirit loves and seeks

Love gives.

Nay, your true heart is not this pale

Thing to fail

Short of such promised love as dies

In such eyes:

I build up all the world anew,—

Nay, above,

I make another world—where You

Build up Love;

Behold your eyes are in the stead

Of these dead,—

Pure seas of looks, with many a shore

Of worlds more;

Behold, instead of these poor moulds,

These mere casts

In some first clay—no stuff that holds

Love that lasts—

Why! life—that love; and then its fresh

Robe of flesh,

With—O what chords of sense that thrill

With love’s will,

Unchecked by death or weariness,

Those dull foes

Of every feeling, more or less,

The world knows!

In place of all the glassy cheats—

Your true sweets,

—Of all the lives with which Death plays,

All the days

Left dim and void when Hope’s own sun

Dare not shine—

In place of all and every one,

You divine!

I know the splendour that you were—

—You shall be;

I see that nothing is so fair

As you there;

I know that you—the thing I crave—

Men shall see

Again, when I am in the grave,

—After me.

O, whose shall be the barren years?

Whose the tears?

God, who of all this world of ours

Gathers flowers

—Taketh and maketh heaven, and faileth

Not at all,

Maketh a heaven that prevaileth

Out of all—

Shall God have care for this and this

—Flowers that miss

The love that gathers and that saves?

For these graves,

Shall love to be, or love that’s past,

Safe above,

Be less than perfected at last,

Less than Love?

O, who shall have the barren years?

Who the tears?

You, World that gave me a false kiss,

Shall have this:

But I—I know that Love hath been,

And shall be

Again, when I am no more seen,

—After me.

II.

I SEE You with the face they paint

For some saint

Born and saved in some sublime

Olden time,

Crowned with the gorgeous golden-waved

Aureole;

Just such a saint as should have saved

My own soul.

Yes; for you have the human grace

In your face

Painted upon the panel there,

And what hair!

‘Fra’—who was he? I forget—

Who could paint

Such a woman wholly, and yet

Such a saint?

From the dim cathedral height

Falls the light;

I could think it for a while

Christ’s smile

From the great window-scene above

Strangely shed

Toward you, resting like Christ’s love

On your head.

O the splendid purple niche

Deep and rich,

Stained of the colour of your soul

Strong and whole,

Full of the prevalence of prayers

And piteous plaint

You made for men and sins all theirs

—You a saint!

The niche a little narrow: well,

As the cell

Your world, your body—all things seen—

Must have been

About the soul that day by day

Groped and felt

To God’s own house and found the way

As you knelt:

In an attitude of prayer

O how fair!

All the body crouched, constrained

As if pained

With the spirit’s inward groan

To entreat

For a sin you could not own,

O how sweet!

Hands God making must have praised;

Clasped and raised

Holy mediæval way

Used to pray;

Sky all wrapped about your head

Blue and sweet,

Earth all golden from the tread

Of your feet.

God, who of all this world of ours

Gathers flowers,

Gathered you in the old sublime

Flower time:

If God had left some flowers like you—

Who can tell?—

He might have had yet one or two

Flowers that fell.

O then there were great sins of course;

Men were worse

Some ways no doubt; at any rate

Men were great:

We cannot bear their mail, much less

Lose or win

Their heavens, through their great holiness

Or great sin.

There were high things for men to see,

Do, or be;

Fair struggles after every throne:

And to atone

Fair crowns and kingdoms for the best;

All men strove,

And, loss or gain, for each man’s rest

There was love.

And men and women bore their part

Heart to heart,

For oh! the women and the men

Loved then;

And love from love you could not break,

Half to save;

If one sinned, for the other’s sake

God forgave.

Would thou wert yet, thou great and old

Time of gold!

Wert thou with me, or could I flee

Back to thee,

God might have had one other flower

Nigh to fall,

And I known love at least one hour

—Once for all.

O who shall have the barren years?

Who the tears?

One with false bosom and cold kiss

May have this:

But somewhere, unless love forget

His old way,

There shall be something better yet

—Ay, some day.

