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Contents:
A Reading of Life—The Vital Choice
A Reading of Life—With
The Huntress
A Reading of Life—With The Persuader
A
Reading of Life—The Test of Manhood
The Cageing of Ares
The
Night-Walk
The Hueless Love
Song In The Songless
Union
In Disseverance
The Burden of Strength
The Main Regret
Alternation
Hawarden
At
the Close
Forest History
A Garden Idyl
Foresight And
Patience
The Invective of Achilles
The Invective of Achilles—V.
225
Marshalling of the Achaians
Agamemnon in the Fight
Paris
and Diomedes
Hypnos on Ida
Clash in Arms of the Achaians And
Trojans
The Horses of Achilles
The Mares of the Camargue
I.
Or shall we run with Artemis
Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?
Both
are mighty;
Both give bliss;
Each can torture if divided;
Each
claims worship undivided,
In her wake would have us wallow.
II.
Youth must offer on bent knees
Homage unto one or other;
Earth,
the mother,
This decrees;
And unto the pallid Scyther
Either
points us shun we either
Shun or too devoutly follow.
Through the water-eye of night,
Midway between eve and dawn,
See
the chase, the rout, the flight
In deep forest; oread, faun,
Goat-foot,
antlers laid on neck;
Ravenous all the line for speed.
See
yon wavy sparkle beck
Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead.
Down
her course a serpent star
Coils and shatters at her heels;
Peals
the horn exulting, peals
Plaintive, is it near or far.
Huntress,
arrowy to pursue,
In and out of woody glen,
Under cliffs that
tear the blue,
Over torrent, over fen,
She and forest, where
she skims
Feathery, darken and relume:
Those are her white-lightning
limbs
Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.
Mountains hear her and
call back,
Shrewd with night: a frosty wail
Distant: her the
emerald vale
Folds, and wonders in her track.
Now her retinue
is lean,
Many rearward; streams the chase
Eager forth of covert;
seen
One hot tide the rapturous race.
Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,
Up
on a flash the lighted mound
Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft
Strung
to barb with archer’s craft,
Legs like plaited lyre-chords,
feet
Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.
Fearful swiftness
they outrun,
Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,
Challenge, charge
of tusks elude:
Theirs the dance to tame the rude;
Beast,
and beast in manhood tame,
Follow we their silver flame.
Pride
of flesh from bondage free,
Reaping vigour of its waste,
Marks
her servitors, and she
Sanctifies the unembraced.
Nought of
perilous she reeks;
Valour clothes her open breast;
Sweet
beyond the thrill of sex;
Hallowed by the sex confessed.
Huntress
arrowy to pursue,
Colder she than sunless dew,
She, that breath
of upper air;
Ay, but never lyrist sang,
Draught of Bacchus
never sprang
Blood the bliss of Gods to share,
High o’er
sweep of eagle wings,
Like the run with her, when rings
Clear
her rally, and her dart,
In the forest’s cavern heart,
Tells
of her victorious aim.
Then is pause and chatter, cheer,
Laughter
at some satyr lame,
Looks upon the fallen deer,
Measuring
his noble crest;
Here a favourite in her train,
Foremost mid
her nymphs, caressed;
All applauded. Shall she reign
Worshipped?
O to be with her there!
She, that breath of nimble air,
Lifts
the breast to giant power.
Maid and man, and man and maid,
Who
each other would devour
Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,
There
are comrades, led by her,
Maid-preserver, man-maker.
Who murmurs, hither, hither: who
Where nought is audible so
fills the ear?
Where nought is visible can make appear
A veil
with eyes that waver through,
Like twilight’s pledge of blessed
night to come,
Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb,
She
breathes, she moves, inviting flees,
Is lost, and leaves the thrilled
desire
To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,
Till over smiles
of hyacinth seas,
Flame in a crystal vessel sails
Beneath
a dome of jewelled spray,
For land that drops the rosy day
On
nights of throbbing nightingales.
Landward did the wonder flit,
Or heart’s desire of her,
all earth in it.
We saw the heavens fling down their rose;
On
rapturous waves we saw her glide;
The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
The
shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;
And we, afire to kiss her feet,
no more
Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
With brightened
edges of dark leaves that feign
An ambush hoped, as heartless night
remain.
More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
The very she called
forth by ripened blood
For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
Allurement;
she, fulfilment; she,
The stream within us urged to flood;
Man’s
cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O she,
Maid,
woman and divinity;
Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
Unmated;
she, our hunger and our fruit
Untasted; she our written fate
Unread;
Life’s flowering, Life’s root:
Unread, divined; unseen,
beheld;
The evanescent, ever-present she,
Great Nature’s
stern necessity
In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;
With
a sword’s edge of sweetness keen to take
Our breath for bliss,
our hearts for fulness break.
The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.
Man’s cry, earth’s
answer, heaven’s consent,
Her form is given to pardoned sight,
And
lets our mortal eyes receive
The sovereign loveliness of celestial
white;
Adored by them who solitarily pace,
In dusk of the
underworld’s perpetual eve,
The paths among the meadow asphodel,
Remembering.
Never there her face
Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell
Around
such whiteness the enamoured air
Of noon that clothes her, never
there.
Daughter of light, the joyful light,
She stands unveiled
to nuptial sight,
Sweet in her disregard of aid
Divine to
conquer or persuade.
A fountain jets from moss; a flower
Bends
gently where her sunset tresses shower.
By guerdon of her brilliance
may be seen
With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen.
Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
Her natural snares to
make her will supreme.
A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
Before
the leader foot shall dip in stream:
One arm at curve along a rounded
thigh;
Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
A knee
half bent to shade its fellow shy,
Where innocence, not nature,
signals nay.
The bud of fresh virginity awaits
The wooer,
and all roseate will she burst:
She touches on the hour of happy
mates;
Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.
And while commanding blissful sight believe
It holds her as
a body strained to breast,
Down on the underworld’s perpetual
eve
She plunges the possessor dispossessed;
And bids believe
that image, heaving warm,
Is lost to float like torch-smoke after
flame;
The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
A thirst’s
delusion, a defeated aim.
The rapture shed the torture weaves;
The direst blow on human
heart she deals:
The pain to know the seen deceives;
Nought
true but what insufferably feels.
And stabs of her delicious note,
That
is as heavenly light to hearing, heard
Through shelter leaves,
the laughter from her throat,
We answer as the midnight’s
morning’s bird.
She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
In her delicious laughter
part revealed;
Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
For
longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.
Yet would she bless, it
is her task to bless:
Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
Are
her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
Consume the fruit in bloom;
not disobeyed.
We dolorous complainers had a dream,
Wrought
on the vacant air from inner fire,
We saw stand bare of her celestial
beam
The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.
Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
Of upward curl
to meanings half obscure;
And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly
skips
She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.
Blush
of our being between birth and death:
Sob of our ripened blood
for its next breath:
Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
Seems
it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
The generous Goddess yields.
And she can arm
Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;
Benevolent
as Earth to feed her own.
Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.
But
scorn she has for them that walk alone;
Blanched men, starved women,
whom no arts can pleach.
The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
And
holds the reason in perceptive thought.
More pitiable, like rivers
lacking rains,
Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.
Those
faceless discords, out of nature strayed,
Rank of the putrefaction
ere decayed,
In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:
Their
lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes
For couples crowned
with flowers that burn in dew.
Comes there a tremor of night’s
forest horn
Across her garden from the insaner crew,
She darkens
to malignity of scorn.
A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:
Grunt
of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,
The hunter’s shouts,
are heard afar, and bring
Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower
of Spring.
These, the irreverent of Life’s design,
Division
between natural and divine
Would cast; these vaunting barrenness
for best,
In veins of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest;
And
these because the roses flood their cheeks,
Vow them in nature
wise as when Love speaks.
With them is war; and well the Goddess
knows
What undermines the race who mount the rose;
How the
ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
Enkindled by persuasion
overpowers:
Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
The
strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs,
And
timely guile unguarded finds them lie.
They who her sway withstand
a sea defy,
At every point of juncture must be proof;
Nor
look for mercy from the incessant surge
Her forces mixed of craft
and passion urge
For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
She,
tenderness, is pitiless to them
Resisting in her godhead nature’s
truth.
No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
Their
youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.
These miserably disinclined,
The
lamentably unembraced,
Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
To
people and beflower the waste.
Wherefore the Pleasures pass them
by:
For death they live, in life they die.
Her head the Goddess from them turns,
As from grey mounds of
ashes in bronze urns.
She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
And
of her beauty mirror they become,
Like orchard blossoms, apple,
pear and plum,
Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.
Crowned
with wreaths that burn in dew,
Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,
Athirst
for shade, they sigh, they wed,
They play the music made of two:
Oldest
of earth, earth’s youngest till earth’s end:
Cunninger
than the numbered strings,
For melodies, for harmonies,
For
mastered discords, and the things
Not vocable, whose mysteries
Are
inmost Love’s, Life’s reach of Life extend.
Is it an anguish overflowing shame
And the tongue’s pudency
confides to her,
With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
The
woman’s marrow in some dear youth’s name,
Then is the
Goddess tenderness
Maternal, and she has a sister’s tones
Benign
to soothe intemperate distress,
Divide despair from hope, and sighs
from moans.
Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
To those
of her milk-bearer votaries
As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the
source
Direct; erratic but in heart’s excess;
Being
mortal and ill-matched for Love’s great force;
Like green
leaves caught with flames by his impress.
And pray they under skies
less overcast,
That swiftly may her star of eve descend,
Her
lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
To lengthen blissful night
will she befriend.
Unfailing her reply to woman’s voice
In supplication instant.
Is it man’s,
She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,
And
him: the flowers are various, he has choice.
Perchance his wound
is deep; she listens long;
Enjoys what music fills the plaintive
song;
And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise
Above the
bird, his plaintive song enjoys.
She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps
To her invoked:
distraction is implored.
A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps
Above,
with his bright Goddess owned the adored.
His tales of her declare
she condescends;
Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:
Moreover,
quits a throne, and must enclose
A queenlier gem than woman’s
wayside rose.
She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs
Enraptured;
low she laughs, his woes disperse;
Aloud she laughs and sweeps
his varied strings.
’Tis taught him how for touch of mournful
verse
Rarely the music made of two ascends,
And Beauty’s
Queen some other way is won.
Or it may solve the riddle, that she
lends
Herself to all, and yields herself to none,
Save heavenliest:
though claims by men are raised
In hot assurance under shade of
doubt:
And numerous are the images bepraised
As Beauty’s
Queen, should passion head the rout.
Be sure the ruddy hue is Love’s: to woo
Love’s Fountain
we must mount the ruddy hue.
That is her garden’s precept,
seen where shines
Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour
pines.
Daughter of light, the joyful light,
She bids her couples
face full East,
Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast
Their
outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,
The lion-haunted thickets
hold apart.
In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;
High
confidence in her whose aid is lent
To lovers lifting the tuned
instrument,
Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.
And
doth the man pursue a tightened zone,
Then be it as the Laurel
God he runs,
Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun’s.
Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe
He lifts for pity,
limp his offspring show.
For him requiring woman’s arts to
please
Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,
No race of
giants! In the woman’s veins
Persuasion ripely runs,
through hers the pains.
Her choice of him, should kind occasion
nod,
Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;
Yet unto dwarf
and mortal, she, submiss
In her high Lady’s mandate, yields
the kiss;
And is it needed that Love’s daintier brute
Be
snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.
She is great Nature’s
ever intimate
In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,
Until
perverted by her senseless male,
She plays the winding snake, the
shrinking snail,
The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,
Elusive
to allure, since he grew tame.
Hence has the Goddess, Nature’s earliest Power,
And greatest
and most present, with her dower
Of the transcendent beauty, gained
repute
For meditated guile. She laughs to hear
A charge
her garden’s labyrinths scarce confute,
Her garden’s
histories tell of to all near.
Let it be said, But less upon her
guile
Doth she rely for her immortal smile.
Still let the
rumour spread, and terror screens
To push her conquests by the
simplest means.
While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves
From
earth’s good labours, Beauty’s Queen he serves.
Her spacious garden and her garden’s grant
She offers
in reward for handsome cheer:
Choice of the nymphs whose looks
will slant
The secret down a dewy leer
Of corner eyelids into
haze:
Many a fair Aphrosyne
Like flower-bell to honey-bee:
And
here they flicker round the maze
Bewildering him in heart and head:
And
here they wear the close demure,
With subtle peeps to reassure:
Others
parade where love has bled,
And of its crimson weave their mesh:
Others
to snap of fingers leap,
As bearing breast with love asleep.
These
are her laughters in the flesh.
Or would she fit a warrior mood,
She
lights her seeming unsubdued,
And indicates the fortress-key.
Or
is it heart for heart that craves,
She flecks along a run of waves
The
one to promise deeper sea.
Bands of her limpid primitives,
Or patterned in the curious
braid,
Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,
For
what he gives is he repaid.
Good is it if by him ’tis held
He
wins the fairest ever welled
From Nature’s founts: she whispers
it: Even I
Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,
Else little
is he lover. Those he clasps,
Intent as tempest, worshipful
as prayer, -
And be they doves or be they asps, -
Must seem
to him the sovereignty fair;
Else counts he soon among life’s
wholly tamed.
Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,
Half
savage must he stay, would he be crowned
The lover. Else,
past ripeness, deathward bound,
He reasons; and the totterer Earth
detests,
Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.
Doth
man divide divine Necessity
From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s
breasts
A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain
Present
her; armed to bless and to constrain.
Of this he perishes; not
she, the throned
On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred
mounts.
A loftier Reason out of deeper founts
Earth’s
chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned
While red blood runs to
swell the pulse, she boasts,
And Beauty, like her star, descends
the sky;
Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s
cry,
Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.
Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear,
When the wild sap at
high tide smites
Within us; or benignly clear
To vision; or
as the iris lights
On fluctuant waters; she is ours
Till set
of man: the dreamed, the seen;
Flushing the world with odorous
flowers:
A soft compulsion on terrene
By heavenly: and the
world is hers
While hunger after Beauty spurs.
So is it sung in any space
She fills, with laugh at shallow
laws
Forbidding love’s devised embrace,
The music Beauty
from it draws.
Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,
An army issues out
of wilderness,
With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;
Obstruction
in the van; insane excess
Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward
stress
Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,
And rise
hushed temples built of shapely stone,
The work of hands not pledged
to grind or slay.
They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;
A
tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.
Then was the gracious
birth of man’s new day;
Divided from the haunted night it
shone.
That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang
Ethereal Beauty
in full morningtide.
Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:
It
was another earth unto him sang.
Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?
From the Persuader
came it, in those vales
Whereunto she melodiously invites,
Her
troops of eager servitors regales?
Not far those two great Powers
of Nature speed
Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;
Nor
either points for us the way of flame.
From him predestined mightier
it came;
His task to hold them both in breast, and yield
Their
dues to each, and of their war be field.
The foes that in repulsion never ceased,
Must he, who once has
been the goodly beast
Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,
Constrain
to make him serviceable man;
Offending neither, nor the natural
claim
Each pressed, denying, for his true man’s name.
Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife
To hold them fast
conjoined within him still;
Submissive to his will
Along the
road of life!
And marvel not he wavered if at whiles
The forward
step met frowns, the backward smiles.
For Pleasure witched him
her sweet cup to drain;
Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.
Delicious
licence called it Nature’s cry;
Ascetic rigours crushed the
fleshly sigh;
A tread on shingle timed his lame advance
Flung
as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,
He of the troubled marching
army leaned
On godhead visible, on godhead screened;
The radiant
roseate, the curtained white;
Yet sharp his battle strained through
day, through night.
He drank of fictions, till celestial aid
Might seem accorded
when he fawned and prayed;
Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,
To
choose for grants the egregious, his elect;
And ever that imagined
succour slew
The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.
In fellowship religion has its founts:
The solitary his own
God reveres:
Ascend no sacred Mounts
Our hungers or our fears.
As
only for the numbers Nature’s care
Is shown, and she the
personal nothing heeds,
So to Divinity the spring of prayer
From
brotherhood the one way upward leads.
Like the sustaining air
Are
both for flowers and weeds.
But he who claims in spirit to be flower,
Will
find them both an air that doth devour.
Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored
External gifts bestowed
but on the sword;
Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,
Through
those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,
His army’s foe,
condemned to strive and fail;
See a black adversary’s ghost
prevail;
Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win
While
still the conflict tore his breast within.
Out of that agony, misread for those
Imprisoned Powers warring
unappeased,
The ghost of his black adversary rose,
To smother
light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.
And long with him was
wrestling ere emerged
A mind to read in him the reflex shade
Of
its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;
By craven compromises
hourly swayed.
Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried,
The man’s
mind opened under weight of cloud.
To penetrate the dark was it
endowed;
Stood day before a vision shooting wide.
Whereat
the spectral enemy lost form;
The traversed wilderness exposed
its track.
He felt the far advance in looking back;
Thence
trust in his foot forward through the storm.
Under the low-browed tempest’s eye of ire,
That ere it
lightened smote a coward heart,
Earth nerved her chastened son
to hail athwart
All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;
A
stranger still, religiously divined;
Not yet with understanding
read aright.
But when the mind, the cherishable mind,
The
multitude’s grave shepherd, took full flight,
Himself as
mirror raised among his kind,
He saw, and first of brotherhood
had sight:
Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,
His
heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,
Had come of many a grip
in mastery,
Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,
And
of his bosom made him lord, to keep
The starry roof of his unruffled
frame
Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep
Below,
above, aye with a wistful aim.
The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown,
By traitor inmates
baited, upward burned;
Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,
The
Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.
To whom unwittingly did
he aspire
In wilderness, where bitter was his need:
To whom
in blindness, as an earthy seed
For light and air, he struck through
crimson mire.
But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,
And viewed
an army, once the seeming doomed,
All choral in its fruitful garden
camp,
The spiritual the palpable illumed.
This gift of penetration and embrace,
His prize from tidal battles
lost or won,
Reveals the scheme to animate his race:
How that
it is a warfare but begun;
Unending; with no Power to interpose;
No
prayer, save for strength to keep his ground,
Heard of the Highest;
never battle’s close,
The victory complete and victor crowned:
Nor
solace in defeat, save from that sense
Of strength well spent,
which is the strength renewed.
In manhood must he find his competence;
In
his clear mind the spiritual food:
God being there while he his
fight maintains;
Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,
While
he rejects the suicide despair;
Accepts the spur of explicable
pains;
Obedient to Nature, not her slave:
Her lord, if to
her rigid laws he bows;
Her dust, if with his conscience he plays
knave,
And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-
Whence
Evil in a world unread before;
That mystery to simple springs resolved.
His
God the Known, diviner to adore,
Shows Nature’s savage riddles
kindly solved.
Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns
In iron
laws, though rapturous fair her face.
Back to the primal brute
shall he retrace
His path, doth he permit to force her chains
A
soft Persuader coursing through his veins,
An icy Huntress stringing
to the chase:
What one the flash disdains;
What one so gives
it grace.
But is he rightly manful in her eyes,
A splendid bloodless knight
to gain the skies,
A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,
Desireing
and desireable he shines;
As peaches, that have caught the sun’s
uprise
And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.
Earth
fills him with her juices, without fear
That she will cast him
drunken down the steeps.
All woman is she to this man most dear;
He
sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:
She conscient, she sensitive,
in him;
With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:
By him
humaner made; by his keen spurs
Pricked to race past the pride
in giant limb,
Her crazy adoration of big thews,
Proud in
her primal sons, when crags they hurled,
Were thunder spitting
lightnings on the world
In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.
This man, this hero, works not to destroy;
This godlike—as
the rock in ocean stands; -
He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands
Creative;
in his edifice has joy.
How strength may serve for purity is shown
When
he himself can scourge to make it clean.
Withal his pitch of pride
would not disown
A sober world that walks the balanced mean
Between
its tempters, rarely overthrown:
And such at times his army’s
march has been.
Near is he to great Nature in the thought
Each changing Season
intimately saith,
That nought save apparition knows the death;
To
the God-lighted mind of man ’tis nought.
She counts not loss
a word of any weight;
It may befal his passions and his greeds
To
lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,
But life gone
breathless will she reinstate.
Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,
When he the mandate
lodged in it obeys,
Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze,
Strike
camp, and onward, like the wind’s cloud-fleets.
Unresting
she, unresting he, from change
To change, as rain of cloud, as
fruit of rain;
She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,
Yet
skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.
No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,
She knows, nor growth
of man in grisly brute;
But he, the flower at head and soil at
root,
Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.
