A LITTIE
TREASURY
OF
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The Little Treasury Series
OSCAR WILLIAMS, Editor
A LITTLE TREASURY OF MODERN POETRY *
edited by Oscar Williams
A LITTLE TREASURY OF GREAT POETRY
edited by Oscar Williams
A LITTLE TREASURY OF AMERICAN POETRY **
edited by Oscar Williams
A LITTLE TREASURY OF BRITISH POETRY
edited by Oscar Williams
A LITTLE TREASURY OF AMERICAN PROSE
edited by George Maybernj
A LITTLE TREASURY OF LOVE POEMS
edited by John Holmes
A LITTLE TREASURY OF WORLD POETRY
edited by Hubert Crcekmore
* Available in Itemed Editions
e7,*w**W)*
Coi-utunrr, 1051, BY
CHARLES SCIUBXKH'S .SONS
Printed m the United States <>i America
Most of the poems in Fart II of this anthology
arc protected by copyright, and may wot be
reproduced in any form without the consent ol
the poets, their publishers, or their agents. Since
this pugc cannot legibly accommodate all the
copyright notices, the opposite page and the
two pages following it (pages v to vii) con
stitute an extension of the copyright page.
JDJLMJ.oJllIJ
COPYRIGHT NOTICES
AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
\,\] "' V '
\ V ' ' u
Thanks are due the following poets, their copyright owners and their
publishers for permission to reprint certain poems in this anthology:
JONATHAN CAPE LiMiTEi>(and Mrs. W. H. Davies) for the poems by
W. H. Davies from Collected Poems', for the poems from A Map of
Verona by Henry Reed
CHATTO & WINDUS -for the poems by Wilfred Owen; for the poems by
Peter Quennell; for "Legal Fiction" and "Letter I" by William
Empson.
CLARENDON PRESS for poems by Robert Bridges from the Poems in
Classical Prosody of Robert Bridges, from October and Other Poems of
Robert Bridges, from New Verse of Robert Bridges, from New Poems
of Robert Bridges, all by pci mission of the Clarendon Press, Oxford.
JOHN DAY COMPANY- for the poems from Selected Verse by John Mani
fold, copyright, 1946, by The John Day Company.
DIAL PRESS- for the poems reprinted from Adamastor, Poems, by Roy
Campbell by permission of the Dial Press, Inc., copyright, 1931, by
the Dial Press, Inc.
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY for the poems from The Collected Poems of
Rupert Brooke, copyright, 1915, by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc,,
copyright, 1943, by Edward Marsh, reprinted by permission of Dodd,
Mead & Co,
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY for the poems from Aegean Islands and Other
Poems by Bernard Spencer, copyright, 1946, by Bernard Spencer, re
printed by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc ; for the poems
by Eudyard Kipling from Departmental Ditties and Ballads and
Barrack- Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling, from The Seven Seas by
Rudyard Kipling, from The Jungle, Book by Rudyard Kipling,, from
The Five Nations by Rudyard Kipling, all repiinted by permission of
Mrs. George Bambiidge and Doubleday & Company, Inc.
FABBR & FADER LIMITED for the poems from Collected Poems by T. S.
Eliot; for "The Dry Salvages" from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot;
for the poem from A Private Country by Lawrence Durrell; for
"Agamemnon's Tomb" from Giant Art by Sacheverell Sitwell; for the
poems by George Barker from News of the World by George Barker
and Sros in Dogma by George Barker; for the poems from The
Lady with the Unicorn by Vernon Watkms; for the poems from
The Gathering jStorm by William Empson; for the poems by Edwin
Muir from The "Voyage and The Labyrinth by Edwin Muir and from
A Little Book of Modern Verse edited by Anne Ridler.
THE FORTUNE PRESS for four poems by Dylan Thomas from 18 Poems
by Dylan Thomas.
HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY for the poems by T. S. Eliot from Col
lected Poems 1909-1935 by T. S. Eliot, copyright, 1936, by Harcourt,
Brace and Company, Inc.; for "The Dry Salvages" from four Quar
tets, copyright, 1943, by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. ; for the poems by William Emp
son from Collected Poems, copyright, 1935, 1940, 1949, by William
Empson, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company,
Inc. ; for the poems by Henry Reed from A Map of Verona, copy
right, 1947, by Henry Reed, reprinted by permission of Harcourt,
Brace and Company, Inc. ; for the poem from A World Within a War,
and Company '
HOGARTH PRESS, LiMiMP-for ''Spring "TO8' ll "il l Dra*liKI book by Roy
Fuller, publisl^T^ByeiMojaHt^BBMg.
V
COPYRIGHT NOTICES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
HKNIIY HOLT & COMPANY- for the poems by Walter do la Male from
Collected Poems, 1901-1918, by Waller de la Mare, copyright, 1920, by
Henry Holt and t Company, Inc., copyright, 1948, by Walter do la JMare,
used by permission of the publishers; for three poems by A. K. Ilous-
man from The Collected Poems of A. E. lions man, copyright, 1922,
1940, by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., copyright, 11)36, 1950, by
Barclays Bank, Ltd., used by permission ol the publishers.
Au'RKi) A. KNOW for three poems by I). II. Lawrence reprinted trom
/Vmsfcs by I), H. Lawrence, by pcnmssion of Alfred A. Knopi, Inc.,
copyright, 1929, by Alfred A. Knopt, Inc.
THE MACMHJUAN COMPANY- -for the selections by Thomas Hardy trom
Collected Poems by Thomas Hardy, copyright, 1925, by The Mac-
millan Company, and used with their permission; for the selections
by William Butler Yeats from Collected P or ins by William Butler
Yeats, copyright, 1933, by The Maemillan Company, and used with
their permission ; lor the selections by William Butler Yeats from
Last, Poems by William Butler Yeats, copyright, 1940, by Georgia
Yeats, and used with the permission of The Maemillan Company; i<r
the selections by John Masefield from Poems f Complete Edition, by
John Masefield, copyright, 1913, by Haipor and Brothers, copyright,
1914, by The Century Company and by the McClure Publications,
copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by The Maemillan Company, copyright,
1915, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1935, 1940, and 11)41, by John
Masofield, from Collected Poems by John Masefiehl, copyright, 1918,
by John Masefield, and usod with the permission of The Maemillan
Company; for the selections by George Barker, from Selected Poems
by George Barker, copyright, 1941, by Tho Maemiilim Company and
used with their permission;; for the selection from Collected Poems by
James Stephens, copyright, 1926, by Tho Maemillan Company and
used with their permission; for the selection from The (fa ft of
Brightness by F. R. Hig^ms, copyright, 1940, by The Maemillan Com
pany and used with their permission; for the selections from Poems
by Ralph Hodgson, copyright, 1945, by The Maemillan Company, and
used with their permission.
HAROLD MATOONfor the four poems by C. pay Lewis.
MRS. ALIDA, MONRO for the two poems (from Collected Poems) by
Harold Monro.
FREDERICK Mum LIMITED for the selection from The, Hoy With a Cart
by Christopher Fry.
NKW DIRECTIONS- for six poems by Dylan Thomas from Selected Writ
ings by Dylan Thomas, copyright, 1946, by Now Directioiw,
QXFQRP UNIVERSITY PREKB, London for the selections by Gerard Manley
Hopkins from The, Collected Poems of (Gerard Mantey Hopkins by
permission of Oxford University Press, London.
F. T. PRiNCB-for his poem "Holdiem Bathing" from New Pnem* M44,
edited by Oscar Williams, copyright, 1944, by Oscar Williams,
KATHLEKN RAINK for two poems, from titonc and JPlmwr by Kathleen
Raino.
RANDOM HOXJSR -for the selections by W. II. Auden from (Collected
Poetry of W. H. Auden, copyright, 1945, by W, IL Auden; for iho
selections from Another Time by W. H, Audon, copyright, 15)40, by
W, IL Auden; for ilia selections by Stephen Hpender from Pocms t
copyright, 1934^ by Modern Library. Inc.; for the neluctionH fniiu
Ruvn* and VISLOHB by Stephen Spender, copyright, 1042, by Htephen
Spender; for the selections by Robert Graven from Collected Poem*
by Robert Graves, reprinted by permission of Random llouwe, Inc, ;
for the selections by Louis MacNcuu* front Poems WM ti)40, copyright,
1940, by Louis MucNoico, and from^prm^^oarc/, copyright, 1945, by
Random House,, Inc., all by permission of Random lfoue, Ine.
W. R. RODOKRH for the poems by W, tt. Hodgers from Awake! and
Other Wartime Potxms, copyright, 1942, by W. U* RotlgWH, publinhed
by Uarcourt Brace and (Company; from Ne>w Poems, 19$ t edit<d }t
Oscar Williams, copyright, 1943, by OHCOT
VI
COPYRIGHT NOTICES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ROUTLEDGE & REGAN PAUL LIMITED for the selections from Under the
Cliff by GeoUrey Gngson, Shadows of Chrysanthemums by Miss E. J.
Scovdl, The Second Man by Julian Symons, Time to Mourn by D. S.
Savage and The Collected Poems of Sidney Kcyes.
CHARLES SCUWNEU'B SONS for the elections by A. E. Housman reprinted
from My Brother, A. E, H. by Laurence Housman, copyright, 1938,
by Laurence Housman., used by pel mission of the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons.
THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS for selections by A. E, Housman by permission
of The Society ot Authors as the Literary Representative of the
Trustees of the Estate of the late A. E. Housman, and Messrs.
Jonathan Cape, Ltd., publishers of A. E, Housman's Collected Poems.
DYLAN THOMAS for five poems (exclusive of those poems acknowledged
to The Fortune Press, Ann Watkins, Inc. and New Directions) fiom
The Map of Love, published by J. M. Dent & Son, Ltd , from The
Atlantic Monthly, copyright, 1947, and copyright, 1951, by The
Atlantic Monthly Company, and from The Hudson Review, copyright,
1950 by The Hudson Review, Inc. (The poem, In the White Oiant's
Thigh, was revised in 1951 by Mr. Thomas, and appeared for the first
time m America in The Atlantic Monthly.)
MRS. HELEN THOMAS for the poems by Edward Thomas.
HENRY TBEKCB for hi two poems.
THE VIKING Pnsssfor the selections from Last Poems by D. H.
Lawrence, copyrighted, 1933, by Frieda Lawrence ; foi the selections
from Collected Poems by D. H. Lawrence, copyright, 1929, by Jona
than Cape and Harrison Hmith; for the selections from The Song of
Lazarus by Alex Comfort, copyright, 1945, by Alex Comfort; for the
selection from Finnvyans Wake by James Joyce, copyright, 1939, by
JniucH Joyce, all reprinted by permission of The Viking Press, Inc.,
New York.
VEENON WATKINH for "Music of Colours: The Blossom Scattered" from
Poetry (Chicago).
ANN WATKINH, INC. for four poems (by Dylan Thomas) from IB
Poems by Dylan Thomas, published by The Fortune Press.
A. P. WATT & SON (and Mrs. George Bambndgo and The Macmillan
Company of Canada) for the selections by Rudyard Kipling fiom
ttarrack-lioom Ballads, The Seven Seas, The Second Jungle Book and
The Five Nations ; for the poems by Robert Graves from Poems 1038-
1946 by Robert Graves, published by Creative Age Press, copyright,
1946, by Robert Graves; ior "Homage to Texas" by Robert Graves,
from The New Yorker, copyright, 1950, by The Yorker Magazine, Inc.
and from Poems and Satirett, 1 9 fit by Robert Graves.
OHCAR WILUAMH- for the poem "Klegy V" by George Barker, from New
Poems 1043 edited by Oscar Williams, copyright, 1943, by Oscar
Williams.
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR
PORTRAITS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
John Donne, from Miniature by Isaac Oliver.
Andrew Marvell, from portrait bij Adrian Hannemann in tlie
I? arena Art Gallery, Hull
Edmund Spenser, from Portrait at Pembroke College,
Richard Lovelace, from portrait at Dulwick College.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, from portrait Inj Jacob
Huysnwns in the National Portrait Gallery.
Sir Walter Ralegh, portrait in National Portrait Gallery.
John Dry den, by unknown artist, Bodleian Library.
Sir Philip Sidney, from the original by Sir. Ant. More.
William Blake, from oil painting by Phillips.
John Milton, from a print; by Faithorne.
Emily Bronte, by "Branwdl Bronte.
Robert Ilerrick, from a print by Marshall.
Christina Georgina Rosaetti, by D. G. Rowetti.
Lewis Carroll, portrait by Hcrkomer, Christ Church, Oxford
Thomas Moore, from painting In/ Sir T. Lawrence, P.R.A.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Elliott 6- Pry,
Sir W. S. Gilbert, Elliot 6* Fry.
Francis Thompson, Elliot 6- Fry.
John Clare, portrait by W. Hilton, National Portrait Gallery
Thomas Lovell Beddoes, from portrait by N. C. Branwhite,
George Meredith, photograph by J. Thomson.
William Butler Yeats from a charcoal drawing by John S
Sargent, H,A
James Stephens, Lafayette, Dublin,
John Maaefield, Gillman and Soame.
W. H. Dames, portrait by Harold Knight.
Herbert Read, photograph by Charles Leirons.
Vernon Watkins, portrait by Alfred /anew, photograph by
Tal Williams.
F. H. Iliggins, photograph by Bachrach,
Wilfred Given, from frontispiece in his first book of poems,
published by Chatto 6- Windus in 1920,
Rupert Brooke, from a photograph by Sherril Schett.
Dylan Thomas, portrait by Gene DerwoocL
Robert Bridges f photograph by Bachrach*
VIM
C ontents
See ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF AUTHORS & TITLES, 859 TO 874
INTRODUCTION xi
Part I: The Chef Poets, 1500 to 1QOO
Anonymous: Ballads ... 3 Sir John Suckling 203
Anonymous: Songs 6- William Gartright 203
Lyrics 17 Richard Crashaw 205
Sir Thomas More 31 Richard Lovelace 211
Sir Thomas Wijatt 33 Abraham Cowlcy 213
Henry Howard, Earl of Andrew Marvell 217
Surrey 35 Henry Vaughan 225
Sir Philip Sidney 38 Thomas Traherne 232
Fulke Grevilte, Lord John Dry den 238
Brooke 45 John Wilmot, Earl of
Sir Walter Ralegh 50 Rochester 247
Sir Edward Dyer 56 Matthew Prior 250
Edmund Spenser 58 John Gay 251
Thomas Lodge 65 Alexander Pope 253
Chidiock Tichborne 66 Thomas Gray 258
Robert Southwell 67 William Collins 266
Samuel Daniel 69 Christopher Smart 268
Michael Drat/ton 70 Oliver Goldsmith 272
Christopher 'Marlowe ..71 William Cowper 274
William Shakespeare ... 74 Thomas Chatterton ....276
Thomas Nashe 112 William Blake 281
Thomas Campion 112 Robert Burns 294
Sir Henry Wotton 114 William Wordsworth . . .304
Sir John Dames 115 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 328
Ben Jonson 116 Walter Savage Landor. .353
John Donne 124 Thomas Campbell 354
John Webster 150 Thomas Moore 355
Richard Corbet 151 George Gordon, Lord
George Wither 152 Byron 357
Robert Ilerrick 154 Percy Bysshe Shelley . . .368
George Herbert 159 John Clare 377
James Shirley 168 John Keats 380
Thomas Carew 169 George Darley 395
Edmund Waller 170 Thomas Hood 396
John Milton 171 William Barnes 400
IX
CONTENTS
Thomas Lovcll BcddocsAOO
Edward Pitzgcrald . . . .404
Alfred* Lord Tennyson. .416
ElizabctJi Barrett
Browning .439
Robert Browning 440
Edward Lear 451
Emily Bronte 453
Arthur Hugh Clough . . .456
Matthew Arnold 457
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. .459
Christina Georgina
Rcmctti 463
George Meredith 464
Lewis Carroll 467
James Thomson 473
William Morris 478
Sir W. S. Gilbert 480
Algernon Charles
Swinburne .486
Alice Mcijncll 495
W. E. Henley 497
Oscar Wilde 497
Francis Thompson . . . , .499
Lionel Johnson 504
Ernest Dowson ...... .506
Part II: The Chief Poets, 1QOO to 1QSO
Thomas Hardy 509
Gerard Manic}/ Hopkins . 529
Robert Bridges 550
John Davidson 561
A. E. Ihmsman 564
William Butler Yeats . . ,575
Rudyard Kipling 611
W. Jf. Dories 622
Ralph Hodgson 624
Walter deh Marc 631
Harold Monro 634
James Stephens ....... 637
James Joyce . . , 639
D. If. Lawrence 64
John Masc field 654
Rupert Brooke 667
Edwin Muir 671
Edward Thomas .676
T. S. Eliot 679
Wilfred Owen 702
Herbert Read 710
Robert Grawx . . 712
F. R. Biggins 720
SacJwverctt Sltwctt 721
Roy Campbell 728
C. Day Leivis 729
Peter Quenndl , . . 733
Geoffrey Grigson 736
William Enwwn 737
Vernon Watkins ,743
W. IL Audcn 748
Louis MacNcice 767
Christopher Fry 775
JS. /. Scovell /. 776
Kathleen Raine . , 777
Stephen Spender ..... .778
Bernard Spencer . , . , , ,784
W. H, jRw/gm- ...786
Lawrence Durrcll .... .794
Roy Fuller ... 796
Henry T recce 798
Julian Si/mons 799
F. T. Prince 800
George Barker 803
Dylan Thomas ....... .815
Henry Reed 843
John Manifold 850
D. 5, Sewage 852
Alex Comfort ..853
Sidney Keycs 854
PORTRAITS of the POETS opposite 858
INDEX of AUTHORS and TITLES 859
Introduction
To offer another anthology of British poetry when
there are so many good ones already available might
seem presumptuous if the new collection did not present
a new point of view or perform a new function. The
body of English poetry is so massive and the outlines of
its brilliant past have been made so clear by the repeated
choice and pruning of countless critics of all periods, that
new discoveries or new judgments about it cannot well
be made, It is my hope that this anthology will offer the
reader a new perspective by showing the natural cul
mination of the tradition, that is, modern British poetry,
in its organic relationship with its past
Anthologies have, for many people, a cachet of final
ity and are often read, especially by the young, in a
fashion that raises receptivity to a maximum, so that
the general air of the book seems inevitably the only
air in which poetry can breathe its life and be read. The
power of the great poems presented carries its authority
over into the plan of the book itself. Thus, for many of
us, the first important anthology which we cherished,
which made us drunk with poetry, becomes our uncon
scious criterion forever. In such a manner, The Golden
Treasury, The Oxford Book of English Verse and The
Faber Book of Modern Verse have determined, rather
than influenced, the taste of whole generations. It is
fortunate that only good anthologies have such force,
and that, on the whole, the basis of taste so established
is solid even if limited in area. But a certain injustice
is worked by the very authority which exists only be
cause it is justified. This injustice has, in the main, been
suffered by contemporary poetry, for obvious reasons,
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
such as the difficulty of anticipating the verdicts of time,
the great number of contemporary poems that would
need to be read by the editor and the fact that they are
hard to find whether in manuscript or printed in obscure
periodicals and unrecognized books, etc.
The Gold&n Treasury barred from its pages all con
temporary poetry as well as the kinds of poetry that
another taste than its editor's would certainly have in
cluded. The Oxford Book of English Verse, in its attempt
to correct this error, made so half-hearted a gesture of
welcome to 'modern' poetry that a naive reader of its
pages could get only an impression of the feebleness, in
quantitative productiveness at least, of his own time, in
contrast to the robust fecundity of the past. The editors
of other general anthologies (including the many good
ones of the last decade) also seem to have been dazzled
into a kind of paralysis by the glory of the past so that, if
they do include modern pieces at all, they include so
few, stop at so early a date and give so little space to
contemporary work that the unalerted reader receives an
impression that modern poetry is virtually non-existent,
or if it exists, almost unworthy of attention, The Paher
Book of Modern Ve.rse created an active audience for
living poets throughout the English-speaking world and
cannot be praised too highly for this feat. But there has
been no previous collection of winch 1 am aware that
has attempted to show, by giving contemporary verse
the emphasis it should have for a modern reader, its
relation to the work of the past. And just how strong
should that emphasis be?
I have arbitrarily answered this question by devoting
approximately two-fifths of the pages herein to the verso
of the past fifty years and the remaining three-fifths to
the verse of previous periods. If the sole function of an
anthology were to make long-range historical compara
tive judgments, this ratio might well seem grotesque and
XII
INTRODUCTION
biased, But there is no reason why an anthology should
offer precisely that kind of judgment, as if it were being
brought to print two centuries in the future. The future
will have its own criteria, and by them determine what
is important to it.
This anthology is being published for living readers.
We belong to a specific period of time, our own, and this
period though not yet fully understood, is fully felt, since
in it we live and bear the shocks of pain or pleasure
peculiar to it, and even bear them after emotional styles
also peculiar to ourselves and our time, and to no other.
The only poets who understand us, who articulate for us,
are the poets who live beside us in our own historical
situation. To us, once the needs of education have been
fulfilled, they should be as important as, if not more im
portant than, the poets of the past. To appreciate Dylan
Thomas it is not necessary either to deny the pre-emi
nence of Shakespeare or to forgo the pleasure of reading
him. But to Shakespeare our reading is of no importance,
to the living poet and to the continuance of the great
tradition it is of vital importance that there should be a
sensitive and aware audience* Only by appreciation of
contemporary verse can the audience participate in
maintaining the values of poetry, especially at a period
when the general public has lost almost all respect for
learning and the arts.
Hence, by devoting approximately two-fifths of this
book to modern verse I am making a judgment on func
tion, rather than a judgment on comparative quality. To
do the latter would be as impossible as absurd, since only
succeeding generations can decide what shall or shall
not live through and beyond their time. It may well be
that many poems here included will later be dropped
from the record of English literature and that the great
figures of the past will loom even larger over our chief
poets of today than we guess. But if we do not exercise
XIII
A Little Treasury of BritisJi Poetry
our privileges as an audience for the poets of today.
there will be no poets except the poets of the past in
that future*
ii
I have begun the first section of this collection, de
voted to the poetry of the past, with the period at which
the language shows itself to have definitely changed into
what we can recognize as modern English and read
without major translation or extensive glossaries. It was
the time when Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, first used
the iambic pentameter of blank verse, that fundamental
of great English poetry, in his translation of The /Eneid,
the time when the spirit of the Renaissance had finally
sxiparseded the attitudes of the Middle Ages. Sir
Thomas Wyatt and those in correspondence with him
brought the influences of Italy to English verse and it is
with their efforts that it may be said that the English
tongue became a perfectly expressive medium for the
greatness of English poetry. One of the chief figures
of the sixteenth century was Edmund Spenser, who
utilized all of the devices and insights of Europe to
create his yet characteristically and magically English
verse, Then there followed closely the massive work of
Shakespeare, and English became the richest of all poetic
media,
This first section runs to SOB pages and covers the
period from 1500 to 1900, obviously too restricted a space
to contain the full glory of English poetry over those
productive four centuries. Much of that glory is made by
poets who, while not names of the greatest magnitude,
yet have certainly contributed greatness to the tradition.
Such poets are represented by one or two poems. But*
most of the space is devoted to the chief poets; all trans
lations, except for the above mentioned &ndd by
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and The Rubdtydt by
Edward FiteGerald, are omitted; and a number of long
XIV
INTRODUCTION
poems are included in full, together with poems and
passages from plays, as well as ballads and lyrics, in
order to make this selection representative.
ni
The second section of the anthology is devoted to
modern poetry, beginning with 1900, and contains 350
pages. Here, too, I have placed emphasis upon the chief
poets and included many long poems in full, such as
'The Tower' and "Meditations in Time of Civil War' by
W. B. Yeats, 'Fragment of an Agon' and 'The Dry
Salvages' by T. S. Eliot, 'Spain' and In Memory of
Sigmund Freud' by W. H. Auden, In Country Sleep'
and *A Winter's Tale' by Dylan Thomas, etc.
A comparative examination of particular poems in
both sections of the anthology will, I think, be useful
to the reader, and, to those readers who have taken for
granted the too-often quoted, and believed, notion that
modern poetry is obscure, this inspection should be re
vealing. The most conspicuous fact about modern poetry,
and therefore, perhaps, the most over-looked, is the
similarity which it bears to the poetry of past centuries.
For the poetry of the Twentieth century, and particularly
of the last twenty years, has many more resemblances to
the poetry of the past than it has differences. If modern
poetry is obscure, it is obscure only to those to whom all
good poetry of any period is obscure, A comparison of
the following passages will show as many subtle and
'difficult' depths in the poems of the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth centuries as in those of the Twentieth:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood- dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
-W. B. Yeats
xv
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Batter my heart, three-pets on'd (Joel; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek lo mend;
That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bond
Your forces to break, blow, burn and make mo new.
I, like an nsnrpt town, to another duo,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end.
John Donne
Truly, my Satan, Ihou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Kvory harlot was a virgin once,
Nor can'st thoti ever change Kate into Nan,
Tho* thou art worshipped by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, llum art still
The son of morn in weary night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill,
-William Make
Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will his negative inversion, be prodigal;
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing tin* intolerable neural itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's (juinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
-W. IL' Audcn
T. S. Eliot's work is often considered too difficult be
cause it is loaded with classical and scholarly quotations
and references. But .surely the same accusation can be
made against Milton, for who, without a knowledge of
classical mythology, Christian theology, and the English
literature that preceded him, could understand him at
all? Dylan Thomas is perhaps more often considered
obscure and difficult than other contemporary poets. But
when we compare a passage from., for example, 'In Mem
ory of Ann Jones':
But t, Ann's bard on a raised hearth, call all
The seas to service that her wood-ton gucd virtue
Babble like a bellbuoy over the hymning heads,
Bow down the walls of the ferned and foxy woods,
XVI
INTRODUCTION
That her love sing and swing through a brown chapel,
Bless her bent spirit with four, crossing birds.
Her flesh was meek as milk, but this skyward statue
With the wild breast and blessed and giant skull
Is carved from her in a room with a wet window
In a fiercely mourning house in a crooked year.
with a passage from 'The Phoenix and the Turtle':
Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul prccurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near,
can it be rightly said that the language is less complex or
the meaning more easily understood in Shakespeare than
in Thomas? Poems do not live because their content is
confined to easy language and one simple surface mean
ing; nor are contemporary critics so incompetent or
naive as to be taken in by a hocus pocus without mean
ing. Not only is our time richly endowed with good
poetry, it has perhaps better critics than any preceding
period.
Some fundamental education is certainly required for
the satisfactory reading of any good poetry, and it is
rather evidence of its quality than of any failure that
modem poetry requires that the reader bring some
knowledge and sensibility to his reading of it. To people
who could neither read nor write, all poetry would reach
the ultimate of obscurity; for to them words would
appear as no more than mysterious marks upon the
paper. I believe that it is the education of the person
who finds modern poetry obscure which is suspect, not
the poetry itself. Poetry is, after all, literature, and to
demand that it be easily understood by the half-edu-
XVII
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
cated, or the uneducated, is equivalent to asking it to be
an art of the illiterate. Illiterature will flourish without
help; the lovers of poetry will continue to want to keep
it literature.
Contemporary poetry resembles the poetry thai has
preceded it not only in presenting those 'difficulties'
essential to express the profound and ambiguous quality
which is one of the values of poetry, but in its technical
structures as well. Modern poets make use of the whole
category of craft devices and have extended the range of
poetry in form, in phonetics, in rhythms, etc. They are
influenced more consciously and knowingly than wen*
their forebears, and influenced by predecessors from all
periods of the past. Largely because of extraordinary de
velopments in criticism, they are aware of their whole
tradition with a kind of immediacy; there is no telling by
whom or by what period a young poet of today may be
instructed. Formerly, period succeeded period with a
sort of natural and indigenous progression. It is scarcely
possible to imagine Pope spending a stimulating evening
reading Donne, Beowulf and translations from the
Chinese. Yet we can think of doing that ourselves with
no incongruity. No poet of the past, even of the recent
past, is in total disrepute; a number of poets are back in
favour. This is a development that might have boon
anticipated; as the world has been narrowed by modern
transportation, interlocking interests and wars, local cul
tural restrictions have been loosened and all areas of
reading have been opened by travel and translation.
While there may be dangers in this catholic reading
there is always the advantage that the modern poet must
set himself a high standard, since he knows just how far
and high poetry has already reached.
But no matter how many the resemblances of modern
poetry to the poetry of former times, its differences are
noticeable and various enough to make the literature of
xviu
INTRODUCTION
the Twentieth century distinctive. To make any general
ization about a period of fifty years, especially the first
fifty years of this century, might, at first view, seem im
possible, since these daring decades have included tal
ents as various as Yeats, Eliot, Graves, Auden, Thomas
and Barker. Perhaps never before have the 'generations'
of poets arisen so close upon each other's flourishing.
Group after group has appeared to change or overthrow
the standards of the preceding few years. Hardy, Yeats,
Eliot and Graves, the influence of Hopkins, the popu
larity of Auden and his group, the rise of George Barker
and Dylan Thomas, all the 'schools' which followed each
other in rapid succession, the Georgian, the Imagist,
the pinkish Marxian and the palely loitering meta
physical, etc., each creating a minor revolution, make
it seem impossible to find any general classification for
all.
Yet, probably because the same social upheaval has
been going on throughout the period, there are traits
held in common by the poets of this century, diverse as
their qualities, styles and perceptions may be.
It is safe to say that the poetry of today has an intense
verbal richness; the poets have extended their vocabu
laries to include whatever common speech or idiom,
scholarly or technical terminology they have a use for;
poetry is no longer written in the speech of 'an English
gentleman/ pastoral language or 'poetic' lingo. A kind
of telescoping of language is a frequent device which
permits a dense texture of images, words and meaning.
This splendour and freedom of vocabulary is to be found
in the work of the majority of living poets and perhaps
reaches its height in that of Dylan Thomas. That a
reaction from this verbal loading will eventually take
place is probable, but meantime it is a characteristic of
our period which we should enjoy here and now. And as
the poets handle words, so they also use a great variety
XIX
A Little Treasury of BritisJi Poetry
of insights gained from the extension of experience into
the many fields of adventure which are common to
Twentieth-century man in the midst of his travels, wars,
economic pressures, threats and social upheavals, with
new understandings of myth and depth psychology for
compass and sounding lead.
But the one characteristic that can be definitely dis
tinguished as a development common to the whole Twen
tieth century may be defined as a change of personal atti
tude. This change exhibits itself as a shift from the poet's
individual personality as the centre of observation or
feeling to a circle that includes the observation and feel
ings of other human beings of his generation, or locale
in time. It can be observed in the work of poets whose
point of view is classical as well as in the work of poets
who are thoroughly romantic. What is here meant is not
the 'socialistic* statement to be found in verse that has
been written, especially in the 'thirties, with the object
of furthering a political idea, but a genuine organic
social feeling tluit causes the poet to bo as intimately
involved in concern for others as for himself. Poets, of
course, have always expressed a concern for mankind,
but in past centuries that concern was likely to be over
the universal fate of men, such as the inevitability of
death, the shortness of youth, the imminence, in other
words, of mortality. Lyric poets sang of their own sub
jective feelings; the philosophy expressed in poems such
as Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' was
the poet's own rumination centred around his own con
victions. When a poet used the plural 'we* rather than T
he meant himself and his beloved, or his friend, or his
immediate class-kind. His attitude was definitely his
personal one.
But now, when the poet says *wc/ and also, in spite
of himself, as it were, when he says 'I,' ho is not only
speaking of himself and his immediate companions in
xx
INTRODUCTION
the situation, but of other individuals of his time, not in
the sense of 'mankind' but truly as individuals. Further,
he is not expressing his own subjective feelings alone,
but, by a new kind of osmosis, he actually feels, with the
intimate involvement of an emotion exactly as personal
as his own, to some extent as others feel, from their
situation as well as from his own.
I think that this change of attitude can he marked as
beginning in Victorian times with Matthew Arnold's
"Dover Beach.' On the surface the Ve' of the poem is
'my beloved and I/ yet the feeling of the actual 'we' is
that of all people caught in the dilemma of the time.
And yet it is not as 'mankind/ always something apart
from the poet, that Arnold feels for others. The tone of
the poem shows that others are realized as individuals.
This identical concern continues in Hardy, and it is to be
found in all the poets who follow, if they are noteworthy
at all (Wilfred Owen's true-to-type preoccupation with
the suffering of the soldiers around him has made him
the leading war poet of a war century.) The Imagists,
it may be said here, did not develop this attitude, and
although they caused some ferment in their hour, we
scarcely think of them today as important. The socially
human concern of Yeats and Eliot is too well-known to
need comment. It is of especial interest to trace this atti
tude through the fluctuations of the various styles and
influences of each decade of the century and to note that
the poets who most strongly manifest it are those who
seem to us most important. Poets as different as W. H.
Auden and George Barker yet have this common trait.
Such poems as 'Soldiers Bathing' by F. T. Prince (page
800), or 'Winter Offering' by D. S. Savage (page 852),
or almost any other which affects us as both good and
contemporaneous show the poet's modern sensitivity to
the subjective world of others as certainly as to his own.
When this attitude is expressed in language drawn from
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
the immediate environment, as in such poems as 'Nam
ing of Parts' by Henry Reed (page 846) and 'On the
Refusal to Mourn the Death of a Child, by Fire, in
London' by Thomas (page 815), we receive an imme
diate awareness of our own time which in itself should
intensify our experience of reading poetry since it gives
us participation in particulars as well as in the universals
common to the poetry of all periods.
This attitude is a gain, 1 think, since it tends to miti
gate the fault of romantic poetry, which is really that of
narrowness of perception. Instead of xittering from one
mouth, the modern romantic poet, while thoroughly in
volved with his own personality, has, whether in spite
of himself or not, a double voice that gives him some of
the quality of the classical tone.
Out of the approximately 250 poems to be found in
the modern section* of this collection, even the most
exacting reader will find, I am sure, many that will seem
to him worthy to carry on the great tradition of English
poetry, poems that have the inevitable ring of per
manence, the magic of immortality.
OSCAR WILLIAMS
Ncio "York City,
July S, 19SL
* See Editorial Note, on page 808.
xxw
I
A
Little Treasury
of
British Poetry
The Chief Poets
from 1500 to 1QOO
Anonymous: Ballads 4
SIR PATRICK SPENS
I. THE SAILING
THE king sits in Dunfermline town
Drinking the blue-red wine;
*O whare will I get a skeely skipper
To sail this new ship o' mine?'
O up and spak an eldern knight,
Sat at the king's right knee;
'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever sail'd the sea/
Our king has written a braid letter,
And seal'd it with his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.
'To Noroway , to Noroway,
To Noroway o'er the faem;
The king's daughter o' Noroway,
'Tis thou must bring her hame/
The first word that Sir Patrick read
So loud, loud laugh'd he;
The neist word that Sir Patrick read
The tear blinded his e'e.
*0 wha is this has done this deed
And tauld the king o' me,
To send us out, at this time o' year,
To sail upon the sea?
'Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,
Our ship must sail the faem;
The king's daughter o* Noroway,
? Tis we must fetch her hame/
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn
Wi' a' the speed they may;
They hue landed in Noroway
Upon a Wodensday.
II. THE RETURN
*Mak ready, mak ready, my merry men a'!
Our glide ship sails the mom/
'Now ever alack, my master dear,
I fear a deadly storm.
*I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wf the auld moon in her arm;
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear well come to harm.*
They hadna saiFd a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,
And gurly grew the sea.
The ankers brak, and the topmast lap,
It was sic a deadly storm:
And the waves came owre the broken ship
Till a* her sides were torn.
*Go fetch a web o* the silken claith,
Another o* the twine,
And wap them into our ship's side,
And let nae the sea come in/
They fetched a web (/ the silken claith,
Another o* the twine,
And they wapp'd them round that gude ship's side,
But still the sea came in.
O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords
To wet their cork-heelM shoon!
But lang or a* the play was playM
They wat their hats aboon.
ANONYMOUS: BALLADS
And mony was the feather bed
That flatter' d on the fa em;
And mony was the gude lord's son
That never mair came hame.
O lang, lang may the ladies sit,
Wf their fans into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand!
And lang, lang may the maidens sit
Wf their gowd kames in their hair,
A-waiting for their ain dear loves!
For them they'll see nae mair.
Half-owre, half-owre to Aberdour,
*Tis fifty fathoms deep;
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wf the Scots lords at his feetl
THE FALCON
Lully, lulley! lully, lulley!
The faucon hath borne my make away!
He bare him up, he bare him down,
He bare him into an orchard brown.
In that orchard there was an halle,
That was hanged with purple and pall.
And in that hall there was a bed,
It was hanged with gold sa red.
And in that bed there If th a knight,
His wound&s bleeding day and night.
At that bed's foot there Ifth a hound,
Licking the blood as it runs down.
By that bed-side kneeleth a may,
And she weepeth both night and day.
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
And at that bed's head standeth a stone,
Corpus Christi written thereon*
Lully, lulloij! lully, liilleij!
The faticon hath borne my make aioayl
THE DEMON LOVER
O WHEKK have you been, my long, long love,
This long seven years and rnair?*
*O Tin come to seek my former vows
Ye granted me before/
*O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For they will breed sad strife;
hold your tongne of your former vows,
For I am become a wife/
He turned him right and round about,
And the tear blinded his eo:
"I wad never hae trodden on Irish ground,
If it had not been for ihee.
*I might have had a king's daughter,
Far, far beyond the sea;
1 might have had a king's daughter,
Had it not been for love o* thee/
*If ye might have had a king's daughter,
Yer sel ye had to blame;
Ye might have had taken the king's daughter,
For ye kend l that I was nane. 2
*If I was to leave my husband clear,
And my two babes also,
what have you to take me to,
If with you I should go?*
*I hae seven ships upon the sea
The eighth brought me to land
1 knew * now?
6
ANONYMOUS: BALLADS
With four-and-twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand/
She has taken up her two little babes,
Kissed them baith 8 cheek and chin:
*O fair ye weel, my ain 4 two babes,
For 111 never see you again/
She set her foot upon the ship,
No mariners could she behold;
But the sails were o' the taffetie,
And the masts o' the beaten gold.
She had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When dismal grew his countenance,
And drumlie 5 grew his ee.
They had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
Until she espied his cloven foot,
And she wept right bitterlie.
*O hold your tongue of your weeping/ says he,
'Of your weeping now let me be;
I will shew you how the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy/
*O what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills,
That the sun shines sweetly on?*
'O yon are the hills of heaven/ he said,
'Where you will never win/
'O whaten a mountain is yon/ she said,
'All so dreary wi* frost and snow?*
*O yon is the mountain of hell/ he cried,
* Where you and I will go/
He strack the tap-mast wi' his hand,
The fore-mast wf his knee,
And he brake that gallant ship in twain,
And sank her in the sea.
4 own 5 dark
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
LORD RANDAL
X) WUKKK ha' you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha' you been, my handsome young man?"
*I ha' been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weaned wf huntin, and fain wad He down/
'And wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
An wha met you there, my handsome young man?*
*O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak rny bed soon,
For I'm wearied wf huntin, and fain wad lie down/
'And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son?
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?*
"Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak rny bed soon,
For I'm wearied wf huntin, and fain wad lie clown/
*And wha gat your leavins, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha gat your leavins, my handsome young man?'
"My hawks and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wf huntin, and fain wad lie down/
'And what beeam of them, Lord Randal, my son?
And what bocam of them, my handsome young man?"
'They swelled and they died; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wf huntin, and fain wad lie clown/
*O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!
I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man!"
*O yes, J am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon,
For Tm sick at the heart, and 1 fain wad lie down/
'What cF ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d* ye leave to your mother, my handsome young
man?'
Tour and twenty milk kye; mother, mak my bod soon.
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down/
'What <V ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal, my son?
What d'ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man?"
*My gold and my silver; mother, mak my bed soon,
For Fin sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down/
8
ANONYMOUS: BALLADS
'What cT ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d' ye leave to your brother, my handsome young
man?*
'My houses and my lands; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down/
"What d' ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?
What d' ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young
man?'
*I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down/
EDWARD, EDWARD
WHY does your brand sae drop wf blude,
Edward, Edward?
Why does your brand sae drop wf blude,
And why sae sad gang ye, O?'
'O I hae kill'd my hawk sae gude,
Mither, mither;
O I hae kill'd my hawk sae gude,
And I had nae mair but he, O/
'Your hawk's blude was never sae red,
Edward, Edward;
Your hawk's blude was never sae red,
My dear son, I tell thee, O/
'O 1 hae kilFd my red-roan steed,
Mither, mither;
O I hae kill'd my red-roan steed,
That erst was sae fair and free, O/
'Your steed was auld, and ye hae got mair,
Edward, Edward;
Your steed was auld, and ye hae got mair;
Some other dule ye dree, O/
'O I hae kill'd my father dear,
Mither, mither;
O I hae kuTd my father dear,
Alas, and wae is me, O!'
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
*Ancl what ten penance will ye dree for that,
Edward, Edward?
Whattcn penance will ye dree lor that?
My dear son, now tell me, O/
Til set my feet in yonder boat,
Mither, mither;
I'll sot my feet in yonder boat,
And ill fare over the sea, ()/
*And what will ye do wi* your tow'rs and your ha',
Edward, Edward?
And what will ye do wi' your tow'rs and your ha",
That were sae fair to see, O?*~
Til let them stand till they cloun fa',
Mither, mither;
I'll let them stand till they doun fa',
For here never mair maun I be, ()/
'And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife,
Edward, Edward?
And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife,
When ye gang owre the sea, O?*
"The warkfs room: let them beg through life,
Mither, mither;
The warld's room: let them beg through life;
For them never mair will I see, ().'
*And what will ye leave to your am mither dear,
Edward, Edward?
And what will ye leave to your ain mither dour,
My dear son, now tell me, O?*~-
*The curse of hell frae me sail ye bear,
Mither, mither;
The curse of hell frae rne sail ye bear:
Sie counsels ye gave to me, OF
HELEN OF KIRCONNELL
I WISH I were where Helen lies,
Night and day on me she cries;
10
ANONYMOUS: BALLADS
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirconnell lea!
Curst be the heart that thought the thought,
And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succour me!
think na ye my heart was sair,
When my Love dropp'd and spak nae mair!
There did she swoon wf meikle care,
On fair Kirconnell lea.
As I went down the water side,
None but my foe to be my guide,
None but my foe to be my guide,
On fair Kirconnell lea;
1 lighted down my sword to draw,
I hacked him in pieces sma',
I hacked him in pieces sma*,
For her sake that died for me.
O Helen fair, beyond compare!
Ill mak a garland o' thy hair,
Shall bind my heart for evermair,
Until the day I die!
O that I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
Out of my bed she bids me rise,
Says, 'Haste, and come to me!*
Helen fair! O Helen chaste!
If I were with thee, I'd be blest,
Where thou lies low and taks thy rest,
On fair Kirconnell lea.
1 wish my grave were growing green,
A winding-sheet drawn owre my e'en,
And I in Helen's arms lying,
On fair Kirconnell lea.
13
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and clay on me she cries;
And 1 am weary of the skies,
For her sake that died for me.
BONNY BARBARA ALLAN
IT WAS in and about the Martinmas time,
When the green leaves were a falling,
That Sir John Graeme, in the West Country,
Fell in love with Barbara Allan.
He sent his man down through the town,
To the place where she was dwelling:
*O haste and come to my master dear,
Gin ye be Barbara Allan/
O hooly, hooly rose she tip,
To the place where he was lying,
And when she drew the curtain by,
Toting man, I think youVe dying. 1
*O it's Tin sick, and very, very sick,
And 'tis a" for Barbara Allan;*
*O the better for me ye \s never be,
Tho your heart's blood were a spilling/
*O clirnui ye mind, young man/ said she,
'When ye was in the tavern a drinking,
That ye made the healths gae round and round,
And slighted Barbara Allan?"
He turned his face unto the wall,
And death was with him dealing:
'Adieu, adieu, my dear friends all"
And be kind to Barbara Allan/
And slowly, slowly raise she up,
And slowly, slowly left him,
And sighing said, she could not stay,
Since death of life had reft him,
12
ANONYMOUS; BALLADS
She had not gane a mile but twa,
When she heard the dead-bell ringing,
And every jow that the dead-bell gied,
It cry'd, 4 Woe to Barbara Allan!'
"O Mother, mother, make my bedl
make it saft and narrow!
Since my love died for me to-day,
111 die for him to-morrow.'
THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL
THERE lived a wife at Usher's Well,
And a wealthy wife was she;
She had thiee stout and stalwart sons,
And sent them o'er the sea.
They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
Whan word came to the carline 1 wife
That her three sons were gane.
They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely three,
Whan word came to the carline wife
That her sons she'd never see.
*I wish the wind may never cease,
Nor fashes 2 in the flood,
Till my three sons come hame to me,
In earthly flesh and blood/
It fell about the Martinmas,
When nights are lang and mirk,
The carline wife's three sons came home,
And their hats were o the birk. 3
It neither grew in syke 4 nor ditch,
Nor yet in ony sheugh; 5
But at the gates o' Paradise,
That birk grew fair eneugh.
1 peasant 2 troubles 3 birch 4 trench s furrow
13
A Little Treasury of Britisli Poetry
*Blow up the fire, my maidens,
Bring water from the well;
For a* <J my house shall feast this night,
Since my three sons are well/
And she has made to them a heel,
She's made it large and wide,
And she's taen her mantle her about,
Sat down at the bed-side.
Up then crew the red, red cock,
And np and crew the gray;
The eldest to the youngest said,
* *T is time we were away.'
The cock he haclna crawd but once,
And clappd his wings at a',
When the youngest to the oldest said,
'Brother, we must awa.
*The cock doth craw, the clay doth daw,
The eharmerin 7 worm cloth chide;
Gin we be mist out o our place,
A sair pain we maun bide.
Tare ye wed, my mother dear!
Farowcel to barn and byre! H
And fare ye wool, the bonny lass
That kindles my mother's fire!"
THOMAS THE RHYMER
TRXTK Thomas lay on Huntlic bank;
A ferlie l he spied wf his c'e;
And there he saw a ladye bright
Come riding cloun by Eilclon Tree.
Her skirt was o* the grass-green silk,
Her mantle o* the velvet fyne;
At ilka tctt o* her horse's mane
Hung fifty siller bells and nine.
all 7 dtnumrinff
14
ANONYMOUS: BALLADS
True Thomas he pu'd aff his cap,
And louted low doun on his knee:
"Hail to thee, Mary, Queen of Heaven!
For thy peer on earth could never be.'
'O no, O no, Thomas/ she said,
'That name does not belang to me;
I'm but the Queen o ? fair Elfiand,
That am hither come to visit thee.
'Harp and carp, Thomas/ she said;
'Harp and carp along wf me;
And if ye dare to kiss my lips,
Sure of your bodie I will be/
'Betide me weal, betide me woe,
That weird shall never daunten me/
Syne he has kissed her rosy lips,
All underneath the Eildon Tree.
'Now ye maun go wT me,' she said,
'True Thomas, ye maun go wf me;
And ye maun serve me seven years,
Thro' weal or woe as may chance to be/
She's mounted on her milk-white steed,
She's ta'en true Thomas up behind;
And aye, whene'er her bridle rang,
The steed gaed swifter than the wind.
O they rade on, and farther on,
The steed gaed swifter than the wind;
Until they reached a desert wide,
And living land was left behind.
'Light down, light down now, true Thomas,
And lean your head upon my knee;
Abide ye here a little space,
And I will show you ferlies three.
'O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wf thorns and briars?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it bxit few inquires.
15
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
"And see yc not yon braid, braid road.
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.
'And see ye not yon bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where them and 1 this night maun gae,
'But, Thomas, ye sail haud your tongue,
Whatever ye may hear or see;
For speak ye word in Elfyn-land,
Ye'll ne'er win back to your ain couutrie/
they rude on, and farther on,
And they waded rivers abxme the knee;
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.
It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae starlight,
They waded thro' red blude to the knee;
For a* the blude that's shed on the earth
Bins through the springs o" that eoxmtrie.
Syne they came to a garden green.
And she pu'cl an apple frae a tree;
'Take this for thy wages, true Thomas;
It will give thee the tongue that can never Ice/
*My tongue is my ain/ true Thomas he said;
*A middy gift ye wad gie to me!
1 neither dought to buy or sell
At fair or tryst where 1 might be,
*I dought neither speak to prince or peer,
Nor ask of grace from fair laclye!'
*Now hand thy peace, Thomas/ she said.
'For as I say, so must it be/
He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
And a pair o* shoon of the velvet green;
And till seven years were gune and past,
True Thomas on earth was never seen.
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Anonymous: Songs & Lyrics
I SING OF A MAIDEN
I SING of a maiden
That is makeles;
King of all kings
To her son she ches.
He came al so still
There his mother was,
As dew in April
That falleth on the grass.
He came al so still
To his mother's hour,
As dew in April
That falleth on the flour.
He came al so still
There his mother lay,
As dew in April
That falleth on the spray.
Mother and maiden
Was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
Goddes mother be.
THE BAILEY BEARETH THE
BELL AWAY
THE maidens came
When I was in my mother's bower,
I had all that I would.
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
The silver is white, red is the gold;
The robes they lay in fold.
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
And through the glass window shines the sun.
How should I love, and I so young?
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
A Little Treasury of BritisJi Poetry
O WESTERN WIND
O WESTERN wind, when wilt thou blow.
That the small rain clown can rain?
Christ, that my love wore in my arms
And I in my bed again!
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH
CHAMBER age and youth cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasanee, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and age is tame,
Age, I do abhor thcc; youth, I do adore thee;
O, my love, my love is young!
Age, 1 do defy thee: O, sweet shepherd, hie thee.
For rnethinks thou stay'st too long.
[Attributed to WILLIAM HIUKUHI'KUU:!
I SAW MY LADY WEEP
1 SAW my lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so
In those fair eyes where all perfections keep*
Her face was full of woe,
But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts.
Sorrow was there made fair,
And Passion wise; Tears a delightful thing;
Silence beyond all speech,, a wisdom rare;
She made her sighs to sing,
And all things with so sweet a sadness move
As made my heart at once both grieve and love.
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ANONYMOUS: SONGS & LYRICS
O fairer than aught else
The world can show, leave off in time to grieve.
Enough, enough; your joyful look excels:
Tears kill the heart, believe.
O strive not to be excellent in woe,
Which only breeds your beauty's overthrow.
FINjE KNACKS FOR LADIES
s
FINE knacks for ladies, cheap choice, brave and new.
Good pennyworthsbut money cannot move:
I keep a fair but for the Fair to view,
A beggar may be liberal of love.
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true,
The heart is true.
Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again,
My trifles come as treasures from my mind;
It is a precious jewel to be plain;
Sometimes in shell the orient's pearls we find:
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain!
Of me a grain.
Within this pack pins, points, laces, and gloves,
And divers toys fitting a country fair,
But my heart, wherein duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, court's brood, a heavenly pair-
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes!
Of no removes!
MY LOVE IN HER ATTIRE
MY LOVE in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season, she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer.
No beauty she doth miss,
When all her robes are on:
But Beauty's self she is,
When all her robes are gone.
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
AS I SAT UNDER A SYCAMORE TREE
As I SAT under a sycamore tree,
A sycamore tree, a sycamore tree,
I looked me out trpou the sea
On Christ's Sunday at mom.
I saw three ships a-sailing there,
A-sailing there, a-sailing there,
Jesu, Mary and Joseph they bare
On Christ's Sunday at morn.
Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,
Mary did sing., Mary did sing,
And all the bells on earth did ring
For joy our Lord was born.
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
To Bethlehem, to Bethlehem;
St. Michael was the statesman,
St. John sate in the horn.
And all the bells on earth did ring,
On earth did ring, on earth did ring:
Welcome be thou Heaven's King,
On Christ's Sunday at mornl'
GOD REST YOU MERRY, GENTLEMEN
Goo rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jest is Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan's power
When we wore gone astray,
O tidings of comfort and joy!
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,,
Was born on Christinas Day,
In Bethlehem, in Jewry,
This blesscM babe was born,
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ANONYMOUS: SONGS & LYRICS
And laid within a manger,
Upon this blessed morn;
The which His mother, Mary,
Nothing did take in scorn.
From God, our Heavenly Father,
A blessed angel came;
And unto certain shepherds
Brought tidings o the same:
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name.
Tear not/ then said the angel,
"Let nothing you affright,
This day is born a Saviour
Of virtue, power and might,
So frequently to vanquish all
The friends of Satan quite/
The shepherds at those tidings
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a feeding
In tempest, storm and wind,
And went to Bethlehem straightway,
This blessed babe to find.
But when to Bethlehem they came,
Whereat this infant lay,
They found Him in a manger,
Where oxen feed on hay,
His mother Mary kneeling
Unto the Lord did pray.
Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All others doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy!
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas Day.
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
THE FIRST NOWELL
THE first Nowell the angels did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay,
In fields where they lay keeping their sheep,
On a eold winter's night that was so deep.
Nowell, No well, Nowell, Nowell,
Born is the King of Israel.