LOST BLISSES.

THINK, O Heart, what sweet—had you waited

A moment, on such a day—

Had yet been to do or to say

That shall never be said now or done!

Think what beautiful worlds uncreated

The clouds then bore back to the sun;

What blisses were all frustrated;

What loves, that were almost begun!

Think, O Life,—had your stream but drifted

To this or that holier Past,

Or Future that must come at last—

Think, O sorrowful Life, and repent—

How the sorrowful days had been gifted

With solace and ravishment,

And year after year slowly lifted

To heavens of golden content!

THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST.

ON the great day of my life—

On the memorable day—

Just as the long inward strife

Of the echoes died away,

Just as on my couch I lay

Thinking thought away;

Came a Man into my room,

Bringing with him gloom.

Midnight stood upon the clock,

And the street sound ceased to rise;

Suddenly, and with no knock,

Came that Man before my eyes:

Yet he seemed not anywise

My heart to surprise,

And he sat down to abide

At my fireside.

But he stirred within my heart

Memories of the ancient days;

And strange visions seemed to start

Vividly before my gaze,

Yea, from the most distant haze

Of forgotten ways:

And he looked on me the while

With a most strange smile.

But my heart seemed well to know

That his face the semblance had

Of my own face long ago

Ere the years had made it sad,

When my youthful looks were clad

In a smile half glad;

To my heart he seemed in truth

All my vanished youth.

Then he named me by a name

Long since unfamiliar grown,

But remembered for the same

That my childhood’s ears had known;

And his voice was like my own

In a sadder tone

Coming from the happy years

Choked, alas, with tears.

And, as though he nothing knew

Of that day’s fair triumphing,

Or the Present were not true,

Or not worth remembering,

All the Past he seemed to bring

As a piteous thing

Back upon my heart again,

Yea, with a great pain:

“Do you still remember the winding street

In the grey old village?” He seemed to say;

“And the long school days that the sun made sweet

And the thought of the flowers from far away?

And the faces of friends whom you used to meet

In that village day by day,

—Ay, the face of this one or of that?” he said,

And the names he named were names of the dead

Who all in the churchyard lay.

“Do you still remember your brother’s face,

And his soft light hair, and his eyes’ deep blue,

And the child’s pet name that in every place

Was once so familiar to him and to you?

And the innocent sports and the butterfly chase

That lasted the bright day through?”

—O this time, I thought of the churchyard and sighed,

For I thought of the dead lying side by side,

And my brother who lay there too.

“And do you remember the far green hills;

Or the long straight path by the side of the stream;

Or the road that led to the farm and the mills,

And the fields where you oft used to wander or dream

Or follow each change of your childish wills

Like the dance of some gay sunbeam?”—

Then, alas, from right weeping I could not refrain,

For indeed all those things I remembered again,—

As of yesterday they did seem.

And I thought of a day in a far lost Spring,

When the sun with a kiss set the wild flowers free;

When my heart felt the kiss and the shadowy wing

Of some beautiful spirit of things to be,

Who breathed in the song that the wild birds sing

Some deep tender meaning for me,—

Who undid a strange spell in the world as it were,

Who set wide sweet whispers abroad in the air,—

Made a presence I could not see.

O that whisper my heart seemed to understand!

O that spell it took hold on right willing feet!

To that beautiful spirit I gave my hand,

And he led me that day up the village street,

And out through the fields and the fragrant land,

And on through the pathways sweet;

Yea, still on, with a semblance of some new bliss,

Through the world he has led me from that day to this

With a tender and fair deceit.

“O for what have you wandered so far—so long?”

Said the voice that was e’en as my voice of old:

“O for what have you done to the Past such wrong?

Was there no fair dream on your own threshold?

In your childhood’s home was there no fresh song?

—Was your heart then all so cold?

Why, at length, are you weary and lone and sad,

But for casting away all the good that you had

With the peace that was yours of old?