And that way
seems he bound; that way the road,
With his dark-lantern mind,
unled, alone,
Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,
He
travels, urged by some internal goad.
Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing
He would become
is in his mind its child;
Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;
For
battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.
So moves he forth in faith,
if he has made
His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth.
Earth’s
nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,
He tastes, as doth the bridegroom
rich in youth.
Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
The
star of sky upon his footway cast;
Then match in him who holds
his tempters fast,
The body’s love and mind’s, whereof
the soul’s.
Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,
To
speed the pair unto her goal of goals.
Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her new mate?
Seen
has she virulent days of heat in flood;
The sly Persuader snaky
in his blood;
With her the barren Huntress alternate;
His
rough refractory off on kicking heels
To rear; the man dragged
rearward, shamed, amazed;
And as a torrent stream where cattle
grazed,
His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?
May
not his aspect, like her own so fair
Reflexively, the central force
belie,
And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,
Be rebel
at the core? What hope is there?
’Tis that in each recovery he preserves,
Between his upper
and his nether wit,
Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;
He
less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;
With such a grasp upon
his brute as tells
Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.
A
Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun
Resplendent springs, to faith
refreshed compels.
[Iliad, v. V. 385—Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]
How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
At sight of her boy
Giants on the leap
Each over other as they neighboured home,
Fronting
the day’s descent across green slopes,
And up fired mountain
crags their shadows danced.
Close with them in their fun, she scarce
could guess,
Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
It
signalled some adventurous master-trick
To set Olympians buzzing
in debate,
Lest it might be their godhead undermined,
The
Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high
On shoulders of his brother
Otos waved
For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
Compact,
complexioned in his gleeful roar
While Otos aped the prisoner’s
wrists and knees,
With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;
Till
Gaea’s lap receiving them, they stretched,
And both upon
her bosom shaken to speech,
Burst the hot story out of throats
of both,
Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut
The
hurried spout. And as when drifting storm
Disburdened loses
clasp of here and yon
A peak, a forest mound, a valley’s
gleam
Of grass and the river’s crooks and snaky coils,
Signification
marvellous she caught,
Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,
Which
now engulphed and now gave eye; at last
Subsided, and the serious
naked deed,
With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,
Stood
in her sight confirmed: she could believe
That these, her sprouts
of promise, her most prized,
These two made up of lion, bear and
fox,
Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,
Still
by the reckoning infants among men,
Had done the deed to strike
the Titan host
In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:
These
two combining strength and craft had snared,
Enmeshed, bound fast
with thongs, discreetly caged
The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord
of War;
Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;
The barren furrower
of anointed fields;
The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,
Her
hated enemy, too long her scourge:
Great Ares. And they gagged
his trumpet mouth
When they had seized on his implacable spear,
Hugged
him to reedy helplessness despite
His godlike fury startled from
amaze.
For he had eyed them nearing him in play,
The giant
cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,
Unheeding his fell presence,
by the mount
Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there
On Earth’s
original fisticuffs they called
For ease of sharp dispute: whereat
the God,
Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,
Good
servitors of Ares they would be,
And ply the pointed spear to dominate
Their
rebel restless fellows, villain brood
Vowed to defy Immortals.
So it chanced
Amusedly he watched them, and as one
The lusty
twain were on him and they had him.
Breath to us, Powers of air,
for laughter loud!
Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!
Bound
like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
Because they knew our
Mother Gaea loathed him,
Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
A
desolating fire to blind the sight
With splendour built of fruitful
things in ashes;
The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
Her
deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
Heard from the babe as
from the broken crone.
Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
And
tumbled down the cave. But rather look -
Ah, that the woman
tattler had not sought,
Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
Hermes,
after the thirteen songful months!
Prompting the Dexterous to work
his arts,
And shatter earth’s delirious holiday,
Then
first, as where the fountain runs a stream,
Resolving to composure
on its throbs.
But see her in the Seasons through that year;
That
one glad year and the fair opening month.
Had never our Great Mother
such sweet face!
War with her, gentle war with her, each day
Her
sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,
On the morrow stood
to challenge; in their strength
Renewed, indomitable; whereof they
won,
From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
Her ready
secret: the abounding life
Returned for valiant labour: she and
they
Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
By loss enriched,
by overthrow restored.
Exchange of powers of this conflict came;
Defacement
none, nor ever squandered force.
Is battle nature’s mandate,
here it reigned,
As music unto the hand that smote the strings;
And
she the rosier from their showery brows,
They fruitful from her
ploughed and harrowed breast.
Back to the primal rational of those
Who
suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp
Stability in hatred of
the insane,
Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce
The
mortal mind’s concept of earth’s divorced
Above; those
beautiful, those masterful,
Those lawless. High they sit,
and if descend,
Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?
Earth
in her happy children asked that word,
Whereto within their breast
was her reply.
Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,
Enjoy
the life prolonged, outleap the years;
Yet they (’twas the
Great Mother’s voice inspired
The audacious thought), they,
glorious over dust,
Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,
To
meet the certain fate of earth’s divorced,
And clap lame
wings across a wintry haze,
Up to the farthest bourne: immortal
still,
Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled
The
Tyranny. This her voice within them told,
When softly the
Great Mother chid her sons
Not of the giant brood, who did create
Those
lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain
Set moving by an abject
blood, that waked
To wanton under elements more benign,
And
planted aliens on Olympian heights; -
Imagination’s cradle
poesy
Become a monstrous pressure upon men; -
Foes of good
Gaea; until dispossessed
By light from her, born of the love of
her,
Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
For earth’s
beneficent, the sons of Law,
Her other name. So spake she
in their heart,
Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath
Young
vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,
Confidently to cling.
And when brown corn
Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,
With
gold necks bent for any zephyr’s kiss;
When vine-roots daily
down a rubble soil
Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
When
swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,
Rich issue of the embrace
of heaven and earth;
The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,
And
yet a burning lion for the spring;
Then in that time of general
cherishment,
Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,
He
the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,
Then did good Gaea’s
children gratefully
Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised
for peace,
Delightful Peace, that answers Reason’s call
Harmoniously
and images her Law;
Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,
In
memories made present on the brain
By natural yearnings, all the
happy scenes;
The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
Between
them the known smile behind black masks;
Rightly their various
moods interpreted;
And frolic because toilful children borne
With
larger comprehension of Earth’s aim
At loftier, clearer,
sweeter, by their aid.
Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
All radiantly the moon’s
own night
Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
Our shadows
down the highway white
Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
With
yon and yon a stem alight.
I see marauder runagates
Across us shoot their dusky wink;
I
hear the parliament of chats
In haws beside the river’s brink;
And
drops the vole off alder-banks,
To push his arrow through the stream.
These
busy people had our thanks
For tickling sight and sound, but theme
They
were not more than breath we drew
Delighted with our world’s
embrace:
The moss-root smell where beeches grew,
And watered
grass in breezy space;
The silken heights, of ghostly bloom
Among
their folds, by distance draped.