They looked up and saw a star
Shining in the East beyond them far,
And to the earth it gave great light,
And so it continued both clay and night.
Nowell &c.
And by the light of that same star
Three wise men came from country far;
To seek for a King was their intent
And to follow the star wherever it went.
Nowell &c.
The star drew nigh to the north-west,
O'er Bethlehem it took its rest,
And then it did both slop and stay
Right over the place where Jesus lay.
Nowell &c
Then entered in those wise men three*
Most reverently upon their knee,
And offered there in His presence
Their gold and myrrh ancl frankincense.
Nowell &e.
Then let us all with one accord
Sing praises to our heavenly Lord,
That hath made heaven and earth of naught,
And with His blood mankind hath bought,
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, Nowell,
Born is the King of Israel,
ANONYMOUS: SONGS & LYBICS
LOVE NOT ME
LOVE not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part:
No, nor for a constant heart!
For these may fail or turn to ill:
So thou and I shall sever.
Keep therefore a true woman's eye,
And love me still, but know not why!
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever.
SINCE FIRST I SAW YOUR FACE
SINCE first I saw your face I resolved to honour and
renown ye;
Tf now I be disdained I wish my heart had never known
ye.
What? I that loved and you that liked, shall we begin
to wrangle?
No, no, no, my heart is fast, and cannot disentangle.
If I admire or praise you too much, that fault you may
forgive me;
Or if my hands had stray'd but a touch, then justly might
you leave me.
I ask d you leave, you bade me love; is 't now a time to
chide me?
No, no, no, 111 love you still what fortune e'er betide me.
The Sun, whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no
beholder,
And your sweet beauty past compare made my poor
eyes the bolder:
Where beauty moves and wit delights and signs of kind
ness bind me,
There, O there, where'er I go Til leave my heart behind
me!
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
DEVOTION
FAIN would I change that note
To which fond Love hath eharm'd me
Long, long to sing by rote,
Fancying that that harm'd me:
Yet when this thought cloth conic,
"Love is the perfect sum
Of all delight/
I have no other choice
Either for pen or voice
To sing or write.
Love! they wrong thee much
That say thy sweet is bitter,
When thy rich fruit is such
As nothing can be sweeter.
Fair house of joy and bliss,
Where truest pleasure is,
1 do adore thee:
1 know thee what tliou art,
I serve thee with my heart,
And fall before thee.
THERE IS A LADY SWEET AND KIND
THKUK is a Lady swool and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
1 did but see her passing by,
And yet J love her till I, die.
Her gesture, motion, and her smiles,
Her wit her voice my heart beguiles,
Beguiles my heart, f know not why,
And yet 1 love her till 1 die
Cupid is winged and doth range,
Her country so my love cloth change;
But change she earth, or change she sky,
Yet will I love hor till I die.
4
ANONYMOUS: SONGS & LYHICS
BACK AND SIDE GO BARE,
GO BARE
Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both hand and foot go cold;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.
I cannot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good;
But sure I think that I can drink
With him that wears a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I am nothing a-cold;
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side, etc.
I love no roast but a nutbrown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire;
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire.
No frost nor snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if it would,
I am so wrapt and throughly lapt
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side, etc.
And Tib my wife, that as her life
Loveth well good ale to seek,
Full oft drinks she, till ye may see
The tears run down her cheek;
Then doth she trowl to me the bowl
Even as a maltworm should,
And saith, 'Sweetheart, I have take my part
Of this jolly good ale and old.'
Back and side, etc.
Now let them drink till they nod and wink,
Even as good fellows should do;
6 25
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
They shall not miss to have the bliss
Good ale cloth bring men to.
And all poor souls that have scoured bowls,
Or have them lustily t row-led,
God save the lives of them and their wives,
Whether they be young or old.
Back and dele, etc.
THE SEA HATH MANY THOUSAND
SANDS
THE sea hath many thousand sands,
The sky hath motes as many;
The sky is full of stars, and love
As full of woes as any:
Believe me, that do know the elf,
And make no trial by thyself.
It is in truth a pretty toy
For babes to play withal;
But O the honies of our youth
Are oft our age's gall!
Self-proof in time; will make thec know
He was a prophet told thee so:
A prophet that, Cassandra-like,
Tells truth without belief;
For headstrong youth will run his race,
Although his goal be grief:
Love's martyr, when his heat is past;
Proves Care's confessor at the last.
TOM O'' BEDLAM'S SONG
FBOM the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands by the naked man
In the book of moons, defend vc\
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ANONYMOUS: SONGS & LYRICS
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from yourselves with Tom,
Abroad to beg your bacon.
While I do sing: Any food.,
Any feeding, drink, or clothing?
Come, dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged,
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly caged
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips, ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.
And now I sing: Any food, etc.
With a thought I took for Maudlin,
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stripped me naked.
And now I sing: Any food, etc.
When I short have shorn my sour-face,
And swigged my horny barrel,
In an oaken inn I pound my skin,
As a suit of gilt apparel.
The moon's my constant mistress,
And the lowly owl my morrow;
The flaming drake and the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow.
While I do sing: Any food, etc.
27
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
The palsy plagues my pulses,
When 1 prig your pigs or pullen,
Your culvers take, or matchless make
Your chanticleer or sullen.
When I want provanl, with Humphry
I sup, and when benighted,
I repose in Powles with waking souls,
Yet never am affrighted.
But I do sing: Any food, etc.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping,
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping,
The moon embrace her shepherd,
And the queen of love her warrior,
While the first doth horn the star of morn.
And the next the heavenly Farrier.
While I do sing: Any food, etc.
The gipsy Snap and Pedro
Are none of Tom's comrudoes.
The punk I scorn, and the cutpnrso sworn,
And the roaring boys* bravadoes*
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle, touch, and spare not;
But those that cross Tom Rhinoceros
Do what the panther dare not.
Although I sing: Any food,, etc.
With an host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
To the wilderness t wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end,
Methmks it is no journey.
Yet ttiill I sing: Any food, etc.
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ANONYMOUS: SONGS & LYRICS
LONDON BELLS
GAY go up, and gay go
down,
To ring the bells of Lon
don town.
Bull's eyes and targets,
Say the bells of St. Marg'-
refs.
Brickbats and tiles,
Say the bells of St. Giles'.
Say the slow bells at Aid-
gate.
Maids in white aprons,
Say the bells of St. Cath'-
rine's.
Pokers and tongs,
Say the bells at St. John's.
Kettles and pans,
Say the bells at St. Ann's.
Halfpence and farthings, You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Mar- Say the bells at St. Helen's.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells at Old Bailey.
tin's.
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Cle
ment's.
Pancakes and fritters,
Say the bells of St. Peter's.
Two sticks and an apple,
Say the bells at White-
chapel.
Old Father Baldpate,
When I grow rich,
Say the bells at Fleetditch.
When will that be?
Say the bells at Stepney.
I am sure I don't know
Says the great bell at Bow.
When I am old,
Say the bells at St. Paul's.
Here comes a caudle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
FOGGY, FOGGY DEW
WHEN I was a bachelor, I lived by myself
And I worked at the weaver's trade;
The only, only thing that I ever did wrong
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Was to woo a fair young maid.
1 wooed her in the winter time,
And in the summer too;
And the only, only thing that I ever did wrong
Was to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew,
One night she came to my bedside
Where I lay fast asleep;
She laid her head upon my bed,
And then began to weep.
She sighed, she cried, she damn near died,
She saicl-'What shall E clo?'-
So I hauled her into bed and I covered up her head,
Just to save her from the foggy, foggy clew.
Oh, I am a bachelor, 1 live with my son,
And we work at the weaver's trade*;
And every, every time that I look into his eyes,
He reminds me of that maid.
Fie reminds me of the winter time,
And of the summer too;
And the many, many times that I hold her in my arms,
Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy clow.
BROOM, GREEN BROOM
THEKK was an old man and he lived in a wood,
And his trade it was making of broom, of broom,
And he had a naughty boy, Jack, to his son.
And he lay in bed till 'twas noon, 'twas noon,
And he lay in bed till 'twas noon.
The father was vext and sorely perplext,
With passion he enters the room, the room,
*Come, sirrah/ lie cried, Til leather your hide,
If you will not go gather green broom, green broom,
If you will not go gather green broom/
Mastor Jack being sly, he got up by and bye,
And went into the town to ery, "Broom, green broom/
30
SIR THOMAS MORE
So loud did he call, and so loudly did bawl,
'Pretty maids, do you want any broom, green broom?
Pretty maids, do you want any broom? 7
A lady looked out of her lattice so high,
And spied Jack a-selling of broom, green broom,
Says she, 'You young blade, won't you give up your trade,
And marry a maid in full bloom, full bloom?
And marry a maid in full bloom?'
So they sent for the parson without more delay,
And married they were in the room, the room,
There was eating and drink, and says Jack, with a wink,
"This is better than cutting of broom, green broom,
This is better than cutting of broom/
Sir Thomas More
A RUEFUL LAMENTATION ON
THE DEATH OF
QUEEN ELIZABETH
O YE that put your trust and confidence
In worldly joy and frail prosperity,
That so live here as ye should never hence,
Remember death and look here upon me.
Ensample I think there may no better be.
Your self wot well that in this realm was I
Your queen but late, and lo now here I lie.
Was I not born of old worthy lineage?
Was not my mother queen, my father king?
Was I not a king's fere in marriage?
Had I not plenty of every pleasant thing?
Merciful God, this is a strange reckoning:
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Riches, honour, wealth and ancestry,
Hath me forsaken, and lo now here J lie.
If worship might have kept me, I had not gone.
If wit might Irave me saved, I needed not fear.
If money might have helped, I lacked none.
But O good God what availeth all this gear?
When death is come, thy mighty messenger,
Obey we must, there is no remedy;
Mo hath he summoned, and lo now here I lie*
Yet was I late promised otherwise,
This year to live in wealth and deliee,
Lo whereto cometh thy blandishing promise,
O false astrology and divinatriee,
Of God's secrets making thy self so wise?
3 low true is for this year thy prophecy!
The year yet lasteth, and lo now here J lie.
O brittle wealth, aye full of bitterness,
Thy single pleasure doubled is with pain*
Account my sorrow first and my distress,
In sundry wise, and reckon there again
The joy that 1 have had, and dare sayn,
For all my honour, endured yet have I
More woe than wealth, and lo now hero I lie.
Where are our castles now, where are our towers?
Goodly Richmond, soon art them gone from me;
At Westminster that costly work of yours,
Mine own dear lord, now shall I never see.
Almighty God vouchsafe to grant that ye
For you and your children well may edify,
My palace buiklecl is 3 and lo now here- I lie.
32
Sir Thomas Wyatt
THEY FLEE FROM ME
THEY flee from me, that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That some time they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once, in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewith all sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said: 'Dear heart, how like you this?'
It was no dream: I lay broad waking
But all is turned now through my gentleness,
Into a bitter fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness:
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served,
I fain would know what she hath deserved.
FAREWELL, LOVE
FAREWELL, Love, and all thy laws for ever:
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore,
To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did persevere,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store,
And scape forth, since liberty is liever,
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A JMtlo Treasury of British Poetry
Therefore farewell, go trouble younger hearts.
And in me claim no more authority:
With idle youth go use thy property,
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts.
For, hitherto tho* IVe lost all my time,
Me lusteth no longer rotten houghs to climb.
I FIND NO PEACE
I FIND no peace, and all my war is done,
I fear, and hope. I burn, and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise.
And naught I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor loeketh holdeth me in prison,
And holdeth me not, yet ean I, scape nowise;
Nor let te til me live nor die at my devise,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen J see, and without tongue I plain:
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health:
I love another, and thus 1 hate myself:
I feed me in sorrow, and laugh at all my pain.
Likewise clispleaselh me both death and life,
And my delight is causer of this strife.
MY GALLEY
MY galley charged with forget fulness
Through sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
Tween rock and rook, and eke mine enemy alas,
That is my lord, steereth with eruelness,
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a ease,
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a eloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the wearied cords great hinderaunee;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignonumee
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me comfort,
And I remain despairing of the
84
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
HOW NO AGE IS CONTENT
LAID in my quiet bed, in study as I were,
I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts
appear.
And every thought did shew so lively in mine eyes,
That now I sighed, and then I smiled, as cause of
thought did rise.
I saw the little boy in thought, how oft that he
Did wish of God to scape the rod, a tall young man to be.
The young man eke that feels his bones with pains
opprest,
How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest.
The rich old man that sees his end draw on so sore,
How he would be a boy again, to live so much the more.
Whereat full oft I smiled, to see how all these three,
From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and
change degree.
And musing thus I think, the case is very strange,
That man from wealth, to live in woe, doth ever seek to
change.
Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my withered skin,
How it doth show my dented chews, the flesh was worn
so thin.
And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way,
That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me say;
'Thy white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age,
That shew, like lines of true belief, that this life doth
assuage;
Bid thee lay hand, and feel them hanging on thy chin;
The which do write two ages past, the third now com
ing in.
Hang up therefore the bit of thy young wanton time:
And thou that therein beaten art, the happiest life
define.'
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Whereat I sighed, and said: 'Farewell! rny wonted joy;
Truss up thy pack, and trudge from me to every little
boy;
And tell them thus from me; their time most happy is,
If, to their time, they reason had, to know the truth of
this/
DESCRIPTION OF SPRING
THE sweet season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale.
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes float with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings; 1
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs!
TRANSLATION from VIRGIL'S JENEID
THEY whisted all, with fixed face attent,
When prince Aeneas from the royal scat
Thus gan to speak. O Queen, it is thy will
I should renew a woe cannot be told,
How that the Greeks did spoil and overthrow
The Phrygian wealth and wailful realm of Troy,
Those ruthful things that I myself beheld,
And whereof no small part fell to my share:
Which to express, who could refrain from tears?
What Myrmidon? or yet what Dolopes?
What stern Ulysses' wag&d soldiar?
1 bethinks herself of
36
HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY
And lo, moist night now from the welkin falls,
And stars declining counsel us to rest,
But since so great is thy delight to hear
Of our mishaps and Troyes last decay,
Though to record the same my mind abhors
And plaint eschews, yet thus will I begin.
The Greeks' chieftains, all irked with the war
Wherein they wasted had so many years
And oft repulst by fatal destiny,
By the divine science of Minerva
A huge horse made, high raised like a hill,
For their return a feigned sacrifice:
The fame whereof so wandered it at point.
Of cloven fir compacted were his ribs:
In the dark bulk they closed bodies of men
Chosen by lot, and did enstuff by stealth
The hollow womb with armed soldiars.
There stands in sight an isle, hight Tenedon,
Rich, and of fame, while Priam's kingdom stood;
Now but a bay, and road unsure for ship.
Hither them secretly the Greeks withdrew,
Shrouding themselves under the desert shore.
And, weening we they had been fled and gone
And with that wind had fet the land of Greece,
Troye discharged her long continued dole.
The gates cast up, we issued out to play,
The Greekish camp desirous to behold,
The places void, and the forsaken coasts.
Here Pyrrhus' band; there fierce Achilles pight;
Here rode their ships; there did their battles join.
Astonied, some the scatheful gift beheld,
Behight by vow unto the chaste Minerve,
All wondering at the hugeness of the horse.
The first of all Timoetes gan advise
Within the walls to lead and draw the same,
And place it eke amid the palace court:
Whether of guile, or Troyes fate it would.
Capys, with some of judgment more discreet,
WilFd it to drown, or underset with flam
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The suspect present of the Greeks' deceit,
Or bore and gauge the hollow caves uncouth:
So diverse ran the giddy people's mind.
Lo, foremost of a rout that followed him,
Kindled Laocoon hasted from the tower,
Crying far off: "O wretched citizens!
What so great kind of frenzy fretteth you?
Deem ye the Greeks our enemies to be gone?
Or any Greekish gifts can you suppose
Devoid of guile? Is so Ulysses known?
Either the Greeks are in this timber hid,
Or this an engine is to annoy our walls,
To view our towers, and overwhelm our town.
Here lurks some craft. Good Troyans, give no trust
Unto this horse, for whatsoever it be,
I dread the Greeks yea, when they offer gifts!*
And with that word, with all his force a dart
He lanced then into that crooked womb
Which trembling stuck, and shook within the side:
Wherewith the caves gan hollowly resound.
And, but for Fates, and for our blind forecast
The Greeks* device and guile had he descried:
Troy yet had stood, and Priam's towers so high.
(From Tho Second Book of V trait' x sMitci'
Sir Philip Sidney
DESIRE
THOU blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare,
Fond Fancy's scurn and dregs of scattered thought,
Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care,
Thou web of will whose end is never wrought;
Desire! desire, I have too dearly bought
With price of mangled mind thy worthless ware;
Too long, too long asleep thou hast me brought,
Who should my mind to higher things prepare.
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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought,
In vain thou mad'st me to vain things aspire,
In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire.
For virtue hath this better lesson taught,
Within myself to seek my only hire,
Desiring nought but how to kill desire.
LOVING IN TRUTH
LOVING in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her
know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned
brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my
throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write.
THE HIGHWAY
HIGHWAY, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber-melody,
Now blessed you bear onward blessed me
To her, where I my heart, safe-left, shall meet;
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully;
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed;
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By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot;
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed;
And that you know I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss!
LEAVE ME, O LOVE
LEAVE me, O Love, which readiest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things.
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might,
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedom be,
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide
In this small course which birth draws out to death,
And think how evil becometh him to slide
Who seeketh heav'n, and comes of heav'nly breath.
Then, farewell world! thy uttermost I see;
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.
THE DELIGHT OF SOLITARINESS
O SWEET woods, the delight of solitariness!
O how much I do like your solitariness!
Where man's mind ham a freed consideration,
Of goodness, to receive lovely direction;
Where senses do behold th" order of hcav'nly host,
And wise thoughts do behold what the creator is:
Contemplation here holdeth his only seat,
Bounded with no limits, born with a wing of hope,
Climbs even unto the stars, nature is under it;
Nought disturbs thy quiet, all to thy service yields;
Each sight draws on a thought, thought, mother of
science;
Sweet birds kindly do grant harmony unto tliec;
40
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
Fair trees' shade is enough fortification,
Nor danger to thy self, if be not in thy self.
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness!
O how much I do like your solitariness!
Here nor treason is hid, veiled in innocence,
Nor envy's snaky eye, finds harbour here,
Nor flatterers' venomous insinuations,
Nor cunning humorists' puddled opinions,
Nor courteous ruin of proffered usury,
Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance,
Nor causeless duty, nor comber of arrogance,
Nor trifling title of vanity dazzle th us,
Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise;
Here wrong's name is unheard, slander a monster is;
Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt:
What man grafts in a tree, dissimulation?
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness!
O how well I do like your solitariness!
Yet, dear soil, if a soul closed in a mansion
As sweet as violets, fair as a lily is,
Straight as a cedar, a voice stains the canary-bird's,
Whose shade safety doth hold, danger avoideth her:
Such wisdom, that in her lives speculation:
Such goodness, that in her simplicity triumphs;
Where envy's snaky eye winketh or else dieth,
Slander wants a pretext, flattery gone beyond:
Oh, if such a one have bent to a lonely life
Her steps, glad we receive, glad we receive her eyes:
And think not she doth hurt our solitariness,
For such company decks such solitariness.
THE NIGHTINGALE
THE nightingale, as soon as April bringeth
Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth.
Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making,
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And mournfully bewailing,
Her throat in tunes expresseth
What grief her breast oppresseth
For Tereus* force on her chaste will prevailing.
O Philomela fair, O take some gladness,
That here is juster cause of plain tful sadness;
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.
Alas, she hath no other cause of anguish
But Tereus* love, on her by strong hand wroken,
Wherein she sufFring, all her spirits languish,
Full womanlike complains her will was broken.
But I, who, daily craving,
Cannot have to content me,
Have more cause to lament me,
Since wanting is more woe than too much having.
O Philomela fair, O take some gladness,
That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.
HEART EXCHANGE
MY true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his, because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For, as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still rae-thought in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt in this change sought our bliss:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.
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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
DOUBLE SESTINE
STREPHON
You goat-herd Gods, that love the grassy mountains,
You nymphs that haunt the springs in pleasant valleys,
You Satyrs joyed with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to playning music,
Which to my woes gives still an early morning:
And draws the dolour on till weary evening.
KLAIUS
O Mercury, forgoer to the evening,
O heavenly huntress of the savage mountains,
lovely star, entitled of the morning,
While that my voice doth fill these woeful valleys
Vouchsafe your silent ears to playning music,
Which oft doth Echo tired in secret forests.
STREPHON
1 that was once free-burgess of the forests
Where shade from sun, and sports I sought at evening,
I that was once esteemed for pleasant music,
Am banished now among the monstrous mountains
Of huge despair, and foul affliction's valleys,
Am grown a screech-owl to myself each morning.
KLAIUS
I that was once delighted every morning,
Hunting the wild inhabiters of forests,
I that was once the music of these valleys,
So darkened am, that all my day is evening,
Heart-broken so, that mole-hills seem high mountains,
And fill the vales with cries instead of music.
STREPHON
Long since, alas, my deadly Swannish music
Hath made itself a crier of the morning,
And hath with wailing strength climbed highest moun
tains;
Long since my thoughts more desert be than forests:
Long since I see my joys come to their evening,
And state thrown down to over-trodden valleys.
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KLAIUS
Long since the happy dwellers of these valleys,
Have prayed me leave my strange exclaiming music,
Which troubles their day's work, and joys of" evening:
Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning:
Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forests,
And make me wish myself laid under mountains.
STREPHON
Meseems I see the high and stately mountains
Transform themselves to low dejected valleys;
Meseems I hear in these ill-changed forests
The nightingales do learn of owls their music:
Meseems I feel the comfort of the morning
Turned to the mortal serene of an evening.
KLAIUS
Meseems I see a filthy cloudy evening,
As soon as sun begins to climb the mountains:
Meseems I feel a noisome scent, the morning
When I do smell the flowers of these valleys:
Meseems I hear, when I do hear sweet music,
The dreadful cries of murdered men in forests.
STREPHON
I wish to fire the trees of all these forests:
I give the sun a last farewell each evening;
I curse the fiddling finders out of music:
With envy do I hate the lofty mountains;
And with despite despise the humble valleys:
I do detest night, evening, day, and morning.
KLAIUS
Curse of myself my prayer is, the morning:
My fire is more, than can be made with forests;
My state more base, than are the basest valleys:
I wish no evening more to see, each evening;
Shamed I have myself in sight of mountains,
And slop mine ears, lest I go mad with music,
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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
STREPHON
For she, whose parts maintained a perfect music,
Whose beauty shined more than the blushing morning
Who much did pass in state the stately mountains,
In straightness passed the cedars of the forests,
Hath cast me wretch into eternal evening,
By taking her two suns from these dark valleys.
KLAIUS
For she, to whom compared, the Alps are valleys,
She, whose least word brings from the spheres thei
music,
At whose approach the sun rose in the evening,
Who, where she went, bare in her forehead morning,
Is gone, is gone from these our spoiled forests,
Turning to deserts our best pastured mountains.
STREPHON These mountains witness shall, so shall thesi
valleys,
KLAIUS These forests eke, made wretched by ou
music,
STREPHON Our morning hymn is this,
KLAIUS and song at evening
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke *
O WEARISOME CONDITION OF
HUMANITY
O WEARISOME condition of humanity!
Bom under one law, to another bound:
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound:
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws,
"Passion and Reason, self -division's cause?
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Is it the mark or majesty of Power
To make offences that it may forgive?
Nature herself doth her own self deflower
To hate those errors she herself doth give.
But how should man think that he may not do,
If Nature did not fail, and punish too?
Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,
Only commands things difficult and hard,
Forbids us all things which it knows is lust,
Makes easy pains, impossible reward.
If Nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good.
We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To teach belief in God and still devotion,
To preach of heaven's wonders and delights;
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks,
He finds the God there far unlike his books.
EPITAPH ON SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
SILENCE augrnenteth grief, writing increuseth rugo,
Staled arc my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder
of our age:
Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere
now,
Enraged I write I know not what; dead, quick, 1 know
not how.
Hard-hearted minds relent and rigour's tears abound,
And envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she
found.
Knowledge her light hath lost; valour hath slain her
knight.
Sidney is dead; dead is my friend; dead is the world's
delight.
Place, pensive, wails his fall whose presence was her
pride;
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FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE
Time crieth out, "My ebb is come; his life was my spring
tide."
Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports;
Each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry
sorts.
He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking
mind
A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever
shined,
Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ,
Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works
of wit.
He, only like himself, was second unto none,
Whose death (though life) we rue, and wrong, and all
in vain do moan.
Their loss, not him, wail they, that fill the world with
cries,
Death slew not him, but he made death his ladder to
the skies.
Now sink of sorrow I, who live, the more the wrong!
Who wishing death, whom death denies, whose thread
is all too long;
Who tied to wretched life, who looks for no relief,
Must spend my ever dying days in never ending grief.
Heart's ease and only I, like parallels, run on,
Whose equal length keep equal breadth, and never meet
in one;
Yet for not wronging him, my thoughts, my sorrow's cell,
Shall not run out, though leak they will, for liking him
so well.
Farewell to you, my hopes, my wonted waking dreams,
Farewell, sometimes enjoyed joy; eclipsed are thy beams.
Farewell, self-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings
forth;
And farewell, friendship's sacred league, uniting minds
of worth.
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And farewell, merry heart, the gift of guiltless minds,
And all sports which for life's restore variety assigns;
Let all that sweet is void; in rne no mirth may dwell.
Philip, the cause of all this woe, my life's content, fare
well!
Now rhyme, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill,
And endless grief, which deads my life, yet knows not
how to kill,
Go, seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,
Salute the stones, that keep the limbs, that held so good
a mind.
THREE THINGS THERE BE
THREE things there be in man's opinion dear,
Fame, many friends, and fortune's dignities:
False visions all, which in our sense appear,
To sanctify desire's idolatry.
For what is fortune, but a watery glass?
Whose crystal forehead wants a steely back,
Where rain and storms blow all away that was,
Whose ship alike both depths and shallows wrack.
Fame again, which from blinding power takes light,
Both Caesar's shadow is, and Cato's friend,
The child of humour, not allied to right,
Living by oft exchange of winged end.
And many friends, false strength of feeble mind,
Betraying equals, as true slaves to might;
Like echoes still send voices down the wind,
But never in adversity find right.
Then man, though virtue of extremities
The middle be, and so hath two to one,
By place and nature constant enemies,
And against both these no strength but her own,
Yet quit thou for her, friends, fame, fortune's throne;
Devils there many be, and Gocls but one.
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FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE
WHEN AS MAN'S LIFE
WHEN as Man's life, the light of human lust,
In socket of his earthly lanthorne burns,
That all this glory unto ashes must,
And generation to corruption turns-
Then fond desires that only fear their end,
Do vainly wish for life, but to amend.
But when this life is from the body fled,
To see itself in that eternal Glass,
Where time doth end, and thoughts accuse the dead,
Where all to come is one with all that was;
Then living men ask how he left his breath,
That while he lived never thought of death.
TO MYRA
I, WITH whose colours Myra dressed her head,
I, that wear posies of her own hand-making,
I, that mine own name in the chimneys read
By Myra finely wrought ere I was waking;
Must I look on, in hope time coming may
With change bring back my turn again to play?
I, that on Sunday at the church-stile found
A garland sweet with true-love knots in flowers,
Which I to wear about mine arms was bound,
That each of us might know that all was ours;
Must I now lead an idle life in wishes,
And follow Cupid for his loaves and fishes?
I, that did wear the ring her mother left,
I, for whose love she gloried to be blamed,
I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft,
I, who did make her blush when I was named;
Must I lose ring, flowers, blush, theft, and go naked,
Watching with sighs till dead love be awaked?
I, that when drowsy Argus fell asleep,
Like jealousy overwatched with desire,
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Was ever warned modesty to keep.
While her breath speaking kindled Nature's fire;
Must I look on a-cold, while others warm them?
Do Vulcan's brothers in such fine nets arm them?
Was it for this that I might Myra see
Washing the water with her beauties white?
Yet would she never write her love to me,
Thinks wit of change while thoughts are in delight?
Mad girls must safely love, as they may leave;
No man can print a kiss; lines may deceive.
Sir Walter Ralegh
THE NYMPH'S REPLY TO THE
SHEPHERD*
IF ALL the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
* fice page 7$,
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SIR WALTER RALEGH
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
EVEN SUCH IS TIME
EVEN such is Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, and joys, and all we have;
And pays us but with age and dust,
Which, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
And from which earth and grave and dust
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
THE PASSIONATE MAN'S PILGRIMAGE
Supposed to Be Written by One at the Point of Death
GIVE me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage,
And thus 111 take rny pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body's balmer,
No other balm will there be given,
Whilst my soul like a white palmer
Travels to the land of heaven,
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains;
And there I'll kiss
The bowl of bliss,
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And drink my eternal fill
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will ne'er thirst more;
And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have shook off their gowns of clay
And go apparelled fresh like me,
111 bring them first
To slake their thirst,
And then to taste those nectar suckets,
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,
Then the holy paths well travel,
Strewed with rubies thick as gravel,
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral, and pearl bowers.
From thence to heaven's bribelcss hall
Where no corrupted voices brawl,
No conscience molten into gold,
Nor forged accusers bought and sold,
No cause deferred, nor vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the king's attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And he hath angels, but no fees.
When the grand twelve million jury
Of our sins and sinful fury,
'Gainst oxir souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblottecl lawyer, true proccedcr;
Thou movest salvation even for alms,
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.
And this is my eternal plea
To him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
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SIR WALTER RALEGH
Seeing my flesh must die so soon,
And want a head to dine next noon:
Just at the stroke when my veins start and spread,
Set on my soul an everlasting head.
Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
THE SILENT LOVER
PASSIONS are liken'd best to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;
So, when affection yields discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
They that are rich in words, in words discover
That they are poor in that which makes a lover.
THE MERIT OF TRUE PASSION
WRONG not, sweet empress of my heart,
The merit of true passion,
With thinking that he feels no smart,
That sues for no compassion.
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
Then wrong not, dearest to my heart,
My true, though secret passion;
He smarteth most that hides his smart,
And sues for no compassion.
WALSINGHAME
*As YOU came from the holy land
Of Walsinghame,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came? 7
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*How shall I know your true love,
That have met many a one
As I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?'
'She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair,
There is none hath a form so divine
In the earth or the air.'
'Such an one did I meet, good Sir,
Such an angelic face,
Who like a queen, like a nymph did appear
By her gait, by her grace/
'She hath left me here alone,
All alone as unknown,
Who sometime did me lead with herself,
And me loved as her own/
'What's the cause that she leaves you alone
And a new way doth take,
Who loved you once as her own
And her joy did you make?'
*I have loved her all my youth,
But now old as you see,
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree,
'Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list
And in faith never fast.
'His desire is a dureless content
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair
And is lost with a toy/
*Of womenkind such indeed is the love
Or the word love abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.
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SIR WALTER RALEGH
'But love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning/
THE LIE
Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy war
rant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no
good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate;
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them
most,
that brave it
They beg for more by
spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but com
mending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust:
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blast-
eth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it
wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness :
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the
lie.
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
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Tell charity o coldness; If arts and schools reply,
Tell law it is contention: Give arts and schools the
And as they do reply, lie.
So give them still the lie. 1T - , , - .
b Tell faith it s fled the city;
Tell fortune of her blind- Tell how the country err-
ness; eth;
Tell nature of decay; Tell manhood shakes off
Tell friendship of unkind- pity
ness; And virtue least prcferreth:
Tell justice of delay: And if they do reply,
And if they will reply, Spare not to give the lie.
Then give them all the lie. . ,
& So when thou hast, as I
Tell arts they have no sound- Commanded tlicc, done
ness, blabbing
But vary by esteeming; Although to give the lie
Tell schools they want pro- Deserves no less than slab-
foundness, king
And stand too much on Stab at thee he that will,
seeming: No stab the soul can kill.
.___ . -~~~~~-~^._ ^^^
* Sir Edward Dyer
MY MIND TO ME A KINGDOM IS
MY mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind:
Though much 1 want which most would have
Yet still my mind forbids to crave,
No princely pomp, no wealthy store,
No force to win the victory,
No wily wit to salve a sore,
No shape to feed a loving eye;
To none of these I yield as thrall:
For why? My mind doth serve for all.
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DYER
I see how plenty suffers oft,
And hasty climbers down do fall;
I see that those which are aloft,
Mishap doth threaten most of all;
They get with toil, they keep with fear:
Such cares my rnind could never bear.
Content I live, this is my stay,
I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
Look what I lack my mind supplies:
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring.
Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more.
They are but poor though much they have,
And I am rich with little store;
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.
I laugh not at another's loss,
I grudge not at another's gain;
No worldly waves my mind can toss:
My state at one doth still remain:
I fear no foe, I fawn no friend;
I loathe not life nor dread my end.
Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,
Their wisdom by their rage of will;
Their treasure is their only trust,
A cloaked craft their store of skill.
But all the pleasure that I find
Is to maintain a quiet mind.
My wealth is health and perfect ease;
My conscience clear my choice defence;
I neither seek by bribes to please
Nor by deceit to breed offence;
Thus do I live, thus will I die;
Would all did so as well as I.
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Edmund Spenser
MOST GLORIOUS LORD OF LIFE
MOST glorious Lord of life, that on this clay
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
And having harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we, for whom thou diddcst die,
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live for ever in felicity:
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought:
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
FRESH SPRING, THE HERALD
FRESH Spring, the herald of love's mighty king,
In whose coat-armour richly are displayed
All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring
In goodly colours gloriously arrayed;
Go to my love, where she is careless laid,
Yet in her winter's bower, not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time will riot be stayed,
Unless she do him by the forelock take;
Bid her therefore herself soon ready make
To wait on Love amongst his lovely crew,
Where everyone that misseth then her make
Shall be by him amerced with penance due.
Make haste, therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime;
For none can call again the passed time.
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EDMUND SPENSER
MY LOVE IS LIKE TO ICE
MY Love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
'Vain man/ said she, 'that dost in vain essay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise/
'Not so/ quoth I; let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew/
YE TRADEFUL MERCHANTS
YE tradeful Merchants, that, with weary toil,
Do seek most precious things to make your gain,
And both the Indias of their treasure spoil,
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What needeth you to seek so far in vain?
For lo! my Love doth in herself contain
All this world's riches that may far be found:
If sapphires, lo! her eyes be sapphires plain;
If rubies, lo! her lips be rubies sound;
If pearls, her teeth be pearls, both pure and round;
If ivory, her forehead ivory ween;
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
If silver, her fair hands are silver sheen:
But that which fairest is but few behold:
Her mind, adorned with virtues manifold.
PROTHALAMION
CALM was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;
When I, (whom sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In Prince's Court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away,
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain,)
Walked forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver streaming Thames;
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorned with dainty gems
Fit to deck maidens' bowers,
And crown, their paramours
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
There, in a meadow, by the river's side,
A flock of nymphs I chanced to espy,
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied,
As each had been a bride;
And each one had a little wicker basket,
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EDMUND SPENSER
Made of the twigs, entrailed curiously,
In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket,
And with fine fingers cropt full feateously
The tender stalks on high.
Of every sort, which in that meadow grew,
They gathered some; the violet, pallid blue,
The little daisy, that at evening closes,
The virgin lily, and the primrose true,
With store of vermeil roses,
To deck their bridegrooms' posies
Against the bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
With that I saw two swans of goodly hue
Come softly swimming down along the lea;
Two fairer birds I yet did never see;
The snow, which doth the top of Pindus strew,
Did never whiter show;
Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be
For love of Leda, whiter did appear;
Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he,
Yet not so white as these, nor nothing near;
So purely white they were,
That even the gentle stream, the which them bare,
Seemed foul to them, and bade his billows spare
To wet their silken feathers, lest they might
Soil their fair plumes with water not so fair,
And mar their beauties bright,
That shone as heaven's light,
Against their bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
Eftsoons the Nymphs, which now had flowers their fill,
Ran all in haste to see that silver brood,
As they came floating on the crystal flood;
Whom when they saw, they stood amazed still,
Their wondering eyes to fill;
Them seemed they never saw a sight so fair,
Of fowls, so lovely, that they sure did deem
Them heavenly born, or to be that same pair
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Which through the sky draw Venus' silver team;
For sure they did not seem
To be begot of any earthly seed,
But rather angels, or of angels' breed;
Yet were they bred of summer's heat, they say,
In sweetest season, when each flower and weed
The earth did fresh array;
So fresh they seemed as day,
Even as their bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
Then forth they all out of their baskets drew
Great store of flowers, the honour of the field,
That to the sense did fragrant odours yield,
All which upon those goodly birds they threw
And all the waves did strew,
That like old Peneus' waters they did seem,
When down along by pleasant Tempe's shore,
Scattered with flowers, through Thessaly they stream.
That they appear, through lilies' plenteous store,
Like a bride's chamber floor.
Two of those Nymphs, meanwhile, two garlands bound
Of freshest flowers which in that mead they found,
The which presenting all in trim array,
Their snowy foreheads therewithal they crowned,
Whilst one did sing this lay,
Prepared against that day,
Against their bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
Te gentle birds! the world's fair ornament,
And heaven's glory, whom this happy hour
Doth lead unto your lovers' blissful bower,
Joy may you have, and gentle heart's content
Of your love's couplement;
And let fair Venus, that is queen of love,
With her heart-quelling son uppn you smile,
Whose smile, they say, hath virtue to remove
All Love's dislike, and friendship's faulty guile
For ever to assoil.
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EDMUND SPENSER
Let endless Peace your steadfast hearts accord,
And blessed Plenty wait upon your board;
And let your bed with pleasures chaste abound,
That fruitful issue may to you afford,
Which may your foes confound,
And make your joys redound
Upon your bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.*
So ended she; and all the rest around
To her redoubled that her undersong,
Which said their bridal day should not be long:
And gentle Echo from the neighbour ground
Their accents did resound.
So forth those joyous birds did pass along,
Adown the lea, that to them murmured low,
As he would speak, but that he lacked a tongue,
Yet did by signs his glad affection show,
Making his stream run slow.
And all the fowl which in his flood did dwell
'Gan flock about these twain, that did excel
The rest, so far as Cynthia doth shend
The lesser stars. So they, enranged well,
Did on these two attend,
And their best service lend
Against their wedding day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
At length they all to merry London came,
To merry London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this life's first native source,
Though from another place I take my name,
A house of ancient fame:
There when they came, whereas those bricky towers
The which on Thames' broad aged back to ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whilom wont the Templar knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride:
Next whereunto there stands a stately place,
Where oft I gained gifts and goodly grace
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Of that great Lord, which therein wont to dwell,
Whose want too well now feels my friendless case;
But ah! here fits not well
Old woes, but joys, to tell
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
iTet therein now doth lodge a noble peer,
Great England's glory, and the world's wide wonder,
Whose dreadful name late through all Spain did thunder.
And Hercules' two pillars standing near
Did make to quake and fear:
Fair branch of Honour, flower of Chivalry!
Thou fillest England with thy triumph's fame,
Joy have thou of thy noble victory,
And endless happiness of thine own name
That promiseth the same;
That through thy prowess, and victorious arms,
Thy country may be freed from foreign harms;
And great Eliza's glorious name may ring
Through all the world, filled with thy wide alarms,
Which some brave muse may sing
To ages following
Upon the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
From those high towers this noble Lord issuing,
Like radiant Hesper, when his golden hair
In th' ocean billows he hath bathed fair,
Descended to the river's open viewing,
With a great train ensuing.
Above the rest were goodly to be seen
Two gentle knights of lovely face and feature,
Beseeming well the bower of any queen,
With gifts of wit, and ornaments of nature,
Fit for so goodly stature,
That like the twins of Jove they seemed in sight,
Which deck the baldrick of the heavens bright;
They two, forth pacing to the river's side,
Received those two fair brides, their love's delight;
~
EDMUND SPENSER
Which, at th' appointed tide,
Each one did make his bride
Against their bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.
Thomas Lodge
ROSALINE
LIKE to the clear in highest sphere
Where all imperial glory shines,
Of selfsame colour is her hair
Whether unfolded or in twines:
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
Her eyes are sapphires set in snow,
Refining heaven with every wink;
The gods do fear whenas they glow,
And I do tremble when I think
Heigh ho, would she were mine!
Her cheeks are like the blushing cloud
That beautifies Aurora's face,
Or like the silver crimson shroud
That Phoebus' smiling looks doth grace.
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
Her lips are like two budded roses
Whom ranks of lilies neighbour nigh,
Within whose bounds she balm encloses
Apt to entice a deity:
Heigh ho, would she were mine!
Her neck like to a stately tower
Where Love himself imprison'd lies,
To watch for glances every hour
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From her divine and sacred eyes:
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
Her paps are centres of delight,
Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame,
Where Nature moulds the dew of light
To feed perfection with the same:
Heigh ho, would she were mine!
With orient pearl, with ruby red,
With marble white, with sapphire blue,
Her body every way is fed,
Yet soft to touch and sweet in view:
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
Nature herself her shape admires;
The gods are wounded in her sight;
And Love forsakes his heavenly fires
And at her eyes his brand doth light:
Heigh ho, would she were mine!
Then muse not, Nymphs, though I bemoan
The absence of fair Rosaline,
Since for a fair there's fairer none,
Nor for her virtues so divine:
Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
Heigh ho, my heart! would God that she were mine!
fchidiock Tichborne
WRITTEN ON THE EVE OF
EXECUTION
MY prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
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CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fall'n and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my fife is done.
Robert Southwell
TIMES GO BY TURNS
THE lopped tree in time may grow again,
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorriest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moistening shower;
Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her tides have equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.
Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring,
No endless night, yet not eternal day;
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The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay:
Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.
A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
That net that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crossed;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish.
Unmingled joys here to no man befall;
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.
THE BURNING BABE
As I in hoary winter's night
Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat
Which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye
To view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright
Did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat,
Such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench His flames,
Which with His tears were bred:
*Alas! ? quoth He, *but newly born
In fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts
Or feel my fire but I!
*My faultless breast the furnace is;
The fuel, wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke;
The ashes, shames and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on,
And Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought
Are men's defiled souls;
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ROBERT SOUTHWELL
For which, as now on fire I am
To work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath,
To wash them in my blood/
With this He vanish'd out of sight
And swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind
That it was Christmas Day.
Samuel Daniel
FAIR IS MY LOVE
FAIR is my Love and cruel as she's fair;
Her brow-shades frown, although her eyes are sunny.
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair,
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey:
A modest maid, deck a with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love;
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,
Sacred on earth, designed a Saint above.
Chastity and Beauty, which were deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had she Pity to conjoin with those,
Then who had heard the plaints I utter now?
For had she not been fair, and thus unkind,
My Muse had slept, and none had known my mind.
CARE-CHARMER SLEEP
CARE-CHARMER sleep, son of the sable night,
Brother to death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve rny languish and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care, return.
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And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, th ? images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
Michael Drayton
NIGHT AND DAY
DEAR, why should you command me to my rest
When now the night doth summon all to sleep?
Methinks this time becometh lovers best;
Night was ordained together friends to keep.
How happy are all other living things,
Which though the day disjoin by several flight,
The quiet evening yet together brings,
And each returns unto his love at night!
O thou that art so courteous else to all,
Why shouldst thou, Night, abuse me only thus,
That every creature to his kind dost call,
And yet 'tis thou dost only sever us?
Well could I wish it would be ever day,
If, when night comes, you bid me go away.
THE PARTING
SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part-
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
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MICHAEL DRAYTON
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain,
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
Christopher Marlowe
WHO EVER LOVED, THAT LOVED
NOT AT FIRST SIGHT?
IT lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?
From Hero and Leander
FAIR IS TOO FOUL AN EPITHET
AH, fair Zenocrate, divine Zenocrate,
Fair is too foul an epithet for thee,
That in thy passion for thy country's love,
And fear to see thy kingly father's harm,
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With hair dishevelled wip'st thy watery cheeks;
And like to Flora in her morning pride,
Shaking her silver tresses in the air,
Rain'st on the earth resolved pearl in showers,
And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining face,
Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits,
And comments volumes on her ivory pen,
Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes,
Eyes, when that Ebena steps to heaven,
In silence of thy solemn evening's walk,
Making the mantle of the richest night,
The moon, the planets, and the meteors, light.
There angels in their crystal armours fight
A doubtful battle with my tempted thoughts
For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life,
His life that so consumes Zenocrate;
Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul
Than all my army to Damascus' walls;
And neither Persia's sovereign nor the Turk
Troubled my senses with conceit of foil
So much by much as doth Zenocrate.
What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then?
If all the pens that ever poets held
Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,
And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts,
Their minds and muses on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From the immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein as in a mirror we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit
If these had made one poem's period,
And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest.
From Tamburlaine the Great
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CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
HELEN
WAS this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flees!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sacked,
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yes, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azured arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!
From Faustus
THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD
TO HIS LOVE*
COME live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals,
* See page 50.
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
I
William Shakespeare
TELL ME WHERE IS FANCY BRED
TELL rne where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engender'd in the eyes,
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell;
I'll begin itDing, dong, bell.
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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
UNDER the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither-
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live f the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither-
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER
WIND
BLOW, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
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Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember'd not.
Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly,
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
FEAR NO MORE
FEAR no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o' the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak;
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finish'd joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorcise harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear theel
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!
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FULL FATHOM FIVE THY
FATHER LIES
FULL fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade.
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
[Burden: ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.
HARK! HARK! THE LARK
HARK! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise!
Arise, arise!
HOW SHOULD I YOUR TRUE
LOVE KNOW
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
And his sandal shoon.
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
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White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Larded with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS
IT was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
These pretty country folks would lie,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
This carol they began that hour,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that life was but a flower
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
And, therefore, take the present time
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
For love is crowned with the prime
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
NOW THE HUNGRY LION ROARS
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
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All with weary task foredone.
Now the wasted brands do glow,
Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time o night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide:
And we fairies, that do run
By the triple Hecate's team,
From the presence of the sun,
Following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic: not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallo w'd house:
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.
O MISTRESS MINE
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear! your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty!
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
SIGH NO MORE, LADIES
SIGH no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never:
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey, nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leafy:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey, nonny, nonny.
WHEN THAT I WAS AND A LITTLE
TINY BOY
WHEN that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came, alas, to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
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SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY
TO-MORROW is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betimes,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes.
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
TAKE, O TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY
TAKE, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again,
Bring again;
Seals of love, but sealed in vain,
Sealed in vain.
WHO IS SILVIA?
WHO is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admired be.
Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness.
Love doth to her eyes repair,
To help him of his blindness,
And, being help'd, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling:
To her let us garlands bring.
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WHEN ICICLES HANG BY THE WALL
WHEN icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow, ^}^p
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
YOU SPOTTED SNAKES
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind- worms, do no wrong;
Come not near our fairy queen:
Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby
Never harm,
Nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
Weaving spiders come not here:
Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence,
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Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby
Never harm,
Nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
DID NOT THE HEAVENLY
RHETORIC OF THINE EYE
DID not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
Thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me.
Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:
Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth doth shine,
Exhalest this vapour- vow; in thee it is:
If broken then, it is no fault of mine:
If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
To lose an oath to win a paradise?
SONNETS
FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self -substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
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Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an ill-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use.
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse/
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
in
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time,
But if thou live, remembered not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
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XVIII
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
XXIX
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on thee: and then my state,
Like to the Lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.
XXX
When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe,
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And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances forgone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
XXXIII
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
mi
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and plenty of the year.
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.
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LV
^ot marble, nor the gilded monuments
Df princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
3ut you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besrnear'd with sluttish time.
A^hen wasteful war shall statues overturn,
ind broils root out the work of masonry,
^Jor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wears this world out to the ending doom.
5o, till the judgement that yourself arise,
fou live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
LX
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
[n sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
3rawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand,
LXIV
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
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Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose,
LXV
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beaxity hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
LXVI
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalFd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone,
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LXXI
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I arn fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.
LXXIII
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset f adeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
LXXXVII
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
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And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter
In sleep a King; but waking, no such matter.
xciv
They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces.
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
xcvm
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
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cvi
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
cvn
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, 111 live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent
CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fix&d mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
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Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
cxxix
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur'd, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust:
Enjoy 'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and prov'd, a very woe;
Before, a joy propos'd; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
cxxx
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
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CXLVI
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Thrall to these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servants loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more;
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
OPPORTUNITY
O, OPPORTUNITY, thy guilt is great,
'Tis thou that execuf st the traitor's treason:
Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get,
Who ever plots the sin thou poinfst the season,
'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason,
And in thy shady cell where none may spy him,
Sits sin to seize die souls that wander by him.
Thou makest the vestal violate her oath,
Thou blowest the fire when temperance is thawed,
Thou smother'st honesty, thou rnurderest troth,
Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd,
Thou plantest scandal, and displacest laud.
Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,
Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.
Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,
Thy private feasting to a public fast,
Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,
Thy sugared tongue to bitter wormwood taste,
Thy violent vanities can never last.
How comes it then, vile Opportunity,
Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
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When wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend
And bring him where his suit may be obtained?
When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end?
Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained?
Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained?
The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, ciy out for thee,
But they ne'er meet with Opportunity.
The patient dies while the physician sleeps,
The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds.
Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;
Advice is sporting while infection breeds:
Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds:
Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages,
Thy heinous hours wait on diem as their pages.
When Truth and Virtue have to do with thee,
A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid:
They buy thy help, but sin ne'er gives a fee,
He gratis comes, and thou art well apaid,
As well to hear, as grant what he hath said.
My Colatine would else have come to me,
When Tarquin did, but he was stayed by thee.
Guilty thou art of murder, and of theft,
Guilty of perjury, and subornation,
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,
Guilty of incest that abomination,
An accessary by thine inclination.
To all sins past and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.
Misshapen time, copesmate of ugly night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight:
Base watch of woes, sin's packhorse, virtue's snare.
Thou nursest all, and murder est all that are.
O hear me then, injurious, shifting time,
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.
Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,
Betrayed the hours thou gav'st me to repose?
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Cancelled my fortunes, and enchained me
To endless date of never-ending woes?
Time's office is to fine the hate of foes,
To eat up errors by opinion bred,
Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.
Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn, and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.
To fill with wormholes stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books, and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,
To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs,
To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,
And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel;
To show the beldam daughters of her daughter
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn, and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
To cheer the plowman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water drops.
From The Rape of Lucrece
ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE
ALL the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy^ with his satchel,
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And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modem instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
From As You Like It
THE USES OF ADVERSITY
Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
That than of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference; as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon rny body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say
'This is no flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:
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And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in everything.
I would not change it.
From As You Like It
CLEOPATRA
THE barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description; she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of -gold of tissue,
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature; on each side her
Stood pretty-dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides
So many mermaids, tended her i ? the eyes,
And made their bends adornings; at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony, -
Enthroned f the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature.
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Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
From Antony and Cleopatra
THE CARES OF MAJESTY
How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers o the great.
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
From King Henry IV
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CARDINAL WOLSEY'S FAREWELL
FAREWELL! a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms.,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me, and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:
I feel my heart new opened. O! how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours.
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
From King Henry VIII
HE JESTS AT SCARS
HE jests at scars, that never felt a wound.
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady; O! it is my love:
Ol that she knew she were.
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She speaks, yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand:
O! that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek.
Fiom Romeo and Juliet
MERCUTIO'S QUEEN MAB SPEECH
O, THEN, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fames' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners* legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
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Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.
From Romeo and Juliet
IMAGINATION
LOVERS and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
From A Midsummer Night's Dream
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ULYSSES ADVISES ACHILLES
TIME hath, my Lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear rny Lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast: keep, then, the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter 'd tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse falFn in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, most o'er top yours;
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O! let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.
From Troilus and Crcssida
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OUR REVELS NOW ARE ENDED
OUR revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
From The Tempest
THE QUALITY OF MERCY
THE quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
*Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy,
From The Merchant of Venice
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TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
THERE, my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
From Hamlet
TO BE, OR NOT TO BE
To BE, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
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To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There 's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely.
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
From Hamlet
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
AND TOMORROW
TOMOKROW, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying; nothing.
J From Macbeth
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TO GILD REFINED GOLD
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Fiorn King John
ANTONY'S ORATION OVER
CAESAR'S BODY
FRIENDS, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it were a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men-
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
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And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me,
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there.
And none so poor to do him reverence.
masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
1 should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
I found it in his closet, 'tis his will:
Let but the commons hear this testament
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.
Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;
And, being men, hearing the will of Csesar,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad:
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs;
For, if you should, O, what would come of it!
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Will you be patient? will you stay awhile?
I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it:
I fear I wrong the honourable men
Whose daggers have stabb'd Caesar; I do fear it.
You will compel me, then, to read the will?
Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar,
And let me show you him that made the will.
Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii:
Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd;
And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no;
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel:
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
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The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture, wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself marr'd, as you see, with traitors.
Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
They that have done this deed are honourable:
What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,
That made them do it: they are wise and honourable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:
I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him:
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb
mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
Fiom Julius Caesar
THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE
LET the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
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Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing
Save the eagle, feathered king.