“Have you wholly forgotten the words you said,

When you stood by a certain mound of earth,

When you vowed with your heart that that place you made

The last burial place for your love and your mirth,

For the pure past blisses you therein laid

Were surely your whole life’s worth?—

O, the angels who deck the lone graves with their tears

Have cared for this, morning and evening, for years,

But of yours there has been long dearth:

“In the pure pale sheen of a hallowed night,

When the graves are looking their holiest,

You may see it more glistering and more bright

And holier-looking than all the rest;

You may see that the dews and the stars’ strange light

Are loving that grave the best;

But, perhaps, if you went in the clear noon-day,

After so many years you might scarce find the way

Ere you tired indeed of the quest:

“For the path that leads to it is almost lost;

And quite tall grass-flowers of sickly blue

Have grown up there and gathered for years, and tost

Bitter germs all around them to grow up too;

For indeed all these years not a man has crost

That pathway—not even You!”—

But alas! for these words to my heart he sent,

For I knew it was Marguérite’s grave that he meant,

And I felt that the words were true.

Then the dim sweet faces of them of yore

Seemed to start from the mist where the memory lies;

And each one was as sweet and as dear as before;

But a piteous look was in all their eyes—

Yea, the long smile of sadness; and each one bore

A reproach in some tender wise:

Till my bosom was troubled and sorely thrilled

With the thought of them all, and my ears were filled

With a sound of the mingling of sighs.

And my heart, where the memories of them were cast

And as buried and choked in the dust of the years,

Became peopled, it seemed, with the shapes of the Past;

And the voice of my brother grew fresh in my ears:

So my dried up eyes were softened at last

To weeping some few sweet tears;

But the Man who was sitting at my fireside—

He covered his face with his hands and cried

As I did in those earlier years.

Then I faltered,—“O Spectre of my lost Youth!

All too well at thy pleading the sad thoughts wake,

With the bitter regret of the Past, and in truth

The whole love of the fair things that all men forsake;

And for this thy reproach I am filléd with ruth—

My heart seemeth nigh to break:

Ah! right gladly would I now return with thee

To those loves and those lovers, if that might be,

And be happy for their sweet sake.

“And, O Spectre that wearest my look—my face,

And art ever with them as the thought they keep

To remind them of me in the changeless place

In the changeless Past where the memories sleep,—

Do thou tell them I am not all barren of grace,

Nor have buried their love so deep,

But that now after so long toward them I yearn,

And that often the thought of them all may return,

And that often it makes me weep.”

Then, alas! I was troubled and filled with shame,

As I looked on His face and beheld him fair;

For his locks were as gold, and his eyes as a flame;

And I knew that one winter had blanched my hair,

And that surely my looks were no longer the same

As in earlier days they were:

For I feared he should mock me and tell them of this,

And that even my tears were but scant beside his.

O, this thought was a hard one to bear!

But at length I fell dreaming beneath the might

Of each spell of the Past whence I cared not to start;

And I saw Him some time by the flickering light,

As the one in my dream who was playing my part;

Till his semblance grew dim and was gone from my sight

As a dream of the Past will depart.

Then the Spirit whose beauty has led me till now,

Came and breathed a sweet breath on my feverish brow,

And the strain of this verse in my heart.

A FADING FACE.

OUT of a dim and slowly fading place

In the deep dwelling mem’ries,—as it seems,

Mingled of purple mem’ries and of dreams—

The perfect marble features of Your face

Shine and are seen: each brow is like the space

Pearly in heaven after the sun-beams;

And all the curving of the mouth still gleams

Where many a gracious smile hath left a grace;

But the eyes are within, or all too far,

Or changed now to some element of heaven

Purer and subtler than the blue they were;

They meet me not. I know not where you are;

With God most—wholly in the grave,—or even

In the remembrance of you that is here.

THE HEART’S QUESTIONS.

Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15, no. 3.

WHEN the heaven is blue,

Or the stars look down,

Or the golden crown

Glows upon the hills,—

When the sky of tears

Lets the sunlight through,

And the heart a moment thrills,

Yea, and utters too,—

Who discerns? who hears?