’Twas Youth, rapacious to
consume,
That cried to have its chaos shaped:
Absorbing, little
noting, still
Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;
With wistful
looks on each far hill
For something hidden, something owed.
Unto
his mantled sister, Day
Had given the secret things we sought
And
she was grave and saintly gay;
At times she fluttered, spoke her
thought;
She flew on it, then folded wings,
In meditation
passing lone,
To breathe around the secret things,
Which have
no word, and yet are known;
Of thirst for them are known, as air
Is
health in blood: we gained enough
By this to feel it honest fare;
Impalpable,
not barren, stuff.
A pride of legs in motion kept
Our spirits to their task meanwhile,
And
what was deepest dreaming slept:
The posts that named the swallowed
mile;
Beside the straight canal the hut
Abandoned; near the
river’s source
Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;
The
roadway missed; were our discourse;
At times dear poets, whom some
view
Transcendent or subdued evoked
To speak the memorable,
the true,
The luminous as a moon uncloaked;
For proof that
there, among earth’s dumb,
A soul had passed and said our
best.
Or it might be we chimed on some
Historic favourite’s
astral crest,
With part to reverence in its gleam,
And part
to rivalry the shout:
So royal, unuttered, is youth’s dream
Of
power within to strike without.
But most the silences were sweet,
Like
mothers’ breasts, to bid it feel
It lived in such divine
conceit
As envies aught we stamp for real.
To either then an untold tale
Was Life, and author, hero, we.
The
chapters holding peaks to scale,
Or depths to fathom, made our
glee;
For we were armed of inner fires,
Unbled in us the ripe
desires;
And passion rolled a quiet sea,
Whereon was Love
the phantom sail.
Unto that love must we through fire attain,
Which those two
held as breath of common air;
The hands of whom were given in bond
elsewhere;
Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.
Midway the road of our life’s term they met,
And one another
knew without surprise;
Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
Nor
at their tardy meeting nursed regret.
To them it was revealed how they had found
The kindred nature
and the needed mind;
The mate by long conspiracy designed;
The
flower to plant in sanctuary ground.
Avowed in vigilant solicitude
For either, what most lived within
each breast
They let be seen: yet every human test
Demanding
righteousness approved them good.
She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
Abandonment to
help if heaved or sank
Her heart at intervals while Love looked
blank,
Life rosier were she but less revered.
An arm that never shook did not obscure
Her woman’s intuition
of the bliss -
Their tempter’s moment o’er the black
abyss,
Across the narrow plank—he could abjure.
Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
And their first
touch of lips, as he lay cold,
Was all of earthly in their love
untold,
Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.
So has there come the gust at South-west flung
By sudden volt
on eves of freezing mist,
When sister snowflake sister snowdrop
kissed,
And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.
They have no song, the sedges dry,
And still they sing.
It
is within my breast they sing,
As I pass by.
Within my breast
they touch a string,
They wake a sigh.
There is but sound
of sedges dry;
In me they sing.
Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;
She that star overhead
in slow descent:
That white star with the front of angel she;
He
undone in his rays of glory spent
Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,
He casts round her,
and knows his hour of rest
Incomplete, were the light for which
he dies,
Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.
Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;
Life’s full
throb over breathless and abased:
Yet stand they, though impalpable
the links,
One, more one than the bridally embraced.
If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
Thy part is
to uplift the trodden low;
Else in a giant’s grasp until
the end
A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.
[Written for the Charing Cross Album]
I.
Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
Frown
when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.
They of our
mortal diseases find never healing physician;
Errors they of the
soul, past the one hope to repair.
II.
Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered
Seed
to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.
Even the limp-legged
beggar a sick desperado has flattered
Back to a half-sloughed life
cheered by the mere human tone.
Between the fountain and the rill
I passed, and saw the mighty
will
To leap at sky; the careless run,
As earth would lead
her little son.
Beneath them throbs an urgent well,
That here is play, and there
is war.
I know not which had most to tell
Of whence we spring
and what we are.
When comes the lighted day for men to read
Life’s meaning,
with the work before their hands
Till this good gift of breath
from debt is freed,
Earth will not hear her children’s wailful
bands
Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;
Nor
they look where is darkness, but on high.
The sun that dropped
down our horizon’s verge,
Illumes his labours through the
travelled sky,
Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known
By
what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.
A splendid image built
of man has flown;
His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.
Ours
the great privilege to have had one
Among us who celestial tasks
has done.
To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
Who straightway sound
the call to arms. Thou know’st;
And that black spot
in each embattled host,
Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt
reveal.
Now is it red artillery and white steel;
Till on a
day will ring the victor’s boast,
That ’tis Thy chosen
towers uppermost,
Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.
So
in all times of man’s descent insane
To brute, did strength
and craft combining strike,
Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.
But
at the close he entered Thy domain,
Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like
He
tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe.
I.
Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in.
Heroic who came out;
for round them hung
A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue,
With
league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:
II.
Old Earth’s original Dragon; there retired
To his last
fastness; overthrown by few.
Him a laborious thrust of roadway
slew.
Then man to play devorant straight was fired.
III.
More intimate became the forest fear
While pillared darkness
hatched malicious life
At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife
And
wary slid the glance from ear to ear.
IV.
In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,
The forest’s
heart of fog on mossed morass,
On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,
Revealed
where lured the swallower byway.
V.
Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound
Off walls of
distance, left each mounted height.
It seemed a giant hag-fiend,
churning spite
Of humble human being, held the ground.
VI.
Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow
The
feet sustained by track of feet pursued
Pained steps, and found
the common brotherhood
By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.
VII.
Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight,
And long-frocked
men, called Brothers, there abode.
They pointed up, bowed head,
and dug and sowed;
Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.
VIII.
What words they taught were nails to scratch the head.
Benignant
works explained the chanting brood.
Their monastery lit black solitude,
As
one might think a star that heavenward led.
IX.
Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,
Like some gold flower nightly
inward curled,
Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,
Or
played with it, and had their white retreat.
X.
Into big books of metal clasps they pored.
They governed, even
as men; they welcomed lays.
The treasures women are whose aim is
praise,
Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.
XI.
A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,
With widened jaws,
and slaughter was its foam.
For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge,
home,
The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.
XII.
Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:
And inmost spots
of ancient horror shone
As temples under beams of trials bygone;
For
in them sang brave times with God in view.
XIII.
Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green,
Like night’s
first little stars through clearing showers.
Was rumoured how a
castle’s falcon towers
The wilderness commanded with fierce
mien.
XIV.
Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;
For minstrel songs
a beauteous Dame would pout.
Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,
Pricked
onward, bound for their unsung romance.
XV.
It might be that two errant lords across
The block of each came
edged, and at sharp cry
They charged forthwith, the better man
to try.
One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.
XVI.
Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,
The robbers into
gruesome durance drew.
Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s
blue!
She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.
XVII.
As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,
Of Angels guided, nigh
that loathly den:
A toady cave beside an ague fen,
Where long
forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.
XVIII.
By daylight now the forest fear could read
Itself, and at new
wonders chuckling went.
Straight for the roebuck’s neck the
bowman spent
A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.
XIX.
Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate
Rang forth of merry
dingles round the tors;
And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
But
soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.
XX.
Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
At dawn the
deer’s wet nostrils blew their last.
To forest, haunt of
runs and prime repast,
With paying blows, the yokel strained his
yoke.
XXI.
The city urchin mooned on forest air,
On grassy sweeps and flying
arrows, thick
As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed
him sick
For thinking that his dearer home was there.
XXII.
Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
An old-world echo,
like no mortal thing.
The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund
ring,
But held in ear it had a chilly clang.
XXIII.
Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
Some warning haunted
any sound prolonged,
As though the leagues of woodland held them
wronged
To hear an axe and see a township climb.
XXIV.
The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve
Had voice when lowered
heavens drummed for gales.
At midnight a small people danced the
dales,
So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve
XXV.
Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
Old wives
that gathered herbs and knew too much.
The pensioned forester beside
his crutch,
Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.
XXVI.
Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
Devourer, and
insensibly devoured;
In whom the city over forest flowered,
The
forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.
XXVII.
There found he in new form that Dragon old,
From tangled solitudes
expelled; and taught
How blindly each its antidote besought;
For
either’s breath the needs of either told.
XXVIII.
Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone,
He showed
what charm the human concourse works:
Amid the press of men, what
virtue lurks
Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.
XXIX.
Our conquest these: if haply we retain
The reverence that ne’er
will overrun
Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
Nor
let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.
With sagest craft Arachne worked
Her web, and at a corner lurked,
Awaiting
what should plump her soon,
To case it in the death-cocoon.
Sagaciously
her home she chose
For visits that would never close;
Inside
my chalet-porch her feast
Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.
The finished structure, bar on bar,
Had snatched from light
to form a star,
And struck on sight, when quick with dews,
Like
music of the very Muse.
Great artists pass our single sense;
We
hear in seeing, strung to tense;
Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,
To
think such beauty means a trap.
But Nature’s genius, even
man’s
At best, is practical in plans;
Subservient to
the needy thought,
However rare the weapon wrought.
As long
as Nature holds it good
To urge her creatures’ quest for
food
Will beauty stamp the just intent
Of weapons upon service
bent.
For beauty is a flower of roots
Embedded lower than
our boots;
Out of the primal strata springs,
And shows for
crown of useful things
Arachne’s dream of prey to size
Aspired; so she could
nigh despise
The puny specks the breezes round
Supplied, and
let them shake unwound;
Assured of her fat fly to come;
Perhaps
a blue, the spider’s plum;
Who takes the fatal odds in fight,
And
gives repast an appetite,
By plunging, whizzing, till his wings
Are
webbed, and in the lists he swings,
A shrouded lump, for her to
see
Her banquet in her victory.
This matron of the unnumbered threads,
One day of dandelions’
heads
Distributing their gray perruques
Up every gust, I watched
with looks
Discreet beside the chalet-door;
And gracefully
a light wind bore,
Direct upon my webster’s wall,
A
monster in the form of ball;
The mildest captive ever snared,
That
neither struggled nor despaired,
On half the net invading hung,
And
plain as in her mother tongue,
While low the weaver cursed her
lures,
Remarked, “You have me; I am yours.”
Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,
Her dream of size she saw,
agape.
Midway the vast round-raying beard
A desiccated midge
appeared;
Whose body pricked the name of meal,
Whose hair
had growth in earth’s unreal;
Provocative of dread and wrath,
Contempt
and horror, in one froth,
Inextricable, insensible,
His poison
presence there would dwell,
Declaring him her dream fulfilled,
A
catch to compliment the skilled;
And she reduced to beaky skin,
Disgraceful
among kith and kin
Against her corner, humped and aged,
Arachne wrinkled, past
enraged,
Beyond disgust or hope in guile.
Ridiculously volatile
He
seemed to her last spark of mind;
And that in pallid ash declined
Beneath
the blow by knowledge dealt,
Wherein throughout her frame she felt
That
he, the light wind’s libertine,
Without a scoff, without
a grin,
And mannered like the courtly few,
Who merely danced
when light winds blew,
Impervious to beak and claws,
Tradition’s
ruinous Whitebeard was;
Of whom, as actors in old scenes,
Had
grannam weavers warned their weans,
With word, that less than feather-weight,
He
smote the web like bolt of Fate.
This muted drama, hour by hour,
I watched amid a world in flower,
Ere
yet Autumnal threads had laid
Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s
blade,
And still along the garden-run
The blindworm stretched
him, drunk of sun.
Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance
Her
visitor performed a dance;
She puckered thinner; he the same
As
when on that light wind he came.
Next day was told what deeds of night
Were done; the web had
vanished quite;
With it the strange opposing pair;
And listless
waved on vacant air,
For her adieu to heart’s content,
A
solitary filament.
Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,
Are they who point
our pathway and sustain.
They rarely meet; one soars, one walks
retired.
When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.
To see Life’s formless offspring and subdue
Desire of
times unripe, we have these two,
Whose union is right reason: join
they hands,
The world shall know itself and where it stands;
What
cowering angel and what upright beast
Make man, behold, nor count
the low the least,
Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.
When
these two meet, a point of time is ours.
As in a land of waterfalls, that flow
Smooth for the leap on
their great voice below,
Some eddies near the brink borne swift
along,
Will capture hearing with the liquid song,
So, while
the headlong world’s imperious force
Resounded under, heard
I these discourse.
First words, where down my woodland walk she led,
To her blind
sister Patience, Foresight said:
- Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,
When still I find
you in this mire alone.
- The few steps taken at a funeral pace
By men had slain me
but for those you trace.
- Look I once back, a broken pinion I:
Black as the rebel angels
rained from sky!
- Needs must you drink of me while here you live,
And make me
rich in feeling I can give.
- A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:
Yet must I read my sister
for the How.
My daisy better knows her God of beams
Than doth
an eagle that to mount him seems.
She hath the secret never fieriest
reach
Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.
- Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,
My semblance
when I have you not as now.
The quiet creatures who escape mishap
Bear
likeness to pure growths of the green sap:
A picture of the settled
peace desired
By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.
I
listen at their breasts: is there no jar
Of wrestlings and of stranglings,
dead they are,
And such a picture as the piercing mind
Ranks
beneath vegetation. Not resigned
Are my true pupils while
the world is brute.
What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,
Stronger
impels the motion of my heart.
I am not Resignation’s counterpart.
If
that I teach, ’tis little the dry word,
Content, but how
to savour hope deferred.
We come of earth, and rich of earth may
be;
Soon carrion if very earth are we!
The coursing veins,
the constant breath, the use
Of sleep, declare that strife allows
short truce;
Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,
And pass
despised; “a-cold for lack of heat,”
Like other corpses,
but without death’s plea.
- My sister calls for battle; is it she?
- Rather a world of pressing men in arms,
Than stagnant, where
the sensual piper charms
Each drowsy malady and coiling vice
With
dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!