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none;
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight;
Either was the other's mine.
Property was thus appalled,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was called.
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Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either neither;
Simple were so well compounded,
That it cried, 'How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain/
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.
Threnos
Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,
Leaving no posterity:
? Twas not their infirmity.
It was married chastity.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
Ill
Thomas Nashe
SPRING, THE SWEET SPRING
SPRING, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu we, to witta woo.
The palrn and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu we, to witta woo.
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu we, to witta woo.
Spring, the sweet spring!
Thomas Campion
FOLLOW THY FAIR SUN,
UNHAPPY SHADOW
FOLLOW thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow.
Follow her whose light thy light depriveth,
Though here thou liv'st disgraced,
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And she in heaven is placed,
Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.
Follow those pure beams whose beauty burneth,
That so have scorched thee,
As thou still black must be,
Till her kind beams thy black to brightness turneth.
Follow her while yet her glory shineth:
There comes a luckless night,
That will dim all her light;
And this the black unhappy shade divineth.
Follow still since so thy fates ordained;
The sun must have his shade,
Till both at once do fade,
The sun still proud, the shadow still disdained.
CHERRY-RIPE
THERE is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow:
There cherries grow which none may buy
Till 'Cherry-ripe' themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearls a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow;
Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy
Till 'Cherry-ripe' themselves do cry.
Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threatening with piercing frowns to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred cherries to come nigh,
Till 'Cherry-ripe' themselves do cry.
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Sir Henry Wotton
THE CHARACTER OF A
HAPPY LIFE
How happy is he bom and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!
Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;
Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend;
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.
L14
Sir John Davies
IN WHAT MANNER THE SOUL IS
UNITED TO THE BODY
BUT how shall we this union well express?
Naught ties the Soul; her subtilty is such,
She moves the Body, which she doth possess,
Yet no part toucheth but by Virtue's touch.
Then dwells she not therein as in a tent,
Nor as a pilot in his ship doth sit,
Nor as the spider in her web is pent,
Nor as the wax retains the print in it,
Nor as a vessel water doth contain,
Nor as one liquor in another shed,
Nor as the heat doth in the fire remain,
Nor as a voice throughout the air is spread:
But as the fair and cheerful morning light
Doth here and there her silver beams impart,
And in an instant doth herself unite
To the transparent air, in all and part:
Still resting whole when blows the air divide,
Abiding pure when the air is most corrupted,
Throughout the air, her beams dispersing wide,
And when the air is tost, not interrupted:
So doth the piercing Soul the body fill,
Being all in all, and all in part diffused;
Indivisible, incorruptible still,
Not forced, encountered, troubled, or confused.
And as the sun above the light doth bring,
Though we behold it in the air below,
So from the Eternal Light the Soul doth spring,
Though in the body she her powers do show.
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TO CELIA
DRINK to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And 111 not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear
Not of itself but thee!
ON MY FIRST SON
FAREWELL, thou child of my right hand, and joy,
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy,
Seven years th ? wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O I could lose all father now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and ask'd, say here doth lie
BEN: JONSON his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
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BEN JONSON
IT IS NOT GROWING LIKE A TREE
IT is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night-
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
THE HOUR GLASS
CONSIDER this small dust, here in the glass,
By atoms moved:
Could you believe that this the body was
Of one that loved;
And in his mistress* flame playing like a fly,
Was turned to cinders by her eye:
Yes; and in death, as life unblessed,
To have it expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.
INVITING A FRIEND TO SUPPER
TO-NIGHT, grave sir, both my poor house and I
Do equally desire your company;
Not that we think us worthy such a guest,
But that your worth will dignify our feast
With those that come, whose grace may make that seem
Something, which else could hope for no esteem.
It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates
The entertainment perfect, not the cates.
Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate,
An olive, capers, or some better salad
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Qsh'ring the mutton; with a short-legged hen,
If we can get her, full of eggs, and then
Lemons and wine for sauce; to these, a coney
Is not to be despaired of for our money;
And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,
The sky not falling, think we may have larks.
Ill tell you of more, and lie, so you will come;
Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some
May yet be there; and godwit, if we can,
Gnat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe'er, my man
Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,
Livy, or of some better book to us.
Of which well speak our minds amidst our meat;
And 111 profess no verses to repeat;
To this, if aught appear which I not know of,
That will the pastry, not my paper, show of.
Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will be;
But that which most doth take my muse and me
Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,
Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine;
Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted,
Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted.
Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian springs
Are all but Luther's beer to this I sing.
Of this we will sup free, but moderately,
And we will have no polly, or parrot by;
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men,
But at our parting we will be as when
We innocently met. No simple word
That shall be uttered at our mirthful board
Shall make us sad next morning, or affright
The liberty that well enjoy to-night.
THE TRIUMPH OF CHARIS
SEE the Chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my Lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
And well the car Love guideth.
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BEN JONSON
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty;
And enamour'd do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she
would ride.
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that Love's world compriseth!
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As Love's star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead's smoother
Than words that soothe her;
And from her arch'd brows such a grace
Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touch'd it?
Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of beaver,
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt of the bud of the brier,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she!
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED,
THE AUTHOR, MASTER WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE
To DRAW no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much*
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
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Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stagel
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room;
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I would not seek
For names; but call forth thundering Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us;
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
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When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter Nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned
like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
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AN ODE TO HIMSELF
WHERE dost thou careless lie,
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and destroys them both.
Are all the Aonian springs
Dried up? Lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius' harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings?
Or droop they as disgraced,
To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced?
If hence thy silence be,
As 'tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.
What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.
Then take in hand thy lyre;
Strike in thy proper strain;
With Japhet's line aspire
Sol's chariot for new fire
To give the world again;
Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain.
And since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page
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BEN JONSON
To that strumpet the stage;
But sing high and aloof,
Safe from the wolfs black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof.
TO HEAVEN
GOOD and great God! can I not think of thee,
But it must straight my melancholy be?
Is it interpreted in me disease,
That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease?
be thou witness, that the reins dost know
And hearts of all, if I be sad for show;
And judge me after, if I dare pretend
To aught but grace, or aim at other end.
As thou art all, so be thou all to me,
First, midst, and last, converted One and Three!
My faith, my hope, my love; and, in this state,
My judge, my witness, and my advocate!
Where have I been this while exiled from thee,
And whither rapt, now thou but stoop 'st to me?
Dwell, dwell here still! O, being everywhere,
How can I doubt to find thee ever here?
1 know my state, both full of shame and scorn,
Conceived in sin, and unto labour born,
Standing with fear, and must with horror fall,
And destined unto judgement, after all.
I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground
Upon my flesh t" inflict another wound;
Yet dare I not complain or wish for death
With holy Paul, lest it be thought the breath
Of discontent; or that these prayers be
For weariness of life, not love of thee.
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John Donne
GO AND CATCH A FALLING STAR
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And till last you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.
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JOHN DONNE
THE GOOD-MORROW
I WONDER by my troth what thou and I
Did till we loved? were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.
THE FLEA
MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
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This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w' are met.
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor me the weaker now;
'Tis true, then learn how false fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
THE ECSTASY
WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to'entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls, which to advance their state
Were gone out, hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
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JOHN DONNE
And we said nothing, all the day.
I any, so by love refined
That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He, though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same,
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love:
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mixed souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
All which before was poor and scant,
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh, alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we; we are
The intelligences, they the sphere.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us to us at first convey,
Yielded their forces, sense, to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
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For soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love revealed may look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we'are to bodies gone.
THE CANONIZATION
FOR God sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honour, or his grace,
Or the king's real, or his stamped face
Contemplate, what you will approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguey bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
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JOHN DONNE
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another sly,
We are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it.
So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it "will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
Well build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half -acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love:
And thus invoke us; you whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
( So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize),
Countries, towns, courts: beg from above
A pattern of your love!
LOVE'S DEITY
I LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born:
I cannot think that he, who then loved most,
Sunk so low, as to love one which did scorn.
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But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be;
I must love her, that loves not me.
Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practised it;
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be
Love, till I love her, that loves me.
But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative, as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
Oh were we wakened by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her, who loves not me.
Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I,
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love might make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I am loath to see;
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be,
If she whom I love, should love me,
THE ANNIVERSARY
ALL kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
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JOHN DONNE
Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas! as well as other princes, we
Who prince enough in one another be
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
But souls where nothing dwells but love
All other thoughts being inmates then shall prove
This or a love increased there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves
remove.
And then we shall be throughly blest;
But now no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years unto years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.
THE DREAM
DEAR love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy.
Therefore thou waked'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.
As lightning, or a taper's light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise, waked me;
Yet I thought thee-
For thou lov'st truth-an angel, at first sight;
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But when I saw thou saw'st my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts beyond an angel's art,
When thou knew'st what I dreamt, when thou knew'st
when
Excess of joy would wake me, and cam'st then,
I must confess it could not choose but be
Profane to think thee anything but thee.
Coming and staying show'd thee thee,
But rising makes me doubt that now
That art not thou.
That Love is weak where Fear's as strong as he;
'Tis not all spirit pure and brave
If mixture it of Fear, Shame, Honour have.
Perchance as torches, which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal'st with me.
Thou cam'st to kindle, go'st to come; then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.
THE SUN RISING
BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me,
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Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, 'All here in one bed lay/
She's all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is;
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou? Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
LOVERS' INFINITENESS
IF yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all,
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move;
Nor can entreat one other tear to fall.
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent,
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant,
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have thee all.
Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then,
But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall,
New love created be, by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For, this love was not vowed by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general,
The ground, thy heart is mine, what ever shall
Grow there, dear, I should have it all.
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Yet I would not have all yet,
He that hath all can have no more,
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it:
Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it:
But we will have a way more liberal
Than changing hearts, to join them, so we shall
Be one, and one another's all.
ON HIS MISTRESS
BY our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, hy that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts which spies and rivals threatened me,
I calmly beg; but by thy father's wrath,
By all pains, which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee; and all the oaths which I
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy,
Here I unswear, and overswear them thus:
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous.
Temper, fair love, love's impetuous rage,
Be my true mistress still, not my feigned page;
I'll go, and by thy kind leave, leave behind
Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind
Thirst to come back; oh, if thou die before,
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar.
Thy else almighty beauty cannot move
Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love,
Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness; thou hast read
How roughly he in pieces shivered
Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved.
Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have proved
Dangers unurged; feed on this flattery,
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That absent lovers one in th' other be.
Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change
Thy body's habit, nor mind's; be not strange
To thyself only; all will spy in thy face
A blushing womanly discovering grace.
Richly clothed apes are called apes; and as soon
Eclipsed as bright, we call the moon the moon.
Men of France, changeable chameleons,
Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions,
Love's fuelers, and the Tightest company
Of players which upon the world's stage be,
Will quickly know thee, and no less, also!
Th' indifferent Italian, as we pass
His warm land, well content to think thee page,
Will hunt thee with such lust and hideous rage
As Lot's fair guests were vexed. But none of these,
Nor spongy hydroptic Dutch shall thee displease,
If thou stay here. Oh, stay here! for, for thee,
England is only a worthy gallery
To walk in expectation, till from thence
Our greatest King call thee to his presence.
When I am gone, dream me some happiness,
Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess,
Nor praise, nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse
Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight's startings, crying out, Oh, oh,
Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go
O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I,
Assailed, fight, taken, stabbed, bleed, fall, and die.
Augur me better chance, except dread Jove
Think it enough for me to'have had thy love.
LOVE'S PROGRESS
WHOEVER loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.
Love is a bear-whelp born, if we o'er-lick
Our love, and force it new strange shapes to take,
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We err, and of a lump a monster make.
Were not a calf a monster that were grown
Faced like a man, though better than his own?
Perfection is in unity; prefer
One woman first, and then one thing in her.
I, when I value gold, may think upon
The ductileness, the application,
The wholesomeness, the ingenuity,
From rust, from soil, from fire ever free:
But if I love it, 'tis because 'tis made
By our new nature (Use) the soul of trade.
All these in women we might think upon
(If women had them) and yet love but one.
Can men more injure women than to say
They love for that, by which they're not they?
Makes virtue women? Must I cool my blood
Till I both be, and find one, wise anc
May barren angels love so. But if we
Make love to woman, virtue is not she,
As beauty's not, nor wealth; he that strays thus
From her to hers is more adulterous
Than if he took the maid. Search every sphere
And firmament, our Cupid is not there;
He's an infernal god, and underground
With Pluto dwells, where gold and fire abound;
Men to such gods their sacrificing coals
Did not in altars lay, but pits and holes.
Although we see the celestial bodies move
Above the earth, the earth we till and love;
So we her airs contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues, but we love the centric part.
Nor is the soul more worthy, or more fit
For love than this, as infinite it is.
But in attaining this desired place
How much they err that set out at the face.
The hair a forest is of ambushes,
Of springs, snares, fetters and manacles;
The brow becalms us when 'tis smooth and plain,
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And when 'tis wrinkled shipwrecks us again.
Smooth, 'tis a paradise where we would have
Immortal stay, and wrinkled 'tis our grave.
The nose (like to the first meridian) runs
Not 'twixt an East and West, but 'twixt two suns;
It leaves a cheek, a rosy hemisphere
On either side, and then directs us where
Upon the Islands Fortunate we fall,
(Not faint Canaries, but ambrosial)
Her swelling lips; to which when we are come,
We anchor there and think ourselves at home,
For they seem all; there sirens' songs and there
Wise Delphic oracles to fill the ear,
There in a creek where chosen pearls do swell,
The remora, her cleaving tongue, doth dwell.
These and the glorious promontory, her chin,
O'erpast, and the strait Hellespont between
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts,
(Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests)
Succeeds a boundles sea, but yet thine eye
Some island moles may scattered there descry,
And sailing toward her India in that way
Shall at her fair Atlantic navel stay;
Though thence the current be thy pilot made,
Yet ere thou be where thou wouldst be embayed
Thou shalt upon another forest set,
Where many shipwreck and no further get.
When thou art there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy beginning at the face.
Rather set out below; practise my art,
Some symmetry the foot hath with that part
Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that
Lovely enough to stoop, but not stay at;
Least subject to disguise and change it is;
Men say the Devil never can change his.
It is the emblem that hath figured
Firmness; 'tis the first part that comes to bed.
Civility we see refined; the kiss
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Which at the face began, transplanted is,
Since to the hand, since to the Imperial knee,
Now at the Papal foot delights to be.
If kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too;
For as free spheres move faster far than can
Birds, whom the air resists, so may that man
Which goes this empty and aethereal way,
Than if at beauty's elements he stay.
Rich Nature hath in woman wisely made
Two purses, and their mouths aversely laid;
They then which to the lower tribute owe,
That way which that Exchequer looks must go.
He that doth not, his error is as great
As who by clyster gave the stomach meat.
GOING TO BED
COME, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th'eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th'hilFs shadow steals
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou angel brings t with thee
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JOHN DONNE
A heaven like Mahomet's paradise; and though
111 spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my Emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering theel
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed. Then since that I may know,
As liberally, as to a midwife, show
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance, much less innocence;
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What need'st thou have more covering than a man.
THE BLOSSOM
LITTLE think'st thou, poor flower,
Whom I have watched six or seven days,
And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour
Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,
And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,
Little thinFst thou
That it will freeze anon, and that I shall
Tomorrow find thee fallen, or not at all
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Little think'st thou, poor heart,
That labour'st yet to nestle thee,
And think'st by hovering here to get a part
In a forbidden or forbidding tree,
And hop'st her stiffness by long siege to bow:
Little think'st thou,
That thou tomorrow, ere that sun doth wake,
Must with this sun, and me a journey take.
But thou which lov'st to be
Subtle to plague thy self, wilt say,
Alas, if you must go, what's that to me?
Here lies my business, and here I will stay:
You go to friends, whose love and means present
Various content
To your eyes, ears, and tongue, and every part.
If then your body go, what need you a heart?
Well then, stay here; but know,
When thou hast stayed and done thy most;
A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a woman, but a kind of Ghost;
How shall she know my heart; or having none,
Know thee for one?
Practise may make her know some other part,
But take my word, she doth not know a Heart.
Meet me at London, then,
Twenty days hence, and thou shalt see
Me fresher, and more fat, by being with men,
Than if I had stayed still with her and thee.
For God's sake, if you can, be you so too:
I would give you
There, to another friend, whom we shall find
As glad to have my body, as my mind.
BREAK OF DAY
'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
Oh, wilt thou therefore rise m>m me?
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JOHN DONNE
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could bay,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that's the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong as when a married man doth woo.
THE WILL
BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies: here I bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to ambassadors mine ears;
To women or the sea, my tears;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me serve her who had twenty more
That I should give to none, but such as had too much
before.
My constancy I to the planets give;
My truth to them who at the court do live;
Mine ingenuity and openness,
To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence to any, who abroad have been;
My money to a Capuchin:
Thou, Love, taughfst me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.
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My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
All my good works unto the schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility
And courtship to an University;
My modesty I give to shoulders bare;
My patience let gamesters share:
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.
I give my reputation to those
Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;
My sickness to physicians, or excess;
To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ;
And to my company my wit:
Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her, who begot this love in me before,
Taught'st me to make, as though I gave, when I do but
restore.
To him, for whom the passing-bell next tolls,
I give my physic-books; my written rolls
Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give;
My brazen medals unto them which live
In want of bread; to them which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue:
Thou, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.
Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying; because Love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth;
And all your graces no more use shall have,
Than a sun-dial in a grave:
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her, who doth neglect both me and thee,
To invent & practice this one way to annihilate all three
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A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY'S DAY
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death things which are not.
All others from all things draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drowned the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death, which word wrongs her,
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.
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But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you.
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.
IF POISONOUS MINERALS
IF poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, Alas! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And mercy being easy, and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,
God? O! of thine only worthy blood,
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sin's black memory;
That thou remember them, some claim as debt,
1 think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING
MOURNING
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
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'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th* earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
Whose soul is sense cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th* other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
THE RELIC
When my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,
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(For graves have learn'd that womanhead
To b to more than one a bed)
And he that digs it, spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
Will he not lefus alone,
And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls, at the last busy day,
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?
If this fall in a time, or land,
Where mis-devotion doth command,
Then he that digs us up will bring
Us to the Bishop and the King,
To make us Relics; then
Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I
A something else thereby;
All women shall adore us, and some men;
And since at such time, miracles are sought,
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.
First, we lov'd well and faithfully,
Yet knew not what we lov'd, nor why,
Difference of sex no more we knew
Than our Guardian Angels do;
Coming and going, we
Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;
Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals
Which nature, injur'd by late law, sets free:
These miracles we did; but now alas,
All measure, and all language, I should pass
Should I tell what a miracle she was.
DEATH, BE NOT PROUD
DEATH, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
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From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go
Rest of their bones and souls' delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
WHAT IF THIS PRESENT
WHAT if this present were the world's last night?
Mark in my heart, O Soul, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee af right:
Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierc'd head fell.
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,
Which pray'd forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?
No, no; but as in my idolatry
I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty, of pity, foulness only is
A sign of rigour: so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assigned,
This beauteous form assures a piteous mind.
AT THE ROUND EARTH'S
IMAGINED CORNERS
Ax the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow;
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
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But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
? Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if Thou hadst sealed my pardon with Thy blood.
BATTER MY HEART
BATTER my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, overthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive those sins, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin by which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
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Swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, Thou hast done:
I fear no more.
A HYMN TO CHRIST
At the Author's Last Going Into Germany
IN what torn ship so ever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of Thy ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of Thy blood;
Though Thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.
I sacrifice this island unto Thee,
And all whom I love there, and who love me;
When I have put our seas 'twixt them and me,
Put thou Thy seas betwixt my sins and Thee.
As the tree's sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go,
Where none but Thee, the eternal root
Of true love, I may know.
Nor Thou nor Thy religion dost control
The amorousness of an harmonious soul;
But Thou wouldst have that love Thyself; as Thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now;
Thou lovest not, till from loving more Thou free
My soul; Who ever gives, takes liberty;
Oh, if Thou carest not whom I love,
Alas! Thou lovest not me.
Seal then this bill of my divorce to all,
On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be
On fame, wit, hopesfalse mistresses to Thee.
Churches are best for prayer, that have least light;
To see God only, I go out of sight;
And to escape stormy days, I choose
An everlasting night.
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John Webster
ALL THE FLOWERS OF THE
SPRING
ALL the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man doth flourish but his time;
Survey our progress from our birth;
We are set, we grow., we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites.
Sweetest breath and clearest eye,
Like perfumes, go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.
A DIRGE
CALL for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
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Richard Corbet
THE FAIRIES' FAREWELL
FAREWELL, rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late, for cleanliness,
Finds sixpence in her shoe?
Lament, lament, old Abbeys,
The fairies' lost command;
They did not change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land!
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now grown Puritans,
Who live as changelings ever since,
For love of your domains.
At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad;
So little care of sleep or sloth
These pretty ladies had;
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabor
And nimbly went their toes.
Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late, Elizabeth
And, later, James came in,
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They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath been.
By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession;
Their songs were Ave-Maries,
Their dances were procession.
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for religion fled;
Or else they take their ease.
A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure;
And whoso kept not secretly
Their mirth, was punished sure;
It was a most just Christian deed
To pinch such black and blue:
Oh, how the Commonwealth doth need
Such justices as you!
George Wither
SHALL I, WASTING IN DESPAIR
SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
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GEORGE WITHER
Should my heart be grieved or pined
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well-disposed nature
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder than
Turtle-dove, or pelican,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?
Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well-deserving, known,
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blessed
Which may gain her name of best,
If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be?
'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool, and die?
Those that bear a noble mind,
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do
That without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I though great she be?
Great, or good, or kind, or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair:
If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve:
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?
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Robert Herrick
TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE
MUCH OF TIME
GATHER ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are wanner;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
THE NIGHT-PIECE, TO JULIA
HER eyes the glow-worm lend thee;
The shooting stars attend thee;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
No Will-o'-the-wisp mislight thee,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee;
But on, on thy way
Not making a stay,
Since ghost there's none to affright thee.
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ROBERT HERRICK
Let not the dark thee cumber;
What though the moon does slumber?
The stars o the night
Will lend thee their light
Like tapers clear without number.
Then, Julia, let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me;
And when I shall meet
Thy silv'ry feet,
My soul I'll pour into thee.
UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!
DELIGHT IN DISORDER
A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction,
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher,
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly,
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat,
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
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A CHILD'S GRACE
HERE a little child I stand,
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as Paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a Benizon to fall
On our meat, and on us all. Amen.
THE BAD SEASON MAKES THE
POET SAD
DULL to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses:
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again,
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplexed the seasons were,
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drowned
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crowned;
And once more yet, ere I am laid out dead,
Knock at a star with my exalted head.
'TIS HARD TO FIND GOD
*Tis hard to find God, but to comprehend
Him, as He is, is labour without end.
MIRTH
TRUE mirth resides not in the smiling skin:
The sweetest solace is to act no sin.
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ROBERT HERRICK
PRAYERS MUST HAVE POISE
GOD He rejects all prayers that are sleight,
And want their poise: words ought to have their weight.
THE ROD
GOD'S rod doth watch while men do sleep; and then
The rod doth sleep, while vigilant are men.
TEMPTATION
THOSE saints, which God loves best,
The devil tempts not least.
THANKSGIVING
THANKSGIVING for a former, doth invite
God to bestow a second benefit.
NEUTRALITY LOATHSOME
GOD will have all, or none; serve Him, or fall
Down before Baal, Bel, or Belial:
Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise,
Abhor, and spew out all neutralities.
SINS LOATHED, AND YET LOVED
SHAME checks our first attempts, but then 'tis proved
Sins first disliked, are after that beloved.
GOOD CHRISTIANS
PLAY their offensive and defensive parts,
Till thev be hid o'er with a wood of darts.
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TO DAFFODILS
FAIR Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring!
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the Summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew
Ne'er to be found again.
GOOD MEN AFFLICTED MOST
GOD makes not good men wantons, but doth bring
Them to the field, and, there, to skirmishing;
With trials those, with terrors these He proves,
And hazards those most, whom the most He loves;
For Sceva, darts; for Codes, dangers; thus
He finds a fire for mighty Mutius;
Death for stout Cato; and besides all these,
A poison, too, He has for Socrates;
Torments for high Attilius; and, with want,
Brings in Fabricius for a combatant:
But, bastard-slips, and such as He dislikes,
He never brings them once to th* push of pikes.
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George Herbert
EASTER-WINGS
LORD, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till be became
Most poor:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did begin:
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sin,
That I became
Most thin.
With thee
Let me combine
And feel this day thy victory:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
REDEMPTION
HAVING been tenant long to a rich lord,
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel the old.
In heaven at his manor I him sought:
They told me there, that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth to take possession.
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of thieves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
THE COLLAR
I STRUCK the board, and cried, No more;
I will abroad!
What! shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free is the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let my blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not; forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's head there: tie up thy fears.
160
GEORGE HERBERT
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load.
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Me thought I heard one calling, Child:
And I replied, My Lord.
THE QUIP
THE merry World did on a day
With his train-bands and mates agree
To meet together, where I lay,
And all in sport to jeer at me.
First, Beauty crept into a rose,
Which when I plucked not, 'Sir/ said she,
'Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?'
But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Then Money came, and chinking still,
'What tune is this, poor man?' said he:
*I heard in music you had skill/
But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Then came brave Glory puffing by
In silks that whistled who but he?
He scarce allowed me half an eye-
But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Then came quick Wit and Conversation,
And he would needs a comfort be,
And, to be short, make an oration
But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Yet when the hour of Thy design
To answer these fine things shall come,
Speak not at large, say, I am Thine,
And then they have their answer home.
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LOVE
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
*A guest/ I answered, 'worthy to be here.'
Love said, 'You shall be he/
*I ? the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, rny dear,
I cannot look on Thee/
Love took my hand, and smiling, did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?*
'Truth, Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve/
'And know you not/ says Love, Vho bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve/
'You must sit down/ says Love, 'and taste my meat.*
So I did sit and eat.
THE PULLEY
WHEN God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by-
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewel also on My creature,
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GEORGE HERBERT
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
.Arid rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.
DISCIPLINE
THROW away thy rod,
Throw away thy wrath;
my God,
Take the gentle path.
For my heart's desire
Unto thine is bent;
1 aspire
To a full consent.
Not a word or look
I affect to own,
But by book,
And thy book alone.
Though I fail, I weep;
Though I halt in pace,
Yet I creep
To the throne of grace.
Then let wrath remove,
Love will do the deed;
For with love
Stony hearts will bleed.
Love is swift of foot;
Love's a man of war,
And can shoot,
And can hit from far.
Who can 'scape his bow?
That which wrought on
thee,
Brought thee low,
Needs must work on me.
Throw away thy rod:
Though man frailties hath,
Thou art God;
Throw away thy wrath.
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LIFE
I MAKE a posie, while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away
And withered in my hand.
My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time's gentle admonition:
Who did so sweetly death's sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
Yet sug'ring the suspicion.
Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,,
Fit, while ye liv'd, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since, if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.
JORDAN
WHO says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?
Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow course-spun lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
Must all be veil'd, while he that reads, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?
Shepherds are honest people; let them sing:
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for Prime:
I envy no man's nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rime,
Who plainly say. My God, My King.
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GEORGE HERBERT
THE ROSE
PRESS me not to take more pleasure
In this world of sugared lies,
And to use a larger measure
Than my strict, yet welcome size.
First, there is no pleasure here:
Colour'd griefs indeed there are,
Blushing woes, that look as clear
As if they could beauty spare.
Or if such deceits there be,
Such delights I meant to say;
There are no such things to me,
Who have passed my right away.
But I will not much oppose
Unto what you now advise:
Only take this gentle rose,
And therein my answer lies.
What is fairer than a rose?
What is sweeter? yet it purgeth,
Purgings enmity disclose,
Enmity forbearance urgeth.
If then all that worldling's prize
Be contracted to a rose;
Sweetly there indeed it lies,
But it biteth in the close.
So this flower doth judge and sentence
Worldly joys to be a scourge;
For they all produce repentance,
And repentance is a purge.
But I health, not physic choose:
Only though I you oppose,
Say that fairly I refuse,
For my answer is a rose.
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AVARICE
MONEY, thou bane of bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine.
Surely thou didst so little contribute
To this great kingdom which thou now hast got,
That he was fain, when thou wert destitute,
To dig thee out of thy dark cave and grot:
Thus forcing thee, by fire he made thee bright:
Nay, thou hast got the face of man; for we
Have with our stamp and seal transferred our right:
Thou art the man, and man but dross to thee.
Man calleth thee his wealth, who made thee rich,
And while he digs thee out, falls in the ditch.
AFFLICTION
WHEN first Thou didst entice to Thee my heart,
I thought the service brave:
So many joys I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have
Out of my stock of natural delights,
Augmented with Thy gracious benefits.
I looked on Thy furniture so fine,
And made it fine to me;
Thy glorious household-stuff did me entwine,
And 'tice me unto Thee.
Such stars I counted mine: both heaven and earth
Paid me my wages in a world of mirth.
vVhat pleasures could I want, whose King I served,
Where joys my fellows were?
Thus argued into hopes, my thoughts reserved
No place for grief or fear;
Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place,
And made her youth and fierceness seek Thy face.
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GEORGE HERBERT
At first Thou gav'st me milk and sweetnesses;
I had my wish and way:
My days were strew'd with flowers and happiness;
There was no month but May.
But with my years sorrow did twist and grow,
And made a party unawares for woe.
My flesh began unto my soul in pain,
Sicknesses cleave my bones,
Consuming agues dwell in every vein,
And tune my breath to groans:
Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce believed,
Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived.
When I got health, Thou took'st away my life,
And more; for my friends die:
My mirth and edge was lost; a blunted knife
Was of more use than I.
Thus thin and lean without a fence or friend,
I was blown through with every storm and wind.
Whereas my birth and spirit rather took
The way that takes the town;
Thou didst betray me to a ling'ring book,
And wrap me in a gown.
I was entangled in the world of strife,
Before I had the power to change my life.
Yet, for I threatened oft the siege to raise,
Not simp'ring all mine age,
Thou often didst with academic praise
Melt and dissolve my rage.
I took Thy sweeten'd pill, till I came near;
I could not go away, nor persevere.
Yet lest perchance I should too happy be
In my unhappiness,
Turning my purge to food, Thou throwest me
Into more sicknesses.
Thus doth Thy power cross-bias me, not making
Thine own gift good, yet me from my ways taking.
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Now I am here, what Thou wilt do with me
None of my books will show:
I read and sigh, and wish I were a tree;
For sure then I should grow
To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust
Her household to me, and I should be just.
Yet, though Thou troublest me, I must be meek;
In weakness must be stout;
Well, I will change the service, and go seek
Some other master out.
Ah, my dear God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love Thee, if I love Thee not.
James Shirley
DEATH THE LEVELLER
THE glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill;
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
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JAMES SHIRLEY
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon Death's purple altar now
See where the victor- victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust
Thomas Careto
SONG
ASK me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars 'light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in vour fragrant bosom dies.
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HE THAT LOVES A ROSY CHEEK
HE that loves a rosy cheek
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires;
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.
Edmund Waller
ON A GIRDLE
THAT which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind;
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my Heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move.
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that 's good, and all that ? s fair!
Give me but what this ribband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round!
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John Milton
ON HIS BLINDNESS
WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait/
ON HIS DECEASED WIFE
METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great Son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescued from death by force though pale and faint,
Mine as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she inclined
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
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HOW SOON HATH TIME
THE SUBTLE THIEF OF YOUTH
How soon hath Time the subtle thief of youth,
StoFn on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arriv'd so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n,
To that same lot, however mean, or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN
PIEDMONT
AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heav'n. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
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LYCIDAS
YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening, bright
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to th' oaten flute,
Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel,
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Damaetas loved to hear our song.
But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
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Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine overgrown,
And all their echoes mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen,
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:
Ay me, I fondly dream!
Had ye been therefor what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son
Whom universal Nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! What boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live labourious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th* abhorred shears,
And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,
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Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set of! to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all judging Jove;
As He pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea,
That came in Neptune's plea.
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory,
They knew not of his story,
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed,
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark
Built in th 7 eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
Ah! Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their belly's sake
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
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Of other care they little reckoning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearers* feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swolPn with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Beside what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flow'rets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied flowers,
And purple all the ground with vernal showers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
The cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
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Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth,
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves,
Where other groves, and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
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L'ALLEGRO
HENCE loathed Melancholy
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In Heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-maying,
There on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity,
Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled care derides,
And laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
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Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Some time walking not unseen
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight.
While the ploughman near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
While the landskip round it measures,
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied.
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
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Towers, and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or if the earlier season lead
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the live-long daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat;
She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he by friar's lanthorn led;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
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Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men.
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry,
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony:
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half -regained Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
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IL PENSEROSO
HENCE, vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys;
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view,
O'er-laid with black, staid wisdom's hue:
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The sea nymphs, and their power offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended,
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore;
His sister she (in Saturn's reign,
Such mixture was not held a stain).
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,.
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
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With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
And join with thee calm peace, and quiet,
Spare fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring,
Aye round about Jove's altar sing.
And add to these retired leisure.,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub, contemplation;
And the mute silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er th* accustomed oak;
Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among,
I woo to hear thy even-song;
And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that hath been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
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Or if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman's drowsy charm,
To bless the doors from nightly harm:
Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those daemons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet or with element.
Sometimes let gorgeous tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes', or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age,
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
But, O sad virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as warbled to the string
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made hell grant what love did seek;
Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wond'rous horse of brass,
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On which the Tartar king did ride;
And if aught else, great bards beside,
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of tourneys and of trophies hung;
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited morn appear,
Not tricked and frounced as she was wont,
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But kerchiefed in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown that Sylvan loves
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe with heaved stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flower work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring
With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream,
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eye-lids laid.
And as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
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Or th* unseen genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear.
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heav'n before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hemitage,
The haizy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heav'n doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.
ON TIME
FLY envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummet's pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
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When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t'whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this Earthy grossness quit,
Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.
THE BLINDNESS OF SAMSON
O LOSS of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased,
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereaved Thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
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To such a tender ball as th' eye confined?
So obvious and so easy to be quenched.
And not as feeling through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light;
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but O yet more miserable!
Myself, my sepulcher, a moving grave.
Fiom Samson Agomstes
ODE ON THE MORNING OF
CHRIST'S NATIVITY
THIS is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to this His new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons
bright?
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See how from far, upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel quire
From out His secret altar touched with hallow'd fire.
The Hymn
It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born Child,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to Him
Had dofFd her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But He, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around:
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood
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Unstain'd with hostile blood,
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
The stars, with deep amaze
Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.
And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlighten'd world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burning axletree could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
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When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet,
As never was by mortal finger strook
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shamefaced night array 'd;
The helmed Cherubim
And s worded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
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And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
But wisest Fate says No;
This must not yet be so;
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy.
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
So both Himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those ychain'd in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the
deep.
With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The aged Earth aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake;
When, at the world's last sessidn,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His
throne.
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And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But, now begins; for from this happy day
Th' old Dragon under ground
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swings the scaly horror of his folded tail.
The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament:
From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint,
In urns, and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat.
Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine,
And moon&d Ashtaroth
Heaven's queen and mother both,
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Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz
mourn.
And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread,
His burning idol all of blackest hue 9
In vain with cymbals' ring,
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blues
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove, or green,
Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud'.
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest,
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud,
In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,
Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.
So, when the sun in bed,
Curtain'd with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale,
Troop to the infernal jail,
Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fays,
Fly after the night-steeds leaving their moon-loved
maze.
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But see! the Virgin blest,
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is, our tedious song should here have ending,
Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car,
Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable,
Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.
SATAN AND THE FALLEN ANGELS
HE scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield..
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand-
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marie, not like those steps
On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions Angel Forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves overthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The soiourners of Goshen, who beheld
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From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
Fiom Paradise Lost
LIGHT
HAIL holy light, offspring of Heav'n first-born,
Or of th' Eternal Coetemal beam
May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from Eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hearest thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest
The rising world of water dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th' Orphean Lyre
I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovereign vital Lamp; but thou
Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their Orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear Spring, or shady Grove, or Sunny Hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee Zion and the flowery Brooks beneath
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
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Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in Fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach o Even or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's Rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the Book of knowledge fair
Presented, with a Universal blank
Of Nature's works to me expung'd and raised,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou Celestial light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of tilings invisible to mortal sight.
From Paradise Lost
SATAN'S SOLILOQUY
O THOU that with surpassing Glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole Dominion like the God
Of this new World; at whose sight all the Stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
1 fell, how glorious once above thy Sphere;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down
Warring in Heav'n against Heav'n's matchless King:
Ah wherefore; he deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
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In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I 'sdained subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burthensonxe, still paying, still to owe;
Forgetful what from him I still received,
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged; what burden then?
O had his powerful Destiny ordained
Me some inferior Angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not? some other Power
As great might have aspired, and me though mean
Drawn to his part; but other Powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same free Will and Power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heav'n's free Love dealt equally to all?
Be then his Love accursed, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.
O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
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JOHN MILTON
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me, they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan:
While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,
With Diadem and Scepter high advanced
The lower still I fall, only Supreme
In misery; such joy Ambition finds.
But say I could repent and could obtain
By Act of Grace my former state; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore: ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse,
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging peace:
All hope excluded thus, behold instead
Of us out-cast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this World.
So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,
Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least
Divided Empire with Heaven's King I hold
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long, and this new World shall know.
From Paradise Lost
SATAN'S GUILE
WHOM thus answered the Arch Fiend now undisguised.
'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate,
Who leagued with millions more in rash revolt
Kept not my happy Station, but was driven
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With them from bliss to the bottomless deep,
Yet to that hideous place not so confined
By rigour unconniving, but that oft
Leaving my dolorous Prison I enjoy
Large liberty to round this Globe of Earth,
Or range in the Air, nor from the Heav'n of Heav'ns
Hath he excluded my resort sometimes.
I came among the Sons of God, when he
Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job
To prove him, and illustrate his high worth;
And when to all his Angels he proposed
To draw the proud King Ahab into fraud
That he might fall in Ramoth, they demurring,
I undertook that office, and the tongues
Of all his flattering Prophets glibbed with lies
To his destruction, as I had in charge.
For what he bids I do; though I have lost
Much lustre of my native brightness, lost
To be beloved of God, I have not lost
To love, at least contemplate and admire
What I see excellent in good, or fair,
Or virtuous, I should so have lost all sense.
What can be then less in me than desire
To see thee and approach thee, whom I know
Declared the Son of God, to hear attend
Thy wisdom, and behold thy God-like deeds?
Men generally think me much a foe
To all mankind: why should I? they to me
Never did wrong or violence, by them
I lost not what I lost, rather by them
I gained what I have gained, and with them dwell
Copartner in these Regions of the World,
If not disposer; lend them oft my aid,
Oft my advice by presages and signs,
And answers, oracles, portents and dreams,
Whereby they may direct their future life.
Envy they say excites me, thus to gain
Companions of my misery and woe.
At first it may be; but long since with woe
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Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof,
That fellowship in pain divides not smart,
Nor lightens aught each man's peculiar load.
Small consolation then, were Man adjoined:
This wounds me most (what can it less) that Man,
Man fallen shall be restored, I never more.
From Paradise Regained
TRUE AND FALSE GLORY
To whom our Saviour calmly thus replied.
Thou neither dost persuade me to seek wealth
For Empires' sake, nor Empire to affect
For glory's sake by all thy argument.
For what is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people's praise, if always praise unmixed?
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and well weighed, scarce worth the
praise,
They praise and they admire they know not what;
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extolled,
To live upon their tongues and be their talk,
Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise?
His lot who dares be singularly good.
The intelligent among them and the wise
Are few, and glory scarce of few is raised.
This is true glory and renown, when God
Looking on the Earth, with approbation marks
The just man, and divulges him through Heaven
To all his Angels, who with true applause
Recount his praises; thus he did to Job,
When to extend his fame through Heaven and Earth,
As thou to thy reproach mayest well remember,
He asked thee, hast thou seen my servant Job?
Famous he was in Heaven, on Earth less known;
Where glory is false glory, attributed
To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame.
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
They err who count it glorious to subdue
By Conquest far and wide, to over-run
Large Countries, and in field great battles win,
Great Cities by assault: what do these Worthies,
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peaceable Nations, neighbouring, or remote,
Made Captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their Conquerors, who leave behind
Nothing but ruin whereso'er they rove,
'And all the flourishing works of peace destroy,
Then swell with pride, and must be titled Gods,
Great Benefactors of mankind, Deliverers,
Worshipped with Temple, Priest and Sacrifice;
One is the Son of Jove, of Mars the other,
Till Conqueror Death discover them scarce men,
Rolling in brutish vices, and deformed,
Violent or shameful death their due reward.
But if there be in glory aught of good,
It may by means far different be attained
Without ambition, war, or violence;
By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent,
By patience, temperance; I mention still
Him whom thy wrongs with Saintly pateience borne,
Made famous in a Land and times obscure;
Who names not now with honour patient Job?
Poor Socrates (who next more memorable?)
By what he taught and suffered for so doing,
For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now
Equal in fame to proudest Conquerors.
Yet if for fame and glory aught be done,
Aught suffered; if young African for fame
His wasted Country freed from Punic rage,
The deed becomes unpraised, the man at least,
And loses, though but verbal, his reward.
Shall I seek glory then, as vain men seek
Oft not deserved? I seek not mine but his
Who sent me, and thereby witness what I am.
From Paradise Regained
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I
Sir John Suckling
THE CONSTANT LOVER
OUT upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together!
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.
Time shall moult away his wings
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.
But the spite on't is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.
Had it any been but she,
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.
William Cartwright
NO PLATONIC LOVE
TELL me no more of minds embracing minds,
And hearts exchang'd for hearts;
That spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds,
And mix their subtlest parts;
That two unbodied essences may kiss,
And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.
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I was that silly thing that once was wrought
To practise this thin love;
I climb'd from sex to soul, from soul to thought;
But thinking there to move,
Headlong I rolled from thought to soul, and then
From soul I lighted at the sex again.
As some strict down-looked men pretend to fast,
Who yet in closets eat;
So lovers who profess they spirits taste,
Feed yet on grosser meat;
I know they boast they souls to souls convey,
Howe'r they meet, the body is the way.
Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread
Those vain aerial ways,
Are like young heirs and alchemists misled
To waste their wealth and days,
For searching thus to be for ever rich,
They only find a med'cine for the itch.
TO CHLOE
Who Wished Herself Young Enough for Me
CHLOE, why wish you that your years
Would backward run, till they meet mine,
That perfect likeness which endears
Things unto things might us combine?
Our ages so in date agree
That twins do differ more than we.
There are two births; the one when light
First strikes the new awakened sense;
The other when two souls unite;
And we must count our life from thence.
When you loved me and I loved you,
The both of us were born anew.
Love then to us did new souls give,
And in those souls did plant new powers;
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Since when another life we live,
The breath we breathe is his, not ours;
Love makes those young whom age doth chill,
And whom he finds young, keeps young still.
Love, like that angel that shall call
Our bodies from the silent grave,
Unto one age doth raise us all,
None too much, none too little have.
Nay, that the difference may be none,
He makes two not alike, but one.
Richard Crashaw
THE TEAR
WHAT bright soft thing is this,
Sweet Mary, thy fair eyes' expense?
A moist spark it is,
A watery diamond; from whence
The very term, I think, was found,
The water of a diamond.
Oh! 'tis not a tear,
'Tis a star about to drop
From thine eye, its sphere;
The Sun will stoop and take it up.
Proud will his sister be to wear
This thine eye's jewel in her ear.
Oh! 'tis a tear,
Too true a tear; for no sad eyne,
How sad soe'er,
Rain so true a tear as thine;
Each drop, leaving a place so dear,
Weeps for itself, is its own tear.
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Such a pearl as this is,
(Slipped from Aurora's dewy breast)
The rose-bud's sweet lip kisses;
And such the rose itself, when vexed
With ungentle flames, does shed,
Sweating in too warm a bed.
Such the maiden gem
By the wanton Spring put on,
Peeps from her parent stem,
And blushes on the manly Sun:
This wat'ry blossom of thy eyne,
Ripe, will make the richer wine.
Fair drop, why quak'st thou so?
'Cause thou straight must lay thy head
In the dust? Oh no;
The dust shall never be thy bed:
A pillow for thee will I bring,
Stuffed with down of angel's wing.
Thus carried up on high,
(For to heaven thou must go)
Sweetly shalt thou lie,
And in soft slumbers bathe thy woe;
Till the singing orbs awake thee,
And one of their bright chorus make thee.
There thyself shalt be
An eye, but not a weeping one;
Yet I doubt of thee,
Wither th'hadst rather there have shone
An eye of Heaven; or still shine here
In th' Heaven of Mary's eye, a tear.
FOR HOPE*
DEAR hope! Earth's dowry and heaven's debt!
The entity of those that are not yet.
Subtlest, but surest being! Thou by whom
Our nothing has a definition!
* Sec page $14.
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RICHARD CRASHAW
Substantial shade! whose sweet allay
Blends both the noons of night and day.
Fates cannot find out a capacity
Of hurting thee.
From Thee their lean dilemma with blunt horn
Shrinks, as the sick moon from the wholesome morn.
Rich hope! Love's legacy under lock
Of faith! still spending and still growing stock!
Our crown-land lies above, yet each meal brings
A seemly portion for the sons of kings.
Nor will the virgin joys we wed
Come less unbroken to our bed
Because that from the bridal cheek of bliss
Thou steal'st us down a distant kiss.
Hope's chaste stealth harms no more joy's maidenhead
Than spousal rites prejudge the marriage bed.
Fair hope! Our earlier heav'n, by thee
Young time is taster to eternity.
Thy generous wine with age grows strong, not sour.
Nor does it kill the fruits to smell the flower.
Thy golden, growing head never hangs down,
Till in the lap of love's full noon
It falls, and dies! O no, it melts away
As does the dawn into the day,
As lumps of sugar lose themselves and twine
Their supple essence with the soul of wine.
Fortune? Alas, above the world's low wars,
Hope walks, and kicks the curl'd heads of conspiring
stars.
Her keel cuts not the waves where these winds stir;
Fortune's whole lottery is one blank to her.
Her shafts and she fly far above
And forage in the fields of light and love.
Sweet hope! Kind cheat! Fair fallacy! By thee
We are not Where nor What we be,
But What and Where we would be. Thus art thou
Our absent Presence and our future Now.
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Faith's sister! Nurse of fair desire!
Fear's antidote! A wise and well-stay'd fire!
Temper 'twixt chill despair and torrid joy!
Queen Regent in young Love's minority!
Though the vext ehymick vainly chases
His fugitive gold through all her faces,
Though Love's more fierce, more fugitive fires assay
One face more fugitive than all they,
True hope's a glorious hunter, and her chase
The God of Nature in the fields of grace.
THE FLAMING HEART
Upon the Book and Picture of the Scraphical Saint Teresa
(As She Is Usually Expressed with Seraphim Beside Her)
WELL meaning readers! you that come as friends
And catch the precious name this piece pretends;
Make not too much haste to' admire
That fir-cheek't fallacy of fire.
That is a SERAPHIM, they say
And this the great TERESIA.
Readers, be rul'd by me; and make
Here a well-placed and wise mistake
You must transpose the picture quite.
And spell it wrong to read it right;
Read HIM for her, and HER for him;
And call the SAINT the SERAPHIM.
Painter, what didst thou understand
To put her dart into his hand!
See, even the years and size of him
Shows this the mother SERAPHIM.
This is the mistress flame; and duteous he
Her happy fire-works, here, comes down to see.
O most poor-spirited of men!
Had thy cold Pencil kissed her PEN
Thou couldst not so unkindly err
To show us This faint shade for HER.
Why man, this speaks pure mortal frame;
And mocks with female FROST love's manly flame.
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One would suspect thou meanest to paint
Some weak, inferiour, woman saint.
But had thy pale-faced purple took
Fire from the burning cheeks of that bright Book
Thou wouldst on her have heaped up all
That could be found SERAPHIC AL;
What e'er this youth of fire wears fair,
Rosy fingers, radiant hair,
Glowing cheek, and glistering wings,
All those fair and flagrant things,
But before all, that fiery DART
Had filled the Hand of this great HEART.
Do then as equal right requires,
Since HIS the blushes be, and hers the fires.
Resume and rectify thy rude design;
Undress thy Seraphim into MINE.
Redeem this injury of thy art;
Give HIM the veil, give her the dart.
Give him the veil; that he may cover
The Red cheeks of a rivalTd lover.
Asham'd that our world, now, can show
Nests of new Seraphims here below.
Give her the DART for it is she
(Fair youth) shoots both thy shaft and THEE.
Say, all ye wise and well-pierced hearts
That live and die amidst her darts,
What is't your tasteful spirits do prove
In that rare life of Her, and love?
Say and bear witness. Sends she not
A SERAPHIM at every shot?
What magazines of immortal Arms there shine!
Heav'n's great artillery in each love-spun line.
Give then the dart to her who gives the flame;
Give him the veil, who kindly takes the shame.
But if it be the frequent fate
Of worst faults to be fortunate;
If all 's prescription; and proud wrong
Hearkens not to an humble song;
For all the gallantry of him,
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Give me the suffering SERAPHIM.
His be the bravery of all those Bright things,
The glowing cheeks, the glistering wings;
The Rosy hand, the radiant DART;
Leave HER alone THE FLAMING HEART.
Leave her that; and thou shalt leave her
Not one loose shaft but love's whole quiver.
For in love's field was never found
A nobler weapon then a Wound.
Love's passives are his activest part.
The wounded is the wounding heart.
O HEART! The equal poise of love's both parts
Big alike with wounds and darts.
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant FLAME
Live here, great HEART; and love and die and kill;
And bleed and wound; and yield and conquer still.
Let this immortal life where it comes
Walk in a crowd of loves and MARTYRDOMS.
Let mystic DEATHS wait on't; and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcase of a hard, cold, heart,
Let all thy scattered shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large Books of day,
Combined against this BREAST at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin,
This gracious Robbery shall thy bounty be;
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of LIGHTS and FIRES;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill'd Bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last Morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz'd thy parting Soul, and seal'd thee his;
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By all the heavens them hast in him
(Fair sister of the SERAPHIM!)
By all of HIM we have in THEE;
Leave nothing of my SELF in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die.
Richard Lovelace
TO LUCASTA
On Going to the Wars
TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.
TO LUCASTA
On Going Beyond the Seas
IF to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind, or swallowing wave.
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Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown, and greet as Angels greet.
So then we do anticipate
Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfin'd
In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind.
TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON
WHEN Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free-
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.
When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
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When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
Abraham Cowley
BEAUTY
BEAUTY, thou wild fantastic ape,
Who dost in ev'ry country change thy shape!
Here black, there brown, here tawny, and there white;
Thou flatt'rer which complfst with every sight!
Thou babel which conf ound'st the eye
With unintelligible variety!
Who hast no certain what, nor where,
But vary'st still, and dost thy self declare
Inconstant, as thy she-professors are.
Beauty, love's scene and masquerade,
So gay by well-plac'd lights, and distance made;
False coin, with which th' impostor cheats us still;
The stamp and colour good, but metal ill!
Which light, or base we find, when we
Weigh by enjoyment, and examine thee!
For though thy being be but show,
'Tis chiefly night which men to thee allow:
And choose t'enioy thee, when thou least art thou.
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Beauty, them active, passive ill!
Which diest thy self as fast as thou dost kill!
Thou tulip, who thy stock in paint dost waste,
Neither for physic good, nor smell, nor taste.
Beauty, whose flames but meteors are,
Short-liv'd and low, though thou wouldst seem a star,
Who dar'st not thine own home descry,
Pretending to dwell richly in the eye,
When thou, alas, dost in the fancy lie.
Beauty, whose conquests still are made
O'er hearts by cowards kept, or else betray'd!
Weak victor! who thy self destroyed must be
When sickness storms, or time besieges thee!
Thou'unwholesome thaw to frozen age!
Thou strong wine, which youth's fever dost enrage,
Thou tyrant which leav'st no man free!
Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!
Thou murth'rer which hast kilFd, and devil which
wouldst damn me.
AGAINST HOPE*
HOPE, whose weak being ruined is
Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of fate's dilemma wound.
Vain shadow! which does vanish quite
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The stars have not a possibility
Of blessing thee;
If things then from their end we happy call,
'Tis hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
Hope, thou bold taster of delight,
Who whilst thou should'st but taste devour'st it quite!
Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor
By clogging it with legacies before!
* See page 206
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ABRAHAM COWLEY
Che joys which we entire should wed
Dome deflowered virgins to our bed;
2ood fortunes without gain imported be,
>uch mighty custom's paid to thee.
7 or joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;
[f it take air before, its spirits waste.
Hope, fortune's cheating lottery!
Where for one prize an hundred blanks there be;
Pond archer, hope, who tak'st thy air so far,
That still or short or wide thine arrows are!
Thin empty cloud, which th'eye deceives
With shapes that our own fancy gives!