Who but I—and perhaps You?

When some thin thought-wave

From the shadow shore

Brings the Voice once more

From beyond the grave;

When some pain is prest

Deep into the breast,

And the inward thoughts are swords

Killing one with sadness;

Most when love is strong,

And the anguish long

Rolls up in a haste of words

Ending all in madness—

Who is he that soothes or cheers?

Who believes? who hears?

Ay, when the Heart grieves,

Pants, prays—who believes?—

Ay, when the Heart cries,

When it breaks, when it dies,—

(Ah, why was the Heart born!—)

Who shall save? who shall mourn?

BARCAROLLE.

THE stars are dimly seen among the shadows of the bay,

And lights that win are seen in strife with lights that die away:

The wave is very still—the rudder loosens in our hand,

The zephyr will not fill our sail and waft us to the land;

O precious is the pause between the winds that come and go,

And sweet the silence of the shores between the ebb and flow.

No sound but sound of rest is on the bosom of the deep,

Soft as the breathing of a breast serenely hushed with sleep:

Lay by the oar; there is a voice at heart to sing or sigh—

O what shall be the choice of barcarolle or lullaby?

Say shall we sing of day or night, fair land or mighty ocean,

Of any rapturous delight or any dear emotion,

Of any joy that is on Earth, or hope that is above—

The holy country of our birth, or any song of love?

Our heart in all our life is like the hand of one who steers

A bark upon an ocean rife with dangers and with fears;

The joys, the hopes, like waves or wings, bear up this life of ours—

Short as a song of all these things that make up all its hours.

Spread sail! for it is Hope to-day that like a wind new-risen

Doth waft us on a golden wing towards a new horizon,

That is the sun before our sight, the beacon for us burning,

That is the star in all our night of watching and of yearning.

Love is this thing that we pursue to-day, to-night, for ever,

We care not whither, know not who shall be at length the giver:

For Love,—our life and all our years are cast upon the waves;

Our heart is as the hand that steers;—but who is He that saves?

We ply with oars, we strive with every sail upon our mast—

We never tire, never fail—and Love is seen at last:

A low and purple mirage like a coast where day is breaking—

Sink sail!—for such a dream as Love is lost before the waking.

THE MINER.

BALLAD.

HO, I sing and I sing!

Digging jewels for the King;—

Till I tire of the measure

I sing and I sing:

Here’s a diamond true bright;

Here’s a ruby worth a treasure:

So I labour, and my sight

Surely fails, and I get gray

Digging jewels for the King:

I have toiled so many a day,

I have found so many a treasure,

Yet,—ah’s me!—I dare to say

That I could not earn my way

To the palace of the King.

I was a miner—doomed

With a fate branded at birth

To serve the King entombed

In this dungeon of the Earth:

They gave me a thing called Hope,

A word written in gold

On a talent—precious I’m told;

But, if I am to grope

All my life long in a mine,

What were the use at best

Of a bauble just to shine

And dangle at my breast?

So I sing, so I sing

Here’s a jewel for the King!—

Let me clear it of the rust;

Wrap the gold thing in gold dust:

’Tis a perfect bauble—see,

A truly precious thing,

Far fitter for a king

Than a prisoner like me.

A WASTED LAND.

ALAS, for a sound is heard

Of a bitterly broken song;

Grievous is every word;

And the burden is weary and long

Like the waves between ebb and flow;

And it comes when the winds are low,

Or whenever the night is nigh,

And the world hath space for a sigh.

It was in the time of fruit;

When the peach began to pout,

And the purple grape to shine,

And the leaves were a threadbare suit

For the blushing blood of the vine,

And the spoilers were about

And the viper glode at the root:

—She came, and with her hand,

With her mouth, yea, and her eyes

She hath ravaged all the land;

Its beauty shall no more rise:

She hath drawn the wine to her lip.

For a mere wanton sip:

Lo, where the vine-branch lies;

Lo, where the drained grapes drip.