No home is here for
peace while evil breeds,
While error governs, none; and must the
seeds
You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,
Lie
barren at the doorway of the brain,
Let stout contention drive
deep furrows, blood
Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!
- My sober little maid, when we meet first,
Drinks of me ever
with an eager thirst.
So can I not of her till circumstance
Drugs
cravings. Here we see how men advance
A doubtful foot, but
circle if much stirred,
Like dead weeds on whipped waters.
Shout the word
Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,
As
to band-music under Victory’s arch.
Thus was it, and thus
is it; save that then
The beauty of frank animals had men.
- Observe them, and down rearward for a term,
Gaze to the primal
twistings of the worm.
Thence look this way, across the fields
that show
Men’s early form of speech for Yes and No.
My
sister a bruised infant’s utterance had;
And issuing stronger,
to mankind ’twas mad.
I knew my home where I had choice to
feel
The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.
- Speak of this Age.
- When you it shall discern
Bright as you are, to me the Age
will turn.
- For neither of us has it any care;
Its learning is through
Science to despair.
- Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not
With evil, casts
the burden of its lot.
This Age climbs earth.
- To challenge heaven.
- Not less
The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!
That
know I, though the echoes of it wail,
For one step upward on the
crags you scale.
Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,
Which
means our soul asleep or body’s lust,
Until from warmth of
many breasts, that beat
A temperate common music, sunlike heat
The
happiness not predatory sheds!
- But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads,
Now rages to
outdo a horny Past.
Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast
Are
thrown by every novel light upraised.
The world’s whole round
smokes ominously, amazed
And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells.
Combustibles
on hot combustibles
Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire
The
mountain-torrent of infernal ire
And leave the track of devils
where men built.
Perceptive of a doom, the sinner’s guilt
Confesses
in a cry for help shrill loud,
If drops the chillness of a passing
cloud,
To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:
None save
they but the souls which them contain.
No extramural God, the God
within
Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.
A world that
for the spur of fool and knave,
Sweats in its laboratory, what
shall save?
But men who ply their wits in such a school,
Must
pray the mercy of the knave and fool.
- Much have I studied hard Necessity!
To know her Wisdom’s
mother, and that we
May deem the harshness of her later cries
In
labour a sure goad to prick the wise,
If men among the warnings
which convulse,
Can gravely dread without the craven’s pulse.
Long
ere the rising of this Age of ours,
The knave and fool were stamped
as monstrous Powers.
Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,
And
are as lasting as the parent thing.
Yet numbering locust hosts,
bent they to drill,
They might o’ermatch and have mankind
at will.
Behold such army gathering: ours the spur,
No scattered foe
to face, but Lucifer.
Not fool or knave is now the enemy
O’ershadowing
men, ’tis Folly, Knavery!
A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned
beach.
Now must the brother soul alive in each,
His traitorous
individual devildom
Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.
Dimly
men see it menacing apace
To overthrow, perchance uproot the race.
Within,
without, they are a field of tares:
Fruitfuller for them when the
contest squares,
And wherefore warrior service they must yield,
Shines
visible as life on either field.
That is my comfort, following
shock on shock,
Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.
Since
with his weapons, all the arms of Night,
Frail men have challenged
Lucifer to fight,
Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,
The
human and Satanic intellect,
Determined for their uses to control
What
forces on the earth and under roll,
Their granite rock runs igneous;
now they stand
Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.
They
cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:
Through fear they learn
whose aid is good in war.
- My sister, as I read them in my glass,
Their field of tares
they take for pasture grass.
How waken them that have not any bent
Save
browsing—the concrete indifferent!
Friend Lucifer supplies
them solid stuff:
They fear not for the race when full the trough.
They
have much fear of giving up the ghost;
And these are of mankind
the unnumbered host.
- If I could see with you, and did not faint
In beating wing,
the future I would paint.
Those massed indifferents will learn
to quake:
Now meanwhile is another mass awake,
Once denser
than the grunters of the sty.
If I could see with you! Could
I but fly!
- The length of days that you with them have housed,
An outcast
else, approves their cause espoused.
- O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,
While still they
have a cause too piteous!
Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,
They
walk no longer with a stumbler blind,
And quicken in the virtue
of their cause,
To think me a poor mouther of old saws!
I
wait the issue of a battling Age;
The toilers with your “troughsters”
now engage;
Instructing them through their acutest sense,
How
close the dangers of indifference!
Already have my people shown
their worth,
More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.
That
love to love of labour leads: thence love
Of humankind—earth’s
incense flung above.
- Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;
Encased in matter;
vowed to Gods obscene;
Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells
On
Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;
And if I bid it face what
I observe,
Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!
- Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,
Seen nests of seeming
cockatrices coil:
Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,
Which
were his offspring, born of flame on slime.
Nor him, their sire,
have known the filial fry:
As little as Time’s earliest knew
the sky.
Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame
At intervals,
in proof of whom they came.
To strengthen our foundations is the
task
Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,
Though,
lighted by your beams, down mining caves
The rock it blasts, the
hoarded foulness braves.
My sister sees no round beyond her mood;
To
hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.
Out of the course of
ancient ruts and grooves,
It moves: O much for me to say it moves!
About
his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,
Though not the stream of the
paternal smile:
And where his tide of nourishment he drives,
An
Abyssinian wantonness revives.
Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he
swims;
He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,
The Past
yet flowing, the fair time that fills;
Breath of all mouths and
grist of many mills.
To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,
He is the vast
Insensate who devours
His golden promise over leagues of seed,
Then
sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.
The races which on barbarous
force begin,
Inherit onward of their origin,
And cancelled
blessings will the current length
Reveal till they know need of
shaping strength.
’Tis not in men to recognize the need
Before
they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.
Then may sharp suffering
their nature grind;
Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.
Yet
mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,
For tens up the
safe mountains at his head.
Few would be fed, not far his course
prolong,
Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.
- That rings of truth! More do your people thrive;
Your
Many are more merrily alive
Than erewhile when I gloried in the
page
Of radiant singer and anointed sage.
Greece was my lamp:
burnt out for lack of oil;
Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber
spoil!
All structures built upon a narrow space
Must fall,
from having not your hosts for base.
O thrice must one be you,
to see them shift
Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;
With
faith, that of privations and spilt blood,
Comes Reason armed to
clear or bank the flood!
And thrice must one be you, to wait release
From
duress in the swamp of their increase.
At which oppressive scene,
beyond arrest,
A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed,
Philosophers
behold; desponding view.
Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant
few;
Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,
Dive down
the fumy AEtna of their brains.
Belated vessels on a rising sea,
They
seem: they pass!
- But not Philosophy!
- Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise
Nought but the coward
in us! That way lies
The wisdom making passage through our
slough.
Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;
Like her,
shall wait to see, and seeing wait.
Philosophy is Life’s
one match for Fate.
That photosphere of our high fountain One,
Our
spirit’s Lord and Reason’s fostering sun,
Philosophy,
shall light us in the shade,
Warm in the frost, make Good our aim
and aid.
Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,
Unconquerable,
whose aim for aid is Good!
Advantage to the Many: that we name
God’s
voice; have there the surety in our aim.
This thought unto my sister
do I owe,
And irony and satire off me throw.
They crack a
childish whip, drive puny herds,
Where numbers crave their sustenance
in words.
Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,
Your Chieftain
Mind mounts over them serene.
Who never yet of scattered lamps
was born
To speed a world, a marching world to warn,
But sunward
from the vivid Many springs,
Counts conquest but a step, and through
disaster sings.
[Iliad, B. I. V. 149]
“Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can
one,
Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,
Either
the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?
I, not
hither I fared on account of the spear-armèd Trojans,
Pledged
to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;
Never have
they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;
Never in deep-soiled
Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests
Ravaged, they; for between
us is numbered full many a darksome
Mountain, ay, therewith too
the stretch of the windy sea-waters.
O hugely shameless! thee did
we follow to hearten thee, justice
Pluck from the Dardans for him,
Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!
Whereof little thy thought is,
nought whatever thou reckest.
Worse, it is thou whose threat ’tis
to ravish my prize from me, portion
Won with much labour, the which
my gift from the sons of Achaia.
Never, in sooth, have I known
my prize equal thine when Achaians
Gave some flourishing populous
Trojan town up to pillage.
Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most
in the storm of the combat,
Yet when came peradventure share of
the booty amongst us,
Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some
small blessèd thing bore
Off to the ships, my share of reward
for my toil in the bloodshed!
So now go I to Phthia, for better
by much it beseems me
Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and
I hold not in prospect,
I being outraged, thou mayst gather here
plunder and wealth-store.”
“Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer,
thou!
Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the
conflict,
Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia
Dared
thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death-stroke.
Sooth,
more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,
Snatch
at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against thee.
Ravening
king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects;
Else,
son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.
Nay, but
I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:
Yea, by
the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds
Never
again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the mountains,
No
more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped off
Leaves
and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,
Guardian hands
of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,
Hold it aloft;
so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;
Loud will the
cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia
Throughout the army,
and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish,
How to give succour
when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector
Tumble expiring;
and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-strings,
Rage-wrung,
thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of Achaians.”
[Iliad, B. II V. 455]
Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,
Up
on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,
So
on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the splendour
Gleam
wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault.
They,
now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks,
Be
it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-swans,
Off
that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaïstros;
Hither
and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,
Clamour,
shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them resoundeth;
So
those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured
forth
On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath
them
Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of
the horse-hooves.
Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d
field of Scamander, their thousands
Many as leaves and the blossoms
born of the flowerful season.
Even as countless hot-pressed flies
in their multitudes traverse,
Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s
wonning, where then are the milk-pails
Also, full of their milk,
in the bountiful season of spring-time;
Even so thickly the long-haired
sons of Achaia the plain held,
Prompt for the dash at the Trojan
host, with the passion to crush them.
Those, likewise, as the goatherds,
eyeing their vast flocks of goats, know
Easily one from the other
when all get mixed o’er the pasture,
So did the chieftains
rank them here there in their places for onslaught,
Hard on the
push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,
He, for his eyes
and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder,
He with the
girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.
[Iliad, B. XI. V. 148]
These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the
thickest,
Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved
Achaians.
Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful
compulsion,
Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted
the dust-cloud,
Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the
thundering horse-hooves)
Hewed with the sword’s sharp edge;
and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon
Followed, chasing and slaughtering
aye, on-urgeing the Argives.
Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclippèd woodland,
This
way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the scrubwood
Stretches
uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire’s fury rageing,
So
beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered
Trojans fell;
and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,
Rattled their
vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,
Missing the
blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were outstretched
Flat
upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.
[Iliad; B. XI V. 378]
So he, with a clear shout of laughter,
Forth of his ambush leapt,
and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:
“Hit thou art! not
in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had pierced thee
Into
the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!
Following
that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst,
They
all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion.”
Then
unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:
“Bow-puller,
jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!
If that thou
dared’st face me here out in the open with weapons,
Nothing
then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.
Now
thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;
Reck
I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.
Aye
flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, noughtworth!
Otherwise
hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest,
My
keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.
Torn,
troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen slaughtered,
Orphans
his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops,
Rotting,
round him the birds, more numerous they than the women.”
[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283]
They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
Came,
and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
Where
underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland.
There
hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
Mounted
upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
Lustily spring
off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.
There did he sit well-cloaked
by the wide-branched pine for concealment,
That loud bird, in his
form like, that perched high up in the mountains,
Chalkis is named
by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.
[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 394]
Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,
Whipped
from the sea’s deeps up by the terrible blast of the Northwind;
Nay,
nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire’s rush so arousing,
Down
along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;
Nay,
nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees’
Foliage-tresses
high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;
As rose then stupendous
the Trojan’s cry and Achaians’,
Dread upshouting as
one when together they clashed in the conflict.
[Iliad, B. XVII. V. 426]
So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,
Wept,
since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there,
Cast
down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.
Sooth,
meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,
Oft, on the
one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and oft, too,
Coax
entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.
Vainly,
for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious,
Backward
turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.
Nay, as
a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,
Haply, of some
dead man or it may be a woman there-under;
Even like hard stood
they there attached to the glorious war-car,
Earthward bowed with
their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant
Ran the hot teardrops
downward on to the earth from their eyelids,
Mourning their charioteer;
all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,
Right side and left of
the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the yoke-bow.
Now when
the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook
Pitying
them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom;
“Why,
ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal
Master; ye that
are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!
Was it that ye among
men most wretched should come to have heart-grief?
’Tis most
true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere
Aught
over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath and has movement.”
[From the Mirèio of Mistral]
A hundred mares, all white! their manes
Like mace-reed of the
marshy plains
Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ the shears:
And
when the fiery squadron rears
Bursting at speed, each mane appears
Even
as the white scarf of a fay
Floating upon their necks along the
heavens away.
O race of humankind, take shame!
For never yet a hand could
tame,
Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue
The mares
of the Camargue. I have known,
By treason snared, some captives
shown;
Expatriate from their native Rhone,
Led off, their
saline pastures far from view:
And on a day, with prompt rebound,
They have flung their riders
to the ground,
And at a single gallop, scouring free,
Wide-nostril’d
to the wind, twice ten
Of long marsh-leagues devour’d, and
then,
Back to the Vacarés again,
After ten years of
slavery just to breathe salt sea
For of this savage race unbent,
The ocean is the element.
Of
old escaped from Neptune’s car, full sure,
Still with the
white foam fleck’d are they,
And when the sea puffs black
from grey,
And ships part cables, loudly neigh
The stallions
of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;
And keen as a whip they lash and crack
Their tails that drag
the dust, and back
Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their
flesh, where he,
The God, drives deep his trident teeth,
Who
in one horror, above, beneath,
Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,
And
shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.
Cant. iv.
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