A. cloud, which gilt and painted now appears,
But must drop presently in tears!
When thy false beams o'er reason's light prevail,
By Ignes fatui for north stars we sail.
Brother of fear, more gaily clad!
The merrier fool o' th' two, yet quite as mad:
Sire of repentance, child of fond desire!
That blow'st the alchemist's and lover's fire!
Leading them still insensibly on
By the strange witchcraft of anon!
By thee the one does changing nature through
Her endless labyrinths pursue,
And th'other chases woman, whilst she goes
More ways and turns than hunted nature knows.
THE WISH
WELL then! I now do plainly see
This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy;
And they, methinks, deserve my pity
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings,
Of this great hive, the city.
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Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave,
May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!
And since love ne'er will from me flee,
A Mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only beloved and loving me.
O fountains! when in you shall I
Myself eased of unpeaceful thoughts espy?
O fields! O woods! when, when shall I be made
The happy tenant of your shade?
Here's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood:
Here's wealthy Nature's treasury,
Where all the riches lie that she
Has coin'd and stamp 'd for good.
Pride and ambition here
Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear;
Here nought but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter,
And nought but Echo flatter.
The gods, when they descended, hither
From heaven did always choose their way:
And therefore we may boldly say
That 'tis the way too thither.
How happy here should I
And one dear She live, and embracing die!
She who is all the world, and can exclude
In deserts solitude.
I should have then this only fear:
Lest men, when they my pleasures see,
Should hither throng to live like me,
And so make a city here.
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TO HIS COY MISTRESS
HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Should'st rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze:
Two hundred to adore each breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
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Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chap t power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
THE GARDEN
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their incessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb, or tree,
Whose short and narrow-verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flowers and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose!
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow;
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress* name:
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Little, alas! they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheresVer your barks I wound
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race;
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile, the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits, and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
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Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet?
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises 'twere in one,
To live in paradise alone.
How well the skillful gardener drew
Of flowers, and herbs, this dial new;
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!
THE PICTURE OF LITTLE T.C. IN
A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS
SEE with what simplicity
This nymph begins her golden days!
In the green grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair aspect tames
The wilder flowers, and gives them names,
But only with the roses plays,
And them does tell
What colour best becomes them, and what smelL
Who can foretell for what high cause
This darling of the gods was born?
Yet this is she whose chaster laws
The wanton Love shall one day fear,
And, under her command severe,
See his bow broke and ensigns torn.
Happy, who can
Appease this virtuous enemy of man!
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O then let me in time compound
And parley with those conquering eyes,
Ere they have tried their force to wound;
Ere with their glancing wheels they drive
In triumph over hearts that strive,
And them that yield but more despise:
Let me be laid
Where I may see thy glories from some shade.
Meantime, whilst every verdant thing
Itself does at thy beauty charm,
Reform the errors of the Spring:
Make that the tulips may have share
Of sweetness, seeing they are fair;
And roses of their thorns disarm;
But most procure
That violets may a longer age endure.
But O, young beauty of the woods,
Whom nature courts with fruits and flowers,
Gather the flowers, but spare the buds,
Lest Flora, angry at thy crime
To kill her infants in their prime,
Do quickly make th' example yours;
And, ere we see,
Nip in the blossom all our hopes and thee.
THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
MY love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapt its tinsel wing.
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And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow'r depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have plac'd,
(Though Love's whole world on us does wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced
Unless the giddy heaven fall
And earth some new convulsion tear,
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere.
As lines so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite can never meet.
Therefore the love which doth us bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
THE MOWER AGAINST GARDENS
LUXURIOUS man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the world seduce:
And from the fields the flow'rs and plants allure,
Where nature was most plain and pure.
He first enclosed within the garden's square
A dead and standing pool of air:
And a more luscious earth for them did knead,
Which stupefTd them while it fed.
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The pink grew then as double as his mind;
The nutriment did change the kind.
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint.
And flow'rs themselves were taught to paint.
The tulip, white, did for complexion seek;
And learn'd to interline its cheek:
Its onion root they then so high did hold,
That one was for a meadow sold.
Another world was search'd, through oceans new,
To find the marvel of Peru.
And yet these rarities might be allow'd,
To man, that sovereign thing and proud;
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it came;
He grafts upon the wild the tame:
That the uncertain and adult'rate fruit
Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too;
Lest any tyrant him out-do.
And in the cherry he does nature vex,
To procreate without a sex.
'Tis all enforc'd; the fountain and the grot;
While the sweet fields do lie forgot:
Where willing nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence:
And fauns and fairies do the meadows till,
More by their presence than their skill.
Their statues polish'd by some ancient hand,
May to adorn the gardens stand:
But howsoe'er the figures do excel,
The gods themselves with us do dwell.
ON A DROP OF DEW
SEE how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new;
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For the clear region where 'twas born
Round in itself encloses:
And in its little globe's extent,
Frames as it can its native element.
How it the purple flower does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light;
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure:
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flower be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away:
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day.
Dark beneath, but bright above:
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go:
How girt and ready to ascend.
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna's sacred dew distil;
White, and entire, though congealed and chill.
Congealed on earth; but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of the Almighty Sun.
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Henry Vaughan
THE SHOWER
TWAS so; I saw thy birth. That drowsy lake
From her faint bosom breathed thee, the disease
Of her sick waters and infectious ease.
But now at even,
Too gross for Heaven,
Tiou falFst in tears, and weep'st for thy mistake.
Jil it is so with me. Oft have I pressed
Heaven with a lazy breath, but fruitless this
Pierced riot; love only can with quick access
Unlock the way,
When all else stray
?he smoke and exhalations of the breast.
Tet, if as thou dost melt, and with thy train
Of drops make soft the Earth, my eyes could weep
O'er my hard heart, that's bound up and asleep;
Perhaps, at last,
Some such showers past,
vly God would give a sunshine after rain.
THE MORNING-WATCH
O JOYS! infinite sweetness! with what flowers
And shoots of glory my soul breaks and buds!
All the long hours
Of night and rest,
Through the still shrouds
Of sleep and clouds,
This dew fell on my breast.
Oh, how it bloods
And spirits all my earth! hark! in what rings
And hymning circulations the quick world
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Awakes and sings!
The rising winds,
And falling springs,
Birds, beasts, all things
Adore Him in their kinds.
Thus all is hurled
In sacred hymns and order; the great chime
And symphony of Nature. Prayer is
The world in tune,
A spirit-voice,
And vocal joys,
Whose echo is Heaven's bliss.
Oh, let me climb
When I lie down! The pious soul by night
Is like a clouded star, whose beams, though said
To shed their light
Under some cloud,
Yet are above,
And shine and move
Beyond that misty shroud.
So in my bed,
That curtained grave, though sleep like ashes hide
My lamp and life, both shall in Thee abide.
THE RETREAT
HAPPY those early days when I
Shined in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile, or two, from my first love,
And looking back (at that short space,)
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
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And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense;
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O how I long to travel back
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train,
From whence the'enlightened spirit sees
That shady city of palm trees;
But (ah!) my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move,
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.
THE WORLD
I SAW Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world
And all her train were hurled.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
Wit's sour delights;
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
Yet his dear treasure,
All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flower.
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The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog, moved there so slow,
He did not stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughtslike sad eclipsesscowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digged the mole, and lest his ways be found,
Worked underground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
That policy.
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
Were gnats and flies;
It rained about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.
The fearful miser on a heap of rust
Sat pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves.
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugged each one his pelf;
The downright epicure placed heav'n in sense,
And scorned pretence;
While others, slipped into a wide excess,
Said little less;
The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave;
And poor, despised Truth sat counting by
Their victory.
Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing and weep, soared up into the ring;
But most would use no wing.
Oh, fools said I thus to prefer dark night
Before true light!
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shows the way;
The way, which from this dead and dark abode
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Leads tip to God;
A way where you might tread the sun, and be
More bright than he!
But as I did their madness so discuss,
One whispered thus,
"This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,
But for His bride/
THEY ARE ALL GONE
THEY are all gone into the world o light!
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is dressed,
After the sun's remove.
I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days;
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmering and decays.
O holy Hope! and high Humility!
High as the heavens above!
These are your walks, and you have showed them me,
To kindle my cold love.
Dear beauteous Death! the jewel of the just,
Shining nowhere but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!
He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown;
But what fair well or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.
And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
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So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
If a star were confined into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that locked her up gives room,
Shell shine through all the sphere.
O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under Thee!
Resume Thy spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.
Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill
My perspective still as they pass;
Or else remove me hence unto that hill
Where I shall need no glass.
THE NIGHT
THROUGH that pure virgin-shrine,
That sacred veil drawn o'er thy glorious noon
That men might look and live as glow-worms shine,
And face the moon:
Wise Nicodemus saw such light
As made him know his God by night.
Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise,
And what can never more be done,
Did at midnight speak with the Sun!
O who will tell me, where
He found thee at that dead and silent hourl
What hallowed solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower,
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fullness of the Deity.
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No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works did my Lord hold
And lodge alone;
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.
Dear night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ's progress, and his prayer time;
The hours to which high heaven doth chime.
God's silent, searching flight:
When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
His still, soft call;
His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch,
When spirits their fair kindred catch.
Were all my loud, evil days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice
Is seldom rent;
Then I in heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here.
But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
To every mire,
And by this world's ill-guiding light,
Err more than I can do by night.
There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in Him
Might live invisible and dim.
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Thomas Traherne
ON LEAPING OVER THE MOON
I SAW new Worlds beneath the Water lie,
New People; yea, another Sky
And Sun, which seen by Day
Might things more clear display.
Just such another
Of late my Brother
Did in his Travel see, and saw by Night,
A much more strange and wondrous Sight:
Nor could the World exhibit such another,
So Great a Sight, but in a Brother.
Adventure strange! No such in Story we,
New or old, true or feigned, see.
On Earth he seem'd to move
Yet Heaven went above;
Up in the Skies
His body flies
In open, visible, yet Magic, sort:
As he along the Way did sport,
Over the Flood he takes his nimble Course
Without the help of feigned Horse.
As he went tripping o'er the King's high-way,
A little pearly river lay
O'er which, without a wing
Or Oar, he dar'd to swim,
Swim through the air
On body fair;
He would not use nor trust Icarian wings
Lest they should prove deceitful things;
For had he fall'n, it had been wondrous high,
Not from, but from above, the sky:
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He might have dropt through that thin element
Into a fathomless descent;
Unto the nether sky
That did beneath him lie,
And there might tell
What wonders dwell
On earth above. Yet doth he briskly run,
And bold the danger overcome;
Who, as he leapt, with joy related soon
How happy he o'er-leapt the Moon.
What wondrous things upon the Earth are done
Beneath, and yet above the sun?
Deeds all appear again
In higher spheres; remain
In clouds as yet:
But there they get
Another light, and in another way
Themselves to us above display.
The skies themselves this earthly globe surround;
Ware even here within them found.
On heav'nly ground within the skies we walk,
And in this middle centre talk:
Did we but wisely move,
On earth in heav'n above,
Then soon should we
Exalted be
Above the sky: from whence whoever falls,
Through a long dismal precipice,
Sinks to the deep abyss where Satan crawls
Where horrid Death and Despair lies.
As much as others thought themselves to lie
Beneath the moon, so much more high
Himself he thought to fly
Above the starry sky,
As that he spied
Below the tide.
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Thus did he yield me in the shady night
A wondrous and instructive light,
Which taught me that under our feet there is,
As o'er our heads, a place of bliss.
To the same purpose; he, not long before
Brought home from nurse, going to the door
To do some little thing
He must not do within,
With wonder cries,
As in the skies
He saw the moon, O yonder is the moon
Newly come after me to town,
That shin'd at Lugwardin but yesternight,
Where I enjoy'd the self-same light.
As if it had ev'n twenty thousand faces,
It shines at once in many places;
To all the earth so wide
God doth the stars divide
With so much art
The rnoon impart,
They serve us all; serve wholly ev'ry one
As if they served him alone.
While every single person hath such store,
'Tis want of sense that makes us poor.
WONDER
How like an angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
When first among his works I did appear,
Oh, how their glory did me crown!
The world resembled his eternity,
In which my soul did walk;
And everything that I did see
Did with me talk.
The skies in their magnificence,
The lovely lively air,
Oh, how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!
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The stars did entertain my sense,
And all the works of God so bright and pure,
So rich and great, did seem,
As if they ever must endure
In my esteem.
A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all spirit; I within did flow
With seas of life like wine;
I nothing in the world did know,
But 'twas divine.
Harsh rugged objects were concealed;
Oppressions, tears, and cries,
Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes,
Were hid, and only things revealed
Which heavenly spirits and the angels prize:
The state of innocence
And bliss, not trades and poverties,
Did fill my sense.
The streets seemed paved with golden stones,
The boys and girls all mine-
To me how did their lovely faces shine!
The sons of men all holy ones,
In joy and beauty then appeared to me;
And everything I found,
While like an angel I did see,
Adorned the ground.
Rich diamonds, and pearl, and gold
Might everywhere be seen;
Rare colours, yellow, blue, red, white, and green,
Mine eyes on ev'ry side behold;
All that I saw a wonder did appear,
Amazement was rny bliss,
That and my wealth met ev'ry where;
No ioy to this!
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Cursed, ill-devised proprieties,
With envy, avarice,
And fraud, those fiends that spoil ev'n paradise,
Were not the object of mine eyes;
Nor hedges, ditches, limits, narrow bounds,
I dreamt not aught of those,
But in surveying all men's grounds
I found repose.
For property itself was mine,
And hedges, ornaments,
Walls, houses, coffers, and their rich contents,
To make me rich combine.
Clothes, costly jewels, laces, I esteemed
My wealth, by others worn,
For me they all to wear them seemed,
When I was born.
SHADOWS IN THE WATER
IN unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view,
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.
Thus did I by the water's brink
Another world beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious skies
Reversed there abused mine eyes,
I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some puddle I did play
Another world within it lay.
Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go
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As freely moving to and fro:
In bright and open space
I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.
'Twas strange that people there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk:
That through a little wat'ry chink,
Which one dry ox or horse might drink,
We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.
I called them oft, but called in vain;
No speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other world, to please my mind.
I plainly saw by these
A new Antipodes,
Whom, though they were so plainly seerx
A film kept off that stood between.
By walking men's reversed feet
I chanced another world to meet;
Though it did not to view exceed
A phantasm, 'tis a world indeed,
Where skies beneath us shine,
And earth by art divine
Another face presents below,
Where people's feet against ours go.
Within the regions of the air,
Compassed about with heavens fair,
Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;
Where many numerous hosts,
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends,
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.
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ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me, through the chink,
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemed others, but are we;
Our second selves those shadows be.
Look how far off those lower skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine eyes
1 can them reach, O ye my friends,
What secret borders on those ends?
Are lofty heavens hurled
'Bout your inferior world?
Are ye the representatives
Of other people's distant lives?
Of all the playmates which I knew
That here I do the image view
In other selves; what can it mean
But that below the purling stream
Some unknown joys there be
Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin skin
Is broken, be admitted in.
John Dryden
A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY, 1687
FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
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'Arise, ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the corded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound:
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell,
That spoke so sweetly, and so well.
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
The trumpet's loud clangour
Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger,
And mortal alarms.
The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries Hark! the foes come;
Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat!
The soft complaining flute,
In dying notes, discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.
Sharp violins proclaim
Their jealous pangs and desperation,
Fury, frantic indignation,
Depth of pains, and height of passion,
For the fair, disdainful dame.
But O, what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
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The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.
Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees unrooted left their place,
Sequacious of the lyre;
But bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder higher:
When to her organ vocal breath was given,
An angel heard, and straight appeared
Mistaking Earth for Heaven.
GRAND CHORUS
As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the Blest above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky!
FAREWELL, UNGRATEFUL TRAITOR
FAREWELL, ungrateful traitor,
Farewell, my perjured swain;
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.
*Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain,
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have described it,
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There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it,
Will never love again.
The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.
ALEXANDER'S FEAST
AN ODE IN HONOUR OF ST. CECELIA'S DAY
'TWAS at the royal feast, for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were placed around;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned).
The lovely Thais, by his side,
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.
CHORUS: Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.
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ii
Timotheus, placed on high
Amid the tuneful choir,
With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above
(Such is the power of mighty love).
A dragon's fiery form belied the god:
Sublime on radiant spires he rode,
When he to fair Olympia pressed;
And while he sought her snowy breast:
Then, round her slender waist he curled,
And stamped an image of himself, a sovereign of the
world.
The listening crowd admire the lofty sound;
*A present deity/ they shout around;
C A present deity/ the vaulted roofs rebound:
With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.
CHORUS: With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.
in
The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums;
Flushed with a purple grace
He shows his honest face:
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
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JOHN DRYDEN
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
CHORUS: Bacchus 9 blessings are a treasure?
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
IV
Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the
slain.
The master saw the madness rise;
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And, while he heaven and earth defied,
Changed his hand, and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse,
Soft pity to infuse:
He sung Darius great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole;
And tears began to flow.
CHORUS: Revoking in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
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And, now and then, a sigh he stole;
And tears began to flow.
v
The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree:
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
'War/ he sung, Is toil and trouble;
Honour, but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying:
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying;
Lovely Thai's sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.'
The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So Love was crowned, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again:
At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.
CHORUS: The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again:
At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.
VI
Now strike the golden lyre again:
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder!
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Hark, hark! the horrid sound
Has raised up his head:
As awaked from the dead,
And amazed, he stares around.
'Revenge, revenge!' Timotheus cries,
'See the Furies arise!
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew!
Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods!'
The princes applaud, with a furious joy;
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thai's led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.
CHORUS: And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to
destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.
vn
Thus, long ago,
Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute;
Timotheus, to his breathing flute,
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last, divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
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The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He raised a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down.
GRAND
CHORUS: At last, divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He raised a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down.
NO, NO, POOR SUFFERING HEART
No, no, poor suffering heart, no change endeavour;
Choose to sustain the smart rather than leave her;
My ravished eyes behold such charms about her,
I can die with her, but not live without her.
One tender sigh of hers to see me languish
Will more than pay the price of my past anguish;
Beware, O cruel fair, how you smile on me,
'Twas a kind look of yours that has undone me.
Love has in store for me one happy minute,
And she will end my pain who did begin it;
Then no day void of bliss or pleasure leaving
Ages shall slide away without perceiving:
Cupid shall guard the door the more to please us,
And keep out time and death when they would seize us;
Time and death shall depart and say in flying
Love has found out a way to live, by dying.
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John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
A SATIRE AGAINST MANKIND
WERE I, who to my cost already am,
One of those strange, prodigious Creatures Man,
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What sort of Flesh and Blood I pleas'd to wear,
I'd be a Dog, a Monkey or a Bear,
Or any thing, but that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
The Senses are too gross; and hell contrive
A sixth to contradict the other five:
And before certain Instinct, will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err
Reason, an Ignis fatuus of the Mind,
Which leaves the Light of Nature, Sense behind.
Pathless, and dangerous, wand'ring ways, it takes,
Through Error's fenny Bogs, and thorny Brakes:
Whilst the misguided Follower climbs with pain,
Mountains of Whimseys, heaped in his own Brain,
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
Into Doubt's boundless Sea, where like to drown,
Books bear him up a while, and make him try
To swim with Bladders of Philosophy,
In hopes still to overtake the skipping Light:
The Vapour dances, in his dazzled sight,
Till spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
Then old Age, and Experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to Death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful, and so long,
That all his Life he has been in the wrong.
Which is the basest Creature, Man, or Beast?
Birds feed on Birds, Beasts on each other prey;
But savage Man alone, does Man betray.
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Prest by Necessity, They kill for Food;
Man undoes Man, to do himself no good.
With Teeth, and Claws, by Nature arm'd They hunt
Nature's allowance, to supply their want:
But Man with Smiles, Embraces, Friendships, Praise,
Inhumanely, his Fellow's Life betrays,
With voluntary Pains, works his Distress;
Not through Necessity, but Wantonness.
For Hunger, or for Love They bite or tear,
Whilst wretched Man is still in Arms for Fear:
For Fear he arms, and is of Arms afraid;
From Fear, to Fear, successively betrayed.
Base Fear, the Source whence his best Passions came,
His boasted Honour, and his dear-bought Fame,
The Lust of Power, to which he's such a Slave,
And for the which alone he dares be brave:
To which his various Projects are designed,
Which makes him gen'rous, affable, and kind:
For which he takes such pains to be thought wise,
And screws his Actions, in a forc'd Disguise:
Leads a most tedious Life, in misery,
Under labourious, mean Hypocrisy.
Look to the bottom of his vast Design,
Wherein Man's Wisdom, Pow'r, and Glory join
The Good he acts, the 111 he does endure,
'Tis all from Fear, to make himself secure.
Merely for safety, after Fame they thirst;
For all Men would be 'Cowards if they durst:
And Honesty's against all common sense-
Men must be Knaves; 'tis in their own defence,
Mankind's dishonest; if they think it fair,
Amongst known Cheats, to play upon the square,
You'll be undone
Nor can weak Truth, your Reputation save,
The Knaves will all agree to call you Knave.
Wrong'd shall he live, insulted o'er, opprest,
Who dares be less a Villain than the rest.
Thus here you see what Human Nature craves,
Most Men are Cowards, all Men should be Knaves.
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JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Difference lies, as far as I can see,
Not in the thing it self, but the degree;
And all the subject matter of Debate,
Is only who's a Knave of the first Rate.
Epilogue to the Satire of Man
All this with indignation have I hurFd,
At the pretending part of the proud World,
Who swoFn with selfish vanity, devise,
False freedoms, holy Cheats, and formal lies
Over their fellow Slaves to tyrannize.
But if at all, so just a Man there be,
(At all a just Man, of that blest degree)
Who does his needful flattery direct,
Not to oppress, and ruin, but protect;
Since flattery which way so ever laid,
Is still a Tax on that unhappy Trade.
If so upright a Patriot, you can find,
Whose passions bend to his unbiased Mind;
Who does his Arts, and Policies apply,
To raise his Country, not his Family;
Who boldly fatal, Avarice withstands,
And tempting Bribes, from friends' corrupting hands.
Is there a Mortal who on God relies?
Whose Life, his Faith, and Doctrine Justifies?
Not one blown up, with vain aspiring Pride,
Who for reproof of Sins, does Man deride:
Whose envious Heart with saucy Eloquence,
Dares chide at Kings, and rail at Men of sense.
Who in his talking vents more peevish lies,
More bitter railings, scandals, Calumnies,
Than at a Gossiping, are thrown about,
When the good Wives get drunk, and then fall out.
None of that sensual Tribe, whose Talents lie,
In Avarice, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony.
Who hunt Preferment, but abhor good Lives,
Whose lust exalted, to that height arrives,
They act Adult'ry with their Neighbours' Wives
And e'er a score of years completed be,
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Can from the lofty Stage of Honour see,
Half a large Parish their own Progeny.
Nor doting he who would be ador'd,
For domineering when at's height he's soared,
A greater Fop, in business at fourscore,
Fonder of serious Toys, affected more,
Than the gay glitt'ring Fool at twenty proves,
With all his noise, his tawdry Clothes and Loves.
But a meek humble Man of modest sense,
Who preaching peace does practice continence;
Whose pious life's a proof he does believe,
Mysterious truths, which no Man can conceive.
If upon Earth there dwell such Godlike Men,
111 here recant my Paradox to them.
Adore those Shrines of Virtue, Homage pay,
And with the thinking World, their Laws obey.
If such there are, yet grant me this at least,
Man differs more from Man, than Man from Beast.
From A Satire Against Mankind
Matthew Prior
TO A CHILD OF QUALITY
Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty
LOBDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band
That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters,
Were summoned by her high command
To show their passions by their letters.
My pen amongst the rest I took,
Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read ?
Should dart their kindling fire, and look
The power they have to be obey'd.
Nor quality, nor reputation,
Forbid me yet my flame to tell;
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MATTHEW PRIOR
Dear Five-years-old befriends my passion,
And I may write till she can spell.
For, while she makes her silkworms beds
With all the tender things I swear;
Whilst all the house my passion reads,
In papers round her baby's hair;
She may receive and own my flame,
For, though the strictest prudes should know it,
She'll pass for a most virtuous dame,
And I for an unhappy poet.
Then too, alas! when she shall tear
The rhymes some younger rival sends,
She'll give me leave to write, I fear,
And we shall still continue friends.
For, as our different ages move,
'Tis so ordain'd (would Fate but mend it!),
That I shall be past making love
When she begins to comprehend it.
John Gay
TO A LADY
ON HER PASSION FOR OLD CHINA
WHAT ecstasies her bosom fire!
How her eyes languish with desire!
How blest, how happy should I be,
Were that fond glance bestow'd on me!
New doubts and fears within me war:
What rival's near? a china jar.
China's the passion of her soul;
A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl,
Can kindle wishes in her breast,
Inflame with joy, or break her rest.
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Some gems collect; some medals prize,
And view the rust with lover's eyes;
Some court the stars at midnight hours;
Some dote on Nature's charms in flowers!
But ev'ry beauty I can trace
In Laura's mind, in Laura's face;
My stars are in this brighter sphere,
My lily and my rose is here.
Philosophers more grave than wise
Hunt science down in butterflies;
Or fondly poring on a spider
Stretch human contemplation wider;
Fossils give joy to Galen's soul,
He digs for knowledge, like a mole;
In shells so learn'd, that all agree
No fish that swims knows more than he!
In such pursuits if wisdom lies,
Who, Laura, shall thy taste despise?
When I some antique jar behold,
Or white, or blue, or speck'd with gold,
Vessels so pure, and so refined,
Appear the types of woman-kind:
Are they not valued for their beauty,
Too fair, too fine, for household duty?
With flowers and gold and azure dyed,
Of ev'ry house the grace and pride?
How white, how polish'd is their skin,
And valued most when only seen!
She who before was highest prized,
Is for a crack or flaw despised;
I grant they're frail, yet they're so rare,
The treasure cannot cost too dear!
But man is made of coarser stuff,
And serves convenience well enough;
He's a strong earthen vessel made,
For drudging, labour, toil, and trade;
And when wives lose their other self,
With ease they bear the loss of delf .
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JOHN GAY
Husbands more covetous than sage
Condemn this china-buying rage;
They count that woman's prudence little,
Who sets her heart on things so brittle.
But are those wise men's inclinations
Fixt on more strong, more sure foundations?
If all that's frail we must despise,
No human view or scheme is wise.
Are not ambition's hopes as weak?
They swell like bubbles, shine and break.
A courtier's promise is so slight,
'Tis made at noon, and broke at night.
What pleasure's sure? The miss you keep
Breaks both your fortune and your sleep,
The man who loves a country Me,
Breaks all the comforts of his wife;
And if he quit his farm and plough,
His wife in town may break her vow.
Love, Laura, love, while youth is warm,
For each new winter breaks a charm,
And woman's not like china sold,
But cheaper grows in growing old;
Then quickly choose the prudent part,
Or else you break a faithful heart.
Alexander Pope
KNOW THEN THYSELF
KNOW then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
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He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end:
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.
Most strength the moving principle requires;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires.
Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,
Form'd but to check, deliberate, and advise.
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;
Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At best more watchful this, but that more strong
The action of the stronger to suspend
Reason still use, to reason still attend.
Attention, habit and experience gains;
Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
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ALEXANDER POPE
But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the north? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;
Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difFrence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
'What differ more,' you cry, 'than crown and cowl?'
Ill tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it, the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings,
That thou mayst be by kings, or whores of kings,
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece:
But by your father's worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great.
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young;
Nor own, your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
What's fame? a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.
Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown
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The same (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade
An Eugene living as a Cassar dead;
Alike or when, or where, they shone, or shine,
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
From Essay on Man
VITAL SPARK OF HEAVENLY FLAME
VITAL spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?
A LITTLE LEARNING
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
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There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds arid mountains seem the last:
But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes.
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
A perfect Judge will read each work of Wit
With the same spirit that its author writ:
Survey the Whole, nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charm'd with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,
That shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep;
We cannot blame indeedbut we may sleep.
In Wit, as Nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome
(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!)
No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to th' admiring eyes;
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;
The Whole at once is bold, and regular.
From The Essay on Criticism,
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ENGRAVED ON THE COLLAR OF
A DOG, WHICH I GAVE TO HIS
ROYAL HIGHNESS
I AM his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
THE COXCOMB BIRD
THE coxcomb bird, so talkative and grave,
That from his cage cries Cuckold, Whore, and Knave,
Though many a passenger he rightly call,
You hold him no Philosopher at all.
From Moral Essays
Thomas Gray *
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD
THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
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Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the fault,
If Memory o'er their Tomb no Trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
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Hands, that the rod of empire might have swa/d,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton, here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
Th* applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester 'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
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Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews.
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.
For thee, who, mindful of th* unhonour'd dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.
'One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came, nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
'The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,
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Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn/
THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Jouih to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown d not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gaind from Heavn ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode.
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT
OF ETON COLLEGE
YE distant spires, ye antique towers
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver- winding way:
Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing
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My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.
Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green
The paths of pleasure trace;
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthral?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?
While some on earnest business bent
Their murmuring labours ply
'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty:
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign
And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
Arid snatch a fearful joy.
Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,
And lively cheer, of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light
That fly tn approach of morn.
Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play;
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:
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Yet see how all around 'em wait
The ministers of human fate
And black Misfortune's baleful train!
Ah show them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey, the murderous band!
Ah, tell them they are men!
These shall the fury Passions tear
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.
Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice
And grinning Infamy.
The stings of Falsehood those shall try
And hard Unkindness* alter'd eye,
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.
Lo, in the vale of years beneath
A griesly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,
More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.
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To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate.
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss
'Tis folly to be wise.
ON A FAVOURITE CAT DROWNED
IN A TUB OF GOLD FISHES
'TWAS on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed in the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared:
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes;
She saw; and purr'd applause.
Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The Genii of the stream:
Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue
Through richest purple, to the view
Betray'd a golden gleam.
The hapless Nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first, and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretch'd, in vain, to reach the prize.
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What female heart can gold despise?
What Cat's averse to fish?
Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch'd, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between:
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled).
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in!
Eight times emerging from the flood
She mew'd to every watery God
Some speedy aid to send.
No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirred:
Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard.
A favourite has no friend!
From hence, ye Beauties, undeceived,
Know one false step is ne'er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
William Collins
ODE TO EVENING
IF aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own brawling springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales;
O Nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed:
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Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,
Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale,
May not unseemly with its stillness suit;
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return.
For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves
Who slept in buds the day,
And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,
The pensive Pleasures sweet,
Prepare thy shadowy car;
Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;
Or find some ruin, midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.
Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires;
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont.
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
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While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long, regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And love thy favourite name!
Christopher Smart
MY CAT JEOFFRY
FOK I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily
serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he
worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times
round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the
blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins
to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are
clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the fore paws
extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
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For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be in
terrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider
his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it
chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more prop
erly begins.
For [he] keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the
adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his elec
trical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking
about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun
loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which
in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither
will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's
a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benev
olence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a bless
ing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at
the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in EuurQpe.
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For he is the cleanest in the use of his fore-paws of any
quadrupede.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the
love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in mo
tion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called
by benevolence perpetually Poor Jeoffry! poor
Jeoflry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is
better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it
in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity
what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things,
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon
approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in em
ployment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon
proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of com
mand.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's
bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of busi
ness.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express
himself neatly.
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For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal serv
ices.
For he killed the Icneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his at
tention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and
fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which
God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both
of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his move
ments.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more
than any other quadrupede.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.
Prom Jubilato Agno
THE MAN OF PRAYER
STRONG is the horse upon his speed;
Strong in pursuit the rapid glede,
Which makes at once his game:
Strong the tall ostrich on the ground;
Strong through the turbulent profound
Shoots xiphias to his aim.
Strong is the lion like a coal
His eyeball like a bastion's mole
His chest against the foes:
Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail,
Strong against tide, th' enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.
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But stronger still, in earth and air,
And in the sea, the man of prayer,
And far beneath the tide;
And in the seat to faith assigned,
Where ask is have, where seek is find,
Where knock is open wide.
From The Song of David
Oliver Goldsmith
WOMAN
WHEN lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her tears away?
The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from ev'ry eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom is to die.
SWEET AUBURN
SWEET Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed;
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease.
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please!
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,
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The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made!
How often have I blessed the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree;
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round;
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown,
By holding out, to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove:
These were thy charms, sweet village! sports like these,
With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please;
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,
These were thy charms but all these charms are fled.
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn!
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green.
One only master grasps thy whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But choked with sedges works its weedy way;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert-walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land.
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111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Prom The Deserted Village
William Cowper
THE SOLITUDE OF ALEXANDER
SELKIRK
I AM monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
1 am out of humanity's reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts, that roam over the plain,
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.
Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestowed upon man,
Oh, had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth,
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Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheered by the sallies of youth.
Ye winds, that have made me your sport.
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more.
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after rne?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift- winged arrows ,of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.
But the seafowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There is mercy in every place;
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even afHiction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.
LIGHT SHINING OUT OF DARKNESS
GOD moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
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He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour:
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.
Thomas Chatterton
AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF
CHARITIE
(As Wroten Bie the Gode Priest, Thomas Rowley, 1464)
IN Virgine the sweltry sun 'gan sheene,
And hot upon the mees did cast his ray;
The apple ripened from its paly green,
And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray;
The pied chelandre sung the livelong day;
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And eke the ground was dressed in its most neat aumere.
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The sun was gleaming in the midst of day,
Dead-still the air, and eke the welkin blue,
When from the sea arose in drear array
A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue,
The which full fast unto the woodland drew,
Hiding at once the sunnis beauteous face,
And the black tempest swelled, and gathered up apace.
Beneath a holm, fast by a pathway-side,
Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent led,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide,
Poor in his view, ungentle in his weed,
Long filled with the miseries of need.
Where from the hailstone could the beggar fly?
He had no houses there, nor any convent nigh.
Look in his clouded face, his sprite there scan;
How woe-begone, how withered, sapless, dead!
Haste to thy church-glebe-house, accursed man!
Haste to thy kiste, thy only sleeping bed.
Cold as the clay which will grow on thy head
Is charity and love among high elves;
Knightis and barons live for pleasure and themselves.
The gathered storm is ripe; the big drops fall,
The sun-burnt meadows smoke, and drink the rain;
The coming ghastness do the cattle 'pall,
And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters fly again;
The welken opes; the yellow lightning flies,
And the hot fiery steam in the wide lowings dies.
List! now the thunder's rattling noisy sound
Moves slowly on, and then embollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, expended, drowned,
Still on the frighted ear of terror hangs;
The winds are up; the lofty elmen swangs;
Again the lightning and the thunder pours,
And the full clouds are burst at once in stony showers.
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Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain,
The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came;
His chapournette was drented with the rain,
And his pencte girdle met with mickle shame;
He backwards told his bede-roll at the same
The storm increases, and he drew aside,
With the poor alms-craver near to the holm to bide.
His cloak was all of Lincoln cloth so fine,
With a gold button fastened near his chin,
His autremete was edged with golden twine,
And his shoe's peak a loverde's might have been;
Full well it shewn he thoughten cost no sin.
The trammels of his palfrey pleased his sight,
For the horse-milliner his head with roses dight.
'An alms, sir priest!' the drooping pilgrim said,
'Oh! let me wait within your convent-door,
Till the sun shineth high above our head,
And the loud tempest of the air is o'er.
Helpless and old am I, alas! and poor.
No house, no friend, no money in my pouch,
All that I call my own is this my silver crouche.'
'Varlet!' replied the abbot, 'cease your din;
This is no season alms and prayers to give,
My porter never lets a beggar in;
None touch my ring who not in honour live/
And now the sun with the black clouds did strive,
And shedding on the ground his glaring ray;
The abbot spurred his steed, and eftsoon rode away.
Once more the sky was black, the thunder rolled,
Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen;
Not dight full proud, nor buttoned up in gold,
His cope and jape were grey, and eke were clean;
A limitour he was of order seen;
And from the pathway-side then turned he,
Where the poor beggar lay beneath the elmen tree.
'An alms, sir priest!* the drooping pilgrim said,
'For sweet Saint Mary and your order sake.'
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The limitour then loosened his pouch-thread,
And did thereout a groat of silver take:
The needly pilgrim did for haline shake,
'Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care,
We are God's stewards all, naught of our own we bear.
'But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me.
Scathe any give a rent-roll to their Lord;
Here, take my semi-cope, thou'rt bare, I see,
'Tis thine; the saints will give me my reward/
He left the pilgrim, and his way aborde.
Virgin and holy saint, who sit in gloure,
Or give the mighty will, or give the good man power.
O SING UNTO MY ROUNDELAY
O SING unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me;
Dance no more at holyday,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Black his cryne as the winter night,
White his rode as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O he lies by the willow-tree!
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
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Hark! the raven flaps his wing
In the brier'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing
To the nightmares, as they go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow- tree.
See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true-love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow- tree.
Here upon my true-love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coldness o a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
With rny hands I'll dent the briers
Round his holy corse to gre:
Ouph and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body still shall be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heartes blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
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REEDS OF INNOCENCE
PIPING down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And lie laughing said to me:
*Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again;'
So I piped: he wept to hear.
'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read/
So he vanished from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
THE LAMB
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
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Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, 111 tell thee,
Little Lamb, 111 tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE
To see a World in a grain o sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to Heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf s and lion's howl
Raises from Hell a Human soul.
The wild deer, wandering here and there,
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Keeps the Human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro 7 the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
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Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling-bands;
Throughout all these human lands
Tools were made, and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in Eternity;
This is caught by Females bright,
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on Heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in Age and Death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over Hell and Death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
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Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to Doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame Philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave Old England's winding-sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night, to perish in a night,
When the Soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is Light,
To those poor souls who dwell in Night;
But does a Human Form display
To those who dwell in realms of Day.
I SAW A CHAPEL ALL OF GOLD
I SAW a Chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in,
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And many weeping stood without,
Weeping, mourning, worshipping.
I saw a Serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door,
And he forc'd and forc'd and forced;
Down the golden hinges tore,
And along the pavement sweet,
Set with pearls and rubies bright,
All his shining length he drew,
Till upon the altar white
Vomiting his poison out
On the Bread and on the Wine.
So I turned into a sty,
And laid me down among the swine.
THE ANGEL
I ASKED a thief to steal me a peach:
He turn'd up his eyes.
I ask'd a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek she cries.
As soon as I went an angel came:
He wink'd at the thief
And smiTd at the dame,
And without one word spoke
Had a peach from the tree,
And 'twixt earnest and joke
Enjoy *d the Lady.
LONDON
I WANDER through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
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In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice; in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
THE SCOFFERS
MOCK on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain;
You throw the sand against the wind
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back, they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The atoms of Democritus
And Newton's particles of light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
THE GARDEN OF LOVE
I WENT to the Garden of Love
And I saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
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And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
SONG
How sweet I roam'd from field to field
And tasted all the summer's pride,
Till I the Prince of Love beheld
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He showM me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fir'd my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
A POISON TREE
I WAS angry with my friend,
I told my wrath, my wrath did end;
I was angry with my foe,
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
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And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
THE NEW JERUSALEM
AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
TO THE MUSES
WHETHER on Ida's shady brow
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melodv have ceased;
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Whether in heaven ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air
Where the melodious winds have birth;
Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea,
Wandering in many a coral grove;
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry;
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.
THE TIGER
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
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Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
THE IMMORTAL
THE Immortal stood frozen amidst
The vast rock of eternity times
And times, a night of vast durance,
Impatient, stifled, stiffened, hardened;
Till impatience no longer could bear
The hard bondage: rent, rent, the vast solid,
With a crash from immense to immense,
Cracked across into numberless fragments.
The Prophetic wrath, struggling for vent,
Hurls apart, stamping furious to dust
And crumbling with bursting sobs, heaves
The black marble on high into fragments.
HuiTd apart on all sides as a falling
Rock, the innumerable fragments away
Fell asunder; & horrible vacuum
Beneath him, & on all sides round,
Falling, falling, Los fell & fell,
Sunk precipitant, heavy, down, down,
Times on times, night on night, day on day-
Truth has bounds, Error none falling, falling,
Years on years, & ages on ages
Still he fell thro' the void, still a void
Found for falling, day & night without end;
For tho' day or night was not, their spaces
Were measured by his incessant whirls
In the horrid vacuity bottomless.
The Immortal revolving, indignant,
First in wrath threw his limbs like the babe
New born into our world: wrath subsided,
And contemplative thoughts first arose:
Then aloft his head rear'd in the Abyss
And his downward-borne fall chang'd oblique
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Many ages of groans, till there grew
Branchy forms organising the Human
Into finite inflexible organs;
Till in process from falling he bore
Sidelong on the purple air, wafting
The weak breeze in efforts o'erwearied.
Incessant the falling Mind labour'd,
Organising itself, till the Vacuum
Became element, pliant to rise
Or to fall or to swim or to fly,
With ease searching the dire vacuity.
From The Book of Los
FOR THE SEXES;
THE GATES OF PARADISE
PROLOGUE
MUTUAL forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the gates of paradise,
Against the accuser's chief desire,
Who walk'd among the stones of fire.
Jehovah's finger wrote the law;
Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe,
And the dead corpse, from Sinai's heat,
Buried beneath his mercy seat.
O Christians! Christians! tell me why
You rear it on your altars high?
THE KEYS
The caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy mother's grief.
OF THE GATES
My eternal man set in repose,
The female from his darkness rose;
And she found me beneath a tree,
A mandrake, and in her veil hid me.
Serpent reasonings us entice
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Of good and evil, virtue and vice,
Doubt self jealous, watery folly,
Struggling thro* earth's melancholy,
Naked in air, in shame and fear,
Blind in fire, with shield and spear,
Two horn'd reasoning, cloven fiction,
In doubt, which is self contradiction,
A dark hermaphrodite we stood,-
Rational truth, root of evil and good.
Round me flew the flaming sword;
Round her snowy whirlwinds roar'd,
Freezing her veil, the mundane shell.
I rent the veil where the dead dwell:
When weary man enters his cave,
He meets his Saviour in the grave.
Some find a female garment there,
And some a male, woven with care,
Lest the sexual garments sweet
Should grow a devouring winding sheet.
One dies! alas! the living and dead!
One is slain! and one is fled!
In vain-glory hatcht and nurst,
By double Spectres, self accurst,
My son! my son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
On the shadows of the moon
Climbing thro* night's highest noon:
In time's ocean falling drown'd:
In aged ignorance profound,
Holy and cold, I clipp'd the wings
Of all sublunary things,
And in depths of my dungeons
Closed the father and the sons.
But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,
Thro* evening shades I haste away
To close the labours of my day.
The door of death I open found,
And the worm weaving in the ground:
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Thou rt my mother from the womb,
Wife, sister, daughter, to the tomb:
Weaving to dreams the sexual strife,
And weeping over the web of Life.
EPILOGUE
(TO THE ACCUSER WHO IS THE
GOD OF THIS WORLD)
Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor can'st thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Tho' thou art worshipped by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The son of morn in weary night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.
Robert Burns
MY LOVE IS LIKE A RED
RED ROSE
MY love is like a red red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
So fair art thou, niy bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till SL the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wf the sun:
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And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o* life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only love,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.
AULD LANG SYNE
SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be f orgot,
And auld lang syne!
Chorus
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o 9 kindness yet 9
For auld lang syne!
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the go wans fine;
But we've wandered monie a weary foot
Sin* auld lang syne.
We twae hae paidled f the burn
Frae mornm* sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin* auld lang syne.
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
And well tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.
COMIN* THRO' THE RYE
GIN a body meet a body
Comin' thro* the rye,
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Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?
Every lassie has her laddie-
Ne'er a ane hae I;
Yet a' the lads they smile at me
When comin' thro' the rye.
Amang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo'e mysel';
But whaur his hame, or what his name,
I dinna care to tell.
Gin a body meet a body
Comin' frae the town,
Gin a body greet a body,
Need a body frown?
Every lassie has her laddie-
Ne'er a ane hae I;
Yet a' the lads they smile at me
When comin' thro' the rye.
Amang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo'e mysel';
But whaur his hame, or what his name,
I dinna care to tell.
GREEN GROW THE RASHES, O
GREEN grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
There's nought but care on ev'ry han',
In ev'ry hour that passes, O:
What signifies the life o' man,
An t'were na for the lasses, O.
Green grow, etc.
The war'ly race may riches chase,
And riches still may fly them, O;
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An* tho* at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.
Green grow, etc.
But gie me a cannie hour at e'en,
My arms about my dearie, O;
An* warly cares, an* warly men,
May a* gang tapsalteerie, O!
Green grow, etc.
For you sae douce, ye sneer at this;
Ye*re nought but senseless asses, O:
The wisest man that warl* e*er saw,
He dearly lov*d the lasses, O.
Green grow, etc.
Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O;
Her prentice han* she try*d on man,
An* then she made the lasses, O.
Green grow, etc.
JOHN ANDERSON
JOHN* ANDERSON, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo!
John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill togither;
And mony a canty day, John,
We *ve had wi* ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we '11 go;
And sleep tegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.
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SWEET AFTON
FLOW gently, sweet Afton! ainang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds, in yon thorny den,
Thou green crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear, winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild Evening weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT
Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure, and a' that;
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The rank is but the guinea stamp;
The man's the gowd * for a' that.
What tho' on namely fare we dine,
Wear hodden-grey, 2 and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.
For a that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a* that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is King o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie, 3 ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof 4 for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star, and a* that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon 5 his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa' 6 thatl
For a' that, and a* that,
Their dignities, and a' that,
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth.
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree and a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for 'a that.
1 gold. 3 conceited fellow, 5 above.
2 coarse gray woolen. 4 fool, ninny. 6 claim.
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A POET'S WELCOME TO HIS LOVE-
BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER
THOU'S welcome, wean; mishanter fa' me,
If thoughts o' thee, or yet thy mammie,
Shall ever daimton me or awe me,
My sweet wee lady,
Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me
Tyta or daddie.
Tho' now they ca' me fornicator,
An' tease my name wi' countra clatter,
The mair they talk, I'm kend the better,
E'en let them clash;
An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter
To gie ane fash.
Welcome! my bonie, sweet, wee dochter,
Tho' ye come here a wee unsought for,
And tho* your comin' I hae fought for,
Baith kirk and queir;
Yet, by my faith, ye're no unwrought for,
That I shall swear!
Sweet fruit o' monie a merry dint,
My funny toil is no a' tint,
Tho' thou cam to the warl' asklent,
Which fools may scoff at;
In my last plack thy part's be in't
The better ha'f o't.
Tho' I should be the waur bestead,
Thou's be as braw and bienly clad,
And thy young years as nicely bred
Wi' education,
As onie brat o' wedlock's bed,
In a' thy station.
Wee image o* my bonie Betty,
As fatherly I kiss and daut thee,
As dear and near my heart I set thee
Wi' as gude will
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As a' the priests had seen me get thee
That's out o' hell.
Lord grant that thou may aye inherit
Thy mither's person, grace, an' merit,
An* thy poor, worthless daddy's spirit,
Without his failins,
'Twill please me more to see thee heir it,
Than stockit mailens.
For if thou be what I wad hae thee,
And tak the counsel I shall gie thee,
111 never rue my trouble wf thee
The cost nor shame o't,
But be a loving father to thee,
And brag the name o't.
THE RIGS O* BARLEY
IT was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are borne,
Beneath the moon's unclouded light,
I held awa to Annie;
The time flew by, wf tentless heed;
Till, 'tween the late and early,
Wf sma' persuasion she agreed
To see me thro' the barley.
Corn rigs, an' barley rigs,
An 9 corn rigs are bonie:
Til ne'er forget that happy night.
Among the rigs wf Annie.
The sky was blue, the wind was still,
The moon was shining clearly;
I set her down, wf right good will,
Amang the rigs o' barley:
I ken't her heart was a' my ain;
I lov'd her most sincerely;
I kiss'd her owre and owre again,
Amang the rigs o' barley.
Corn rigs, an barley rigs, ire.
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I lock'd her in my fond embrace;
Her heart was beating rarely:
My blessings on that happy place,
Amang the rigs o' barley!
But by the moon and stars so bright,
That shone that hour so clearly!
She ay shall bless that happy night
Amang the rigs o' barley.
Corn rigs, an barley rigs, &c.
I hae been blythe wf comrades dear;
I hae been merry drinking;
I hae been joyfu' gath'rin gear;
I hae been happy thinking:
But a' the pleasures e'er I saw,
Tho' three times doubl'd fairly
That happy night was worth them a',
Amang the rigs o' barley.
Corn rigs, an barley rigs y &c.
TO A LOUSE
On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church
HA! WHABE ye gaun, ye crawlin' ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly:
I canna say but ye strunt rarely
Owre gauze an' lace;
Though, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.
Ye ugly, creepin*, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunned by saunt an' sinner,
How dare you set your fit upon her,
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner
On some poor body.
Swith, in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep and sprawl and sprattle
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Wi'ther kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations:
Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.
Now haud you there, ye 're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug an* tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye 11 no be right
Till ye 've got on it,
The very tapmost tow'ring height
O' Miss's bonnet.
My sooth; right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump and grey as ony grozet;
for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum!
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your drodduml
1 wad na been surprised to spy
You on an auld wif e^s flannen toy;
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy,
On 's wyliecoat;
But Miss's fine Lunar di, fie!
How daur ye do *t?
O Jenny, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a* abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie *s makin'!
Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin'I
O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us.
And ev'n devotion!
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DAFFODILS
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed and gazed but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE*
THERE was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
* See page 803.
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WILLIAM WOBDSWORTH
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
I was a Traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.
But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low;
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could
name.
I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
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As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondencey and madness.
Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befell that, in this lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a Man before me unawares:
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;
Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.
Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
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Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth all together, if it move at all.
At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned,
As if he had been reading in a book:
And now a stranger's privilege I took;
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
'This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.*
A gentle answer did the old Man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:
And him with further words I thus bespake,
'What occupation do you there pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you/
Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.
His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,
But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest
Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
Of ordinary men; a stately speech;
Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.
He told that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance;
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.
The old Man still stood talking by my side;
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the Man did seem
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Like one whom I had met with in a dream;
Or like a man from some far region sent,
To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.
My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
My question eagerly did I renew,
'How is it that you live, and what is it you do?'
He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said that, gathering leeches, far and wide
He travelled; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the pools where they abide.
'Once I could meet with them on every side;
But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may/
While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old Man's shape, and speechall troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.
And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
But stately in the main; and, when he ended,
I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.
'God/ said I, 'be my help and stay secure;
111 think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!'
CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR
WHO is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
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WILLIAM WOBDSWOBTH
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought;
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a stage where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labours good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
Who, if he rises to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honourable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
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Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall,
Like showers of rnanna, if they come at all:
Whose power shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
-He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoever he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to love:
*Tis finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not
Plays in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name-
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
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And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.
STRANGE FITS OF PASSION
STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.
Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
And now we reached the orchard plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.
In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
*O mercy!' to myself I cried,
If Lucy should be dead!'
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A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL
A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees,
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
SHE DWELT AMONG THE
UNTRODDEN WAYS
SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
THE RAINBOW
MY heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
THE SOLITARY REAPER
BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whatever the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
1 saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
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SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF
DELIGHT
SHE was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusy hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
ODE: INTIMATIONS OF
IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS
OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream.
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn whereso'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more,
ii
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
in
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mind the season wrong;
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I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happ}
Shepherd-boyl
IV
Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
v
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He
Beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
VI
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
vn
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
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And -onto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
f Filling from time to time his 'humourous stage 7
'With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
VIII
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
[To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;]
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
IX
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Falling from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
x
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
TINTERN ABBEY
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion, and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensation sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
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As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro* the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
[ came among these hills; when like a roe
[ bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
3f the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
522 -
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Vherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood.
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past^
1 And all its aching joys are now no more 9
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
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The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance
324
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
LONDON, 1802
MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
MUTABILITY
FROM low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;
A musical but melancholy chime,
Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,
Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.
Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime
That in the morning whiten'd hill and plain
326
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time.
IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING
IT is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder everlastingly.
Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
SURPRISED BY JOY
SURPRISED by joy impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport O! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find!
Love, faithful love, recall'd thee to my mind-
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for^the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
327
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
KUBLA KHAN
IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
AJnd from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
328
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEBIDGE
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
THE RIME OF
THE ANCIENT MARINER
PAUT I
IT is an ancient Mariner, ifanner' 1 *
And he stoppeth one of three. meeteth three
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, fiSdSftoa
NOW wherefore StOpp'st thou me? wedding feast,
* *- aind detameth
one.
The Bridegroom's doors are open'd wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din/
329
The Wedding-
eye of the old
to hear
s tale.
The Manner
tells how the
ship sailed
southward with
a good wind
and fair
weather, till
it reached the
Line.
The Wedding -
Guest heareth
the bridal
music; but the
Mariner con-
tinueth his tale.
The ship driven
by a storm to-
ward the South
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He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!*
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with to 5 glittering eye-
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
'The ship was cheer'd, the harbour clear'd,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon '
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
And now the Storm-blast came, and he
t nous and st .
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
He struck with his overtaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts The land of ice,
Did send a dismal sheen: and of fearful
1 sounds, where
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken no living thing
The ice was all between. was to be 8een '
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It crack'd and growFd, and roar'd and
howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hail'd it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steer'd us through!
And a good south wind sprung up
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners* hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
Till a great
sea-bird, called
the Albatross,
came through
the snow -fog,
and was re
ceived with
great joy and
hospitality.
And lol the
Albatross
proveth a bird
and followeth
the ship as it
returned north
ward through
fog and floating
ice.
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
It perch'd for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke
white,
Gilmmer'd the white moonshine.'
The ancient
Manner m- 'Q OC J save ^hee, ancient Mariner,
hospitably . n ' . . . '
Mieth the pious From the fiends, that plague thee thus!
bird of good why } ook > st thou sop'^With my cross bow
I shot the Albatross.
PART II
'The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Tr . , . Came to the mariners' hollo!
His shipmates
The ancient ms And I had done a hellish thing,
*SW6i And ft would work >em woe:
of good luck. For all averr d I had kill'd the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!
Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averr'd I had kill'd the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew.
The furrow follow'd free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt
down,
But when the
fog cleared off,
they justify the
same, and thus
make them
selves accom
plices in the
crime.
The fair breeze
continues; the
ship enters the
Pacific Ocean,
and sails north
ward, even till
it reaches the
Line.
The ship hath
been suddenly
becalmed.
332
And the Alba
tross begins to
be avenged.
SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere.
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
And some in dreams assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and SnOW. nor angels; con
cerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantmo-
politan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and
there is no climate or element without one or more.
The shipmates
And every tongue, through utter drought, * th r 5 re
T*T -J.-L j *. ^L A. & distress, would
Was wither d at the root; fain throw the
We could not speak, no more than if ^heanci^t n
We had been choked with soot. Manner m
sign whereof
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks fe7d h sea-bird
Had I from old and young! round hls neck -
333
A Spirit had
followed them,
one of the in
visible inhabit"
ants of this
planet, neither
departed souls
The ancient
Manner be-
holdeth a sign
in the element
afar off.
At its nearer
approach, it
seemeth him
to be a ship;
and at a dear
ransom he
freeth hts
speech from
the bonds of
thirst.
A flash of joy;
And horror
follows. For
can it be a
wind or tide?
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
PART III
'There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parch'd, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye!
When, looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
At first it seem'd a little speck,
And then it seem'd a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it near'd and near'd:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged, and tack'd and veer'd.
With throats unslaked, with black lips
baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I suck'd the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!
With throats unslaked, with black lips
baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal-
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
The western wave was all aflame,
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The day was wellnigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad, bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was fleck'd with bars but the skeie-
( Heaven's Mother send us grace! ) , ton of a 8hlp '
As if through a dungeon-grate he peer'd
With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres?
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that Woman's mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won! IVe won!"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
We listen'd and look'd sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seem'd to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
And its ribs
are seen as
bars on the
face of the
setting Sun.
The Spectre-
Woman and her
Death-mate,
and no other,
on board the
skeleton ship.
Like vessel,
like crew!
Death and
Lzfo-m- Death
have diced for
the ship's crew
and she (the
latter) winneth
the ancient
Mariner.
No twilight
within the
courts of the
Sun.
335
At the rising
of the Moon,
One after
another,
sis
drop down
dead.
But Life-in-
Death begins
her work on
the ancient
Mariner.
The Wedding-
Guest feareth
that a spirit
^talking to
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
The steersman's face by his lamp gleam'd
white;
From the sails the dew did drip-
Till clomb above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.
One after one, by the star-dogg'd Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turn'd his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
Four times fifty living men
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan ) ,
TTT..I i *i b IT i i
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropp'd down one by one.
The souls did from their bodies fly
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it pass'd me by
Like the whizz of my crossbow!'
PART IV
1 f e ar thee, ancient Mariner!
Y r - , . , -,,
I fear thy skinny hand!
But the an
cient Manner
assureth him
of his bodily
life, and pro-
ceedeth to re
late his horrible
penance.
He despiseth
the creatures of
the calm.
336
As is the ribb'd sea-sand.
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand so brown/
*Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.
Alone, alone, all, all alone
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Lived on; and so did I.
I look'd upon the rotting sea, Andenmeth
And drew my eyes away;
I look d upon the rotting deck, an <i s
And there the dead men lay. hedead '
I look'd to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
But the sky and the sea, and the sea and
the sky,
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
The cold sweat melted from their limbs But the cwr ?
Nor rot nor reek did they: * KJ$ m
The look with which they look'd on me the dead men -
Had never pass'd away.
An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
In his loneli-
The moving Moon went up the sky, * ^
And nowhere did abide; yeameth
o r-ji i . towards the
Softly She Was going up, journeying
And a star or two beside- ^X^tm
sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to
them, and is their appointed rest and their native country and thqir own
natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly
expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.
Her beams bemock'd the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
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A still and awful red.
of 'the 'MOOU Beyond the shadow of the ship,
h hM^ watc h> d tlie water-snakes:
he beholdeth
God's crea
tures of the
great calm.
Their beauty
and their
happiness.
He blesseth
them in his
heart.
The spell
begins to
break.
By grace of
the holy
Mother, the
ancient.
Manner is
refreshed
with rain.
338
They moved in tracks of shining white
And when they rear'd, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watch'd their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coil'd and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gush'd from my heart,
And I blessM them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless'd them unaware.
The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
PART V
*O sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remain'd,
1 dreamt that they were fill'd with dew;
And when I awoke, it rain'd.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold.
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
And still my body drank.
I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.
And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life;
And a hundred fire-flags sheen;
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain pour'd down from one black
cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side;
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steer'd, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up-blew;
He heareth
sounds and
seeth strange
sights and
commotions
in the sky and
the element.
The bodies of
the ship's crew
are inspired,
and the ship
moves on;
339
But not by
the souls of
the men, nor
by demons of
earth or middle
atr r but by a
blessed troop
of angelic
spirits, sent
down by the
invocation of
the guardian
saint.
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The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools
We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother's son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pull'd at one rope,
But he said naught to me/
'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!'
'Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest:
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawn'd they dropp'd their
arms,
And cluster'd round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their
mouths,
And from their bodies pass'd.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mix'd, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the skylark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seem'd to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!
And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the Heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Till noon we quietly saiFd on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The Spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fix'd her to the ocean:
But in a minute she 'gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life return'd,
I heard, and in my soul discerned
Two voices in the air.
"Is it he?" quoth one, "is this the man?
By Him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low
The harmless Albatross.
The Spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow/'
The lonesome
Spirit from the
South Pole
carries on the
ship as far as
the Line, in
obedience to
the angelic
troop, but still
requireth
vengeance.
The Polar
Spirit's fellow
demons, the
invisible inhabit
ants of the
element, take
part in his
wrong ; and
two of them,
relate, one to
the other, that
penance long
and heavy for
the ancient
Mariner hath
been accorded
to the Polar
Spirit, who
returneth
southward.
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The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, "The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do."
PART VI
First Voice:
* "But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the Ocean doing?"
Second Voice:
"Still as a slave before his lord,
The Ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast
If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him."
The Mariner
hath been cast
into a trance;
for the angehc
power causeth
the vessel to
drive north
ward faster
than human life
could endure.
The super
natural motion
is retarded;
the Mariner
awakes, and
his penance
begins anew,
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First Voice:
"But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?"
Second Voice:
"The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner's trance is abated."
I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was
high;
The dead men stood together.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fix'd on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never pass'd away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
And now this spell was snapt: once more finally Ifp^ated.
I viewed the ocean green,
And look'd far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fann'd my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring-
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she saiFd softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-
On me alone it blew.
O dream of ioy! is this indeed And the ancient
nm i. i .1 , T ^ Manner be-
The lighthouse top I see: 3 hoideth his
Is this the hill? is this the kirk? native country.
Is this mine own countree?
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We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray
let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the Moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steep 'd in silentness
The steady weathercock.
e the And the bay was white with silent light
dead bodies, im r sin g f rom ^e same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
And appear m j^ little distance from the prow
their own forms _,, . - - *
of light. Those crimson shadows were:
1 turn'd my eyes upon the deck
Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light;
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart-
No voice; but O, the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
But soon I heard the dash of oars,
1 heard the Pilot's cheer;
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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
My head was turn'd perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.
The Pilot and the Pilot's boy,
I heard them coming fast:
Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good!
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
Hell shrieve my soul, hell wash away
The Albatross's blood.
PART VII
'This hermit good lives in that wood T f ie J He J^ nit J
TTTT- -L i j *. ,.1 / the Wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with mariners
That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve-
He hath a cushion plump.
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat near'd: I heard them talk,
"Why, this is strange, I trow!
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?"
"Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit said Approaches
. , 9 ' ' -> , , , , the ship with
And they answer d not our cheer! wonder.
The planks look warp'd! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along;
345
The ship sud
denly sinketh.
The ancient
Manner is
saved in the
Pilot's boat.
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
When the ivy- tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolfs young."
"Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look
(The Pilot made reply)
I am a-fear'd." "Push on, push on!"
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirr'd;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.
Under the water it rumbled on
Still louder and more dread:
It reach'd the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead
Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days
drown'd
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot's boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
I moved my lips the Pilot shriek'd
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And pray'd where he did sit.
I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laugh'd loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
"Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The Devil knows how to row."
The ancient
And now, all in my own countree, %^ ven -
I stood on the firm land! treateththe
The Hermit stepp'd forth from the boat, ?tooe fom;
And scarcely he could stand. anceofhfT'
. _ . falls on him.
O shneve me, shrieve me, holy man!
The Hermit cross'd his brow.
"Say quick/' quoth he, "I bid thee say
What manner of man art thou?"
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd <d won
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free. him to travel
from land to
Since then, at an uncertain hour, land;
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark, the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God Himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
347
And to teach,
by his own
example, love
and reverence
to all things
that God
made and
loveth.
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all/'
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
DEJECTION: AN ODE
Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;
And 1 fear, I fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
WELL! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this ^EoHan lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming-on of rain and squally blast.
And oh! that even now the gust were swelling,
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they
awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear
Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
1 see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
m
My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail
To lift the smoth'ring weight from off my breast?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
IV
O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
V
O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist.
This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud-
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.
VI
There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For Hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.
vn
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed.
What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tarn, or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,
Me thinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak'st Devil's yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!
Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold!
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What tell'st them now about?
'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,
With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds
At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!
But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,
With groans, and tremulous shudderings all is over-
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!
A tale of less afright,
And tempered with delight,
As Otway's self had framed the tender lay,
'Tis of a little child
Upon a lonesome wild,
Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:
And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother
hear.
VIII
'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep:
Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!
Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
With light heart may she rise,
Gay, fancy, cheerful eyes,
Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;
To her may all things live, from pole to pole,
Their life the eddying of her living soul!
O simple spirit, guided from above,
Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,
Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice.
EPIGRAM
SIR, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
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* Walter Savage Landor
ROSE AYLMER
AH what avails the sceptred race,
Ah what the form divine!
What, every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of sorrows and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
DIRGE
STAND close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat convey M!
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old, and she a shade.
ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH
BIRTHDAY
I STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
DEATH STANDS ABOVE ME
DEATH stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
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IANTHE
PAST ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
Alcestis rises from the shades;
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.
Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
Hide all the peopled hills you see,
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
In distant ages you and me.
The tear for fading beauty check,
For passing glory cease to sigh;
One form shall rise above the wreck,
One name, lanthe, shall not die.
LATELY OUR POETS
LATELY our poets loiter'd in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballads of the plains;
I fancied I had strength enough to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze
Upon the flowers thro* which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece,
My slumber broken and my doublet torn,
I find the laurel also bears a thorn.
Thomas Campbell
THE RIVER OF LIFE
THE more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
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THOMAS CAMPBELL
The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the care-worn cheeks grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,
Feel we its tide more rapid?
It may be strange yet who would change
Time's course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone
And left our bosoms bleeding?
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportioned to their sweetness.
Thomas Moore
BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE
ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS
BELIEVE me, if all those endearing young charms.
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
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It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear;
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.
OFT, IN THE STILLY NIGHT
OFT, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all
The friends so linked together
I've seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but him departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
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George Gordon, Lord Byron
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
THERE BE NONE OF BEAUTY'S
DAUGHTERS
THERE be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
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And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep,
Whose breast is gently heaving
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.
SO, WE'LL GO NO MORE A ROVING
So, well go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
SONNET ON CHILLON
ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar for 'twas trod,
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GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks effacel
For they appeal from tyranny to God.
THE SEA
THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin, his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him, thou dost arise
And shake him -from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
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The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow;
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of Eternity, the throne
Of the Invisible! even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers, they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, *t was a pleasing fear;
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here.
Prom Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
360
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
IT IS THE HUSH OF NIGHT
IT is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.
Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires, 'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves
a star.
All heaven and earth are still though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:
All heaven and earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lulTd lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentre'd in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
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Of that which is of all Creator and defence.
Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty; 'twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.
Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places and the peak
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take
A fit and unwall'd temple, there to seek
The Spirit in whose honour shrines are weak,
Uprear'd of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray'r!
Thy sky is changed! and such a change! Oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the night: Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! Let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black; and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
362
GEOHGE GOEDON, LOED BYRON
DARKNESS
I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went and came, and brought no day.
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chuTd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire but hour by hour
They fell and faded and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds
shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawFd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
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Hissing, but stingless they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects saw, and shriek'd, and died
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
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And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them She was the Universe.
THE ISLES OF GREECE
THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of War and Peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their Sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The Hero's harp, the Lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your Sires' Islands of the Blest/
The mountains look on Marathon
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A King sate on {he rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations; all were his!
He counted them at break of day
And when the Sun set, where were they?
And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
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The heroic lay is tuneless now
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy Lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something, in the dearth of Fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush? Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!
What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no; the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, 'Let one living head,
But one arise, we come, we come!'
'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain in vain: strike other chords:
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call-
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
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It made Anacreon's song divine:
He served but served Polycrates
A Tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.
The Tyrant of the Chersonese
Was Freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore.
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown.
The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for freedom to the Franks
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force, and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!
From Don Juan
367
* Percy Bysshe Shelley
ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN
PROFANED
ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdain'd
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother;
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love:
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
MUSIC, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
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ODE TO THE WEST WIND
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them I Thou
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For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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THE CLOUD
I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers.
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
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An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneatl
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
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I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores:
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
THE INDIAN SERENADE
I ARISE from dreams thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream
And the Champak's odours pine
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must on thine,
beloved as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
1 die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!
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TO A SKYLARK
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightening
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight-
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:
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Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the
view:
Like a rose embower'd
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged
thieves:
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers-
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird.
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
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What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of paii
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought
Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scomer of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
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John Clare
BADGER
WHEN midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den,
And put a sack within the hole, and he
Till die old grunting badger passes by.
He comes and hearsthey let the strongest loose.
The old fox hears the noise and drops the goose.
The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry,
And the old hare half wounded buzzes by.
They get a forked stick to bear him down
And clap the dogs and take him to the town,
And bait him all the day with many dogs,
And laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs.
He runs along and bites at all he meets:
They shout and hollo down the noisy streets.
He turns about to face the loud uproar
And drives the rebels to their very door.
The frequent stone is hurled where'er they go;
When badgers fight, then every one's a foe.
The dogs are clapt and urged to join the fray;
The badger turns and drives them all away.
Though scarcely half as big, demure and small,
He fights with dogs for bones and beats them all.
The heavy mastiff, savage in the fray,
Lies down and licks his feet and turns away.
The bulldog knows his match and waxes cold,
The badger grins and never leaves his hold.
He drives the crowd and follows at their heels,
And bites them through the drunkard swears and reels.
The frighted women take the boys away,
The blackguard laughs and hurries on the fray.
He tries to reach the woods, an awkward race,
But sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chase.
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He turns again and drives the noisy crowd
And beats the many dogs in noises loud.
He drives away and beats them every one,
And then they loose them all and set them on.
He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men,
Then starts and grins and drives the crowd again;
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies.
I AM
I AM: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self -consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;/
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest that I loved the best-
Are strange nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below above the vaulted sky.
MOUSE'S NEST
I FOUND a ball of grass among the hay
And progged it as I passed and went away;
And when I looked I fancied something stirred,
And turned again and hoped to catch the bird
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When out an old mouse bolted in the wheats
With all her young ones hanging at her teats;
She looked so odd and so grotesque to me,
I ran and wondered what the thing could be,
And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood;
Then the mouse hurried from the craking brood.
The young ones squeaked, and as I went away
She found her nest again among the hay.
The water o'er the pebbles scarce could run
And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun.
CLOCK-A-CLAY
IN the cowslip pips I lie,
Hidden from the buzzing fly,
While green grass beneath me lies,
Pearled with dew like fishes* eyes,
Here I lie, a clock-a-clay,
Waiting for the time of day.
While grassy forest quakes surprise.
And the wild wind sobs and sighs,
My gold home rocks as like to fall,
On its pillar green and tall;
When the pattering rain drives by
Clock-a-clay keeps warm and dry.
Day by day and night by night,
All the week I hide from sight;
In the cowslip pips I lie,
In rain and dew still warm and dry;
Day and night, and night and day,
Red, black-spotted clock-a-clay.
My home shakes in wind and showers,
Pale green pillar topped with flowers,
Bending at the wild wind's breath,
Till I touch the grass beneath;
Here I live, lone clock-a-clay,
Watching for the time of day.
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ON FIRST LOOKING INTO
CHAPMAN'S HOMER
MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told,
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacificand all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES
MY spirit is too weak mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep,
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time with a billowy main
A sun a shadow of a magnitude.
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ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE
CRICKET
THE poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's he takes the lead
In summer luxury, he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
TO ONE WHO HAS BEEN LONG IN
CITY PENT
To ONE who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel, an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
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WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I
MAY CEASE TO BE
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in characfry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
BRIGHT STAR! WOULD I WERE
STEADFAST AS THOU ART
BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever or else swoon to death.
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ON THE SEA
IT keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired.
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody-
Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms.
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
what can ail thee, kmght-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
1 see a Hly on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew.
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful- a f aery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
A Little Treasury of British Poetry
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone,
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said
1 love thee true!'
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamed ah, woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill's side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!*
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
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ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
*Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
CooFd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provengal song, and sunburnt mirthl
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
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And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild:
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
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JOHN KEATS
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
With leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu:
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm, and still to be enjoy'd,
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For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
ODE TO PSYCHE
GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
1 wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
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A brooklet, scarce espied:
'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
1 see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
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Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant
pain
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath' d trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!
ODE ON INDOLENCE
They toil not, neither do they spin.
ONE morn before me were three figures seen,
With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-fac'd;
And one behind the other stepp'd serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes grac'd;
They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.
How is it, shadows! that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
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The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Bemimb'd my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower:
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but nothingness?
A third time passd'd they by, and, passing, turn'd
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn'd
And ach'd for wings because I knew the three;
The first was a fair maid, and Love her name;
The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of bkme
Is heap'd upon her, maiden most unmeek,
I knew to be my demon Poesy.
They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
O folly! What is Love? and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition! it springs
From a man's little heart's short fever-fit;
For Poesy! no, she has not a joy,
At least for me, so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep'd in honied indolence;
O, for an age so shelter'd from annoy,
That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!
And once more came they by; alas! wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider'd with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er
With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams;
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press'd a new-leav'd vine.
Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay;
O shadows! 'twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
So, ye three ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
Mv head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
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For I would not be dieted with praise,
A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye phantoms! from my idle spright,
Into the clouds, and nevermore return!
ODE ON MELANCHOLY
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovereign shrine,
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Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
TO AUTUMN
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary flqor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a self-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and aH its twined flowers
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
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Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
A THING OF BEAUTY
A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, , are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die,
From Endymion
394
JOHN KEATS
THERE WAS A NAUGHTY BOY
THEBE was a naughty Boy, Was as red
And a naughty Boy was That lead
he, Was as weighty,
He ran away to Scotland That fourscore
The people for to see Was as eighty,
Then he found That a door
That the ground Was as wooden
Was as hard, As in England
That a yard So he stood in his shoes
Was as long, And he wonder'd,
That a song He wonder'd,
Was as merry, He stood in his shoes
That a cherry And he wonder'd.
K George Darley
THE SOLITARY LYRE
WHEREFORE, unlaurell'd Boy,
Whom the contemptuous Muse will not inspire,
With a sad kind of joy
Still sing'st thou to thy solitary lyre?
The melancholy winds
Pour through unnumbered reeds their idle woes,
And every Naiad finds
A stream to weep her sorrow as it flows.
Her sighs unto the air
The Wood-maid's native oak doth broadly tell,
And Echo's fond despair
Intelligible rocks re-syllable.
Wherefore then should not I,
Albeit no haughty Muse my heart inspire,
Fated of grief to die,
Impart it to my solitary lyre?
f
Thomas Hood
I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER
I REMEMBER, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,
The tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember,
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
396
THOMAS HOOD
AUTUMN
I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.
Where are the songs of Summer? With the sun,
Oping the dusky eyelids of the South,
Till shade and silence waken up as one,
And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.
Where are the merry birds? Away, away,
On panting wings through the inclement skies,
Lest owls should prey
Undazzled at noonday,
And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.
Where are the blooms of Summer? In the West,
Blushing their last to the last sunny hours,
When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest
Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her flow'rs
To a most gloomy breast.
Where is the pride of Summer, the green prime,
The many, many leaves all twinkling? Three
On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime
Trembling, and one upon the old oak-tree!
Where is the Dryad's immortality?
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,
Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through
In the smooth holly's green eternity.
The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard,
The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain,
And honey bees have stored
The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;
The swallows all have wing'd across the main;
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But here the autumn Melancholy dwells,
And sighs her tearful spells
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.
Alone, alone.
Upon a mossy stone,
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone
With the last leaves for a love-rosary,
Whilst all the withered world looks drearily,
Like a dim picture of the drowned past
In the hush'd mind's mysterious far away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into that distance, grey upon the grey.
O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded
Under the languid downfall of her hair!
She wears a coronal of flowers faded
Upon her forehead, and a face of care; -
There is enough of withered everywhere
To make her bower, and enough of gloom;
There is enough of sadness to invite,
If only for the rose that died, whose doom
Is Beauty's,she that with the living bloom
Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light:
There is enough of sorrowing, and quite
Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,
Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl;
Enough of fear and shadowy despair,
To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!
THE SEA OF DEATH
METHOUGHT I saw
Life swiftly treading over endless space;
And, at her foot-print, but by a bygone pace,
The ocean-past, which, with increasing wave,
Swallow'd her steps like a pursuing grave.
Sad were my thoughts that anchor'd silently
On the dead waters of that passionless sea,
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THOMAS HOOD
Unstirr'd by any touch of living breath:
Silence hung over it, and drowsy Death,
Like a gorged sea-bird, slept with folded wings
On crowded carcasses sad passive things
That wore the thin grey surface, like a veil
Over the calmness of their features pale.
And there were spring-faced cherubs that did sleep
Like water-lilies on that motionless deep,
How beautiful! with bright unruffled hair
On sleek unfretted brows, and eyes that were
Buried in marble tombs, a pale eclipse!
And smile-bedimpled cheeks, and pleasant lips,
Meekly apart, as if the soul intense
Spake out in dreams of its own innocence:
And so they lay in loveliness, and kept
The birth-night of their peace, that Life e'en wept
With very envy of their happy fronts;
For there were neighbour brows scarr'd by the brunts
Of strife and sorrowing where Care had set
His crooked autograph, and marr'd the jet
Of glossy locks, with hollow eyes forlorn,
And lips that curFd in bitterness and scorn-
Wretched, as they had breathed of this world's pain,
And so bequeath'd it to the world again
Through the beholder's heart in heavy sighs.
So lay they garmented in torpid light,
Under the pall of a transparent night,
Like solemn apparitions lull'd sublime
To everlasting rest, and with them Time
Slept, as he sleeps upon the silent face
Of a dark dial in a sunless place.
399
William Barnes
THE MAY TREE
I'VE come by the May-tree all times o' the year,
When leaves wer a-springen,
When vrost wer a-stingen,
When cool-winded mornen did show the hills clear,
When night were bedimmen the vields vur an' near.
When, in zummer, his head wer as white as a sheet,
Wi' white buds a-zwellen,
An' blossom, sweet smellen,
While leaves wi 7 green leaves on his boughzides did meet,
A-sheaden the deasies down under our veet
When the zun, in the Fall, wer a-wanderen wan,
An' haws on his head
Did sprinkle en red,
Or bright drops o' rain wer a-hung loosely on
To the tips o' the sprigs when the scud wer a-gone.
An' when, in the winter, the zun did goo low,
An' keen win' did huffle,
But never could ruffle
The hard vrozen feace o' the water below,
His limbs wer a-fringed wi' the vrost or the snow.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
DIRGE
IF thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep;
And not a sorrow
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THOMAS LOVELL, BEDDOES
Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
Lie still and deep,
Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o' the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky.
But wilt thou cure thine heart
O love and all its smart,
Then die, dear, die;
'Tis deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye;
And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love's stars, thoult meet her
In eastern sky.
SONG
OLD Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leaked the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.
Ho! Eve, my grey carrion wife,
When we have supped on kings' marrow,
Where shall we drink and make merry our Me?
Our nest it is queen Cleopatra's skull,
'Tis cloven and cracked,
And battered and hacked,
But with tears of blue eyes it is full:
Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo.
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Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.
SONG
How many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be
In the atmosphere
Of a new-fall'n year,
Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of Eternity:
So many times do I love thee, dear.
How many times do I love again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star:
So many times do I love again.
DREAM PEDLARY
IF there were drums to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rung the bell,
What would you buy?
A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
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THO:MAS LOVELL BEDDOES
Shadowy, my woes to still.
Until I die.
Such pearl from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.
But there were dreams to sell
111 didst thou buy;
Life is a dream, they tell,
Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
In wishing ghosts to rise;
And, if I had the spell
To call the buried -well,
Which one would I?
If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,
Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy
To lead me to his joy.-
There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.
Know'st thou not ghosts to sue?
No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
And breathe thy last.
So out of Life's fresh crown
Fall like a rose-leaf down.
Thus are the ghosts to woo;
Thus are all dreams made true,
Ever to last!
403
Edward FitzGerald
THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
WAKE! For the Sun, who scattered into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n and strike;
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
'When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside?*
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted 'Open, then, the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more/
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ringed Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.
And David's lips are locked; but in divine
High-piping Pehlevi, with 'Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!' the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling;
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter and the Bird is on the Wing.
404
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobad the Great, or Kaikhosru?
Let Zal and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hatim call to Supper heed not you.
With me along the strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot
And Peace to Mahmud on his golden Throne!
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Gash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
Look to the blowing Rose about us *Lo,
Laughing,* she says, 'into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw/
And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turned
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes or it prospers; and anon,
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A Little Treasury of British Poetry
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two is gone.
Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
And Bahrain, that great Hunter the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropped in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TODAY of past Regrets and future Fears:
Tomorrowl Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend ourselves to make a Couch for whom?
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and sans Endl
406
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Alike for those who for TODAY prepare,
And those that after some TOMORROW stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries,
Tools, your Reward is neither Here nor There/
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discussed
Of the Two Worlds so wisely they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopped with Dust.
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reaped
1 came like Water, and like Wind I go/
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
What, without asking, hither hurried Whence?
And, without asking, Whither hurried hencel
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!
Up from the Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many a Knot unraveled by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see;
Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE
There was and then no more of THEE and ME.
Earth could not answer; nor the Seas that mourn
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn;
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Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs reveal'd
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.
Then of the THEE IN ME who works behind
The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find
A Lamp amid the Darkness; and I heard,
As from Without 'THE ME WITHIN THEE BLIND!*
Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn
I leaned, the Secret of my Life to learn;
And Lip to Lip it murmured 'While you live,
Drink! for, once dead, you never shall return/
I think the Vessel, that with fugitive
Articulation answered, once did live,
And drink; and Ah! the passive Lip I kissed,
How many Kisses might it take and give!
For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay;
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmured "Gently, Brother, gently, pray!'
And has not such a Story from of Old
Down Man's successive generations rolled
Of such a clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mold?
And not a drop that from our Cups we throw
For Earth to drink of, but may steal below
To quench the fire of Anguish in some Eye
There hidden far beneath, and long ago.
As then the Tulip, for her morning sup
Of Heav'nly Vintage, from the soil looks up,
Do you devoutly do the like, till Heav'n
To Earth invert you like an empty Cup.
Perplexed no more with Human or Divine,
Tomorrow's tangle to the winds resign,
And lose your fingers in the tresses of
The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine.
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EDWARD FITZGERALD
And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in Yes;
Think that you are TODAY what YESTERDAY
You were TOMORROW you shall not be less.
So when that Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff you shall not shrink.
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcass crippled to abide?
'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.
And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has poured
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.
A Moment's Halt a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reached
The NOTHING it set out from Oh, make hastel
Would you that spangle of Existence spend
About THE SECRET quick about it, Friend!
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True
And upon what, prithee, does life depend?
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True-
Yes; and a single Alif were the clue
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Could you but find it to the Treasure-house,
And peradventure to THE MASTER too;
Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins
Running Quicksilver-like, eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi; and
They change and perish all but He remains;
A moment guessed then back behind the Fold
Immersed of Darkness round the Drama rolled
Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.
But i in vain, down on the stubborn floor
Of Earth, and up to Heav'n's unopening Door,
You gaze TODAY,, while You are You how then
TOMORROW, when You shall be You no more?
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
For c ls* and *!S-NOT' though with Rule and Line,
And 'UP-AND-DOWN* by Logic, I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but Wine.
Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? Nay,
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn Tomorrow, and dead Yesterday.
And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas the Grape!
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EDWARD FITZGERALD
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute;
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute;
The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.
Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare?
A Blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a Curse why, then, Who set it there?
I must abjure the Balm of Life, I must,
Scared by some After-reckoning ta'en on trust
Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink,
To fill the Cup when crumbled into Dust!
Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us passed the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
The Revelations of Devout and Learned
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burned,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep,
They told their comrades, and to Sleep returned.
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, *I Myself am Heav'n and HelT
Heav'n but the Vision of fulfilled Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
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Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays.
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Here or There as strikes the Player goes;
And He that tossed you down into the Field,
He knows about it all HE knows HE knows!
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for helpfor It
As impotently moves as you or I.
With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead v
And there of the Last Harvest sowed the Seed;
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
YESTERDAY This Day's Madness did prepare;
TOMORROW'S Silence, Triumph, or Despair.
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor
Drink, for you know not why you go, nor where.
I tell you this When, started from the Goal,
Over the flaming shoulders of the Foal
Of Heav'n Parwin and Mushtari they flung,
In my predestined Plot of Dust and Soul.
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EDWARD FITZGERALD
The Vine had struck a fiber; which about
It clings my Being let the Dervish flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
And this I know: whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!
What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allayed
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer Oh, the sorry trade!
O Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
Thou, who Man of Baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake,
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blackened Man's forgiveness give and take!
# * #
As under cover of departing Day
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away,
Once more within the Potter's house alone
1 stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay-
Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
That stood along the floor and by the wall;
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listened perhaps, but never talked at all.
Said one among them 'Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
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And to this Figure molded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again.'
Then said a Second 'Ne'er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy;
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy/
After a momentary silence spake
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make:
They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand, then, of the Porter shake?'
Whereat someone of the loquacious Lot
I think a Sufi pipkin waxing hot
'All this of Pot and PotterTell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?'
'Why,' said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marred in makingPish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well.'
'Well,' murmured one, 'Let whoso make or buy,
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry;
But fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by and by.'
So while the Vessels one by one were speaking
The little Moon looked in that all were seeking;
And then they jogged each other, 'Brother! Brother!
Now for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-creaking!'
# # #
Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay rne, shrouded in the living Leaf,
By some not unfrequented Garden-side
That ev'n my buried Ashes such a snare
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air
As not a True-believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.
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EDWARD FITZGERALD
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong,
Have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.
And much as Wine has played the Infidel,
And robbed me of my Robe of Honour Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One-half so precious as the stuff they sell.
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse if dimly, yet indeed, revealed,
To which the fainting Traveler might spring,
As springs the trampled herbage of the field.
Would but some winged Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits and then
Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden and for one in vain!
And when like her, O Saki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scattered on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One turn down an empty Glass!
41S
- -
* Alfred, Lord Tennyson
*+
TEARS, IDLE TEARS
TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the under-world,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
ASK ME NO MORE
ASK me no more: the moon may draw the sea;
The cloud may stoop from heaven and take shape,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape;
But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee?
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Yet O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd:
I strove against the stream and all in vain:
Let the great river take me to the main:
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.
BLOW, BUGLE, BLOW
THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL
FLOWER in the crannied wall,
1 pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
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ST. AGNES' EVE
DEEP on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapour goes:
May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.
As these white robes are soil'd and dark,
To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be.
Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
Thro' all yon starlight keen,
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.
He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And s trows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
One sabbath deep and wide
A light upon the shining sea
The Bridegroom with his bride!
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
AS THRO' THE LAND AT EVE
WE WENT
As thro' the land at eve we went,
And pluck'd the ripen'd ears,
We fell out, my wife and I,
O we fell out I know not why,
And kiss'd again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!
For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
O there above the little grave,
We kiss'd again with tears.
BREAK, BREAK, BREAK
BREAK, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
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ALL IN ALL
IN Love, if Love be Love, i Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
The little rift within the lover's lute,
Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.
It is not worth the keeping: let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all.
From Merlin and Vivien
ULYSSES
IT little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburmshed, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with
me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
' Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
*Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
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Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
THE LOTOS-EATERS
'Courage!' he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.*
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some through wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flushed; and, dewed with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset lingered low adown
In the red West; through mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seemed the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellows spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then someone said, *We will return no more';
And all at once they sang, 'Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam/
CHORIC SONG
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful
skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
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Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest; why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
'There is no joy but calm!'
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?'
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of Me; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence ripen, fall, and cease;
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease,
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream
With half -shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile;
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
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But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly
With half-dropped eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill-
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave through the thick-twined vine
To watch the emerald-coloured water falling
Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak,
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Through every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust
is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge
was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-foun
tains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly
curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming
world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps
and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships,
and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centered in a doleful
song
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ALFKED, LOBJD TENNYSON
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of
wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the
soil.
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered
down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and
oar;
rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
TITHONUS
THE woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground;
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this grey shadow, once a man-
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seemed
To his great heart none other than a god!
1 asked thee, 'Give me immortality/
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant worked their wills,
And beat me down and marred and wasted me,
And though they could not end me, left me maimed
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
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Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, though even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go; take back thy gift.
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence; then, before thine answer given,
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
'The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts
Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch if I be he that watched
The lucid outline forming round thee; saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimsoned all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half -opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kissed
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet.
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Yet hold me not forever in thine East;
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground.
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave;
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn,
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
PROEM*
STRONG Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust;
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
* This and the next 12 poems from "In Memoriam A.H.H."
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Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know,
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more.
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seemed my sin in me;
What seemed my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me "wise.
I HELD IT TRUTH
I HELD it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drank with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast:
'Behold the man that loved and lost.
But all he was is overworn.'
OH YET WE TRUST
OH yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not an} ^
I can but trust that good stiall fall
At last far offat last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
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OF ONE DEAD
IF one should bring me this report.
That thou hadst touched the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half -divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
And I should tell him all my pain,
And how my life had droop'd of late,
And he should sorrow o'er my state
And marvel what possessed my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
DARK HOUSE
DARK house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more-
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
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AJLFKED, LORD TENNYSON
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
CALM IS THE MORN
CALM is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
TO-NIGHT THE WINDS BEGIN
TO-NIGHT the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirFd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
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The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
That make the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
BE NEAR ME
BE near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.
434
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
I CANNOT SEE THE FEATURES
RIGHT
I CANNOT see the features right,
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night;
Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
A hand that points, and palled shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
And crowds that stream from yawning doors,
And shoals of pucker'd faces drive;
Dark bulks that tumble half alive,
And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
Till all at once beyond the will
I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro* a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
I WAGE NOT ANY FEUD WITH
DEATH
I WAGE not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shattered stalks,
Or ruined chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth;
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
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For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart:
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
I ENVY NOT IN ANY MOODS
I ENVY not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth,
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whatever befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
*Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
AS SOMETIMES IN A DEAD
MAN'S FACE
As sometimes in a dead man's face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out to someone of his race;
So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
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ALFRED, LOBD TENNYSON
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
RING OUT, WILD BELLS
RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood.
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
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Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
CROSSING THE BAR
SUNSET and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
438
Elizabeth Barrett Browning *
HOW DO I LOVE THEE?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
IF THOU MUST LOVE ME
IF thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
1 love her for her smile her look her way
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love rne for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
J 439
f
Robert Browning
HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD
OH, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows-
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops at the bent-spray's edge
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
PIPPA'S SONG
THE year 's at the spring,
And day 's at the mom;
Morning 's at seven;
The hill-side 's dew-pearFd;
The lark 's on the wing;
The snail *s on the thorn;
God 's in His heaven-
All 's right with the world!
440
ROBERT BROWNING
SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER
GR-R-R there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims-
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
At the meal we sit together;
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt;
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps-
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
* Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
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Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I, the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp!
Oh, those melons! if he's able
We're to have a feast; so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange! And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails;
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe;
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
Or, there's Satan! one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine. . . .
'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r you swine!
442
ROBERT BROWNING
MY LAST DUCHESS
FERRARA
THAT'S my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will *t please you sit and look at her? I said
Tra Pandolf by design, for never read
Stranger's like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or Taint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.' Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A hearthow shall I say? too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old-name
With anbody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech which I have not to make your will
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Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark' and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse-
E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, well go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Glaus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
PROSPICE
FEAR death? to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, soone fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
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ROBERT BROWNING
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S
GALUPPI, Baldassare, this is very sad to find!
1 can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf
and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy
mind!
Here you come with your old music, and here's all the
good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the mer
chants were the kings,
Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the
sea with rings?
Aye, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched
bywhat you call
Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the
carnival.
I was never out of England it's as if I saw it all.
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was
warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to
mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow,
do you say?
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Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red-
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flowei
on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might
base his head?
Well, and it was graceful of them they'd break talk off
and afford
She, to bite her mask's black velvet he, to finger on his
sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavi
chord?
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths dimin
ished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solu
tions *Must we die?*
Those commiserating sevenths 'Life might last! we can
but try!'
'Were you happy?' "Yes/ 'And are you still as happy?'
'Yes. And you?'
'Then, more kisses!' 'Did I stop them, when a million
seemed so few?'
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered
to!
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you,
I dare say!
'Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and
gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master
play!'
Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time,
one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds
as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never
see the sun.
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand
nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close
reserve,
446
ROBERT BROWNING
In you come with your cold music till I creep through
every nerve.
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house
was burned:
*Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent
what Venice earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal where a soul can be
discerned.
'Yours for instance: you know physics, something of
geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their
degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction you'll not die, it can
not be!
*As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom
and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly
were the crop;
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had
to stop?
'Dust and ashes!* So you creak it, and I want the heart
to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too what's become
of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and
grown old.
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
I SATO Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave, I claim
Only a memory of the same,
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And this beside, if you will not blame,
Your leave for one more last ride with me.
My mistress bent that brow of hers;
Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
When pity would for softening through,
Fixed me a breathing-while or two
With life or death in the balance: right!
The blood replenished me again;
My last thought was at least not vain:
I and my mistress, side by side
Shall be together, breathe and ride,
So, one day more am I deified.
Who knows but the world may end tonight?
Hush! if you saw some western cloud
All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
By many benedictions sun's
And moon's and evening-star's at once
And so, you, looking and loving best,
Conscious grew, your passion drew
Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
Down on you, near and yet more near,
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!-
Thus lay she a moment on my breast.
Then we began to ride. My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.
What need to strive with a life awry?
Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!
Where had I been now if the worst befell?
And here we are riding, she and I.
Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
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ROBERT BROWNING
Saw other regions, cities new,
As the world rushed by on either side.
I thought, All labour, yet no less
Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
Look at the end o the work, contrast
The petty done, the undone vast,
This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
I hoped she would love me; here we ride.
What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?
We ride and I see her bosom heave.
There's many a crown for those who can reach.
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
A soldier's doing! what atones?
They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
My riding is better, by their leave.
What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
*Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you poor, sick, old ere your time-
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding's a joy? For me, I ride.
And you, great sculptor so, you gave
A score of years to Art, her slave,
And that's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!
You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
What, man of music, you grown grey
With notes and nothing else to say,
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Is this your sole praise from a friend,
'Greatly his opera's strains intend,
'Put in music we know how fashions end!'
I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.
Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being had I signed the bond-
Still one must lead some life beyond,
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test!
I sink back shuddering from the quest.
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.
And yet she has not spoke so long!
What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life's best, with our eyes upturned
Whither life's flower is first discerned,
We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,
And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride?
450
Edward Lear
THE JUMBLIES
THEY went to sea in a sieve, they did;
In a sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a sieve they went to sea.
And when the sieve turned round and round,
And everyone cried, 'You'll all be drowned!'
They called aloud, 'Our sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button; we don't care a fig:
In a sieve we'll go to sea!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live:
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
They sailed away in a sieve, they did,
In a sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a ribbon, by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast.
And every one said who saw them go,
'Oh! won't they be soon upset; you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long;
And, happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a sieve to sail so fast/
The water it soon came in, it did;
The water it soon came in:
So, to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat;
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar;
And each of them said, 'How wise we are!
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Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong
While round in our sieve we spin.'
And all night long they sailed away;
And, when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown,
*O Timballoo! how happy we are
When we live in a sieve and crockery-jar!
And all night long, in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail
In the shade of the mountains brown/
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees:
And they bought an owl, and a useful cart,
And a pound of rice, and a cranberry-tart,
And a hive of silvery bees;
And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws,
And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree,
And no end of Stilton cheese.
And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more;
And every one said, 'How tall theyVe grown!
For theyVe been to the Lakes, and the Terrible Zone v
And the hills of the Chankly Bore/
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, If we only live,
We, too, will go to sea in a sieve,
To the hills of the Chankly Bore/
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live.
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
452
Emily Bronte
NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life, that in me hast rest
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Since Thou art Being and Breath
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
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STANZAS
OFTEN rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region:
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
Til walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain-side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
THE VISIONARY
SILENT is the house: all are laid asleep:
One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep,
Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze
That whirls the 'wildering drift, and bends the groaning
I trees.
Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor;
Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door;
The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and
far:
I trim it well, to be the wanderer's guiding-star.
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EMILY BRONTE
Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame!
Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame:
But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know
What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow.
What I love shall come like visitant of air,
Safe in secret power from lurking human snare;
Who loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray,
Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay.
Burn then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear-
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air:
He for whom I wait thus ever comes to me;
Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my con
stancy.
REMEMBRANCE
COLD in the earth and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear Me was given,
All mv life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
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But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion-
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
Arthur Hugh Clough
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE
SAY not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor f aileth,
And as things have been they remain,
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
456
Matthew Arnold
DOVER BEACH
THE sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the ^Egean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow,
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
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Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
REQUIESCAT
STREW on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.
Her mirth the world required:
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabin'd, ample Spirit,
It flutter'd and f ail'd for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of Death.
458
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
THE blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift.
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers;
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.
(To one it is ten years of years.
. . . Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she leaned o'er me her hair
Fell all about my face . . .
Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace.)
It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on;
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.
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It lies in heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath the tides of day and night
With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.
Around her, lovers, newly met
'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
Spoke evermore among themselves
Their heart-remembered names;
And the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames.
And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
From the fixed place of heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.
(Ah, sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be barkened? When those bells
Possessed the mid-day air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair?)
160 S
DANTE GABRIEL B.OSSETTI
*I -wish that he were come to me,
For he will come/ she said.
'Have I not prayed in heaven? on earth,
Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?
*When round his head the aureole clings,
And he is clothed in white,
I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight.
*We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayers sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.
*We two will lie i* the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
Saith His Name audibly.
'And I myself will teach to him,
I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know/
(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shaU God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?)
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'We two,* she said, 'will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret, and Rosalys.
'Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.
'He shall fear, haply, and be dumb;
Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak;
And the dear Mother will approve
My pride, and let me speak.
'Herself shall bring us, hand in hand;
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles;
And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.
'There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me
Only to live as once on earth
With Love, only to be,
As then awhile, forever now,
Together, I and he.'
She gazed and listened and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild
'All this is when he comes.' She ceased.
The light thrilled toward her, filled
With angels in strong, level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.
462
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres;
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)
Christina Georgina Rossetti
A BIRTHDAY
MY heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my Kfe
Is come, my love is come to me.
WHEN I AM DEAD, MY DEAREST
WHEN I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
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Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
George Meredith
LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT
ON a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their specter of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
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GEOKGE MEREDITH
LOVE IN THE VALLEY
UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward,
Couch'd with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:
Then would she hold me and never let me go?
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
Swift as the swallow along the river's light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirror'd winglets,
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,
She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
More love should I have, and much less care.
When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,
Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
I should miss but one for many boys and girls.
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows
Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.
No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:
Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.
Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure,
Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:
Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with
hailstones
Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.
Lovely are the curves of the white owl weeping
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
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Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar.
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
So were it with me if forgetting could be wilTd.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-
spring,
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it fill'd.
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,
Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,
Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess'd.
Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking
Whisper *d the world was; morning light is she.
Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.
Happy happy time, when the white star hovers
Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,
Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,
Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.
Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens
Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;
Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-
shells.
Mother of the dews, dark eye-lash'd twilight,
Low-lidded twilight, o'er the valley's brim,
Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,
Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.
Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,
Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.
Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever
Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;
Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.
My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,
Eyes the bent anemones, and hangs her hands.
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GEORGE MEREDITH
Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,
Coming the rose: and unaware a cry
Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,
Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.
Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,
Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise
High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;
Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.
Something friends have told her fills her heart to brim
ming,
Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.
Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,
Arms up, she dropp'd: our souls were in our names.
Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.
Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,
Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.
Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;
Streaming like the flag-reed South- West blown;
Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
All seem to know what is for heaven alone.
From Love in the Valley
Lewis Carroll
JABBERWOCKY
'TWAS brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
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Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh, Callayl'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
THE WALRUS AND THE
CARPENTER
THE sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
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LEWIS CARROLL
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done-
It's very rude of him/ she said,
"To come and spoil the funP
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead-
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand:
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
*If this were only cleared away/
They said, "it -would be grand!*
Tf seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose/ the Walrus said,
'That they could get it clear?"
*I doubt it/ said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
*O oysters, come and walk with us!*
The Walrus did beseech.
*A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each/
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head-
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
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But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more-
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
'The time has come/ the Walrus said,
*To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings/
*But wait a bit/ the Oysters cried,
*Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath.
And all of us are fat!*
*No hurry!* said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that,
*A loaf of bread/ the Walrus said,
c ls what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed
Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to f e
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LEWIS CAKHOLL
'But not on us!' the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
'After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!'
'The night is fine/ the Walrus said.
'Do you admire the view?
Tt was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice! 7
The Carpenter said nothing but
'Cut us another slice.
I wish you were not quite so deaf
I've had to ask you twice!'
'It seems a shame/ the Walrus said,
'To play them such a trick.
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
'The butter's spread too thick!'
'I weep for you/ the Walrus said:
'I deeply sympathize/
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
'O Oysters/ said the Carpenter.
'You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
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FATHER WILLIAM
'You are old, Father William/ the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head-
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'
Tn my youth/ Father William replied to his son,
'I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again/
'You are old/ said the youth, 'as I mentioned before,-
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door-
Pray, what is the reason of that?*
*In my youth/ said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
'I kept all my Hmbs very supple
By the use of this ointmentone shilling the box-
Allow me to sell you a couple?*
*You are old/ said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the
beak-
Pray, how did you manage to do it?*
*In my youth/ said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life/
'You are old/ said the youth, 'one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose
What made you so awfully clever?'
'I have answered three questions, and that is enough/
Said his father; 'don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or 111 kick you downstairs/
472
James Thomson
THE CITY IS OF NIGHT
THE City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air;
The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity;
The sun has never visited that city,
For it dissolveth in the daylight fair,
Dissolveth like a dream of night away;
Though present in distempered gloom of thought
And deadly weariness of heart all day.
But when a dream night after night is brought
Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many
Recur each year for several years, can any
Discern that dream from real life in aught?
For Me is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day, some night and day: we learn.
The while all change and many vanish quite,
In their recurrence with recurrent changes
A certain seeming order; where this ranges
We count things real; such is memory's might.
A river girds the city west and south,
The main north channel of a broad lagoon,
Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth;
Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon
For leagues, then moorland black, then stony ridges;
Great piers and causeways, many noble bridges,
Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn.
Upon an easy slope it lies at large,
And scarcely overlaps the long curved crest
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Which swells out two leagues from the river marge,
A trackless wilderness rolls north and west,
Savannahs, savage woods, enormous mountains,
Bleak uplands, black ravines with torrent fountains;
And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest.
The city is not ruinous, although
Great ruins of an unremembered past,
With others of a few short years ago
More sad, are found within its precincts vast.
The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement
In house or palace front from roof to basement
Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast.
The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.
The silence which benumbs or strains the sense
Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping:
Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping,
Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence!
Yet as in some necropolis you find
Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead,
So there; worn faces that look deaf and blind
Like tragic masks of stone. With weary tread,
Each wrapt in his own doom, they wander, wander,
Or sit foredone and desolately ponder
Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.
Mature men chiefly, few in age or youth,
A woman rarely, now and then a child:
A child! If here the heart turns sick with ruth
To see a little one from birth defiled,
Or lame or blind, as preordained to languish
Through youthless life, think how it bleeds with anguish
To meet one erring in that homeless wild.
They often murmur to themselves, they speak
To one another seldom, for their woe
Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak
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JAMES THOMSON
Itself abroad; and if at whiles it grow
To frenzy which must rave, none heeds the clamour,
Unless there waits some victim of like glamour,
To rave in turn, who lends attentive show.
The City is of Night, but not of Sleep:
There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain;
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
A night seems termless hell. This dreadful strain
Of thought and consciousness which never ceases,
Or which some moments' stupor but increases,
This, worse than woe, makes wretches there insane.
They leave all hope behind who enter there:
One certitude while sane they cannot leave,
One anodyne for torture and despair;
The certitude of Death, which no reprieve
Can put off long; and which, divinely tender,
But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render
That draught whose slumber nothing can bereave.
From The City of Dreadful Night
AS I CAME THROUGH THE
DESERT
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: All was black,
In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
A brooding hush without a stir or note,
The air so thick it clotted in my throat;
And thus for hours; then some enormous things
Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire
Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;
The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath
Was hot upon me from deep laws of death;
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Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold
Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,
That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow
Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell
For Devil's roll-call and some fete of Hell:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Meteors ran
And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;
The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,
The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame;
The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged
And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Air once more,
And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;
Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,
The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;
White f oambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;
The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:
And I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: On the left
The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;
There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,
A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;
Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,
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JAMES THOMSON
And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:
Still I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: From the right
A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;
A woman with a red lamp in her hand,
Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;
O desolation moving with such grace 1
O anguish with such beauty in thy face I
I fell as on my bier,
Hope travailed with such fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was.
As I came through the desert: I was twain,
Two selves distinct that cannot join again;
One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
And she came on, and never turned aside,
Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
And as she came more near
My soul grew mad with fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Hell is mild
And piteous matched with that accursed wild;
A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,
A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud;
That lamp she held was her own burning heart,
Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart:
The mystery was clear;
Mad rage had swallowed fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: By the sea
She knelt and bent above that senseless me;
Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,
She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;
She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,
She heeded not the level rushing flow:
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And mad with rage and fear,
I stood stonebound so near.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert; When the tide
Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,
She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne
Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;
I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,
Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:
They love; their doom is drear,
Yet they nor hope nor fear;
But I ? what do I here?
From The City of Dreadful Night
William Morris
THE EARTHLY PARADISE
OF Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.
But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die-
Remember me a little then I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.
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WILLIAM MORRIS
The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let me sing of names remembered,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
Folk say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.
So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea.
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.
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Sir W. S. Gilbert
SIR JOSEPH'S SONG
WHEN I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
As office boy I made such a mark
That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.
I served the writs with a smile so bland,
And I copied all the letters in a big round hand
I copied all the letters in a hand so free,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
In serving writs I made such a name
That an articled clerk I soon became;
I wore clean collars and a brand new suit
For the pass examination at the Institute,
And that pass examination did so well for me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership.
And that junior partnership, I ween,
Was the only ship that I ever had seen.
But that kind of ship so suited me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking of myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
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SIR W. S. GILBERT
Now Landsmen all, whoever you may be,
If you want to rise to the top of the tree,
If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool,
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule-
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,
And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee!
From H.M.S. Pinafore
BUNTHORNE'S SONG
IF you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line
as a man of culture rare,
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental
terms, and plant them everywhere.
You must He upon the daisies and discourse in novel
phrases of your complicated state of mind.
The matter doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a
transcendental kind.
And everyone will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
*If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep
for me,
'Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep
young man must be! 7
Be eloquent in praise of the very dull old days which
have long since passed away,
And convince 'em, if you can, that the reign of good
Queen Anne was Culture's palmiest day.
Of course you will pooh-pooh whatever's fresh and new,
and declare it's crude and mean,
For Art stopped short in the cultivated court of the
Empress Josephine.
And everyone will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
*If that's not good enough for him which is good enough
for me,
Why, what a very cultivated kind of youth this kind of
youth must be!'
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Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must
excite your languid spleen,
An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or
a not-too-French French bean!
Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an
apostle in the high aesthetic band,
If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in
your mediaeval hand.
And as everyone will say,
As you walk your flowery way,
'If he's content with a vegetable love which would cer
tainly not suit me,
Why, what a most particularly pure young man this
pure young man must be!'
From Patience
KO-KO'S SONG
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed who never would
be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for auto
graphs-
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs-
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em
flat-
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you
like that-
And all third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist
They'd none of 'em be missed they'd none of 'em be
missed!
Chorus. He's got 'em on the list he's got 'em on the
list;
And they'll none of 'em "be missed they II none of 'em
be missed.
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SIR W. S. GILBERT
There's the nigger serenader, and the others o his race,
And the piano-organist IVe got him on the list!
And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your
face,
They never would be missed they never would be
missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own;
And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
And who 'doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather
like to try*;
And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist
I don't think she'd be missedI'm sure she'd not be
missed!
Chorus. He's got her on the list he's got her on the
list;
And I don't think she'tt be missed I'm sure she'll not
be missed!
And that Nisi Prins nuisance, who just now is rather rife,
That judicial humourist I've got him on the list!
All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private
life
They'd none of *em be missed they'd none of 'em be
missed.
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as- What d'ye call him-Thing'em-bob, and 'like
wise Nevermind,
And 'St-'st-'st-and What's-his-name, and also You-
know-who
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed they'd none of *ern
be missed!
Chorus. Jou may put 'em on the list you may put y em
on the list,
And they'll none of y em be missedthey'll none of 'em
be missed! J?^ The Mikado
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THE MIKADO'S SONG
A MORE humane Mikado never
Did in Japan exist,
To nobody second,
I'm certainly reckoned
A true philanthropist.
It is my very Lumane endeavour
To make, to some extent,
Each evil liver
A running river
Of harmless merriment.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time-
To let the punishment fit the crime
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!
All prosy dull society sinners,
Who chatter and bleat and bore,
Are sent to hear sermons
From mystical Germans
Who preach from ten till four.
The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies
All desire to shirk,
Shall, during off-hours,
Exhibit his powers,
To Madame Tussaud's waxwork.
The lady who dyes a chemical yellow
Or stains her grey hair puce,
Or pinches her figger,
Is blacked like a nigger
With permanent walnut juice.
The idiot who, in railway carriages,
Scribbles on window-panes,
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SIR W. S. GILBERT
We only suffer
To ride on a buffer
In Parliamentary trains.
My object all sublime, etc.
The advertising quack who wearies
With tales of countless cures,
His teeth, I've enacted,
Shall all be extracted
By terrified amateurs.
The music-hall singer attends a series
Of masses and fugues and "ops"
By Bach, interwoven
With Spohr and Beethoven,
At classical Monday Pops.
The billiard sharp whom any one catches,
His doom's extremely hard-
He's made to dwell-
In a dungeon cell
On a spot that's always barred.
And there he plays extravagant matches
In fitless finger-stalls
On a cloth untrue,
With a twisted cue
And elliptical billiard balls!
My object all sublime, etc.
From The Mikado
KO-KO'S WINNING SONG
ON a tree by a river a little torn-tit
Sang 'Willow, titwillow, titwillow!'
And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing "Willow, titwillow, titwillow"?
Is it a weakness of intellect, birdie?' I cried,
"Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'
With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
'Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillowl'
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He slapped at his chest, as he sat on that bough,
Singing 'Willow, titwillow, titwillowP
And a cold perspiration bespangled his brow,
Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!
He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave,
Then he threw himself into the billowy wave,
And an echo arose from the suicide's grave
'Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillowr
Now, I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name
Isn't Willow, titwillow, titwillow,
That 'twas blighted affection that made him exclaur
*Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillowl'
And if you remain callous and obdurate, I
Shall perish as he did, and you will know why,
Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die,
*Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillowr
From The Mikad
Algernon Charles Swinburne
BEFORE THE BEGINNINGS OF YEAR!
BEFORE the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death.
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ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the labouring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashion'd with loathing and love,
With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the north and the south
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
Arid love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.
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WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING
WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to he
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flowers of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
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ALGERNON CHAfOLES SWINBURNE
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot lad,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Maenad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs,
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
A FORSAKEN GARDEN
IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of
its roses
Now He dead.
The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
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Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briers if a man make way
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.
The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.
Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls
not,
Gould she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.
The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.
Heart handfast in heart as they stood, 'Look thither.'
Did he whisper? 'Look forth from the flowers to the
sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms
wither,
And men that love lightly may die but we?'
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
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ALGERNON CHABLES SWINBUBNE
And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had light
ened,
Love was dead.
Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
And were one to the end but what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
What love was ever as deep as a grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them,
Or the wave.
All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.
Here death may deal not again for ever;
Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up
never,
Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea.
Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink;
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.
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THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE
HERE, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds* and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here e
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
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They blow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Gomes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven.
Nor -weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and f ollow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
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Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
Today will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and -with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal:
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
494
Alice Meijnell
A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER
OWN OLD AGE
LISTEN, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.
O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee!
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.
fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?
Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.
Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind tihee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.
Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander
Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder
The misty mountains of the morning yonder.
Listen: the mountain winds with rain were fretting,
And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting.
1 cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting.
What part of this wild heart of mine I know not
Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not,
And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not.
Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it
Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it,
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And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it.
Oh, in some hour of thine my thoughts shall guide thee,
Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence hide thee,
This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee, '
Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden,
With thy regrets was morning over-shaden,
With sorrow thou hast left, her life was laden.
But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee?
Life changes, and the years and days renew thee.
Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee.
Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses
Upon the evening as the morning tresses,
Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses.
And we, so altered in our shifting phases,
Track one another 'mid the many mazes
By the eternal child-breath of the daisies.
I have not writ this letter of divining
To make a glory of thy silent pining,
A triumph of thy mute and strange declining.
Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded.
Only one morning, and the day was clouded.
And one old age with all regrets is crowded.
Oh, hush; oh, hush! Thy tears my words are steeping.
Oh, hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping?
Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping?
Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her.
Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter
That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her.
The one who now thy faded features guesses,
With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses,
With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses.
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W. E. Henley
INVICTUS
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul
Oscar Wilde
IN READING GAOL BY READING
TOWN
IN Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
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In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved.
And so he had to die.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Prom The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Francis Thompson
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me/
498
FRANCIS THOMPSON
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followed,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside);
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover-
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven.
Flashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o* their feet:
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat
'Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.'
I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
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But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
'Come then, ye other children, Nature'sshare
With me* (said I) 'your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dai's,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.'
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one-
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the willful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumed of the wild sea-snortings;
All that 's born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
500
FRANCIS THOMPSON
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noised Feet
A Voice comes yet more fleet
*Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o" the mounded years
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap,
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
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Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must-
Designer infinite!
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with
it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower f the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
'And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I make much of naught' (He said),
'And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
502
FRANCIS THOMPSON
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!*
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
*Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me. :
IN NO STRANGE LAND
O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air-
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
*Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
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But, when so sad them canst not sadder
Cry; and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!
Lionel Johnson
THE DARK ANGEL
DARK Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!
Because of thee, no thought, no thing
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!
When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.
Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemyl
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.
Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering-place of fears:
504
LIONEL JOHNSON
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.
When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest me.
Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O master of impieties!
The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.
Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete.
Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.
1 fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death;
The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.
Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.
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Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely., unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.
Ernest Dowson
CYNARAE
LAST night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cvnara! in my fashion.
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II
A
Little Treasury
of
Modern British Poetry
The Chief Poets
from 1QOO to ig
Editorial Note
This collection of British poetry is intended primarily for
the American reader as a companion volume to A Little
Treasury of American Poetry. Both volumes have been ar
ranged on a chronological plan, i.e., according to the birth
dates of the poets. T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden have work
included in each volume but the selections are different and
complementary. For instance, any reader who notes that 'The
Waste Land' and 'Ash Wednesday* by Eliot and 'September
1, 1939* and *At the Grave of Henry James' by Auden are
not included in this volume will find them in the American
collection.
There is no separate section in the present volume entitled
The Poetry of the Forties as there is in the American Little
Treasury, but readers interested in comparing British poetry
of the Forties with American poetry of the Forties will find
poems written during this decade starred in the Index of
Authors & Tides (pages 859 to 874). Used together A Little
Treasury of British Poetry and A Little Treasury of American
Poetry constitute one comprehensive anthology of poetry in
the English tongue.
Thomas Hardy
THE DARKLING THRUSH
I LEANT upon coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as L
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
AIT
And I was unaware.
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THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
THE thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race 1 -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or promontory sides,
Or the ooze by the strand,
Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,
Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion
Of criss-crossing tides.
Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
A whirr, as of wings
Waved by mighty-vanned flies,
Or by night-moths of measureless size,
And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hear
ing
Of corporal things.
And they bore to the bluff, and alighted
A dim-discerned train
Of sprites without mould,
Frameless souls none might touch or might hold-
On the ledge by the turreted lantern, far-sighted
By men of the main.
And I heard them say 'Home!' and I knew them
For souls of the felled
On the earth's nether bord
Under Capricorn, whither they'd warred,
And I neared in my awe, and gave needfulness to them
With breathings inheld.
Then, it seemed, there approached from the north
ward
1 The "Race" is the turbulent sea-area off the Bill of Portland, where
contrary tides meet.
510
A senior soul-flame
Of the like filmy hue:
And he met them and spake: Is it you,
my men?' Said they, 'Aye! We bear homeward and
hearthward
To feast on our fame!'
I've flown there before you,* he said then:
'Your households are well;
But your kin linger less
On your glory and war-mightiness
Than on dearer things/ 'Dearer?' cried these from the
dead then,
'Of what do they tell?'
'Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
Your doings as boys-
Recall the quaint ways
Of your babyhood's innocent days.
Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,
And higher your joys.
'A father broods: "Would I had set him
To some humble trade,
And so slacked his high fire,
And his passionate martial desire;
And told him no stories to woo him and whet him
To this dire crusade!" *
'And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
Sworn loyal as doves?'
'Many mourn; many think
It is not unattractive to prink
Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts
Have found them new loves/
'And our wives?* quoth another resignedly,
'Dwell they on our deeds?'
'Deeds of home; that live yet
Fresh as new deeds of fondness or fret;
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Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,
These, these have their heeds/
'Alas! then it seems that our glory
Weighs less in their thought
Than our old homely acts,
And the long-ago commonplace facts
Of our lives held by us as scarce part of our story,
And rated as nought!'
Then bitterly some: Was it wise now
To raise the tomb-door
For such knowledge? Away!'
But the rest; Tame we prized till to-day;
Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize
now
A thousand times more!'
Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions
Began to disband
And resolve them in two:
Those whose record was lovely and true
Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions
Again left the land,
And, towering to seaward in legions,
They paused at a spot
Overbending the Race-
That engulphing, ghast, sinister place-
Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless
regions
Of myriads forgot.
And the spirits of those who were homing
Passed on, rushingly,
Like the Pentecost Wind;
And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned
And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming
Sea-mutterings and me.
December 1899.
512
THOMAS HABBY
TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD
BREATHE not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time- wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.
Hark, how the people surge and sigh,
And laughters fail, and greetings die:
Hopes dwindle; yea,
Faiths waste away,
Affections and enthusiasms numb;
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.
Had I the ear of wombed souls
Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
And thou wert free
To cease, or be,
Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?
Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence
To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
Explain none can
Life's pending plan:
Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make
Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.
Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot
Of earth's wide wold for thee, where not
One tear, one qualm,
Should break the calm.
But I am weak as thou and bare;
No man can change the common lot to rare.
Must come and bide. And such are we
Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary
That I can hope
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Health, love, friends, scope
In full for thee; can dream thou wilt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!
THE RUINED MAID
'O 'MELIA, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?'
'O didn't you know I'd been ruined?' said she.
'You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers
three!'
'Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined/ said she.
'At home in the barton you said, "thee" and "thou,"
And "thik oon," and "theas oon/' and "t'other"; but now
Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!'
'Some polish is gained with one's ruin,' said she.
'Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and
bleak
But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,
And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!*
'We never do work when we're ruined/ said she.
'You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,
And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!'
'True. One's pretty lively when ruined/ said she.
'I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!'
'My dear a raw country girl, such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined/ said she.
514
THOMAS HARDY
THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM
WHY should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.
Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?
It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,,
And saps all retrocede.
Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.
Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?
I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.
IN TENEBRIS
"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."Ps, cL
WINTERTIME nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
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Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.
Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost's black length:
Strength long since fled!
Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.
Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.
Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope.
II
"Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me.
. . . Non est qui requirat animam meam."Ps. cxli.
WHEN the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts
of the many and strong
That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be
right ere long,
And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what
to these is so clear,
The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he
i were not here.
The stout upstanders say, All's well with us: ruers have
nought to rue!
And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat
)" true?
516
THOMAS HAKDY
Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes
around their career,
Till I think I am one born out of due time, who has no
calling here.
Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their evenings
all that is sweet;
Our times are blessed times, they cry: Life shapes it as
is most meet,
And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles
to a tear;
Then what is the matter is I, I say. Why should such an
one be here?. . .
Let him in whose ears the low-voiced Best is killed by
the clash o the First,
Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a
full look at the Worst,
Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by
crookedness, custom, and fear,
Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he
disturbs the order here.
m
"Heu mihi, qma incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum kabitan-
tibits Cedar; multum incola fuit anima mea." Ps. cxix.
THERE have been times when I well might have passed
and the ending have come
Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on
me, artless, unruerng
Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile
doing:
Such has been times when I well might have passed,
and the ending have corne!
Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that
April was nigh,
And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the
crocus-border,
Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming
order,
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Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year
thereby.
Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted
we stood,
She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon
together,
Confident I in her watching and ward through the
blackening heather,
Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless
scope endued.
Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the
chimney-nook quoin,
Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest
of folk there,
Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon
I awoke there-
Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing
to join.
Even then! while unweeting that vision could vex or that
knowledge could numb,
That sweets to the mouth in the belly are bitter, and tart,
and untoward,
Then, on some dim-coloured scene should my briefly
raised curtain have lowered,
Then might the Voice that is law have said 'Cease!'
and the ending have come.
THE MAN HE KILLED
he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
TBut ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
518
THOMAS HARDY
*I shot him dead because
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
*He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-handjust as I
Was out of work had sold his traps-
No other reason why.
'Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown/
CHANNEL FIRING
THAT night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:
'All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christes sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
'That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening. . . .
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*Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need) /
So down we lay again. *I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be/
Said one, 'than when He sent us under
La our indifferent century!'
And many a skeleton shook his head.
Instead of preaching forty year/
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
*I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer/
Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN
(Lines on the loss of the "Titantic")
IN a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches
she.
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls grotesque, slimed, dumb, indif
ferent.
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and
blind.
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THOMAS HARDY
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down
here?* . . .
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
Prepared a sinister mate
For her so gaily great
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said 'Now!* And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
THIS statue of Liberty, busy man,
Here erect in the city square,
I have watched while your scrubbings, this early mon>
Strangely wistful,
And half tristful,
Have turned her from foul to fair;
With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
Bringing her out of the grime
That has smeared her during; the smokes of winter
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With such glumness
In her dumbness,
And aged her before her time.
You have washed her down with motherly care-
Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,
To the very hem of the robes that drape her
All expertly
And alertly.
Till a long stream, black with soot,
Flows over the pavement to the road,
And her shape looms pure as snow:
I read you are hired by the City guardians-
May be yearly,
Or once merely
To treat the statues so?
*Oh, I'm not hired by the Counciimen
To cleanse the statues here.
I do this one as a self-willed duty,
Not as paid to,
Or at all made to,
But because the doing is dear/
Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!
Liberty's knight divine.
What you have done would have been my doing,
Yea, most verily,
Well, and thoroughly,
Had but your courage been mine!
e Oh I care not for Liberty's mould,
Liberty charms not me;
What's Freedom but an idler's vision,
Vain, pernicious,
Often vicious,
Of things that cannot be!
'Memory it is that brings me to this
Of a daughter my one sweet own.
She grew a famous carver's model,
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THOMAS HARDY
One of the fairest
And of the rarest:
She sat for the figure as shown.
"But alas, she died in this distant place
Before I was warned to betake
Myself to her side! . . . And in love of my darling.
In love of the fame of her,
And the good name of her,
I do this for her sake/
Answer I gave not. Of that form
The carver was I at his side;
His child, my model, held so saintly,
Grand in feature,
Gross in nature,
In the dens of vice had died.
UNDER THE WATERFALL
'WHENEVER I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of grey.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart,
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans taE
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks/
'And why gives this the only prime
Idea to vou of a real love-rhyme?
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And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?'
'Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though where precisely none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalized,
Is a drinking-glass:
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade's rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
*By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine/
524
THOMAS HARDY
THE GOING
WHY did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!
Never to bid good-bye,
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.
Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!
You were she who abode
By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.
Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And err your vanishing strive to seek
That time's renewal? We might have said,
In this bright spring weather
We'll visit together
Those places that once we visited/
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Well, well! All's past amend,
Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing
Not even I would undo me so!
AFTERWARDS
WHEN the Present has latched its postern behind my
tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like
wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
'He was a man who used to notice such things?
If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
'To him this must have been a familiar sight/
If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and
warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, 'He strove that such innocent creatures
should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.'
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they
stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face
no more,
'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'?
And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in
the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
'He hears it not now, but used to notice such things'?
526
THOMAS HARDY
A REFUSAL
SAID the grave Dean of
Westminster:
Mine is the best minster
Seen in Great Britain,
As many have written:
So therefore I cannot
Rule here if I ban not
Such liberty-taking
As movements for mak
ing
Its greyness environ
The memory of Byron,
Which some are de
manding
Who think them o
standing,
But in my own viewing
Require some subduing
For tendering sugges
tions
On Abbey-wall questions
That must interfere here
With my proper sphere
here,
And bring to disaster
This fane and its master.
Whose diet is but Chris
tian
Though nicknamed Phllis-
tian.
A lax Christian charity-
No mental clarity
Ruling its movements
For fabric improvements-
Demands admonition
And strict supervision
When bent on enshrining
Rapscallions, and signing
Their names on God's
stonework,
As if like His own work
Were their lucubrations:
And passed is my pa
tience
That such a creed-scorner
(Not mentioning homer)
Should claim Poet's
Comer.
*Tis urged that some
sinners
Are here for worms'
dinners
Already in person;
That he could not worsen
The walls by a name mere
With men of such fame
here.
Yet nay; they but leaven
The others in heaven
In just true proportion,
While more mean distor
tion.
'Twill next be expected
That I get erected
To Shelley a tablet
In some niche or gablet.
Then what makes my
skin burn,
Yea, forehead to chin
burn-
That I ensconce Swin
burne!
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IN TIME OF 'THE BREAKING
OF NATIONS'
ONLY a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will fade into night
Ere their story die.
NO BUYERS: A STREET SCENE
A LOAD of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown
hairs.
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling
sway
At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turk's-head brush (in a drum-major's way
When the bandsmen march and play) .
A yard from the back of the man is the whiteybrown
pony's nose:
He mirrors his master in every item of pace and pose:
He stops when the man stops, without being told,
And seems to be eased by a pause; too plainly he's old,
Indeed, not strength enough shows
To steer the disjointed waggon straight,
Which wriggles left and right in a rambling line,
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THOMAS HARDY
Deflected thus by its own warp and weight.
And pushing the pony with it in each incline.
The woman walks on the pavement verge,
Parallel to the man:
She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries a like TurkVhead, but more in nursing- wise;
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things.
The rain clams her apron till it clings.
So, step by step, they move with their merchandise,
And nobody buys.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
GOD'S GRANDEUR
THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the
soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown bring eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings.
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PIED BEAUTY
GLORY be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced fold, fallow, and
plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He father's-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
THE WRECK OF THE
DEUTSCHLAND
To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns
exiles by the Folk Laws drowned between
midnight and morning of Dec. 7th, 1875
PART THE FIRST
I THOU mastering me
GodI giver of breath and bread;
World's strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened ma
flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
n I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
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GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of
thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire
of stress.
m The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the
Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from
the grace to the grace.
iv I am soft sift
In an hourglass at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,
And it crowds and it combs to the fall;
I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,
But roped with, always, all the way down from the
taU
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ's
gift.
v I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:
Since, tho* he is under the world's splendour and
wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I
understand.
vi Not out of his bliss
Springs the stress felt
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Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and
melt-
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and
miss).
vn It dates from day
Of his going in Galilee;
Warm-laid grave of a womb-like grey;
Manger, maiden's knee;
The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;
Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,
Though felt before, though in high flood yet
What none would have known of it, only the heart,
being hard at bay.
vm Is out with it! Oh,
We lash with the best or worst
Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush! flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full! Hither then, last or first,
To hero of Calvary, Christ's feet
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it men
g*
ix Be adored among men,
God, three-numbered form;
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man's malice, with wrecking and storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and
warm;
Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.
x With an anvil-ding
And with fire in him forge thy will
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GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring
Through him, melt him but master him still:
Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,
Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,
Make mercy in all of us, out o us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.
PART THE SECOND
xi 'Some find me a sword; some
The flange and the rail; flame,
Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.
But we dream we are rooted in earth Dust!
Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower
the same,
Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
xii On Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,
Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two hundred souls in the round
O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing
The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be
drowned;
Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing
Not vault them, the millions of rounds of thy mercy
not reeve even them in?
xin Into the snows she sweeps,
Hurling the haven behind,
The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular
blow,
Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;
Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivelled snow
Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering
deeps.
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xiv She drove in the dark to leeward,
She struck not a reef or a rock
But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her
Dead to the Kentish Knock;
And she beat the bank down with her bows and the
ride of her keel:
The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock;
And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel
Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she
endured.
xv Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone;
And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day
Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,
And lives at last were washing away:
To the shrouds they took, they shook in the hurling and
horrible airs.
xvi One stirred from the rigging to save
The wild woman-kind below,
With a rope's end round the man, handy and
brave-
He was pitched to his death at a blow,
For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew:
They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro
Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do
With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the
flood of the wave?
xvn They fought with God's cold
And they could not and fell to the deck
(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or
rolled
With the sea-romp over the wreck.
Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-
broke rabble,
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GERABD MANLEY HOPKINS
The woman's wailing, the crying of child without
check-
Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,
A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue
told.
xvin Ah, touched in your bower of bone
Are you! turned for an exquisite smart,
Have you! make words break from me here all
alone,
Do you! mother of being in me, heart.
O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth,
Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal
start!
Never-eldering revel and river of youth,
What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of
your own?
xix Sister, a sister calling
A master, her master and mine!
And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine
Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;
Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine
Ears, and the call of the tall nun
To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the
storm's brawling.
xx She was first of a five and came
Of a coifed sisterhood.
(O Deutschland, double a desperate name!
O world wide of its good!
But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town,
Christ's lily and beast of the waste wood:
From life's dawn it is drawn down,
Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked the
same.)
xxi Loathed for a love men knew in them,
Banned by the land of their birth,
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Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them;
Surf, snow, river and earth
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light;
Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the
worth,
Thou martyr-master: in thy sight
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers-
sweet heaven was astrew in them.
xxn Five! the finding and sake
And cipher of suffering Christ.
Mark, the mark is of man's make
And the word of it Sacrificed.
But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own, be
spoken,
Before-time-taken, dearest prized and priced-
Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token
For lettering of the lamb's fleece, ruddying of the rose
flake.
xxm Joy fall to thee, father Francis,
Drawn to the Life that died;
With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the
lance, his
Lovescape crucified
And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters
And five-lived and leaved favour and pride,
Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,
To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-
fire glances.
xxiv Away in the loveable west,
On a pastoral forehead of Wales,
I was under a roof here, I was at rest,
And they the prey of the gales;
She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails
Was calling *O Christ, Christ, come quickly':
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her
wild-worst Best
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xxv The majesty! what did she mean?
Breathe, arch and original Breath.
Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been?
Breathe, body of lovely Death.
They were else-minded then, altogether, the men
Woke thee with a we are perishing in the weather of
Gennesareth.
Or is it that she cried for the crown then,
The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the com
bating keen?
xxvi For how to the heart's cheering
The down-dugged ground-hugged grey
Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing
Of pied and peeled May!
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still
higher,
With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,
What by your measure is the heaven of desire,
The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed
what for the hearing?
XXVH No, but it was not these.
The jading and jar of the cart,
Time's tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease
Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart,
Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds
The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer
apart:
Other, I gather, in measure her mind's
Burden, in wind's burly and beat of endragoned seas.
xxvin But how shall I ... make me room there:
Reach me a ... Fancy, come faster-
Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there,
Thing that she ... there then! the Master,
Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head:
He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her;
Do, deal, lord it with living and dead;
Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and
have done with Ms doom there.
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xxix Ah! there was a heart right!
There was single eye!
Read the unshapeable shock night
And knew the who and the why;
Wording it how but by him that present and past,
Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?
The Simon Peter o a soul! to the blast
Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light.
xxx Jesu, heart's light,
Jesu, maid's son,
What was the feast followed the night
Thou hadst glory of this nun?
Feast of the one woman without stain.
For so conceived, so to conceive thee is done;
But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain,
Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee out
right
XXXI Well, she has thee for the pain, for the
Patience; but pity of the rest of them!
Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the
Comfortless unconfessed of them
No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence
Finger of a tender of, O of a feathery delicacy, the
breast of the
Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and
Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwreck then a
harvest, does tempest carry the grain for
thee?
xxxn I admire thee, master of the tides,
Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;
The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs sides,
The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall;
Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind;
Ground of being, and granite of it: past all
Grasp God, throned behind
Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes
but abides;
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xxxin With a mercy that outrides
The all of water, an ark
For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides
Lower than death and the dark;
A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in
prison,
The-last-breath penitent spirits the uttermost mark
Our passion-plunged giant risen,
The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the
storm of his strides.
xxxiv Now burn, new born to the world,
Double-natured name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of -flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he
came;
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning
of fire hard-hurled.
xxxv Dame, at our door
Drowned, and among our shoals,
Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of
the Reward:
Our King back, oh, upon English souls!
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of
us, be a crimson-cresseted east,
More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign
rolls,
Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,
Our hearts' charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts' chivalry's
throng's Lord.
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THE LEADEN ECHO AND THE
GOLDEN ECHO
(Maidens' Song -from St. Winef red's Well)
THE LEADEN ECHO
How to keep is there any any, is there none such, no
where known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace,
lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from
vanishing away?
O is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles
deep,
Down? no waving off of these most mournful messengers,
still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, wind
ing sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there's none; no no no there's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.
THE GOLDEN ECHO
Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the
earth's air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
One. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
540
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything
that's fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of
us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and
dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-
matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to,
ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is
an ever-lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden
gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet
looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going
gallant, girlgrace
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion
them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long
before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God,
beauty's self and beauty's giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost;
every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere
mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with
the wind whatwhile we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
Whatwhile we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why should we tread? O why are
we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed,
so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a
care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
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Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it)
finer, fonder
A care kept.-Where kept? Do but tell us where kept,
where.
Yonder. What high as that! We follow, now we follow.
Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.
FELIX RANDAL
FELIX RANDAL the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty
all ended,
Who have watched his mold of man, big-boned and
hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and
some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but
mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began
some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ran
som
Tendered to him. Ah, well, God rest him all road ever
he offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had
quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor
Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more bois
terous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst
peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and
battering sandal!
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GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
THE WINDHOVER
(To Christ Our Lord]
1 CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn
Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and
striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wrmpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the
hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a
billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down
sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
THE CANDLE INDOORS
SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-aE black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There, God to aggrandize, God to glorify.
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart's vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?
A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
SPRING AND FALL: TO A YOUNG
CHILD
MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like die things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
INVERSNAID
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the bum.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet,
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GERABD MANLEY HOPKINS
NO WORST, THERE IS NONE
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing-
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No linger
ing! Let me be fell: force I must be brief/
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
THE HABIT OF PERFECTION
ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shelled, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
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What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of -primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
CARRION COMFORT
NOT, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist slack they may be these last strands of
man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not
to be.
But ah, but thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against
me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and
fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to
avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer
and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the
rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy,
would laugh, cheer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling
flung me, foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each
one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (mv
God!) my God.
546
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
THAT NATURE IS A HERACLITEAN
FIRE AND OF THE COMFORT OF
THE RESURRECTION
CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth,
then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs
they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever
an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance,
and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles,
beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; j in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust;
stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footf retted in it. Million-fueled, nature's bonfire burns
on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-
selved spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that
shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor
mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the
Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away griefs gasping, | joyless days,
dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesb fade, and mortal
trash
Fall to the residuary worm; J world's wildfire, leave but
ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
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I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I
am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, im
mortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
THE SEA AND THE SKYLARK
ON ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeined score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none 's to spill nor spend.
How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,
Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime,
ANDROMEDA
Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.
Her Perseus linger and leave her to her extremes?
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.
548
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
I WAKE AND FEEL THE FELL
OF DARK
I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoiks we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where' I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
THE LANTERN OUT OF DOORS
SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds; Christ's interest, what to avow or amend
There, eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot fol
lows kind,
Their ransom, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend.
549
Robert Bridges
I HEARD A LINNET COURTING
I HEAKD a linnet courting
His lady in the spring:
His mates were idly sporting,
Nor stayed to hear him sing
His song of love.
I fear my speech distorting
His tender love.
The phrases of his pleading
Were full of young delight;
And she that gave him heeding
Interpreted aright
His gay, sweet notes,
So sadly marred in the reading,
His tender notes.
And when he ceased, the hearer
Awaited the refrain,
Till swiftly perching nearer
He sang his song again,
His pretty song:
Would that my verse spake clearer
His tender song!
Ye happy, airy creatures!
That in the merry spring
Think not of what misfeatures
Or cares the year may bring;
But unto love
Resign your simple natures
To tender love.
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ROBERT BRIDGES
ON A DEAD CHILD
PERFECT little body, without fault or stain on thee,
With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
Though cold and stark and bare,
The bloom and the charm of Me doth awhile remain on
thee.
Thy mother's treasure wert thou; alas! no longer
To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be
Thy father's pride; ah, he
Must gather his faith together, and his strength make
stronger.
To me, as I move thee now in the last duty,
Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond;
Startling my fancy fond
With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.
Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it:
But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heart-breaking
and stifi;
Yet feels to my hand as if
'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.
So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing-
Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!
Propping thy wise, sad head,
Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.
So quiet! doth the change content thee? Death, whither
hath he taken thee?
To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?
The vision of which I miss,
Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and
awaken thee?
Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us
To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,
Unwilling, alone we embark,
And the things we have seen and have known and have
heard of, fail us.
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A PASSER-BY
WHITHER, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales opprest,
When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,
Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest
In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.
I there before thee, in the country that well thou
knowest,
Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:
I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,
And anchor queen of the strange shipping there.
Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare:
Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped,
grandest
Peak, that is over the feathery palms more fair
Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.
And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.
But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.
LONDON SNOW
WHEN men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
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ROBERT BRIDGES
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelledmarvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
*O look at the trees!' they cried, *O look at the trees!*
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go :
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the
charm they have broken.
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NIGHTINGALES
BEAUTIFUL must be the mountains whence ye come,
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams wherefrom
Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long!
Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams.
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art.
Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs
of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.
EROS
WHY hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;
Yea, and that standest in thy youth
An image of eternal Truth,
With thy exuberant flesh so fair,
That only Pheidias might compare,
Ere from his chaste marmoreal form
Time had decayed the colours warm;
Like to his gods in thy proud dress,
Thy starry sheen of nakedness.
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Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristen'd smile,
That shadows neither love nor guile,
But shameless will and power immense,
In secret sensuous innocence.
king of joy, what is thy thought?
1 dream thou knowest it is nought,
And wouldst in darkness come, but thou
Makest the light where'er thou go.
Ah yet no victim of thy grace,
None who e'er long'd for thy embrace.,
Hath cared to look upon thy face.
JOHANNES MILTON, SENEX
SINCE I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Man's Maker and Judge, Overruler of Fortune,
'Twere strange should I praise anything and refuse Him
praise,
Should love the creature forgetting the Creator,
Nor unto Him v in suff'ring and sorrow turn me;
Nay how cou'd I withdraw from v His embracing?
But since that I have seen not, and cannot know Him,
Nor in my earthly temple apprehend rightly
His wisdom and the heav'nly purpose eternal;
Therefore will I be bound to no studied system
Nor argument, nor with delusion enslave me,
Nor seek to please Him in any foolish invention,
Which my spirit within me, that loveth beauty
And hateth evil, hath reprov'd as unworthy:
But I cherish my freedom in loving service,
Gratefully adoring for delight beyond asking
Or thinking, and in hours of anguish and darkness
Confiding always on v His excellent greatness.
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NOEL: CHRISTMAS EVE, 1913
Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
A.FROSTY Christmas Eve
when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village
in the water'd valley
Distant music reached me
peals of bells aringing:
The constellated sounds
ran sprinkling on earth's floor
As the dark vault above
with stars was spangled o'er.
Then sped my thoughts to keep
that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching
by the folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields
and marveling could not tell
Whether it were angels
or the bright stars singing.
Now blessed be the tow'rs
that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer
unto God for our souls:
Blessed be their founders
(said I) an' our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ
in the belfries to-night
With arms lifted to clutch
the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above
and the mad romping din.
But to me heard afar
it was starry music
Angels' song, comforting
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ROBERT BRIDGES
as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me
by the riches of time
Mellow'd and transfigured
as I stood on the hill
Heark'ning in the aspect
of th'eternal silence.
LOW BAROMETER
THE south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,
The house is smitten as with a flail,
The chimney shudders to the blast.
On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;
And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier tide than his own.
Unbodied presences, the pack'd
Pollution and remorse of Time,
Slipp'd from oblivion reenact
The horrors of unhouseld crime.
Some men would quell the thing with prayer
Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor,
Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair
Or bursts the locFd forbidden door.
Some have seen corpses long interr'd
Escape from hallowing control,
Pale charnel forms nay ev'n have heard
The shrilling of a troubled soul,
OD/
A Little Treasury of Modem British Poetry
That wanders till the dawn hath cross'd
The dolorous dark, or Earth hath wound
Closer her storm-spredd cloke, and thrust
The baleful phantoms under ground.
THE STORM IS OVER
THE storm is over, the land hushes to rest:
The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,
Is fallen back in the west
To couch with the sinking sun.
The last clouds fare
With fainting speed, and their thin streamers fly
In melting drifts of the sky.
Already the birds in the air
Appear again; the rooks return to their haunt,
And one by one,
Proclaiming aloud their care,
Renew their peaceful chant,
Torn and shattered the trees their branches again reset,
They trim afresh the fair
Few green and golden leaves withheld from the storm,
And awhile will be handsome yet.
To-morrow's sun shall caress
Their remnant of loveliness:
In quiet days for a time
Sad Autumn lingering warm
Shall humour their faded prime.
But ah! the leaves of summer that lie on the ground!
What havoc! The laughing timbrels of June,
That curtained the birds 3 cradles, and screened their
song,
That sheltered the cooing doves at noon,
Of airy fans the delicate throng,
Torn and scattered around:
Far out afield they lie,
In the watery furrows die,
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In grassy pools of the flood they sink and drown,
Green-golden, orange, vermilion, golden and brown,
The high year's flaunting crown
Shattered and trampled down.
The day is done: the tired land looks for night:
She prays to the night to keep
In peace her nerves of delight:
While silver mist upstealeth silently,
And the broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky
Lifts o'er the firs her shining shield,
And in her tranquil light
Sleep falls on forest and field,
See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:
The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.
THE PSALM
WHILE Northward the hot sun was sinking o'er the trees
as we sat pleasantly talking in the meadow,
the swell of a rich music suddenly on our ears
gush'd thru' the wide-flung doors, where village-folk in
church
stood to their evening psalm praising God together
and when it came to cloze, paused, and broke forth
anew.
A great Huguenot psalm it trod forth on the air
with full slow notes moving as a goddess stepping
through the responsive figures of a stately dance
conscious of beauty and of her fair-flowing array
in the severe perfection of an habitual grace,
then stooping to its cloze, paused to dance forth anew;
To unfold its bud of melody everlastingly
fresh as in springtime when, four centuries agone,
it wing'd the souls of martyrs on their way to heav'n
chain'd at the barbarous stake, mid the burning faggots
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standing with tongues cut out, all singing in the flames
O evermore, sweet Psalm, shalt thou break forth anew.
Thou, when in France that self-idolatrous idol reign'd
that starved his folk to fatten his priests and concubines,
thou wast the unconquerable paean of resolute men
who fell in coward massacre or with Freedom fled
from the palatial horror into far lands away,
and England learnt to voice thy deathless strain anew.
Ah! they endured beyond worst pangs of fire and steel
torturings invisible of tenderness and untold;
No Muse may name them, nay, no man will whisper
them;
sitting alone he dare not think of them and wail
of babes and mothers' wail flouted in ribald song.
Draw to thy cloze, sweet Psalm, pause and break forth
anew!
Thy minstrels were no more, yet thy triumphing plaint
haunted their homes, as once in a deserted house
in Orthes, as 'twas told, the madden'd soldiery
burst in and searched but found nor living man nor maid
only the sound flow'd round them and desisted not
but when it wound to cloze, paused, and broke forth
anew.
And oft again in some lone valley of the Cevennes
where unabsolved crime yet calleth plagues on France
thy heavenly voice would lure the bloodhounds on,
astray,
hunting their fancied prey afar in the dark night
and with its ghostly music mock'd their oaths and knives.
O evermore great Psalm spring forth! spring forth anew!
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John Davidson
THIRTY BOB A WEEK
I COULDN'T touch a step and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth I hope, like you
On the handle of a skeleton gold key;"
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.
But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;
There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It's just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur;
Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!
For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburban Park,
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight,
Ascheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it's often very cold and very wet,
And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let-
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little lads are in their bunks.
But you never hear her do a growl or whine,
For she's made of flint and roses, very odd;
And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine,
Or I'd blubber, for I'm made of greens and sod:
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So pYaps we are in Hell for all that I can tell,
And lost and damn'd and served up hot to God.
I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silver-tongue;
I'm saying tilings a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung,
Thirty bob a week's the rammiest start!
With your science and your books and your the'ries
about spooks,
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?
I didn't mean your pocket, Mr., no:
I mean that having children and a wife,
With thirty bob on which to come and go,
Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife:
When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven! it makes
you think,
And notice curious items about life.
I step into my heart and there I meet
A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
He would take it, ask for more, and eat it all.
And I meet a sort of simpleton beside,
The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
He fell in love and married in his teens:
At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn't luck:
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.
And the god-almighty devil and the fool
That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
Are my good and evil angels if you like.
And both of them together in every kind of weather
Ride me like a double-seated bike.
That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled.
But I have a high old hot uri in my mind
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JOHN DAVIDSON
A most engrugious notion of the world,
That leaves your lightning "rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say, 'There ain't no chance,
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind/
And if s this way I make it out to be:
No fathers, mothers, countries, climates none;
Not Adam was responsible for me,
Nor society, nor systems, nary one:
A little sleeping seed, I woke-I did, indeed
A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come;
Beyond my will there was no other cause;
And every where I found myself at home,
Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in what ever shape of mollusc or of ape
I always went according to the laws.
I was the love that chose my mother out;
I joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
Are mine alone for ever from the first:
It's just the very same with a difference in the name
As 'Thy will be done/ You say it if you durst!
They say it daily up and down the land
As easy as you take a drink, it's true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that's the proper thing for you.
It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one;
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
563
A. E. Housman
LOVELIEST OF TREES, THE
CHERRY NOW
LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again.
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
REVEILLE
WAKE: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.
Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.
Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
'Who'll beyond the hills away?*
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A. E. HOUSMAN
Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.
Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
ON WENLOCK EDGE
ON Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
'Tis the old wind in the old anger
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare;
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
Today the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
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WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY
WHEN I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
? Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
OTHERS, I AM NOT THE FIRST
OTHERS, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their veins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
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A. E. HOUSMAN
OH, WHEN I WAS IN LOVE WITH YOU
OH, when I was in love with you.
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG
THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
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And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
WHITE IN THE MOON
WHITE in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.
The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
INTO MY HEART
INTO my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills.
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
568
A. E. HOUSMAN
WITH RUE MY HEART IS LADEN
WITH rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lip t maiden
And many a ligntfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
TERENCE, THIS IS STUPID STUFF
TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad/
Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
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Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it; if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
A. E. HOTJSMAN
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
-I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
SOLDIER FROM THE WARS
RETURNING
SOLDIER from the wars returning,
Spoiler of the taken town,
Here is ease that asks not earning;
Turn you in and sit you down.
Peace is come and wars are over,
Welcome you and welcome aH,
While the charger crops the clover
And his bridle hangs in stall.
Now no more of winters biting,
Filth in trench from fall to spring,
Summers full of sweat and fighting
For the Kesar or the King.
Rest you, charger, rust you, bridle;
Kings and kesars, keep your pay;
Soldier, sit you down and idle
At the inn of night for aye.
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THE CHESTNUT CASTS HIS
FLAMBEAUX
THE chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.
There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of our little store.
May will be fine next year as like as not:
Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.
We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.
It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.
Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.
If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours
To-morrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.
The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
572
A. E. HOUSMAN
WHEN ISRAEL OUT OF EGYPT
CAME
WHEN Israel out of Egypt came
Safe in the sea they trod;
By day in cloud, by night in flame,
Went on before them God.
He brought them with a stretched out hand
Dry-footed through the foam,
Past sword and famine, rock and sand,
Lust and rebellion, home.
I never over Horeb heard
The blast of advent blow;
No fire-faced prophet brought me word
Which way behoved me go.
Ascended is the cloudy flame,
The mount of thunder dumb;
The tokens that to Israel came,
To me they have not come.
I see the country far away
Where I shall never stand;
The heart goes where no footstep may
Into the promised land.
The realm I look upon and die
Another man wiU own;
He shall attain the heaven that I
Perish and have not known.
But I will go where they are hid
That never were begot,
To my inheritance amid
The nation that is not.
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THE JAR OF NATIONS
'On is it the jar of nations,
The noise of a world run mad,
The fleeing of earth's foundations?'
Yes, yes; lie quiet, my lad.
*Oh is it my country calling?
And whom will my country find
To shore up the sky from falling?'
My business; never you mind.
*Oh is it the newsboys crying
Lost battle, retreat, despair,
And honour and England dying?'
Well, fighting-cock, what if it were?
The devil this side of the darnels
Is having a dance with man,
And quarrelsome chaps in charnels
Must bear it as best they can.
INFANT INNOCENCE
THE Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
It has been eaten by the bear.
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William Butler Yeats
THE SECOND COMING
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
TO A SHADE
IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
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To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old foul mouth, had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.
September 9, 1918.
A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER
ONCE more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof -levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.
In courtesy Td have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
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My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
June 1919
578
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN
I WALK through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy-
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.
Her present image floats into the mind-
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
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As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Soldier Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolize
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oiL
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
A DIALOGUE OF SELF AND SOUL
i
MY SOUL. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?
MY SELF. The consecrated blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady's dress and round
The wooden scabbard bound and wound,
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn.
MY SOUL. Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And intellect its wandering
To this and that and t'other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.
MY SELF. Montashigi, third o his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery-
Heart's purple and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier's right
A charter to commit the crime once more.
MY SOUL. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known-
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
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n
MY SELF. A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies?
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what's the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?
I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
I am content to follow to its source,
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
582
WILLIAM BUTLER YEAT&
UPON A DYING LADY
i
HER COURTESY
WITH the old kindness, the old distinguished grace,
She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair
Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.
She would not have us sad because she is lying there,
And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,
Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her,
Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit,
Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.
n
CERTAIN ARTISTS BRING HER DOLLS AND
DRAWINGS
Bring where our Beauty lies
A new modelled doll, or drawing,
With a friend's or an enemy's
Features, or maybe showing
Her features when a tress
Of dull red hair was flowing
Over some silken dress
Cut in the Turkish fashion,
Or, it may be, like a boy's.
We have given the world our passion,
We have naught for death but toys.
m
SHE TURNS THE DOLLS' FACES TO THE WALL
Because to-day is some religious festival
They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese,
Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall
Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies,
Vehement and witty she had seemed; the Venetian lady
Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red
shoes,
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Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi;
The meditative critic; all are on their toes,
Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on.
Because the priest must have like every dog his day
Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon,
We and our dolls being but the world were best away.
IV
THE END OF DAY
She is playing like a child
And penance is the play,
Fantastical and wild
Because the end of day
Shows her that some one soon
Will come from the house, and say-
Though play is but half done
'Come in and leave the play.'
v
HER RACE
She has not grown uncivil
As narrow natures would
And called the pleasures evil
Happier days thought good;
She knows herself a woman,
No red and white of a face,
Or rank, raised from a common
Unreckonable race;
And how should her heart fail her
Or sickness break her will
With her dead brother's valour
For an example still?
VI
HER COURAGE
When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place
(I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made
Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face,
Amid that first astonishment, with Crania's shade,
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
All but the terrors of the woodland flight forgot
That made her Diarmuid dear, and some old cardinal
Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spot
Who had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath-
Aye, and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim, all
Who have lived in joy and laughed into the face of
Death.
vn
HER FRIENDS BRING HER A CHRISTMAS TREE
Pardon, great enemy,
Without an angry thought
We've carried in our tree,
And here and there have bought
Till all the boughs are gay,
And she may look from the bed
On pretty things that may
Please a fantastic head.
Give her a little grace,
What if a laughing eye
Have looked into your face?
It is about to die.
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
Those dying generations at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
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Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
THE TOWER
WHAT shall I do with this absurdity
O heart, O troubled heartthis caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible-
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,
Can be content with argument and deal
586
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
In abstract things; or be derided by
A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
n
I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day's declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.
Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once
When every silver candlestick or sconce
Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine,
A serving-man, that could divine
That most respected lady's every wish,
Ran and with the garden shears
Clipped an insolent farmer's ears
And brought them in a little covered dish.
Some few remembered still when I was young
A peasant girl commended by a song,
Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place.
And praised the colour of her face,
And had the greater joy in praising her,
Remembering that, if walked she there,
Farmers jostled at the fair
So great a glory did the song confer.
And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,
Or else by toasting her a score of times,
Rose from the table and declared it right
To test their fancy by their sight;
But they mistook the brightness of the moon
For the prosaic light of day-
Music had driven their wits astray
And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.
Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;
Yet, now I have considered it, I find
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That nothing strange; the tragedy began
With Homer that was a blind man,
And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.
may the moon and sunlight seem
One inextricable beam,
For if I triumph I must make men mad.
And I myself created Hanrahan
And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn
From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.
Caught by an old man's juggleries
He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro
And had but broken knees for hire
And horrible splendour of desire;
1 thought it all out twenty years ago:
Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;
And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on
He so bewitched the cards under his thumb
That all but the one card became
A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,
And that he changed into a hare.
Hanrahan rose in frenzy there
And followed up those baying creatures towards-
towards I have forgotten what enough!
1 must recall a man that neither love
Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear
Could, he was so harried, cheer;
A figure that has grown so fabulous
There's not a neighbour left to say
When he finished his dog's day:
An ancient bankrupt master of this house.
Before that ruin came, for centuries,
Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees
Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,
And certain men-at-arms, there were
Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,
Come with loud cry and panting breast
To break upon a sleeper's rest
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
While their great wooden dice beat on the board.
As I would question all, come all who can;
Come old, necessitous, half-mounted man;
And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;
The red man the juggler sent
Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French,
Gifted with so fine an ear;
The man drowned in a bog's mire,
When mocking muses chose the country wench.
Did all old men and women, rich and poor,
Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,
Whether in public or in secret rage
As I do now against old age?
But I have found an answer in those eyes
That are impatient to be gone;
Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,
For I need all his mighty memories.
Old lecher with a love on every wind,
Bring up out of that deep considering mind
All that you have discovered in the grave,
For it is certain that you have
Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing
Plunge, lured by a softening eye,
Or by a touch or a sigh,
Into the labyrinth of another's being;
Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?
If on the lost, admit you turned aside
From a great labyrinth out of pride,
Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought
Or anything called conscience once;
And that if memory recur, the sun's
Under eclipse and the day blotted out.
m
It is time that I wrote my will;
I choose upstanding men
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That climb the streams until
The fountain leap, and at dawn
Drop their cast at the side
Of dripping stone; I declare
They shall inherit my pride,
The pride of people that were
Bound neither to Cause nor to State,
Neither to slaves that were spat on,
Nor to the tyrants that spat,
The people of Burke and Grattan
That gave, though free to refuse-
Pride, like that of the morn,
When the headlong light is loose,
Or that of the fabulous horn,
Or that of the sudden shower
When all streams are dry,
Or that of the hour
When the swan must fix his eye
Upon a fading gleam,
Float out upon a long
Last reach of glittering stream
And there sing his last song.
And I declare my faith:
I mock Plotinus* thought
And cry in Plato's teeth,
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole,
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul,
Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
And further add to that
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar Paradise.
I have prepared my peace
With learned Italian things
And the proud stones of Greece,
Poet's imaginings
And memories of love,
590
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Memories of the words of women,
All those things whereof
Man makes a superhuman
Mirror-resembling dream.
As at the loophole there
The daws chatter and scream,
And drop twigs layer upon layer.
When they have mounted up,
The mother bird will rest
On their hollow top,
And so warm her wild nest.
I leave both faith and pride
To young upstanding men
Climbing the mountain side,
That under bursting dawn
They may drop a fly;
Being of that metal made
Till it was broken by
This sedentary trade.
Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath-
Seem but the clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades;
Or a bird's sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades.
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MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR
ANCESTRAL HOUSES
SURELY among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play,
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.
O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?
592
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?
n
MY HOUSE
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;
A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
11 Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.
Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwindling score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
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My bodily heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.
in
MY TABLE
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged. In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous,
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
The soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk,
Had walking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
IV
MY DESCENDANTS
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.
And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless ruin that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.
The Primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move;
And I, that count myself most prosperous,
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.
v
THE ROAD AT MY DOOR
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
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Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream,
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.
VI
THE STARE'S NEST BY MY WINDOW
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
vn
I SEE PHANTOMS OF HATRED AND OF THE
HEART'S FULLNESS AND OF THE
COMING EMPTINESS
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east. A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep
by-
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.
'Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
'Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or
in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading
wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.
Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their
eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes. No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of
lace,
Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean,
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Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place
To brazen hawks. Nor self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the
moon.
I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy,
The half-read wisdom of daemonic images,
Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN
MANY ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
Protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood
And gone are Phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young;
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
What matter that no cannon had been turned
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
Thought that unless a little powder burned
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
On master-work of intellect or hand,
No honour leave its mighty monument,
Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
But break upon his ghostly solitude.
But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say? That country round
None dared admit, if such a thought were his,
Incendiary or bigot could be found
To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
Or break in bits the famous ivories
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees,
n
When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
It seemed that a dragon of air
Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
So the Platonic Year
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Whirls out new right and wrong,
Whirls in the old instead;
All men are dancers and their tread
Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.
in
Some moralist or mythological poet
Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
I am satisfied with that,
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
An image of its state;
The wings half spread for flight,
The breast thrust out in pride
Whether to play, or to ride
Those winds that clamour of approaching night.
A man in his own secret meditation
Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
In art or politics;
Some Platonist affirms that in the station
Where we should cast off body and trade
The ancient habit sticks,
And that if our works could
But vanish with our breath
That were a lucky death,
For triumph can but mar our solitude.
The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
To end all things, to end
What my laborious Me imagined, even
The half-imagined, the half-written page;
O but we dreamed to mend
What ever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
IV
We, who seven years ago
Talked of honour and of truth,
Shriek with pleasure if we show
The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.
v
Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.
Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked and where are they?
Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.
VI
Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
But wearied running round and round in their courses
All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
Herodias' daughters have returned again,
A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
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Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
According to the wind, for all are blind.
But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks.
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.
TWO SONGS FROM A PLAY
I SAW a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side,
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
And then did all the Muses sing
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God's death were but a play.
Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argos painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.
n
In pity for man's darkening thought
He walked that room and issued thence
In Galilean turbulence;
The Babylonian starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
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WILLIAM: BUTLER YEATS
Made all Platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.
Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love's pleasure drives his love away,
The painter's brush consumes his dreams;
The herald's cry, the soldier's tread
Exhaust his glory and his might:
Whatever flames upon the night
Man's own resinous heart has fed.
C I AM OF IRELAND'
7 am of Ireland,,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on* cried she.
'Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland?
One man, one man alone
In that outlandish gear,
One solitary man
Of all that rambled there
Had turned his stately head.
'That is a long way off,
And times runs on/ he said,
'And the night grows rough/
*I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on* cried she.
'Come out of charity
And dance toith me in Ireland. 9
'The fiddlers are all thumbs,
Or the fiddle-string accursed,
The drums and the kettledrums
And the trumpets all are burst,
And the trombone/ cried he,
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'The trumpet and trombone/
And cocked a malicious eye,
'But time runs on, runs on/
7 am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And times runs on,* cried she.
'Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland!
NEWS FOR THE DELPHIC ORACLE
THEKE all the golden codgers lay,
There the silver dew,
And the great water sighed for love,
And the wind sighed too.
Man-picker Niamh leant and sighed
By Oisrn on the grass;
There sighed amid his choir of love
Tall Pythagoras.
Plotinus came and looked about,
The salt-flakes on his breast,
And having stretched and yawned awhile
Lay sighing like the rest.
n
Straddling each a dolphin's back
And steadied by a fin,
Those Innocents re-live their death,
Their wounds open again.
The ecstatic waters laugh because
Their cries are sweet and strange,
Through their ancestral patterns dance,
And the brute dolphins plunge
Until, in some cliff-sheltered bay
Where wades the choir of love
Proffering its sacred laurel crowns,
They pitch their burdens off.
604
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
m
Slim adolescence that a nymph has stripped,
Peleus on Thetis stares.
Her limbs are delicate as an eyelid,
Love has blinded him with tears;
But Thetis' belly listens.
Down the mountain walls
From where Pan's cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.
LAPIS LAZULI
I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out,
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.
All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
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And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
On their own feet they came, or on shipboard,
Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea- wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again.
And those that build them again are gay.
Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-rnan,
Carries a musical instrument.
Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
606
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
THE MUNICIPAL GALLERY
REVISITED
AROUND me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffiths staring in hysterical pride;
Kevin O'Higgins* countenance that wears
A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed.
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. This is not/ I say,
'The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay/
Before a woman's portrait suddenly I stand,
Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.
I met her all but fifty years ago
For twenty minutes in some studio.
Heart-smitten with emotion I sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images:
Augusta Gregory's son; her sister's son,
Hugh Lane, 'onlie begetter* of all these;
Hazel Lavery living and dying, that tale
As though some ballad-singer had sung it all.
Mancinf s portrait of Augusta Gregory,
"Greatest since Rembrandt,' according to John Synge;
A great ebullient portrait certainly;
But where is the brush that could show anything
Of all that pride and that humility?
And I am in despair that time may bring
Approved patterns of women or of men
But not that selfsame excellence again.
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My mediaeval knees lack health until they bend,
But in that woman, in that household where
Honour had lived so long, all lacking found.
Childless I thought, 'My children may find here
Deep-rooted things/ but never foresaw its end,
And now that end has come I have not wept;
No fox can foul the lair the badger swept.
(An image out of Spenser and the common tongue.)
John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought
All that we did, all that we said or sang
Must come from contact with the soil, from that
Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.
We three alone in modern times had brought
Everything down to that sole test again,
Dream of the noble and the beggar-man.
And here's John Synge himself, that rooted man,
'Forgetting human words/ a grave deep face.
You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
A BRONZE HEAD
HERE at right of the entrance this bronze head,
Human, superhuman, a bird's round eye,
Everything else withered and mummy-dead.
What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky
(Something may linger there though all else die;)
And finds there nothing to make its terror less
Hysterica passio of its own emptiness?
No dark tomb-haunter once; her form all full
As though with magnanimity of
60S
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Yet a most gentle woman; who can tell
Which of her forms has shown her substance right?
Or maybe substance can be composite,
Profound McTaggart thought so, and in a breath
A mouthful held the extreme of life and death.
But even at the starting-post, all sleek and new,
I saw the wildness in her and I thought
A vision of terror that it must live through
Had shattered her soul. Propinquity had brought
Imagination to that pitch where it casts out
All that is not itself: I had grown wild
And wandered murmuring everywhere, 'My child, my
child!'
Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall;
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave,
And wondered what was left for massacre to save.
THE CIRCUS ANIMALS'
DESERTION
I SOUGHT a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
n
What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
The Countess Cathleen was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
in
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
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Rudyard Kipling
RECESSIONAL
GOD of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine-
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forgetlest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law-
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
DANNY DEEVER
"What are the bugles blowin' for?' said Files-on-Parade.
*To turn you out, to turn you out,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What makes you look so white, so white?' said Files-
on-Parade.
I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch,' the Colour-Sergeant
said.
For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the
Dead March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow squarethey're hangin' him
to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes
away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
'What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?' said Files-
on-Parade.
It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold/ the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What makes that front-rank man fall down?' said Files-
on-Parade.
*A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun,* the Colour-Sergeant said,
They are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of
'im round,
They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the
ground;
An' 'ell swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin'
hound-
O they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'!
* 'Is cot was right-'and cot to mine/ said Files-on-Parade.
"E's sleepin' out an' far to-night/ the Colour-Sergeant
said.
I've drunk 'is beer a score o' times/ said Files-on-
Parade.
* 'E's drinkin* bitter beer alone/ the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Danny Deever, you must mark 'im
to 'is place,
For 'e shot a comrade sleepin' you must look 'im in
the face;
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RUDYARD KIPLING
Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace,
While they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin',
'What's that so black agin the sun?' said Files-on-Parade.
It's Danny fightin' 'ard for life/ the Color-Sergeant said.
What's that that whimpers over'ead?' said Files-on-
Parade.
It's Danny's soul that's passin' now/ the Color-Sergeant
said.
For they're done with Danny Deever, you can 'ear the
quickstep play,
The Regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away;
Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want
their beer to-day,
After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
GUNGA DIN
You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I know
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was 'Din! Din! Din!
'You Hnipin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
"Hi! Slippy Utherao!
'Water, get it! Panee laol 1
'You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din/
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
1 Bring water swiftly.
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A Little Treasury of Modem British Poetry
An* rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment *e could find.
When the sweatin* troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows
crawl,
We shouted 'Harry By!' 2
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was 'Din! Din! Din!
'You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
'You put some juldee 3 in it
'Or I'll marrow 4 you this minute
If you don't 11 up my helmet, Gunga Din!'
*E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E 'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick 5 on 'is back,
*E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made 'Retire/
An* for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!'
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
'Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!'
I shan't f orgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should V been.
1 was chokin' mad with thirst,
2 O Brother. 3 Be quick. 4 Hit you 5 Water-skin.
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RXJDYAKD KIPLING
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin, gruntin Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An^ he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water green:
It was crawlin* and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was 'Din! Din! Din!
' 'Ere's a^ begger with a bullet through 'is spleen;
* 'E's chawin' up the ground,
*An' Vs kickin' all around:
'For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!'
'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
'I 'ope you liked your drink,' sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' Til get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
MANDALAY
BY the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,
There's a Burma girl a'settin', and I know she thinks o'
me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells
they say:
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
'Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to
Mandalay!'
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you "ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon
to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!
'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat jes' the same as Thee-
baw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-srnokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An* a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
Bloomin' idol made o' mud-
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd-
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er
where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay . . .
When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was
droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing 'Kulla-lo-lol*
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin my
cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
Elephints a'pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf
afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay . . .
But that's all shove be'ind me long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to
Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier
tells:
If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never *eed
naught else.'
616
RUDYARD KIPLING
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an* the tinkly-
temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay . . .
I am sick o' was tin* leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An* the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my
bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the
Strand,
An' they talks a lot o* lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like
the worst
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man
can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I
would be-
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went
to Mandalay!
O the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!
SESTINA OF THE TRAMP-ROYAL
SPEAKIN' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all
The *appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
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But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die.
What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all
The different ways that different things are done,
An' men an' women lovin' in this world;
Takin* our chances as they come along,
An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good?
In cash or credit no, it aren't no good;
You 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die,
Unless you lived your life but one day long,
Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all,
But drew your tucker some'ow from the world,
An' never bothered what you might ha' done.
But, Gawd, what things are they I 'aven't done!
I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good,
In various situations round the world
For 'im that doth not work must surely die;
But that's no reason man should labour all
'Is life on one same shift life's none so long.
Therefore, from job to job I've moved along.
Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done,
For something in my 'ead upset it all,
Till I 'ad dropped whatever 't was for good,
An' out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die,
An' met my mate the wind that tramps the world!
It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're readin' done,
An' turn another likely not so good;
But what you're after is to turn 'em all.
Gawd bless this world! Whatever she 'ath done
Excep' when awful long I've found it good.
So write, before I die, * 'E liked it all!'
618
RUDYAHD KIPLING
THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE
Now this is the Law of the Jungleas old and as true as
the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the
Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law
runneth forward and back
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the
strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but
never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not
the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy
whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a hunter go forth and get food
of thine own.
Keep peace with the Lords of the Jungle the Tiger, the
Panther, the Bear;
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar
in his lair.
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither
will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken it may be fail-
words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight
him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be
diminished by war.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has
made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Coun
cil may come.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has
digged it too plain,
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The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall
change it again.
If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the
woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crops, and the
brothers go empty away.
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your
cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never
Ml Man!
If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in
thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the
head and the hide.
The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat
where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or
he dies.
The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may
do what he will,
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat
of that Kill.
Cub-Bight is the right of the Yearling. From all of his
Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may
refuse him the same.
Lair-Bight is the right of the Mother. From all of her
year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter; and none may
deny her the same.
Cave-Bight is the right of the Fatherto hunt by him
self for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the
Council alone.
620
RUDYARD KIPLING
Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe
and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of the Head
Wolf is Law.
Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and
mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch
and the hump is Obey!
WHEN EARTH'S LAST PICTURE
IS PAINTED
WHEN Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are
twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest
critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it lie down for
an geon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to
work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit
in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes
of comets' hair,
They shall find real saints to draw from Magdalene,
Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be
tired at all!
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master
shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work
for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his
separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things
as They are!
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W. H. Davies
622
A GREAT TIME
SWEET Chance, that led my steps abroad,
Beyond the town, where wild flowers grow-
A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord!
How rich and great the times are now!
Know, all ye sheep
And cows that keep
On staring that I stand so long
In grass that's wet from heavy rain
A rainbow and a cuckoo's song
May never come together again;
May never come
This side the tomb.
LEISURE
WHAT is this life, if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare,
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
W. H. DAVIES
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
THE WHITE MONSTER
LAST night I saw the monster near; the big
White monster that was like a lazy slug,
That hovered in the air, not far away,
As quiet as the black hawk seen by day.
I saw it turn its body round about,
And look my way; I saw its big, fat snout
Turn straight towards my face, till I was one
In coldness with that statue made of stone,
The one-armed sailor seen upon my right
With no more power than he to offer fight;
The great white monster slug that, even then,
Killed women, children, and defenceless men.
But soon its venom was discharged, and it,
Knowing it had no more the power to spit
Death on the most defenceless English folk,
Let out a large, thick cloud of its own smoke;
And when the smoke had cleared away from there,
I saw no sign of any monster near;
And nothing but the stars to give alarm-
That never did the earth a moment's harm.
Oh, it was strange to see a thing like jelly,
An ugly, boneless thing all back and belly,
Among the peaceful stars that should have been
A mile deep in the sea, and never seen:
A big, fat, lazy slug that, even then,
Killed women, children, and defenceless men.
623
Ralph Hodgson
THE SONG OF HONOUR
I CLIMBED a hill as light fell short,
And rooks came home in scramble sort,
And filled the trees and flapped and fought
And sang themselves to sleep;
An owl from nowhere with no sound
Swung by and soon was nowhere found,
I heard him calling half-way round,
Holloing loud and deep;
A pair of stars, faint pins of light,
Then many a star, sailed into sight,
And all the stars, the flower of night,
Were round me at a leap;
To tell how still the valleys lay
I heard a watchdog miles away,
And bells of distant sheep.
I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,
As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one,
Though none so hard as I.
It seemed, so still the valleys were,
As if the whole world knelt at prayer.
Save me and me alone;
So pure and wide that silence was
I feared to bend a blade of grass,
And there I stood like stone.
There, sharp and sudden, there I heard
Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird
Woke singing in the trees?
The nightingale and babble-ivren
624
RALPH HODGSON
Were in the English greenwood then,
And you heard one of these?
The babble- wren and nightingale
Sang in the Abyssinian vale
That season of the year!
Yet, true enough, I heard them plain,
I heard them both again, again,
As sharp and sweet and clear
As if the Abyssinian tree
Had thrust a bough across the sea,
Had thrust a bough across to me
With music for my ear!
I heard them both, and oh! I heard
The song of every singing bird
That sings beneath the sky,
And with the song of lark and wren
The song of mountains, moths and men
And seas and rainbows vie!
I heard the universal choir,
The Sons of Light exalt their Sire
With universal song,
Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,
Her million times ten million throats
Exalt Him loud and long,
And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace
From every part and every place
Within the shining of His face,
The universal throng.
I heard the hymn of being sound
From every well of honour found
In human sense and soul:
The song of poets when they write
The testament of Beauty sprite
Upon a flying scroll,
The song of painters when they take
A burning brush for Beauty's sake
And limn her features whole
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The song of men divinely wise
Who look and see in starry skies
Not stars so much as robins' eyes,
And when these pale away
Hear flocks of shiny pleiades
Among the plums and apple trees
Sing in the summer day
The song of all both high and low
To some blest vision true.
The song of beggars when they throw
The crust of pity all men owe
To hungry sparrows in the snow,
Old beggars hungry too
The song of kings of kingdoms when
They rise above their fortune Men,
And crown themselves anew
The song of courage, heart and will
And gladness in a fight,
Of men who face a hopeless hill
With sparkling and delight,
The bells and bells of song that ring
Round banners of a cause or king
From armies bleeding white
The song of sailors every one
When monstrous tide and tempest run
At ships like bulls at red,
When stately ships are twirled and spun
Like whipping tops and help there's none
And mighty ships ten thousand ton
Go down like lumps of lead
And song of fighters stern as they
At odds with fortune night and day,
Crammed up in cities grim and grey
As thick as bees in hives,
Hosannas of a lowly throng
Who sing unconscious of their song,
Whose lips are in their lives
626
RALPH HODGSON
And song of some at holy war
With spells and ghouls more dread by far
Than deadly seas and cities are
Or hordes of quarrelling kings
The song of fighters great and small,
The song of pretty fighters all
And high heroic things
The song of loverswho knows how
Twitched up from place and time
Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow,
A curve or hue of cheek or brow,
Borne up and off from here and now
Into the void sublime I
And crying loves and passions still
In every key from soft to shrill
And numbers never done,
Dog-loyalties to faith and friend,
And loves like Ruth's of old no end.
And intermission none
And burst on burst for beauty and
For numbers not behind,
From men whose love of motherland
Is like a dog's for one dear hand,
Sole, selfless, boundless, blind
And song of some with hearts beside
For men and sorrows far and wide,
Who watch the world with pity and pride
And warm to all mankind
And endless joyous music rise
From children at their play,
And endless soaring lullabies
From happy, happy mothers' eyes,
And answering crows and baby-cries,
How many who shall say!
And many a song as wondrous well
With pangs and sweets intolerable
From lonelv hearths too grey to tell,
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God knows how utter grey!
And song from many a house of care
When pain has forced a footing there,
And there's a Darkness on the stair
Will not be turned away
And song that song whose singers come
With old kind tales of pity from
The Great Compassion's lips,
That make the bells of Heaven to peal
Round pillows frosty with the feel
Of Death's cold finger tips
The song of men all sorts and kinds,
As many tempers, moods and minds
As leaves are on a tree,
As many faiths and castes and creeds,
As many human bloods and breeds
As in the world may be;
The song of each and all who gaze
On Beauty in her naked blaze,
Or see her dimly in a haze,
Or get her light in fitful rays
And tiniest needles even,
The song of all not wholly dark,
Not wholly sunk in stupor stark
Too deep for groping Heaven
And alleluias sweet and clear
And wild with beauty men mishear,
From choirs of song as near and dear
To Paradise as they,
The everlasting pipe and flute
Of wind and sea and bird and brute,
And lips deaf men imagine mute
In wood and stone and clay,
The music of a lion strong
That shakes a hill a whole night long,
A hill as loud as he,
The twitter of a mouse among:
628 6
RALPH HODGSON
Melodious greenery,
The ruby's and the rainbow's song,
The nightingale's all three,
The song of life that wells and flows
From every leopard, lark and rose
And everything that gleams or goes
Lack-lustre in the sea.
I heard it all, each, every note
Of every lung and tongue and throat,
Ay, every rhythm and rhyme
Of everything that lives and loves
And upward, ever upward moves
From lowly to sublime!
Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light,
I heard them lift their lyric might
With each and every chanting sprite
That lit the sky that wondrous night
As far as eye could climb!
I heard it all, I heard the whole
Harmonious hymn of being roll
Up through the chapel of my soul
And at the altar die,
And in the awful quiet then
Myself I heard, Amen, Amen,
Amen I heard me cry!
I heard it all and then although
I caught my flying senses, Oh,
A dizzy man was I!
I stood and stared; the sky was lit,
The sky was stars all over it,
I stood, I knew not why,
Without a wish, without a will,
I stood upon that silent hill
And stared into the sky until
My eyes were blind with stars, and still
I stared into the sky.
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
EVE
EVE, with her basket, was
Deep in the bells and
grass,
Wading in bells and grass
Up to her knees,
Picking a dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Down in the bells and
grass
Under the trees.
Mute as a mouse in a
Corner the cobra lay,
Curled round a bough of
The cinnamon tall. . . .
Now to get even and
Humble proud heaven &
Now was the moment or
Never at all.
'Eva!' Each syllable
Light as a flower fell,
'Eva!' he whispered the
Wondering maid,
Soft as a bubble sung
Out of a linnet's lung,
Soft and most silverly
TEva!' he said.
Picture that orchard sprite,
Eve, with her body white,
Supple and smooth to her
Slim finger tips,
Wondering, listening,
Listening, wondering,
Eve with a berry
Half-way to her lips.
Oh, had our simple Eve
630
Seen through the make-
believe!
Had she but known the
Pretender he was!
Out of the boughs he
came,
Whispering still her name,
Tumbling in twenty rings
Into the grass.
Here was the strangest
pan-
In the world anywhere,
Eve in the bells and grass
Kneeling, and he
Telling his story low. . . ,
Singing birds saw them go
Down the dark path to
The Blasphemous Tree.
Oh, what a clatter when
Titmouse and Jenny Wren
Saw him succesful and
Taking his leave!
How the birds rated him!
How they all hated him!
How they all pitied
Poor motherless Eve!
Picture her crying,
Outside in the lane,
Eve, with no dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Haunting the gate of the
Orchard in vain. . . .
Picture that lewd delight
Under the hill to-night
'Eva!' the toast goes round,
'Eva!' again.
Walter De la Mare
AN EPITAPH
HERE lies a most beautiful lady:
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?
THE LINNET
UPON this leafy bush
With thorns and roses in it.
Flutters a thing of light,
A twittering linnet,
And all the throbbing world
Of dew and sun and air
By this small parcel of lif e
Is made more fair:
As if each bramble spray
And mounded gold-wreathed furze,
Harebell and little thyme,
Were only hers;
As if this beauty and grace
Did to one bird belong,
And, at a flutter of wing,
Might vanish in song.
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
THE LISTENERS
*Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head;
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:
'Tell them I came, and no one answered
That I kept my word/ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
632
WALTER DE LA MAKE
THE MIRACLE
WHO beckons the green ivy up
Its solitary tower of stone?
What spirit lures the bindweed's cup
Unfaltering on?
Calls even the starry lichen to climb
By agelong inches endless Time?
Who bids the hollyhock uplift
Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high;
Fling wide her petalssilent, swift,
Lovely to the sky?
Since as she kindled, so she will fade,
Flower above flower in squalour laid.
Ever the heavy billow rears
All its sea-length in green, hushed wall;
But totters as the shore it nears,
Foams to its fall;
Where was its mark? on what vain quest
Rose that great water from its rest?
So creeps ambition on; so climb
Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high,
Forgets his birth, small space, brief time,
That he shall die;
Dreams blindly in his stagnant air;
Consumes his strength; strips himself bare;
Rejects delight, ease, pleasure, hope,
Seeking in vain, but seeking yet,
Past earthly promise, earthly scope,
On one aim set:
As if, like Chaucer's child, he thought
All but 'O Alma!' nought.
633
Harold Monro
LIVING
SLOW bleak awakening from the morning dream
Brings me in contact with the sudden day.
I am alive this I.
I let my fingers move along my body.
Realisation warns them, and my nerves
Prepare their rapid messages and signals.
While Memory begins recording, coding.
Repeating; all the time Imagination
Mutters: You'll only die.
Here's a new day. O Pendulum move slowly!
My usual clothes are waiting on their peg.
I am alive this I.
And in a moment Habit, like a crane,
Will bow its neck and dip its pulleyed cable,
Gathering me, my body, and our garment,
And swing me forth, oblivious of my question,
Into the daylight why?
I think of all the others who awaken,
And wonder if they go to meet the morning
More valiantly than I;
Nor asking of this Day they will be living:
What have I done that I should be alive?
O, can I not forget that I am living?
How shall I reconcile the two conditions:
Living, and yet to die?
Between the curtains the autumnal sunlight
With lean and yellow finger points me out;
The clock moans: Why? Why? Why?
But suddenly, as if without a reason,
Heart, Brain and Body, and Imagination
634
HABOLD MONRO
All gather in tumultuous joy together,
Running like children down the path of morning
To fields where they can play without a quarrel:
A country I'd forgotten, but remember,
And welcome with a cry.
O cool glad pasture; living tree, tall corn,
Great cliff, or languid sloping sand, cold sea,
Waves; rivers curving: you, eternal flowers,
Give me content, while I can think of you:
Give me your living breath!
Back to your rampart, Death.
BITTER SANCTUARY
SHE lives in the porter's room; the plush is nicotined.
Clients have left their photos there to perish.
She watches through green shutters those who press
To reach unconsciousness.
She licks her varnished thin magenta lips,
She picks her foretooth with a finger nail,
She pokes her head out to greet new clients, or
To leave them (to what torture) waiting at the door.
n
Heat has locked the heavy earth,
Given strength to every sound,
He, where his life still holds him to the ground,
In anaesthesia, groaning for re-birth,
Leans at the door.
From out the house there comes the dullest flutter;
A lackey; and thin giggling from behind that shutter.
m
His lost eyes lean to find and read the number.
Follows his knuckled rap, and hesitating curse.
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
He cannot wake himself; he may not slumber;
While on the long white wall across the road
Drives the thin outline of a dwindling hearse.
IV
Now the door opens wide.
He: Is there room inside?'
She: 'Are you past the bounds of pain?'
He: 'May my body lie in vain
Among the dreams I cannot keep!'
She: "Let him drink the cup of sleep.'
Thin arms and ghostly hands; faint sky-blue eyes;
Long drooping lashes, lids like full-blown moons,
Clinging to any brink of floating skies :
What hope is there? What fear? Unless to wake and
see
Lingering flesh, or cold eternity.
O yet some face, half living, brings
Far gaze to him and croons:
She: 'You 're white. You are alone.
Can you not approach my sphere?'
He: *I 'm changing into stone/
She: 'Would I were! Would I were!'
Then the white attendants fill the cup.
VI
In the morning through the world,
Watch the flunkeys bring the coffee;
Watch the shepherds on the downs,
Lords and ladies at their toilet,
Farmers, merchants, frothing towns.
But look how he, unfortunate, now fumbles
Through unknown chambers, unheedful stumbles.
Can he evade the overshadowing night?
Are there not somewhere chinks of braided light?
636
HAROLD MONRO
VII
How do they leave who once are in those rooms?
Some may be found, they say, deeply asleep
In ruined tombs.
Some in white beds, with faces round them. Some
Wander the world, and never find a home.
James Stephens
THE GOAT PATHS
THE crooked paths go every way
Upon the hill they wind about
Through the heather in and out
Of the quiet sunniness.
And there the goats, day after day,
Stray in sunny quietness,
Cropping here and cropping there,
As they pause and turn and pass,
Now a bit of heather spray,
Now a mouthful of the grass.
In the deeper sunniness,
In the place where nothing stirs,
Quietly in quietness,
In the quiet of the furze,
For a time they come and lie
Staring on the roving sky.
If you approach they run away,
They leap and stare, away they bound,
With a sudden angry sound.
To the sunny quietude;
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Crouching down where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze,
Crouching down again to brood
In the sunny solitude.
If I were as wise as they,
I would stray apart and brood,
I would beat a hidden way
Through the quiet heather spray
To a sunny solitude;
And should you come I'd run away,
I would make an angry sound,
I would stare and turn and bound
To the deeper quietude,
To the place where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze.
In that airy quietness
I would think as long as they;
Through the quiet sunniness
I would stray away to brood
By a hidden, beaten way
In the sunny solitude,
I would think until I found
Something I can never find,
Something lying on the ground,
In the bottom of my mind.
638
James Joyce
THE BALLAD OF PERSSE O'REILLY
HAVE you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?
He was one time our King of the Castle
How he's kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he'll be sent by order of his
Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
(Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!
Jail him and joy.
He was f af af ather of all schemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the
populace,
Mare's milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion's reform,
(Chorus) And religious reform,
Hideous in form.
Arrah, why, says you, couldn't he manage it?
I'll go bail, my fine dairyman darling,
Like the bumping bull of the Cassidys
All your butter is in your horns.
(Chorus) His butter is in his horns.
Butter his horns!
(Repeat) Hurrah there, Hosty, frosty Hosty, change that
shirt on ye,
Rhyme the raim, the king of all ranns!
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
Balbaccio, balbuccio!
We had chaw chaw chops, chairs, chewing gum, the
chicken-pox and china chambers
Universally provided by this soffsoaping salesman.
Small wonder He'll Cheat E'erawan our local lads nick
named him
When Chimpden first took the floor
(Chorus) With his bucketshop store
Down Bargainweg, Lower.
So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous
But soon well bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery
And 'tis short till sheriff Clancyll be winding up his
unlimited company
With the bailiff's bom at the door,
(Chorus) Bimbam at the door.
Then he'll bum no more.
Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island
The hooker of that hammerfast viking
And Gall's curse on the day when Eblana bay
Saw his black and tan man-o'-war.
(Chorus) Saw his man-o'-war.
On the harbour bar.
Where from? roars Poolbeg. Cookingha'pence, he bawls
Donnezmoi scampitle, wick an wipin'fampiny
Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface
Thok's min gammelhole Norveegickers moniker
Og as ay are at gammelhore Norveegickers cod.
(Chorus) A Norwegian camel old cod.
He is, begod.
Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil ye! up with the rann, the
rhyming rann!
It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the
monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
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JAMES JOYCE
(Chorus) Woohoo, what'll she doo!
The general lost her maidenloo!
He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded
philosopher,
For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.
Begob, he's the crux of the catalogue
Of our antediluvial zoo,
(Chorus) Messrs. Billing and Coo.
Noah's larks, good as noo.
He was joulting by Wellinton's monument
Our rotorious Mppopopotamuns
When some bugger let down the backtrap of the
omnibus
And he caught his death of fusiliers,
(Chorus) With his rent in his rears.
Give him six years.
*Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won't there be earwigs on the green?
(Chorus) Big earwigs on the green,
The largest ever you seen.
Suffoclose! Shikespower! Seudodanto! Anonymoses!
Then we'll have a free trade Gaels' band and mass
meeting
For to sod the brave son of Scandiknavery.
And we'll bury him down in Oxmanstown
Along with the devil and Danes,
(Chorus) With the deaf and dumb Danes,
And all their remains.
And not all the king's men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus
For there's no true spell in Connacht or hell
(bis) That's able to raise a Gain.
From Finnegans Wake
641
D. H. Lawrence
BAVARIAN GENTIANS
NOT every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the day-time torch-like with the smoking
blueness of Pluto's gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness
spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep
of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's
dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale
lamps give off light,
lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this
flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is
darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the
frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness was awake upon
the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of
dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding
darkness on the lost bride and her groom.
642 5
D. H. LAWRENCE
PIANO
SOFTLY, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the
tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who
smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our
guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child
for the past
WHEN I WENT TO THE CIRCUS-
WHEN I went to the circus that had pitched on the waste
lot
it was full of uneasy people
frightened of the bare earth and the temporary canvas
and the smell of horses and other beasts
instead of merely the smell of man.
Monkeys rode rather grey and wizened
on curly plump piebald ponies
and the children uttered a little cry
and dogs jumped through hoops and turned somersaults
and then the geese scuttled in in a little flock
and round the ring they went to the sound of the whip
then doubled, and back, with a funny up-flutter of
wings
and the children suddenly shouted out.
Then came the hush again, like a hush of fear.
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ight-rope lady, pink and
with a few gold spangles
The tight-rope lady, pink and blonde and nude-looking,
gold spangle
footed cautiously out on the rope, turned prettily, spun
round
bowed, and lifted her foot in her hand, smiled, swung
her parasol
to another balance, tripped round, poised, and slowly
sank
her handsome thighs down, down, till she slept her
splendid body on the rope.
When she rose, tilting her parasol, and smiled at the
cautious people
they cheered, but nervously.
The trapeze man, slim and beautiful and like a fish in
the air
swung great curves through the upper space, and came
down like a star
And the people applauded, with hollow, frightened
applause.
The elephants, huge and grey, loomed their curved bulk
through the dusk
and sat up, taking strange postures, showing the pink
soles of their feet
and curling their precious live trunks like ammonites
and moving always with soft slow precision
as when a great ship moves to anchor.
The people watched and wondered, and seemed to re
sent the mystery that lies in beasts.
Horse, gay horses, swirling round and plaiting
in a long line, their heads laid over each other's necks;
they were happy, they enjoyed it;
all the creatures seemed to enjoy the game
in the circus, with their circus people.
But the audience, compelled to wonder
compelled to admire the bright rhythms of moving
bodies
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compelled to see the delicate skill of flickering human
bodies
flesh flamey and a little heroic, even in a tumbling
clown,
they were not really happy.
There was no gushing response, as there is at the film.
When modern people see the carnal body dauntless and
flickering gay
playing among the elements neatly, beyond competition
and displaying no personality,
modern people are depressed.
Modern people feel themselves at a disadvantage.
They know they have no bodies that could play among
the elements.
They have only their personalities, that are best seen flat,
on the film,
flat personalities in two dimensions, imponderable and
touchless.
And they grudge the circus people the swooping gay
weight of limbs
that flower in mere movement,
and they grudge them the immediate, physical under
standing they have with their circus beasts,
and they grudge them their circus-life altogether.
Yet the strange, almost frightened shout of delight that
comes now and then from the children
shows that the children vaguely know how cheated they
are of their birthright
in the bright wild circus flesh.
DON'TS
FIGHT your little fight, my boy,
fight and be a man.
Don't be a good little, good little boy
being as good as you can
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and agreeing with all the mealy-mouthed, mealy-
mouthed
truths that the sly trot out
to protect themselves and their greedy-mouthed, greedy-
mouthed
cowardice, every old lout.
Don't live up to the dear little girl who costs
you your manhood, and makes you pay.
Nor the dear old mater who so proudly boasts
that you'll make your way.
Don't earn golden opinions, opinions golden,
or at least worth Treasury notes,
from all sorts of men; don't be beholden
to the herd inside the pen.
Don't long to have dear little, dear little boys
whom you'll have to educate
to earn their living; nor yet girls, sweet joys
who will find it so hard to mate.
Nor a dear little home, with its cost, its cost
that you have to pay,
earning your living while your life is lost
and dull death comes in a day.
Don't be sucked in by the su-superior,
don't swallow the culture bait,
don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier,
do learn to discriminate.
Do hold yourself together, and fight
with a hit-hit here and a hit-hit there,
and a comfortable feeling at night
that you've let in a little air.
A little fresh air in the money sty,
knocked a little hole in the holy prison,
done your own little bit, made your own little try
that the risen Christ should be risen.
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D. H. LAWRENCE
HUMMING-BIRD
I CAN imagine, in some otherworld
Primeval-dumb, far back
In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and
hummed,
Humming-birds raced down the avenues.
Before anything had a soul,
While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate,
This little bit chipped off in brilliance
And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent
stems.
I believe there were no flowers then,
In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of
creation.
I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his
long beak.
Probably he was big
As mosses, and little lizards, they say, were once big.
Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.
We look at him through the wrong end of the long tele
scope of Time,
Luckily for us.
THE ELEPHANT IS SLOW TO MATE
THE elephant, the huge old beast is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste they wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts slowly, slowly
to rouse
As they loiter along the river-beds and drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake of forest with the
herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake together, with
out a word.
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So slowly the great hot elephant hearts grow full of
desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last, hiding their
fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts so they know at
last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts for the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear; their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near till they touch
in flood.
SNAKE
A SNAKE came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark
carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was
at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the
gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied
down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a
small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack
long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
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D. H. LAWRENCE
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and
mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth brown, earth golden from the burning burn
ing bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the
gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, if you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish
him off.
But I must confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to
drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth.
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air,
so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
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And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
,*
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdraw
ing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly draw
ing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-
front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascina-
( tion.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of rny accursed human
education.
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate;
A pettiness.
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THE SHIP OF DEATH
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
n
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
m
And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?
Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder,
ever a quietus make?
IV
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!
How can we this, our own quietus, make?
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v
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.
Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.
Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
already the flood is upon us.
O build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.
VI
Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.
We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are
dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.
vn
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
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D. H. LAWRENCE
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood's black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening blackness darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any
more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere.
vm
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
It is the end, it is oblivion
IX
And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion
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Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashly grey
of a flood-dawn.
Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
x
The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.
Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.
John Masefield
ON GROWING OLD
BE with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying,
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spendrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart; a withered wire
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
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JOHN MASEFIELD
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland nor your hill-land nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies;
Only stay quiet, while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from tie beauty of embers.
Beauty, have pity, for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower,
Springtime of man all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts or loiters or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain where the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.
THE WEST WIND
IT'S a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
It's a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine,
Apple orchards blossom there, and the air's like wine.
There is cool green grass there, where men may lie at
rest,
And the thrushes are in song there, fluting from the nest.
Will ye not come home, brother? ye have been long
away,
It's April, and blossom time, and white is the May;
And bright is the sun, brother, and warm is the rain,
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Will ye not come home, brother, home to us again?
'The young corn is green, brother, where the rabbits run,
It's blue sky, and white clouds, and warm rain and sun.
It's song to a man's soul, brother, fire to a man's brain,
To hear the wild bees and see the merry spring again.
'Larks are singing in the west, brother, above the green
wheat,
So will ye not come home, brother, and rest your tired
feet?
I've a balm for bruised hearts, brother, sleep for aching
eyes,'
Says the warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries.
It's the white road westwards is the road I must tread
To the green grass, the cool grass, and rest for heart and
head,
To the violets and the warm hearts and the thrushes'
song,
In the fine land, the west land, the land where I belong.
THERE, ON THE DARKENED
DEATHBED
THERE, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain
That flared three several times in seventy years;
It cannot lift the silly hand again,
Nor speak, nor sing, it neither sees nor hears.
And muffled mourners put it in the ground
And then go home, and in the earth it lies,
Too dark for vision and too deep for sound,
The million cells that made a good man wise.
Yet for a few short years an influence stirs,
A sense or wraith or essence of him dead,
Which makes insensate things its ministers
To those beloved, his spirit's daily bread;
Then that, too, fades; in book or deed a spark
Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark.
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JOHN MASEFIELD
HOW MANY WAYS
How many ways, how many different times
The tiger Mind has clutched at what it sought,
Only to prove supposed virtues crimes,
The imagined godhead but a form of thought.
How many restless brains have wrought and schemed,
Padding their cage, or built, or brought to law,
Made in outlasting brass the something dreamed,
Only to prove themselves the things of awe.
Yet, in the happy moment's lightning blink,
Comes scent, or track, or trace, the game goes by,
Some leopard thought is pawing at the brink,
Chaos below, and, up above, the sky.
Then the keen nostrils scent, about, about,
To prove the Thing Within a Thing Without.
AN OLD SONG RE-SUNG
I SAW a ship a-sailing, a-sailing, a-sailing,
With emeralds and rubies and sapphires in her hold;
And a bosun in a blue coat bawling at the railing,
Piping through a silver call that had a chain of gold;
The summer wind was falling and the tall ship rolled.
I saw a ship a-steering, a-steering, a-steering,
With roses in red thread worked upon her sails;
With sacks of purple amethysts, the spoils of buccaneer
ing,
Skins of musky yellow wine, and silks in bales,
Her merry men were cheering, hauling in the brails.
I saw a ship a-sinking, a-sinking, a-sinking,
With glittering sea-water splashing on her decks,
With seamen in her spirit-room singing songs and drink
ing,
Pulling claret bottles down, and knocking off the necks,
The broken glass was chinking as she sank among the
wrecks.
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LOLLINGDON DOWNS
So I have known this life,
These beads of coloured days,
This self the string.
What is this thing?
Not beauty; no; not greed,
O, not indeed;
Not all, though much;
Its colour is not such.
It has no eyes to see,
It has no ears,
It is a red hour's war
Followed by tears.
It is an hour of time,
An hour of road,
Flesh is its goad,
Yet, in the sorrowing lands,
Women and men take hands.
O earth, give us the corn,
Come rain, come sun,
We men who have been born
Have tasks undone.
Out of this earth
Comes the thing birth,
The things unguessed, unwon.
H
O wretched man, that, for a little mile
Crawls beneath heaven for his brother's blood,
Whose days the planets number with their style,.
To whom all earth is slave, all living, food;
O withering man, within whose folded shell
Lies yet the seed, the spirit's quickening corn,
That Time and Sun will change out of the cell
Into green meadows, in the world unborn;
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JOHN MASEFIELD
If Beauty be a dream, do but resolve
And fire shall come, that in the stubborn clay
Works to make perfect till the rocks dissolve,
The barriers burst and Beauty takes her way,
Beauty herself, within whose blossoming Spring
Even wretched man shall clap his hands and sing.
in
Out of the special celTs most special sense
Came the suggestion when the light was sweet;
All skill, all beauty, all magnificence
Are hints so caught, man's glimpse of the complete.
And, though the body rots, that sense survives,
Being of life's own essence it endures
(Fruit of the spirit's tillage in men's lives)
Round all this ghost that wandering flesh immures.
That is our friend, who, when the iron brain
Assails, or the earth clogs, or the sun hides,
Is the good God to whom none calls in vain,
Man's Achieved Good, which, being Life, abides,
The man-made God, that man in happy breath
Makes in despite of Time and dusty death.
IV
You are the link which binds us each to each.
Passion, or too much thought, alone can end
Beauty, the ghost, the spirit's common speech,
Which man's red longing left us for our friend.
Even in the blinding war I have known this,
That flesh is but the carrier of a ghost
Who, through his longing, touches that which is
Even as the sailor knows the foreign coast.
So, by the bedside of the dying black
I felt our uncouth souls subtly made one,
Forgiven, the meanness of each other's lack,
Forgiven, the petty tale of ill things done.
We were but Man, who for a tale of days
Seeks the one city by a million ways.
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v
I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.
If I could sail that nothing, I should cross
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing,
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing,
And rage into a sun with wandering planets
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed,
See his last light upon his last moon's granites
Die to a dark that would be night indeed.
Night where my soul might sail a million years
In nothing, not even Death, not even tears.
VI
How did the nothing come, how did these fires,
These million-leagues of fires, first toss their hair,
Licking the moons from heaven in their ires
Flinging them forth for them to wander there?
What was the Mind? Was it a mind which thought?
Or chance? Or law? Or conscious law? Or Power?
Or a vast balance by vast clashes wrought?
Or Time at trial with Matter for an hour?
Or is it all a body where the cells
Are living things supporting something strange
Whose mighty heart the singing planet swells
As it shoulders nothing in unending change?
Is this green earth of many-peopled pain
Part of a life, a cell within a brain?
vn
It may be so; but let the unknown be.
We, on this earth, are servants of the sun.
Out of the sun comes all the quick in me,
His golden touch is life to everyone.
His power it is that makes us spin through space,
His youth is April and his manhood bread,
Beauty is but a looking on his face,
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JOHN MASEFIELD
He clears the mind, he makes the roses red.
What he may be, who knows? But we are his,
We roll through nothing round him, year by year,
The withering leaves upon a tree which is
Each with his greed, his little power, his fear.
What we may be, who knows? But everyone
Is dust on dust a servant of the sun.
vin
The Kings go by with jewelled crowns,
Their horses gleam, their banners shake, their spears are
many.
The sack of many-peopled towns
Is all their dream:
The way they take
Leaves but a ruin in the brake
And, in the furrow that the ploughmen make,
A stampless penny; a tale, a dream.
The merchants reckon up their gold,
Their letters come, their ships arrive, their freights are
glories :
The profits of their treasures sold
They tell and sum;
Their foremen drive
The servants starved to half-alive
Whose labours do not make the earth a hive
Of stinking stories; a tale, a dream.
The priests are singing in their stalls,
Their singing lifts, their incense burns, their praying
clamours;
Yet God is as the sparrow falls;
The ivy drifts,
The votive urns
Are all left void when Fortune turns,
The god is but a marble for the kerns
To break with hammers: a tale, a dream.
O Beauty, let me know again
The green earth cold, the April rain,
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The quiet waters figuring sky,
The one star risen.
So shall I pass into the feast
Not touched by King, merchant or priest,
Know the red spirit of the beast,
Be the green grain;
Escape from prison.
IX
What is this life which uses living cells
It knows not how nor why, for no known end,
This soul of man upon whose fragile shells
Of blood and brain his very powers depend
Pour out its little blood or touch its brain
The thing is helpless, gone, no longer known,
The carrion cells are never man again,
No hand relights the little candle blown.
It comes not from Without, but from the sperm
Fed in the womb, it is a man-made thing,
That takes from man its power to live a term
Served by live cells of which it is the King.
Can it be blood and brain? It is most great,
Through blood and brain alone it wrestles Fate.
Can it be blood and brain, this transient force
Which, by an impulse, seizes flesh and grows
To man, the thing less splendid than the horse,
More bind than owls, less lovely than the rose?
O, by a power unknown it works the cells
Of blood and brain; it has the power to see
Beyond the apparent thing the something else
Which it inspires dust to bring to be.
O, blood and brain are its imperfect tools,
Easily wrecked, soon worn, slow to attain,
Only by years of toil the master rules
To lovely ends, those servants blood and brain.
And Death, a touch, a germ, has still the force
To make him ev'n as the rose, the owl, the horse.
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JOHN MASEFIELD
XI
Not only blood and brain its servants are,
There is a finer power that needs no slaves
Whose lovely service distance cannot bar
Nor the green sea with all her hell of waves,
Nor snowy mountains, nor the desert sand,
Nor heat, nor storm, it bends to no control,
It is a stretching of the spirit's hand
To touch the brother's or the sister's soul;
So that from darkness in the narrow room
I can step forth and be about her heart,
Needing no star, no lantern in the gloom,
No word from her, no pointing on the chart,
Only red knowledge of a window flung
Wide to the night, and calling without tongue.
xn
Drop me the seed, that I, even in my brain
May be its nourishing earth. No mortal knows
From what immortal granary comes the grain,
Nor how the earth conspires to make the rose;
But from the dust and from the wetted mud
Comes help, given or taken; so with me
Deep in my brain the essence of my blood
Shall give its stature until Beauty be.
It will look down, even as the burning flower
Smiles upon June, long after I am gone.
Dust-footed Time will never tell its hour,
Through dusty Time its rose will draw men on,
Through dusty Time its beauty shall make plain
Man, and, Without, a spirit scattering grain.
XIII
Ah, but Without there is no spirit scattering;
Nothing but Life, most fertile but unwise,
Passing through change in the sun's heat and cloud's
watering,
Pregnant with self, unlit by inner eyes.
There is no Sower, nor seed for any tillage;
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Nothing but the grey brain's past, and the tense will
And that poor fool of the Being's little village
Feeling for the truth in the little veins that thrill.
There is no Sowing, but digging, year by year,
In a hill's heart, now one way, now another,
Till the rock breaks and the valley is made clear
And the poor Fool stands, and knows the sun for his
brother,
And the Soul shakes wings like a bird escaped from cage
And the tribe moves on to camp in its heritage.
XIV
You are too beautiful for mortal eyes,
You the divine unapprehended soul;
The red worm in the marrow of the wise
Stirs as you pass, but never sees you whole.
Even as the watcher in the midnight tower
Knows from a change in heaven an unseen star,
So from your beauty, so from the summer flower,
So from the light, one guesses what you are.
So in the darkness does the traveller come
To some lit chink, through which he cannot see,
More than a light, nor hear, more than a hum,
Of the great hall where Kings in council be.
So, in the grave, the red and mouthless worm
Knows of the soul that held his body firm.
xv
Is it a sea on which the souls embark
Out of the body, as men put to sea?
Or do we come like candles in the dark
In the rooms in cities in eternity?
Is it a darkness that our powers can light?
Is this, our little lantern of man's love,
A help to find friends wandering in the night
In the unknown country with no star above?
Or is it sleep, unknowing, outlasting clocks
That outlast men, that, though the cockcrow ring,
Is but one peace, of the substance of the rocks,
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JOHN MASEFIELD
Is but one space in the now unquickened thing,
Is but one joy, that, though the million tire,
Is one, always the same, one life, one fire?
THE PASSING STRANGE
OUT of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.
Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plow the field and stretch the tether,
To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,
Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;
Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagle's secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;
Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helen's beauty, Caesar's will,
And slay them even as they Mil;
Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And watch a brother starve for food:
Love like a madman, shaking, blind,
Till self is burnt into a kind
Possession of another mind;
Brood upon beauty, till the grace
Of beauty with the holy face
Brings peace into the bitter place;
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Prove in the lifeless granites, scan
The stars for hope, for guide, for plan;
Live as a woman or a man;
Fasten to lover or to friend,
Until the heart break at the end
The break of death that cannot mend:
Then to lie useless, helpless, still,
Down in the earth, in dark, to fill
The roots of grass or daffodil.
Down in the earth, in dark, alone,
A mockery of the ghost in bone,
The strangeness, passing the unknown.
Time will go by, that outlasts clocks,
Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks,
Sunset be glory on the rocks:
But it, the thing, will never heed
Even the rootling from the seed
Thrusting to suck it for its need.
Since moons decay and suns decline,
How else should end this life of mine?
Water and saltness are not wine.
But in the darkest hour of night,
When even the foxes peer for sight,
The byre-cock crows; he feels the light.
So, in this water mixed with dust,
The byre-cock spirit crows from trust
That death will change because it must.
For all things change: the darkness changes.
The "wandering spirits change their ranges,
The corn is gathered to the granges.
The corn is sown again, it grows;
The stars burn out, the darkness goes;
The rhythms change, they do not close.
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JOHN MASEFIELD
They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home,
Only a beauty, only a power,
Sad in the fruit, bright in the flower,
Endlessly erring for its hour,
But gathering as we stray, a sense
Of Life, so lovely and intense,
It lingers when we wander hence,
That those who follow feel behind
Their backs, when all before is blind,
Our joy, a rampart to the mind.
Rupert Brooke
THE SOLDIER
IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England
given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
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THE DEAD
THESE hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
THE GREAT LOVER
I HAVE been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
The inenarrable godhead of delight?
Love is a flame; we have beaconed the world's night.
A city: and we have built it, these and I.
An emperor: we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
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And the high cause of Love's magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that men may know,
To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming. . . .
These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . .
Dear names,
And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing:
Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;
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All these have been my loves. And these shall pass.
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
They'll play deserter, turn with traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust
And sacramented covenant to the dust.
Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers. . . .
But the best I've known.
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
Nothing remains.
O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed
Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved/
HEAVEN
FISH (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud! Death eddies near
Not here the appointed End, not here!
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But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.
Edwin Muir
THE ROAD
THERE is a road that turning always
Cuts off the country of Again.
Archers stand there on every side
And as it runs Time's deer is slain,
And lies where it has lain.
That busy clock shows never an hour.
All flies and all in flight must tarry.
The hunter shoots the empty air
Far on before the quarry,
Which falls though nothing's there to parry.
The lion couching in the centre
With mountain head and sunset brow
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Rolls down the everlasting slope
Bones picked an age ago,
And the bones rise up and go.
There the beginning finds the end
Before beginning ever can be,
And the great runner never leaves
The starting and the finishing tree,
The budding and the fading tree.
There the ship sailing safe in harbour
Long since in many a sea was drowned.
The treasure burning in her hold
So near will never be found,
Sunk past all sound.
There a man on a summer evening
Reclines at ease upon his tomb
And is his mortal effigy.
And there within the womb,
The cell of doom,
The ancestral deed is thought and done,
And in a million Edens fall
A million Adams drowned in darkness,
For small is great and great is small,
And a blind seed all.
TOO MUCH
No, no I did not bargain for so much
When I set out upon the famous way
My fathers praised so fondly such and such
The road, the errand, the prize, the part to play.
For everything is different. Hour and place
Are huddled awry, at random teased and tossed,
Too much piled on too much, no track or trace,
And north and south the road and traveller lost.
Then suddenly again I watch the old
Worn saga write across my years and find,
Scene after scene, the tale my fathers told,
But I in the middle blind, as Homer blind,
EDWIN Mum
Dark on the highway, groping in the light,
Threading my dazzling way within my night.
THE COMBAT
IT was not meant for human eyes,
That combat on the shabby patch
Of clods and trampled tuif that lies
Somewhere beneath the sodden skies
For eye of toad or adder to catch.
And having seen it I accuse
The crested animal in his pride,
Arrayed in all the royal hues
Which hide the claws he well can use
To tear the heart out of the side.
Body of leopard, eagle's head
And whetted beak, and lion's mane,
And frost-grey hedge of feathers spread
Behindhe seemed of all things bred.
I shall not see his like again.
As for his enemy, there came in
A soft round beast as brown as clay;
All rent and patched his wretched skin;
A battered bag he might have been,
Some old used thing to throw away.
Yet he awaited face to face
The furious beast and the swift attack.
Soon over and done. That was no place
Or time for chivalry or for grace.
The fury had him on his back.
And two small paws like hands flew out
To right and left as the trees stood by.
One would have said beyond a doubt
This was the very end of the bout,
But that the creature would not die.
For ere the death-stroke he was gone,
Writhed, whirled, huddled into his den,
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Safe somehow there. The fight was done,
And he had lost who had all but won.
But oh his deadly fury then.
A while the place lay blank, forlorn,
Drowsing as in relief from pain.
The cricket chirped, the grating thorn
Stirred, and a little sound was born.
The champions took their posts again.
And all began. The stealthy paw
Slashed out and in. Could nothing save
These rags and tatters from the claw?
Nothing. And yet I never saw
A beast so helpless and so brave.
And now, while the trees stand watching, still
The unequal battle rages there.
The killing beast that cannot kill
Swells and swells in his fury till
You'd almost think it was despair.
THE INTERROGATION
WE could have crossed the road but hesitated.
And then came the patrol;
The leader conscientious and intent,
The men surly, indifferent.
While we stood by and waited
The interrogation began. He says the whole
Must come out now, who, what we are,
Where we have come from, with what purpose, whose
Country or camp we plot for or betray.
Question on question.
We have stood and answered through the standing day
And watched across the road beyond the hedge
The careless lovers in pairs go by,
Hand linked in hand, wandering another star,
So near we could shout to them. We cannot choose
Answer or action here,
Though still the careless lovers saunter by
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And the thoughtless field is near.
We are on the very edge,
Endurance almost done,
And still the interrogation is going on.
THE CASTLE
ALL through that summer at ease we lay,
And daily from the turret wall
We watched the mowers in the hay
And the enemy half a mile away.
They seemed no threat to us at all.
For what, we thought, had we to fear
With our arms and provender, load on load,
Our towering battlements, tier on tier,
And friendly allies drawing near
On every leafy summer road.
Our gates were strong, our walls were thick,
So smooth and high, no man could win
A foothold there, no clever trick
Could take us, have us dead or quick.
Only a bird could have got in.
What could they offer us for bait?
Our captain was brave and we were true. . . .
There was a little private gate,
A little wicked wicket gate.
The wizened warder let them through.
Oh then our maze of tunnelled stone
Grew thin and treacherous as air.
The cause was lost without a groan,
The famous citadel overthrown,
And all its secret galleries bare.
How can this shameful tale be told?
I will maintain until my death
We could do nothing, being sold;
Our only enemy was gold,
And we had no arms to fight it with.
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THE GALLOWS
THERE was a weasel lived in the sun
With all his family,
Till a keeper shot him with his gun
And hung him up on a tree,
Where he swings in the wind and the rain,
In the sun and in the snow,
Without pleasure, without pain
On the dead oak tree bough.
There was a crow who was no sleeper,
But a thief and a murderer
Till a very late hour; and this keeper
Made him one of the things that were,
To hang and flap in the rain and wind,
In the sun and in the snow.
There are no more sins to be sinned
On the dead oak tree bough.
There was a magpie, too,
Had a long tongue and a long tail;
He could both talk and do-
But what did that avail?
He, too, flaps in the wind and rain
Alongside weasel and crow,
Without pleasure, without pain,
On the dead oak tree bough.
And many other beasts
And birds, skin, bone and feather,
Have been taken from their feasts
And hung up there together,
To swing and have endless leisure
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In the sun and in the snow,
Without pain, without pleasure,
On the dead oak tree bough.
TEARS
IT seems I have no tears left. They should
have fallen
Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall-
that day
When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet
combed out
But still all equals in their rage of gladness
Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon
In Booming Meadow that bends towards the sun
And once bore hops: and on that other day
When I stepped out from the double-shadowed
Tower
Into an April morning, stirring and sweet
And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence.
A mightier charm than any in the Tower
Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard,
Soldiers in line, young English countrymen,
Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums
And fifes were playing 'The British Grenadiers/
The men, the music piercing that solitude
And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,
And have forgotten since their beauty passed.
THE OWL
DOWN hill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
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Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
ADLESTROP
YES, I remember Adlestrop
The namebecause one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The stearn hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestroponly the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry;
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
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THE LOVE SONG OF
J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa /tamma stana senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-
panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
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Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
[They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!*]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin
[They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
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And I have known the arms already, known them all-
Anns that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 1 am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you alT-
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If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all/
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled
streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that
trail along the floor
And this, and so much more?
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on
a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all/
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the
beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
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bombing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Fill human voices wake us, and we drown.
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS
Simihter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut mandatum Jesu Christi; et
Upiscopum, ut Jesum Christum, existentem filium Patns; Presbyteros
mtem, ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem Apostotorum, Sine his Ecclesia
ion vocatur; de quibus suadeo vos sic habeo
S. IGNATII AD TRALLIANOS.
And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in
he church of the Laodiceans.
THE broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo's feeble steeps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.
The 'potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo's voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus's day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
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God works in a mysterious way
The Church, can sleep and feed at once.
I saw the 'potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr'd virgins last,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist,
A SONG FOR SIMEON
LORD, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my
children's children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat's path, and the fox's home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
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Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel's consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.
According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints' stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and
prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also.)
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after
me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those
after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.
ANIMULA
ISSUES from the hand of God, the simple soul*
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray;
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
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What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of "is and seems*
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.
Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the
yew trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
FRAGMENT OF AN AGON
SWEENEY. WAUCHOPE. HORSFALL. KLIPSTEIN.
KRUMPACKER. SWARTS. SNOW. DORIS. DUSTY.
SWEENEY: 111 carry you off
To a cannibal isle.
DORIS: You 11 be the cannibal!
SWEENEY: You'll be the missionary!
You 11 be my little seven stone missionary!
I'll gobble you up. I'll be the cannibal.
DORIS: You'll carry me off? To a cannibal isle?
SWEENEY: I'll be the cannibal.
686
DOKIS:
SWEENEY:
DORIS:
SWEENEY:
DORIS:
SWEENEY:
DORIS:
SWEENEY;
DORIS:
SWEENEY
T. S. ELIOT
111 be the missionary.
Ill convert you!
I'll convert you!
Into a stew,
A nice little, white little, missionary stew.
You wouldn't eat me!
Yes, I'd eat you!
In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender
little,
Juicy little, right little, missionary stew.
You see this egg
You see this egg
Well that's life on a crocodile isle.
There's no telephones
There's no gramophones
There's no motor cars
No two-seaters, no six-seaters,
No Citroen, no Rolls-Royce.
Nothing to eat but the fruit as it grows.
Nothing to see but the palmtrees one way
And the sea the other way,
Nothing to hear but the sound of the surf.
Nothing at all but three things
What things?
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all, that's all, that's all, that's all,
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I'd be bored.
You'd be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I'd be bored.
You'd be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass
tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I've been born, and once is enough.
You dont remember, but I remember,
Once is enough.
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SONG BY WAUCHOPE AND HORSFALL
SWARTS AS TAMBO. SNOW AS BONES
Under the bamboo
Bamboo bamboo
Under the bamboo tree
Two live as one
One live as two
Two live as three
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Where the breadfruit -fall
And the penguin call
And the sound is the sound of the sea
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Where the Gauguin maids
In the banyan shades
Wear palmleaf drapery
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Tell me in what part of the wood
Do you want to flirt with me?
Under the breadfruit, banyan, palmleaf
Or under the bamboo tree?
Any old tree will do for me
Any old wood is just as good
Any old isle is just my style
Any fresh egg
Any fresh egg
And the sound of the coral sea.
DORIS: I dont like eggs; I never liked eggs;
And I dont like life on your crocodile isle.
688
DORIS;
SWEENEY
DORIS:
SWEENEY
DORIS:
S WARTS:
DORIS:
SNOW:
SWEENEY
diminuendo -
T, S. ELIOT
SONG BY KLIPSTEIN AND KRUMP ACKER
SNOW AND SWARTS AS BEFORE
My little island girl
My little island girl
Tm going to stay with you
And we wont worry what to do
We wont have to catch any trains
And we wont go home when it rains
We'll gather hibiscus flowers
For it wont be minutes but hours
For it wont be hours but years
" And the morning
And the evening
And noontime
And night
Morning
Evening
Noontime
^ Night
That's not life, that's no life
Why I'd just as soon be dead.
That's what life is. Just is
What is?
What's that life is?
Life is death.
I knew a man once did a girl in
Oh Mr. Sweeney, please dont talk,
I cut the cards before you came
And I drew the coffin
You drew the coffin?
I drew the COFFIN very last card.
I dont care for such conversation
A woman runs a terrible risk.
Let Mr. Sweeney continue his story.
I assure you, Sir, we are very interested.
I knew a man once did a girl in
Any man might do a girl in
689
SWARTS :
SNOW:
DORIS:
SNOW:
SWEENEY:
SWARTS:
SWEENEY
DORIS:
DUSTY:
SWEENEY
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Any man has to, needs to, wants to
Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.
Well he kept her there in a bath
With a gallon of lysol in a bath
These fellows always get pinched in the end.
Excuse me, they dont all get pinched in the
end.
What about them bones on Epsom Heath?
I seen that in the papers
You seen it in the papers
They dont all get pinched in the end.
A woman runs a terrible risk.
Let Mr. Sweeney continue his story.
: This one didn't get pinched in the end
But that's another story too.
This went on for a couple of months
Nobody came
And nobody went
But he took in the milk and he paid the rent.
What did he do?
All that time, what did he do?
What did he do! what did he do?
That dont apply.
Talk to live men about what they do.
He used to come and see me sometimes
I'd give him a drink and cheer him up.
Cheer him up?
Cheer him up?
Well here again that dont apply
But I've gotta use words when I talk to you.
But here's what I was going to say.
He didn't know if he was alive
and the girl was dead
He didn't know if the girl was alive
and he was dead
He didn't know if they both were alive
or both were dead
If he was alive then the milkman wasn't
and the rent-collector wasn't
T. S. ELIOT
And if they were alive then he was dead.
There wasn't any joint
There wasn't any joint
For when you're alone
When you're alone like he was alone
You're either or neither
I tell you again it dont apply
Death or life or life or death
Death is life and life is death
I gotta use words when I talk to you
But if you understand or if you dont
That's nothing to me and nothing to you
We all gotta do what we gotta do
We're gona sit here and drink this booze
We're gona sit here and have a tune
We're gona stay and we're gona go
And somebody's gotta pay die rent
DORIS: I know who
SWEENEY: But that's nothing to me and nothing to you.
FULL CHORUS: WAUCHOPE, HORSFALL, KLIPSTEIN,
KRUMPACKER
When you're alone in the middle of the night and you
wake in a sweat and a hell of a fright
When you're alone in the middle of the bed and you
wake like some one hit you on the head
You've had a cream of a nightmare dream and you've
got the hoo-ha's coming to you.
Hoo hoo hoo
You dreamt you waked up at seven o'clock and it's foggy
and it's damp and it's dawn and it's dark
And you wait for a knock and the turning of a lock for
you know the hangman's waiting for you.
And perhaps you're alive Hoo
And perhaps you're dead KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Hoo ha ha KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Hoo ha ha KNOCK
Hoo KNOCK
Hoo KNOCK
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THE WIND SPRANG UP AT
FOUR O'CLOCK
THE wind sprang up at four o'clock
The wind sprang up and broke the bells
Swinging between life and death
Here, in death's dream kingdom
The waking echo of confusing strife
Is it a dream or something else
When the surface of the blackened river
Is a face that sweats with tears?
I saw across the blackened river
The camp fire shake with alien spears.
Here, across death's other river
The Tartar horsemen shake their spears.
CHORUS FROM THE ROCK-~III
THE Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
O miserable cities of designing men,
wretched generation of enlightened men.
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
1 have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver,
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you hps, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names ii? print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,
Much is your building, but not the House of GOD.
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated
roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?
692
T. S. ELIOT
1ST MALE VOICE:
A Cry from the East:
What shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?
Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten
To idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?
There shall be left the broken chimney,
The peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron,
In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs,
Where My Word is unspoken.
2ND MALE VOICE:
A Cry from the North, from the West and from the
South
Whence thousands travel daily to the timekept City;
Where My Word is unspoken,
In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels
The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,
The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,
And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent godless
people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls/
CHORUS:
We build in vain unless the LORD build with us.
Can you keep the City that the LORD keeps not with you?
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.
A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots
Build better than they that build without the LORD.
Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?
I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy
sanctuary,
I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.
Where there is no temple there shall be no homes,
Though you have shelters and institutions,
Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid,
Subsiding basements where the rat breeds
Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors
Or a house a little better than your neighbour's;
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When the Stranger says; What is the meaning of this
city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each
other?'
What will you answer? *We all dwell together
To make money from each other'? or 'This is a com
munity*?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
weariness of men who turn from GOD
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your
action,
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,
Binding the earth and the water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred,
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.
THE DRY SALVAGES
(The Dry Salvages presumably 'les trois sauvages' is a small group
of rocks, with a beacon, off the N E, coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
'Salvages' is pronounced to rhyme with 'assuages'. 'Groaner': a whis
tling buoy.}
I
1 DO not know much about gods; but I think that the
river
Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable,
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T. S. ELIOT
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost
forgotten
By the dwellers in citiesever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpro-
pitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching
and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the hermit crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many
voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard; the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching head
land
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
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And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all
deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the begin-
Clangs
The bell.
H
Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there an end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?
There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.
There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devo-
tionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.
696
T. S. ELIOT
Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.
We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly,
barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a
mere sequence
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy,
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of dis
owning the past.
The moments of happiness not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumina
tion
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one Me only
But of many generations not forgetting
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Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the
wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this
better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead Negroes, cows and
chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.
in
I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant
Among other things or one way of putting the same
thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lav
ender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never
been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is
the way back.
698
T. S. ELIOT
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us/
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this; "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death" that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who come to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.*
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
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Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
IV
Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.
Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.
Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea
bell's
Perpetual angelus.
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haraspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are
usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
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T. S. ELIOT
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint-
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incar
nation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement-
Driven by daemonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.
701
Wilfred Owen
GREATER LOVE
RED lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.
Your voice sings not so soft,
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered
loft,-
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that
coughed.
Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not
702
WILFRED OWEN
THE SEND-OFF
DOWN the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to village wells
Up half -blown roads.
BULGE ET DECORUM EST
BENT double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing hike hags, we cursed through
sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
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Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
ARMS AND THE BOY
LET the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
704
WILFRED OWEN
SPRING OFFENSIVE
HAX.TED against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees,
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass
swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like an injected drug for their bodies* pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.
Hour after hour they ponder the warm field
And the far valley behind, where the buttercup
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.
Till like a cold gust thrills the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste-
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun,
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.
So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; earth set sudden cups
In thousands for their blood; and the green slope
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.
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Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.
But what say such as from existence' brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink,
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder-
Why speak not they of comrades that went under.
INSENSIBILITY
HAPPY are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on armies' decimation.
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WILFRED OWEN
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack,
Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones;
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they make themselves immune
To pity and whatever moans in man
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Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears.
THE SHOW
We have fatten in the dreams the ever-living
Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world,
And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
W. B. Yeats
MY soul looked down from a vague height with Death,
As unremembering how I rose or why,
And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
Grey, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
And pitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues.
Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.
By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
Round myriad warts that might be little hills.
From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures
crept,
And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.
(And smell came up from those foul openings
As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)
On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
Brown strings, towards strings of grey, with bristling
spines,
All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.
Those that were grey, of more abundant spawns,
Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.
I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,
I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.
Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.
And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
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Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,
Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my "head.
STRANGE MEETING
IT seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend,* I said, Tiere is no cause to mourn/
"None/ said the other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
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To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot- wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . /
Herbert Read
TO A CONSCRIPT OF 1940
Qui n'a pas une fois desesp6rS de I'honneur,
Ne sera jamais un keros. George Bernanos.
A SOLDIER passed me in the freshly-fallen snow,
His footsteps muffled, his face unearthly grey;
And my heart gave a sudden leap
As I gazed on a ghost of five-and- twenty years ago.
I shouted Halt! and my voice had the old accustomed
ring
And he obeyed it as it was obeyed
In the shrouded days when I too was one
i Of an army of young men marching
Into the unknown. He turned towards me and I said:
*I am one of those who went before you
Five-and-twenty years ago: one of the many who never
returned,
Of the many who returned and yet were dead.
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HERBERT READ
We went where you are going, into the rain and the
mud;
We fought as you will fight
With death and darkness and despair;
We gave what you will give our brains and our blood.
We think we gave in vain. The world was not renewed.
There was hope in the homestead and anger in the
streets
But the old world was restored and we returned
To the dreary field and workshop, and the imme
morial feud
Of rich and poor. Our victory was our defeat.
Power was retained where power had been misused
And youth was left to sweep away
. The ashes that the fire had strewn beneath our feet.
But one thing we learned: there is no glory in the deed
Until the soldier wears a badge of tarnished braid;
There are heroes who have heard the rally and have seen
The glitter of a garland round their head.
Theirs is the hollow victory. They are deceived.
But you, my brother and my ghost, if you can go
Knowing that there is no reward, no certain use
In all your sacrifice, then honour is reprieved.
To fight without hope is to fight with grace,
The self reconstructed, the false heart repaired.*
Then I turned with a smile, and he answered my salute
As he stood against the fretted hedge, which was like
white lace.
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Robert Graves
INTERRUPTION
IF ever against this easy blue and silver
Hazed-over countryside of thoughtfulness
Far behind in the mind and above,
Boots from before and below approach tramping,
Watch how their premonition will display
A forward countryside, low in the distance,
A picture-postcard square of June grass,
Will warm a summer season, trim the hedges,
Cast the river about on either flank,
Start the late cuckoo emptily calling,
Invent a rambling tale of moles and voles,
Furnish a path with stiles.
Watch how the field will broaden, the feet nearing
Sprout with great dandelions and buttercups,
Widen and heighten. The blue and silver
Fogs at the border of this all-grass.
Interruption looms gigantified,
Lurches against, treads thundering through,
Blots the landscape, scatters all,
Roars and rumbles like a dark tunnel,
Is gone.
The picture-postcard grass and trees
Swim back to central: it is a large patch,
It is a modest, failing patch of green,
The postage-stamp of its departure,
Clouded with blue and silver, closing in now
To a plain countryside of less and less,
Unpeopled and unfeathered blue and silver,
Before, behind, above.
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ROBERT GRAVES
OGRES AND PYGMIES
THOSE famous men of old, the Ogres
They had long beards and stinking arm-pits.
They were wide-mouthed, long-yarded and great-bellied
Yet of not taller stature, Sirs, than you.
They lived on Ogre-Strand, which was no place
But the churl's terror of their proud extent,
Where every foot was three-and-thirty inches,
And every penny bought a whole sheep.
Now of their company none survive, not one,
The times being, thank God, unfavourable
To all but nightmare memory of them.
Their images stand howling in the waste,
(The winds enforced against their wide mouths)
Whose granite haunches king and priest must yearly
Buss, and their cold knobbed knees.
So many feats they did to admiration:
With their enormous lips they sang louder
Than ten cathedral choirs, and with their grand yards
Stormed the most rare and obstinate maidenheads,
With their strong-gutted and capacious bellies
Digested stones and glass like ostriches.
They dug great pits and heaped great cairns,
Deflected rivers, slew whole armies,
And hammered judgments for posterity
For the sweet-cupid-lipped and tassel-yarded
Delicate-stomached dwellers
In Pygmy Alley, where with brooding on them
A foot is shrunk to seven inches
And twelve-pence will not buy a spare rib.
And who would choose between Ogres and Pygmies
The thundering text, the snivelling commentary-
Reading between such covers he will likely
Prove his own disproportion and not laugh.
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THE LEGS
THERE was this road,
And it led up-hill,
And it led down-hill,
And round and in and
> out.
And the traffic was legs,
Legs from the knees down,
Coming and going,
Never pausing.
And the gutters gurgled
With the rain's overflow,
And the sticks on the
pavement
Blindly tapped and tapped.
What drew the legs along
Was the never-stopping,
And the senseless, fright
ening
Fate of being legs.
Legs for the road,
The road for legs,
Resolutely nowhere
In both directions.
My legs at least
Were not in that rout:
On grass by the road-side
Entire I stood,
Watching the unstoppable
Legs go by
With never a stumble
Between step and step.
smile
was
Though my
broad
The legs could not see,
Though my laugh was loud
The legs could not hear.
My head dizzied, then:
I wondered suddenly,
Might I too be a walker
From the knees down?
Gently I touched my shins.
The doubt unchained
them:
They had run in twenty
puddles
Before I regained them.
ROCKY ACRES
THIS is a wild land, country of my choice,
With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
But voice of cold water that runs here and there
Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run nor no birds cry
For fear of the dark speck that floats in the sky.
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ROBERT GRAVES
He soars and he hovers, rocking on his wings,
He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky;
Tenderness and pity the land will deny
Where life is but nourished from water and rock,
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.
Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,
The rocks jut, the streams flow singing on either hand,
Careless if the season be early or late.
The skies wander overhead, now blue, now slate:
Winter would be known by his cold cutting snow
If June did not borrow his armour also.
Yet this is my country beloved by me best,
The first land that rose from Chaos and the Flood,
Nursing no fat valleys for comfort and rest,
Trampled by no hard hooves, stained with no blood.
Bold immortal country whose hill-tops have stood
Strongholds for the proud gods when on earth they go,
Terror for fat burghers in far plains below.
THE EREMITES
WE MAY well wonder at those froward hermits
Who like the scorpion and the basilisk
Crouched in the desert sands, to undo
Their scurfy flesh with tortures.
They drank from pools fouled by the ass and camel,
Chewed uncooked millet pounded between stones,
Wore but a shame-rag, dusk or dawn,
And rolled in thorny places.
In the wilderness there are no women;
Yet hermits harbour in their shrunken loins
A penetential paradise,
A leaping-house of glory.
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Solomons of a thousand lusty love-chants,
These goatish men, burned Aethiopian black,
Kept vigil till the angelic whores
Should lift the latch of pleasure.
And what Atellan orgies of the soul
Were celebrated then among the rocks
They testify themselves in books
That rouse Atellan laughter.
Haled back at last to wear the ring and mitre,
They clipped their beards and, for their stomachs* sake,
Drank now and then a little wine,
And tasted cakes and lioney.
Observe then how they disciplined the daughters
Of noble widows, who must fast and thirst,
Abjure down-pillows, rouge and curls,
Deform their delicate bodies:
Whose dreams were curiously beset with visions
Of stinking hermits in a wilderness
Pressing unnatural lusts on them
Until they wakened screaming.
Such was the virtue of our pious fathers:
To refine pleasure in the hungry dream.
Pity for them, but pity too for us
Our beds by their leave lain in.
HOMAGE TO TEXAS
IT'S seldom wise to generalize
About a state or city,
But Texan girls are decent girls.
As bold as they are pretty.
Who dared the enormous unicorn
Through lonely woods a-leaping?
Who made him halt and lower his horn
And crouch beside her, weeping?
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ROBERT GRAVES
Not Helen (wonder of her sex),
Nor Artemis, nor Pallas;
No, sir: a girl from Houston, Tex.,
Though some claim it was Dallas.
He told her, 'Ma'am, your Lone-Star State,
Though maybe short on schooling,
Outshines the whole bright forty-eight*
And so it did, no fooling.
A LOVE STORY
THE full moon easterly rising, furious,
Against a winter sky ragged with red;
The hedges high in snow, and owls raving-
Solemnities not easy to withstand:
A shiver wakes the spine.
In boyhood, having encountered the scene,
I suffered horror: I fetched the moon home,
With owls and snow, to nurse in my head
Throughout the trials of a new spring.
Famine unassuaged.
But fell in love, and made a lodgement
Of love on those frozen ramparts.
Her image was my ensign: snows melted,
Hedges sprouted, the moon tenderly shone,
The owls trilled with tongues of nightingale.
These were all lies, though they matched the time,
And brought me less than luck: her image
Warped in the weather, turned beldamish.
Then back came winter on me at a bound,
The pallid sky heaved with a moon-quake.
Dangerous it had been with love-notes
To serenade Queen Famine.
In tears I recomposed the former scene,
Let the snow lie, watched the moon rise, suffered the owls,
Paid homage to them of unevent.
717
F. K Higgins
SONG FOR THE CLATTER-BONES
GOD rest that Jewy woman,
Queen Jezebel, the bitch
Who peeled the clothes from her shoulder-bones
Down to her spent teats
As she stretched out of the window
Among the geraniums, where
She chaffed and laughed like one half daft
Titivating her painted hair-
King Jehu he drove to her,
She tipped him a fancy beck;
But he from his knacky side-car spoke,
'Who'll break that dewlapped neck?'
And so she was thrown from the window;
Like Lucifer she fell
Beneath the feet of the horses and they beat
The light out of Jezebel.
That corpse wasn't planted in clover;
Ah, nothing of her was found
Save those grey bones that Hare-foot Mike
Gave me for their lovely sound;
And as once her dancing body
Made star-lit princes sweat,
So 111 just clack: though her ghost lacks a back
There's music in the old bones yet.
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Sacheverell Sitwell
AGAMEMNON'S TOMB
TOMB
A hollow hateful word
A bell, a leaden bell the dry lips mock,
Though the word is as mud or clay in its own sound;
A hollow noise that echoes its own emptiness,
Such is this awful thing, this cell to hold the box.
It is breathless, a sink of damp and mould, that 's all,
Where bones make dust and move not otherwise;
Who loves the spider or the worm, for this,
That they starve in there, but are its liveliness?
The grave-cloth, coldest and last night-gown,
That 's worn for ever till its rags are gone,
This comes at the end when every limb is straight,
When mouth and eyes are shut in mockery of sleep.
Much comes before this, for the miser hand
That clutches at an edge of wood, a chair, a table,
Must have its fingers broken, have its bones cracked back,
It's the rigor mortis, death struggle out of life,
A wrestling at the world's edge for which way to go-
There are all other deaths, but all are sisters;
What dreams must they have who die so quiet in sleep,
What dread pursuings into arms of terror,
Feared all through life, gigantic in dark corridors,
A giant in a wood, or a swirling of deep waters;
This may be worst of all, for pain is material,
And it has lulls, or you may pray for them,
While, when the pain is worst, you pray for death,
For swift delivery from heart and lungs,
The tyrant machinery, the creaking engine,
Lungs like wheezing bellows, heart Tike a clock that stops;
To die frightened, with a scream that never comes
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That shivers with no shape out of the dumb dry lips,
This is worse than pain, and worse than death, awake,
For with that cry you're in the tomb already,
There 's its arch above you, there 's its hand upon your
mouth,
Knock, knock, knock, these are the nails of the coffin,
They go in easy, but must be wrenched out,
For no strength can break them from the walled night
within;
They are little shining points, they are cloves that have
no scent,
But the dead are kept in prison by such little things,
Though little does it help them when that guard is gone.
It is night, endless night, with not a chink of day,
And if the coffin breaks there i-s no hope in that,
The bones tumble out and only dogs will steal them;
There is no escape, no tunnel back to life,
And, soon, no person digging at the other end,
For the living soon forget, but soon will join you there;
The dead are but dead, there is no use for them,
But who can realize that it ends with breath,
That the heart is not a clock and will not wind once more?
There is something in mortality that will not touch on
death,
That keeps the mind from it, that hides the coffin;
And, if this were not so, there would be nought else,
No other thing to think of; the skull would be the altar,
There could be no prayer save rest for the skeleton
That has jagged bones and cannot lie at comfort;
The sweetest flowers soon wither there, they love it not.
Who pondered too much on this would lie among the
bones
And sleep and wake by little contrast there,
Finding them no different but always cold;
The hermit's only plaything was the death's head in his
cell,
That he was long used to, that never stared at night
Through eyes without lids, kissed away by something,
With a mouth below that, bare and lipless,
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SACHEVEREIX SITWELL
Eaten by the dust, quite burned away;
But the hermit was not frightened, he had grown accus
tomed,
For it is one sort of logic to be living with the dead,
It's so slight a difference, a stone dropped from the hand
Picked up not long ago, now dropped again;
This is one remedy, to know the dead from near,
But it ends at nothing, there 's no more than that,
The fright of death goes, but not the dreading of its dull
ness;
It is endless, dull, and comfortless, it never stops;
There is no term to it, no first nor last,
There is no mercy in that dark land of death.
Think of death's companions, the owl, the bat, the spider,
And they can only enter when the tomb is broken,
They live in that darkness, in that lair of treachery,
And crawl, and spin their webs, and shake their speckled
wings,
And come out in the double night, the night that *s dark
outside,
So they bring no light back on their fattened bodies.
The spider, with its eight legs, runs and crawls,
With dreadful stomach, hairy paunch in air,
While the bat hangs, asleep, with gripping claws above
Holding to the stone ledge fouled by it;
Hell wake, when it *s night outside, and wave his skinny
wings,
And fly out through the crevice where the spider weaves
anew,
Her silk will choke and fill it when the bat comes back,
And the bat, more clumsy, rends the webs asunder.
Such are death's companions and their twilit lives,
They keep by dry bones and yet they profit by them,
Living on death's bounties, on his dying portion,
Paid like marriage money, or the fees for school;
This, in stone or marble, is the home of others,
For they share it, but too soon, and it is theirs no more.
There is nothing at the other end, no door at which to
listen,
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There is nothing, nothing, not a breath beyond,
Give up your hopes of it, you'll wake no more.
The poor are fast forgotten,
They outnumber the living, but where are all their bones?
For every man alive there are a million dead,
Has their dust gone into earth that it is never seen?
There should be no air to breathe, with it so thick,
No space for wind to blow, or rain to fall;
Earth should be a cloud of dust, a soil of bones,
With no room, even, for our skeletons;
It is wasted time to think of it, to count its grains,
When all are alike and there 's no difference in them;
They wait in the dark corridors, in earth's black galleries,
But the doors never open; they are dead, dead, dead.
Ah! Seek not the difference in king or beggar:
The King has his gold with him, that will not buy,
It is better to have starved and to be used to it.
Is there no comfort down the long dead years,
No warmth in prison, no love left for dead bones;
Does no one come to kiss them? Answer, none, none, none.
Yet that was their longing, to be held and given,
To be handed to death while held in arms that loved them,
For his greater care, who saw that they were loved
And would take note of it and favour them in prison;
But, instead, he stood more near to them, his chill was in
them,
And the living were warm, the last of love was warm;
Ohl One more ray of it, one beam before the winter,
Before they were unborn, beyond the blind, unborn,
More blind and puny, carried back into the dark,
But without rumour, with no fate to come,
Nothing but waiting, waiting long for nothing.
It was too late to weep, this was the last of time,
The light flickered, but tears would dim it more:
It was better to be calm and keep the taste of life;
But a sip or two of life, and then, for ever, death.
Oh! The cold, the sinking cold, the falling from the edge
Where love was no help and could not hold one back,
Falling, falling, falling into blackest dark,
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Falling while hands touched one, while the lips felt warm,
If one was loved, and was not left alone.
Now it was so little that a babe was more,
No more of self, a little feeble thing
That love could not help,
That none could love for what it was;
It looked, and love saw it, but it could not answer:
Life's mystery was finished, only death was clear,
It was sorry for the living, it was glad to die,
Death was its master, it belonged to death.
kiss it no more, it is so cold and pale,
It is not of this world, it is no part of us;
Not the soul we loved, but something pitiful
The hands should not touch. Oh! Leave it where it lies;
Let the dead where they die; come out among the living;
Weep not over dead bones; your tears are wasted.
There 's no escape, there is no subterfuge,
Death is decay; nor was it any better,
The mummied dead body, with brain pulled through the
nose,
With entrails cut out, and all the mutilation
Wrapped in sweet bandages, bound up with herbs:
Death is not aromatic, it is false with flowers,
It has no ferment, it is always bitter;
The Egyptians live for ever, but not like themselves,
They are clenched, tortured, stifled, not the portrait on
the lid;
They'd be better as old bones, and then might lie at peace.
All is degradation in the chambers of dead bones,
Nor marble, nor porphyry, but make it worse
For the mind sees, inside it, to the stained wet shroud
Where all else is dry, and only that is fluid,
So are carven tombs in the core to their cool marble,
The hollowed out heart of it, the inner cell,
All is degradation in the halls of the dead;
1 never thought other things of death, until
The climb to Mycenae, when the wind and rain
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Stormed at the tombs, where the rocks were as clouds
Struck still in the hurricane, driven to the hillside,
And rain poured in torrents, all the air was water.
The wet grey Argolide wept below,
The winds wailed and tore their hair,
The plain of Argos mourned and was in mist,
In mist tossed and shaken, in a sea of wrack;
This was the place of weeping, the day of tears,
As if all the dead were here, in all their pain,
Not stilled, nor assuaged, but aching to the bone:
It was their hell, they had no other hope than this,
But not alone, it was not nothingness:
The wind shrieked, the rain poured, the steep wet stones
Were a cliff in a whirlwind, by a raging sea,
Hidden by the rain-storm pelting down from heaven
To that hollow valley loud with melancholy;
But the dark hill opened. And it was the tomb.
A passage led unto it, cut through the hill,
Echoing, rebounding with the million-ringing rain,
With walls, ever higher, till the giant lintel
Of huge stone, jagged and immense, rough-hewn
That held up the mountain: it was night within:
Silence and peace, nor sound of wind nor rain,
But a huge dome, glowing with the day from out
Let in by the narrow door, diffused by that,
More like some cavern under ocean's lips,
Fine and incredible, diminished in its stones,
For the hand of man had fitted them, of dwindling size,
Row after row, round all the hollow dome,
As scales of fish, as of the ocean's fins,
Pinned with bronze flowers that were, now, all fallen,
But the stones kept their symmetry, their separate shape
To the dome's high cupola of giant stone:
All was high and solemn in the cavern tomb:
If this was death, then death was poetry,
First architecture of the man-made years,
This was peace for the accursed Atridae:
Here lay Agamemnon in a cell beyond,
A little room of death, behind the solemn dome
726
SACHEVERELL SITWELL
Not burnt, nor coffined, but laid upon the soil
With a golden mask upon his dead man's face
For a little realm of light within that shadowed room:
And ever the sun came, every day of life,
Though less than star-point in that starry sky,
To the shadowed meridian, and sloped again,
Nor lit his armour, nor the mask upon his face,
For they burned in eternal night, they smouldered in it;
Season followed season, there was summer in the tomb,
Through hidden crevice, down that point of light,
Summer of loud wings and of the ghosts of blossom;
One by one, as harvesters, all heavy laden,
The bees sought their corridor into the dome
With honey of the asphodel, the flower of death,
Or thyme, rain-sodden, and more sweet for that;
Here was their honeycomb, high in the roof,
I heard sweet summer from their drumming wings,
Though it wept and rained and was the time of tears;
They made low music, they murmured in the tomb,
As droning nuns through all a shuttered noon,
Who prayed in this place of death, and knew it not.
How sweet such death, with honey from the flowers,
A little air, a little light, and drone of wings,
To long monotony, to prison of the tomb!
But he did not know it. His bones, picked clean,
Were any other bones. The trick is in our mind:
They love not a bed, nor raiment for their bones,
They are happy on cold stone or in the aching water,
And neither care, nor care not, they are only dead.
It once was Agamemnon, and we think him happy:
false, false nope! How empty his happiness,
All for a fine cavern and the hum of bees.
1 went again to him, another year,
And still it stormed, the corn-ripe Argolide
Rattled in dust, in burning grain of sand,
Earth lay in fever by the tombed Atridae.
O happy, happy death, and only happiness of that,
There is none other, where it ever weeps
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In the ripened corn and round the silent cavern,
First, and best building of the man-made years.
O happy Agamemnon, who was luckless, living,
Happy in death, in the hollow haunted room,
Your very name is the treading of a spectre:
O speak to us of death, tell us of its mysteries,
Not here, not here, not in the hollow tomb,
But at the Muse's fountain, the Castalian spring,
By the plane-trees you planted, in the sacred shade;
The leaves speak in syllables, the live-long hours,
Their leaves are your leaves, and their shade is yours;
Listen, listen, listen to the voice of water
Alive and living, more than Agamemnon,
Whose name is sound of footsteps on the shaking boards,
A tragedian's ghost, a shadow on the rocks.
You are dead, you are dead, and all the dead are nothing
to us,
There 's nothing, nothing, nothing, not a breath beyond:
O give up every hope of it, well wake no more,
We are the world and it will end with us:
The heart is not a clock, it will not wind again,
The dead are but dead, there is no use for them,
They neither care, nor care not, they are only dead.
Roy Campbell
THE SERF
His naked skin clothed in the torrid mist
That puffs in smoke around the patient hooves,
The ploughman drives, a slow somnambulist,
And through the green his crimson furrow grooves.
His heart, more deeply than he wounds the plain,
Long by the rasping share of insult torn,
Red clod, to which the war-cry once was rain
And tribal spears the fatal sheaves of corn,
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ROY CAMPBELL
Lies fallow now. But as the turf divides
I see in the slow progress of his strides
Over the toppled clods and falling flowers,
The timeless, surly patience of the serf
That moves the nearest to the naked earth
And ploughs down palaces, and thrones, and towers.
THE ZEBRAS
FROM the dark woods that breathe of fallen showers.
Harnessed with level rays in golden reins,
The zebras draw the dawn across the plains
Wading knee-deep among the scarlet flowers.
The sunlight, zithering their flanks with fire,
Flashes between the shadows as they pass
Barred with electric tremors through the grass
Like wind along the gold strings of a lyre.
Into the flushed air snorting rosy plumes
That smoulder round their feet in drifting fumes,
With dove-like voices call the distant fillies,
While round the herds the stallion wheels his flight,
Engine of beauty volted with delight,
To roll his mare among the trampled lilies.
i
C. Day Lewis
CONSIDER THESE, FOR WE
HAVE CONDEMNED THEM
CONSIDER these, for we have condemned them;
Leaders to no sure land, guides their bearings lost
Or in league with robbers have reversed the signposts,
Disrespectful to ancestors, irresponsible to heirs.
Born barren, a freak growth, root in rubble,
Fruitlessly blossoming, whose foliage suffocates,
A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
Their sap is sluggish, they reject the sun.
The man with his tongue in his cheek, the woman
With her heart in the wrong place, unhandsome, un
wholesome;
Have exposed the new-born to worse than weather,
Exiled the honest and sacked the seer.
These drowned the farms to form a pleasure-lake,
In time of drought they drain the reservoir
Through private pipes for baths and sprinklers.
Getters not begetters; gainers not beginners;
Whiners, no winners; no triers, betrayers;
Who steer by no star, whose moon means nothing.
Daily denying, unable to dig:
At bay in villas from blood relations,
Counters of spoons and content with cushions
They pray for peace, they hand down disaster.
They that take the bribe shall perish by the bribe,
Dying of dry rot, ending in asylums,
A curse to children, a charge on the state.
But still their fears and frenzies infect us;
Drug nor isolation will cure this cancer:
It is now or never, the hour of the knife,
The break with the past, the major operation.
DO NOT EXPECT AGAIN A
PHOENIX HOUR
Do not expect again a phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Tranced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.
By a blazed trail our joy will be returning:
One burning hour throws light a thousand ways,
And hot blood stays into familiar gestures.
The best years wait, the body's plenitude.
730
C. DAY LEWIS
Consider then, my lover, this is the end
Of the lark's ascending, the hawk's unearthly hover:
Spring season is over soon and first heatwave;
Grave-browed with cloud ponders the huge horizon.
Draw up the dew. Swell with pacific violence.
Take shape in silence. Grow as the clouds grew.
Beautiful brood the cornlands, and you are heavy;
Leafy the boughs they also hide big fruit.
NEARING AGAIN THE LEGENDARY
ISLE
NEARING again the legendary isle
Where sirens sang and mariners were skinned,
We wonder now what was there to beguile
That such stout fellows left their bones behind.
Those chorus-girls are surely past their prime,
Voices grow shrill and paint is wearing thin,
Lips that sealed up the sense from gnawing time
Now beg the favour with a graveyard grin.
We have no flesh to spare and they can't bite,
Hunger and sweat have stripped us to the bone;
A skeleton crew we toil upon the tide
And mock the theme-song meant to lure us on:
No need to stop the ears, avert the eyes
From purple rhetoric of evening skies.
THE CONFLICT
I SANG as one
Who on a tilting deck sings
To keep their courage up, though the wave hangs
That shall cut off their sun,
As storm-cocks sing,
Flinging their natural answer in the wind's teeth,
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And care not if it is waste of breath
Or birth-carol of spring.
As ocean-flyer clings
To height, to the last drop of spirit driving on
While yet ahead is land to be won
And work for wings.
Singing I was at peace,
Above the clouds, outside the ring:
For sorrow finds a swift release in song
And pride its poise.
Yet living here,
As one between two massing powers I live
Whom neutrality cannot save
Nor occupation cheer.
None such shall be left alive:
The innocent wing is soon shot down,
And private stars fade in the blood-red dawn
Where two worlds strive.
The red advance of life
Contracts pride, calls out the common blood,
Beats song into a single blade,
Makes a depth-charge of grief.
Move then with new desires,
For where we used to build and love
Is no man's land, and only ghosts can live
Between two fires.
732
Peter Quennell
HERO ENTOMBED I
MY lamp, full charged with its sweet oil, still burns,
Has burned a whole year and it shows no check.
My cerements there
Lie where I rolled them off,
The death odours within them,
Harshly composed, coiled up in marble fold.
This tent of white translucent stone, my tomb,
Lets through its panel such a ray of light,
Blind and refracted,
As a calm sea might do
Through its tough warping lens
From the ascendant moon at its highest step.
Some have complained the gentleness of the sea,
Stagnantly streaming, in quick ebb withdrawing
Along the tideless South,
Tbus sound to me,
And like its noonday hiss
Wheels, voices, music, thunder, the trumpet at dawn.
You must not think my entertainment slight
In the close prison where I walk all day.
'And yet, entombed,
Do not your thoughts oppressed
Pluck off the bandage from your sores,
From arrow wound and from ulcered armour-gall?"
My wounds are dried already to pale weals,
I did not fall in battle as you think,
On Epipolae
Dashed from the rock head down,
Or in the quarries stifle,
But stoned by words and pierced with beams of eyes.
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So, patient, not regretful, self consoling
I walk, touching the tomb wall with my fingers,
In silent entertainment.
On the smooth floor
The stirred dust ankle deep
Steams up languid, to clog the struggling lamp flame.
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT
WITHIN Heaven's circle I had not guessed at this,
I had not guessed at pleasure such as this,
So sharp a pleasure,
That, like a lamp burning in foggy night,
Makes its own orb and sphere of flowing gold
And tents itself in light.
Going before you, now how many days,
Thoughts, all turned back like birds against the wind,
Wheeled sullenly towards my Father's house,
Considered his blind presence and the gathered, bustling
paean,
The affluence of his sweetness, his grace and unageing
might.
My flesh glowed then in the shadow of a loose cloak
And my brightness troubled the ground with every
pulse of the blood,
My wings lax on the air, my eyes open and grave,
With the vacant pride of hardly less than a god.
We passed thickets that quaked with hidden deer,
And wide shallows dividing before my feet,
Empty plains threaded, and between stiff aloes
I took the ass's bridle to climb into mountain pathways.
When cold bit you, through your peasant's mantle,
And my Father filled the air with meaningless stars,
I brought dung and dead white grass for fuel,
Blowing a fire with the breath of the holy word.
Your drudge, Joseph, slept; you would sit unmoving,
In marble quiet, or by the unbroken voice of a river,
734
PETER QUENNELL
Would sometimes bare your maiden breast to his mouth,
The suckling, to the conscious God baknced upon your
knees.
Apart I considered the melodious names of my brothers,
As again in my Father's house, and the even spheres
Slowly, nightlong recalled the splendour of numbers;
I heard again the voluptuous measure of praise.
Sometimes pacing beneath clarity immeasurable
I saw my mind lie open and desert,
The wavering streams frozen up and each coppice
quieted,
A whole valley in starlight with leaves and waters.
Corning at last to these farthest Syrian hills,
Attis or Adon, some ambushed lust looked out;
My skin grows pale and smooth, shrunken as silk,
Without the rough effulgence of a God.
And here no voice has spoken;
There is no shrine of any godhead here;
No grove or hallowed fires,
And godhead seems asleep.
Only the vine has woven
Strange houses and blind rooms and palaces,
Into each hollow and crevice continually
Dropped yearlong irrecoverable flowers.
The sprawling vine has built us a close room
Obedient Hymen fills the air with mist;
And to make dumb our theft
The white and moving sand that will not bear a print.
PROCNE
So she became a bird and bird-like danced
On a long sloe-bough, treading the silver blossom
With a bird's lovely feet,
shaken blossoms fell into the hands
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A Little Treasury of Modern British Poetry
Of sunlight, and he held them for a moment
And let them drop.
And in the autumn Procne came again
And leapt upon the crooked sloe-bough singing
And the dark berries winked like earth-dimmed beads,
As the branch swung beneath her dancing feet.
Geoffrey Grigson
THE LANDSCAPE OF THE HEART
WHO must be blamed for the young head
On the pavement in the shape of blood,
But the whole heart of man?
The giant cloud shines on all.
The innocent table holds up the just
And evil document:
Who must be blamed? The young head
And the vile aimer's hand,
And the whole heart they share,
The wide landscape, which holds houses,
Slaughter houses, the worm, adder
And the berry, caves,
Open and secret waters, museums
With the fossils of love and stuffed
Birds of law, all
Plants, nettles to fumitory, choked
Ditch; and all beyond footstep
To the coloured edge:
Who must you blame? The young head
And the vile aimer's hand
And the whole heart of man.
736
William Empson
LETTER I
You were amused to find you too could fear
'The eternal silence of the infinite spaces,'
That net-work without fish, that mere
Extended idleness, those pointless places
Who, being possibilized to bear faces,
Yours and the light from it, up-buoyed,
Even of the galaxies are void.
I approve, myself, dark spaces between stars;
All privacy's their gift; they carry glances
Through gulfs; and as for messages (thus Mars'
Reknown for wisdom their wise tact enhances,
Hanged on the thread of radio advances)
For messages, they are a wise go-between,
And say what they think common-sense has seen.
Only, have we space, common-sense in common,
A tribe whose life-blood is our sacrament,
Physics or metaphysics for your showman,
For my physician in this banishment?
Too non-Euclidean predicament.
Where is that darkness that gives light its place?
Or where such darkness as would hide your face?
Our jovial sun, if he avoids exploding
(These times are critical), will cease to grin,
Will lose your circumambient foreboding;
Loose the full radiance his mass can win
While packed with mass holds all that radiance in;
Flame far too hot not to seern utter cold
And hide a tumult never to be told.
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LETTER IV
HATCHED in a rasping darkness of dry sand
The child cicada some brave root discovers:
Sucks with dumb mouth while his long climb is
planned
That high must tunnel through the silt that
smothers:
Parturient with urine from this lover
Coheres from chaos, only to evade,
An ordered Nature his own waste has made,
And builds his mortared Babel from the incumbent
shade.
On my unpointed Atlantic where bergs float
In endless cold: its scream of gulls: the claw,
A Roman feather at the back of the throat,
Wave-shutter, hanging, flapping, nape and jaw;
You lay your sunbeam and a part can soar
As tear-clouds, safe beneath their maker, move
In air-ships' gross security, rove and prove
The virgin's fertile lands, Spain-stolen, treasure-trove.
The highest in his bowels (God had come)
Israel, determined to digest, had striven;
1 will not let thee go,' told Helium,
The unvalenced self-closing air of Heaven.
These risings have more earth-born gas as leaven,
Cheaper, less 'bitter in the belly,' free
If rain to make but little in the sea
Or if on fire to make too fierce an empyry.
Therefore, my dear, though you can have it all
As giving goes, the car more safe would ride
Slung on star-netting of a larger ball
Putting its eggs in wicker-work sky wide:
Stars less monogamously deified:
Who not by light, merely by being far,
Make real Rotational Phenomena,
Prove that I satellite and you true centre are.
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WILLIAM EMPSON
Who, being fixed and far, calm and surprise:
Being no farther, shutter and enclose
A rounded universe: who name the size,
Imply the creature that can count their rows.
Your sun alone yielding its beauty glows
In growth upon the planet. They are song
Or call the tune to make the dancing throng
Free only as they aloof compose it and are strong.
AUBADE
HOURS before dawn we were woken by the quake.
My house was on a cliff. The thing could take
Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row.
Then the long pause and then the bigger shake.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
And far too large for my feet to step by.
I hoped that various buildings were brought low.
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed.
The guarded tourist makes the guide the test.
Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No.
Taxi for her and for me healthy rest.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
The language problem but you have to try.
Some solid ground for lying could she show?
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
None of these deaths were her point at all.
The thing was that being woken he would bawl
And finding her not in earshot he would know.
I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie.
Till you have seen what a threat holds below,
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
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Tell me again about Europe and her pains,
Who's tortured by the drought, who by the rains.
Glut me with floods where only the swine can row
Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky.
Only the same war on a stronger toe.
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
Tell me more quickly what I lost by this,
Or tell me with less drama what they miss
Who call no die a god for a good throw,
Who say after two aliens had one kiss
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
But as to risings, I can tell you why.
It is on contradiction that they grow.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
Up was the heartening and the strong reply.
The heart of standing is we cannot fly.
COURAGE MEANS RUNNING
FEARFUL 'had the root of the matter/ bringing
Him things to fear, and he read well that ran;
Muchafraid went over the river singing
Though none knew what she sang. Usual for a man
Of Bunyan's courage to respect fear. It is the two
Most exquisite surfaces of knowledge can
Get clap (the other is the eye). Steadily you
Should clean your teeth, for your own weapon's near
Your own throat always. No purpose, view,
Or song but's weak if without the ballast of fear.
We fail to hang on those firm times that met
And knew a fear because when simply here
740
WILLIAM EMPSON
It does not suggest its transformation. Yet
To escape emotion (a common hope) and attain
Cold truth is essentially to get
Out by a rival emotion fear. We gain
Truth, to put it sanely, by gift of pleasure
And courage, but, since pleasure knits with pain,
Both presume fear. To take fear as the measure
May be a measure of self-respect. Indeed
As the operative clue in seeking treasure
Is normally trivial and the urgent creed
To balance enough possibles; as both bard
And hack must blur or peg lest you misread;
As to be hurt is petty, and to be hard
Stupidity; as the economists raise
Bafflement to a boast we all take as guard;
As the wise patience of England is a gaze
Over the drop, and 'high' policy means clinging;
There is not much else that we dare to praise.
LEGAL FICTION
LAW makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
Your well fenced out real estate of mind
No high flat of the nomad citizen
Looks over, or train leaves behind.
Your rights extend under and above your claim
Without bounds; you own land in Heaven and Hell;
Your part of earth's surface and mass the same,
Of all cosmos* volume, and all stars as well.
Your rights reach down where all owners meet, in Hell's
Pointed exclusive conclave, at earth's centre
(Your spun farm's root still on that axis dwells);
And up, through galaxies, a growing sector.
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You are nomad yet; the lighthouse beam you own
Flashes, like Lucifer, through the firmament.
Earth's axis varies; your dark central cone
Wavers a candle's shadow, at the end.
MISSING DATES
SLOWLY the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is not your system or clear sight that mills
Down small to the consequence a life requires;
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills
Of young dog blood gave but a month's desires;
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills
Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.
The complete fire is death. From partial fires
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is the poems you have lost, the ills
From missing dates, at which the heart expires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
742
Vernon Watkins
MUSIC OF COLOURS: THE
BLOSSOM SCATTERED
O, BUT how white is white, white from shadows come,
Sailing white of clouds, not seen before
On any snowfield, any shore;
Or this dense blue, delivered from the tomb,
White of the risen body, fiery blue of sky,
Light the saints teach us, light we learn to adore;
Not space revealed it, but the needle's eye
Love's dark thread holding, when we began to die.
It was the leper's, not the bird's cry,
Gave back that glory, made that glory more.
I cannot sound the nature of that spray
Lifted on wind, the blossoms falling away,
A death, a birth, a dazzling mystery,
As though each petal stirring held the whole tree
That grew, created on the Lord's day.
There is no falling now. Yet for time's sake
These blossoms are scattered. They fall. How still they
are.
They drop, they vanish, where all blossoms break.
Who touches one dead blossom touches every star.
So the green Earth is first no colour and then green.
Spirits who walk, who know
All is untouchable, and, knowing this, touch so,
Who know the music by which white is seen,
See the world's colours in flashes come and go.
The marguerite's petal is white, is wet with rain,
Is white, then loses white, and then is white again
Not from time's course, but from the living spring,
Miraculous whiteness, a petal, a wing,
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Like light, like lightning, soft thunder, white as jet,
Ageing on ageless breaths. The ages are not yet.
Is there a tree, a bud, that knows not this :
White breaks from darkness, breaks from such a kiss
No mind can measure? Locked in the branching knot.
Conception shudders; that interior shade
Makes light in darkness, light where light was not;
Then the white petal, of whitest darkness made,
Breaks, and is silent. Immaculate they break,
Consuming vision, blinding eyes awake,
Dazzling the eyes with music, light's unspoken sound,
White born of bride and bridegroom, when they take
Love's path through Hades, engendered of dark ground,
Leda remembers. The rush of wings cast wide.
Sheer lightning, godhead, descending on the flood.
Night, the late, hidden waters on the moon's dark side.
Her virgin secrecy, doomed against time to run.
Morning. The visitation. All colours hurled in one.
Struggling with night, with radiance! That smothering
glory cried:
'Heavenborn am L White-plumaged heart, you beat
against the sun!'
All recollection sinking from the dazzled blood.
She woke, and her awakened wings were fire,
Darkened with light; O blinding white was she
With white's bewildering darkness. So that secret choir
Know, in the thicket, and witness more than we,
Listening to early day, dew's voice, the lightest feet,
As though Saint Francis passing, told who they were,
Fledged of pure spirit, though upheld by air.
I think one living is already there,
So sound asleep she is, her breath so faint,
She knows, she welcomes the footstep of the saint,
So still, so moving, joy sprung of despair,
And the two feasts, where light and darkness meet.
744
VERNON WATKINS
THE CAVE-DRAWING
EXCAVATOR, explore rock from the great Ice Age
Moored by this anchor of bones from the sailing sky;
And find this agonized beast, figured forth where cen
turies fly,
Marked by an arrow, man's prey, overtaken in rage
At the dawn of life. There, drawn to his far cry,
Stab the unstrict measure, find only that chase for gauge
Where stag or bison speaks a momentous language
And beckons us late through the labyrinth of his eye.
For delicately, upon silver, he found the fleeting line,
Untutored here, of deer that eluded knowledge.
In the shadow of an eagle they sprang from the spear of
the hunter. Their image
Danced; it flew from his wrist as the aquiline
Wing-beat shuddered; they were luminous, caught in
the wedge
Of triangular wisdom, flung from the flint's edge fine,
Stretched on a sunray, making that eagle shine
In quartzlight, stream's light, falling from ledge to ledge.
He witnessed the bison bounding through dust from a
crimson sun.
For us he made light sing in the dark of his line,
Arrested motion, all animals pierced and crystalline:
He, he alone had found it, his look trained down
By luck their lightning emergence. This was his mine
Of mineral wonder, making the skilled hand run,
A hunter, spearlike, outspeeding all ages begun,
At which we marvel. Pagan, pristine, divine
Met in the rock where his hand, like the hand on a sickle
reaping,
Narrowly moved, in the age of the mastodon,
Bridling the horses of sunrise, curbed, yet able to stun
The rock with vision; such was his flint-line creeping
In the heavens on its early path, for his toil seemed one
Measure of light. He arose from night to the shaping
Of a life the glaciers had left. Rigid gloom escaping,
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He watched the day-hawk wheel where no wheel was
known.
Then the night-rain stopped. Five colours, a mist-formed
rainbow spun
From the dawn of time, to potter and painter sweeping
From the lost Ice Age, was hung there, all colours of
morning keeping
On the edge of sleep, to attend the Syrian:
Antelopes flying on the rim of the world unsleeping,
A bison pierced, an eagle dropped from the sun,
Deer like a river flying, suddenly gone,
And again like a vein behind the iris leaping.
THE YEW-TREE
Is there a cause why we should wake the dead?
Should they not sleep, safe in the sepulchre?
I, a man walking, one alive to fear,
H 