Her feet left many a stain;

And her lips left many a sting;

She will never come again,

And the fruit of everything

Is a canker or a pain:

And a memory doth crouch

Like an asp,—yea, in each part

Where she hath left her touch,—

Lying in wait for the heart.

CHARMED MOMENTS.

Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 37, no. 1.

THE sky is a brilliant enamel;

The sea is a beautiful gem;

The hours are beautiful flowers

That pass, and we keep none of them;

They bear not the thing we would cherish,

Those beautiful fruitless flowers;

Each comes up to blossom and perish;

We wait, and another is ours:

We wait till the heavens above us,

The flowering earth, or the seas

Shall bring us the soul meant to love us,

And hours much sweeter than these.

How thrill we, when heavenly hushes

Come over the sea and the land!—

Soft kissings of waves among rushes,

Footfalls of a bird on the sand,

Or least little stirs in the bushes

Take hold on the heart like a hand

Arresting—we know not for what—

But little we care to withstand:

How thrill we!—We think that some Spirit

Is speaking each moment like that;—

O faint not, strained ear, till you hear it,—

Heart, break not till you understand!

A LIFE-TOMB.

THE house is haunted and rife

With Her touch behind panel and door

And her footfalls under the floor;

O the house is filled with gloom:

—Is She here dead in my life?

Am I here alive in her tomb?—

Ah fain am I still to track

And to walk along the ways

Sown with flowers by her feet;

And to gather, following back,

All the purple nights and days

She slew passing; or, half sweet,

To sit with dull eyes cast

On slowly dying embers

Of things the heart remembers

Right fair in the heart’s past,

—Till tones, that seem to start

From the shadows in the room,

Move round about the heart,

And a love-glow fills the gloom;

And her soul seems to look out

As from dim and distant eyes,

And a shade of lips to pout

With some remnant of her sighs.

And often too, in the night,

The flame in famished eyes

Re-kindles an old delight

At some dream-sight of her;

The heart with tremulous stir

Lives a moment and then dies.

THE SLAVE OF APOLLO.

“HOW shall I rid myself from thee,

Apollo? Give me leave to be

No more than flower, or wind, or thought,

—Only a fragrant memory, nought,

Or anything that’s free:

“Give me—O pitying—some power

To cease; make me a gentle shower;

A hidden fount that murmureth

In some sweet glimmer all apart

From sounds of living: give me death!

Or loose me for your love of me;

My bosom faileth and my heart

No more a prisoner will be

—Will be free!

Shall I not cry to ye aloud

O clouds! My spirit was a cloud

Like one of you,—was free, I say,

To loiter o’er the tremulous lakes

Loving, to cling upon the wane

Of every fair thing that forsakes

The light and luxury of day;

To bear me over hill and plain

Upon the winds’ unfooted way:

Ah, I was fearless then and pure;

And my sight touched all things obscure

Beneath dim masks of change or sleep:

And read the tender meanings writ

For full new heavens down in deep

Horizons, over which stood knit

The storms’ dark brows; I saw what cleaves

In the far corners of sun-smiles,

And I could send my breath for miles

Among the flowers and the leaves.

O bosom of my mother Heaven,

Was not I purer than the dew?

Was not my spirit of the leaven

Of your own high eternal blue

Unspotted by one part of earth?

O, wherefore this dull flesh that wraps

My sense in shame,—O, why this birth

Among hard human sights and mirth!

Hear now, and draw me back to you.

Call to me through the silent gaps

In some great tempest cloud above,

Steal me when, gasping in the laps

Of these that sicken me of love,

I lie and think of my lost bliss:

O can you not in one long kiss

Absorb my spirit back to you?

But thou, Apollo, who prevailest!

Hast thou made me thine envy? choosing,

Out of all creatures, me the frailest;

Me the most piteous, for the loosing

Of thy swift amorous looks like hounds

That hunt my soul—heavy and rife

With bodiless delights and sounds,

And knowledge of a goodlier life?

—O, not until some fate shall darken

This soul with death, shall any scorn

Or hate of heaven make me mute:

Rather, through hot days, will I hearken

For quick breaths panting in pursuit,

And the swift feet of some sweet fawn

Crashing among the fallen fruit:

And him—making my whole blood blush—

I will all languishing beseech,—

Crush me, O God, as thou wouldst crush

Some fire-fed fruit, some fallen peach,

Some swollen skin of purple wine;

Care not to spare me,—nor refuse me;

Take me, to use me or abuse me,

And slay me taking me for thine!—

So—till he seize me with a shout,

Tear me, and sear me with his breath;

Yea, till he tread my heart quite out,

And give me Death!

And if not Death!—

O all the night I shall be free

To steep me and to stifle me

In dew, and cool dew-dropping hair,

In every shadowy haunt and lair

Where most forgetfulness may be;

And, all on flame, my soul shall flare

Into the chillest of the dark,

And there be quenchéd, spark by spark.

To the last faintest spark of me.

I will be wasted as a spoil

On all things of the woods and winds;

Earned with no eagerness or toil

I will be for the first who finds—

A revel for mad zephyr lips,

A soft eternity of sips:

I will no sweet of mine detain;

But wholly be to them a prey,

Used lavishly or cast away

For the whole rout of them to drain.

Or I will give myself to make

Sport for the green gods of the lake;

—All fierce are they with foamy breath,

And rainbow eyes, and watery souls,

Quaint things, half deity, half snake;

—O, I shall lay me in the shoals

Of waves: or any way get Death!—

So I shall rid myself from thee,

Apollo!—So at length be free!

THE POET’S GRAVE.

IN a lonely spot that was filled with leaves,

And the wild waste plants without scent or name,

Where never a mourner came,—

That was far from the ground where the false world grieves,

And far from the shade of the church’s eaves—

They buried the Poet with thoughts of shame,

And not as one who believes.

Then the tall grass flower with lolling head,

Who is king of all flowers that twine or creep

On graves where few come to weep,

To the briar, and bindweed, and vetch, he said,

“Lo, here is a grave of the lonely dead;

Let us go up and haste while his soul may sleep,

To make the fresh earth our bed.”

Then the rootless briar and bindweed mean,

And the grovelling vetch, with the pale trefoil

That cumbers the fruitless soil,

Yea, the whole strange rout of the earth’s unclean

Went up to the grave that was fresh and green;

And together they wrought there so dense a coil

The grave was no longer seen.

But the tall mad flower whose head is crowned

With the long lax petals that fall and flap

Like the ears of a fool’s bell-cap,

He stood higher than all on the fameless mound;

And nodded his head to each passing sound,

Darting this way and that, as in sport to trap

Each laugh of the winds around.

JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY, LONDON.

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Table of Contents

AN EPIC OF WOMEN AND OTHER POEMS.

CONTENTS.

EXILE.

A NEGLECTED HARP.

THREE FLOWERS OF MODERN GREECE.

I. IANOULA.

II. THE FAIR MAID AND THE SUN.

III. THE CYPRESS.

A PRECIOUS URN.

SERAPHITUS.

THE LOVER.

A WHISPER FROM THE GRAVE.

BISCLAVARET.

THOUGHT.

THE STORY OF THE KING.

PALM FLOWERS.

AN EPIC OF WOMEN. I. CREATION.

II. THE WIFE OF HEPHÆSTUS.

III. CLEOPATRA.

1.

IV. CLEOPATRA.

2.

V. THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.

VI HELEN.

VII. A TROTH FOR ETERNITY.

(1867.)

DEATH.

THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS.

LOVE AFTER DEATH.

SOWN SEED.

A DISCORD.

GALANTERIE.

THE GLORIOUS LADY.

I.

II.

LOST BLISSES.

THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST.

A FADING FACE.

THE HEART’S QUESTIONS. Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15, no. 3.

BARCAROLLE.

THE MINER. BALLAD.

A WASTED LAND.

CHARMED MOMENTS. Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 37, no. 1.

A LIFE-TOMB.

THE SLAVE OF APOLLO.

THE POET’S GRAVE.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE