{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_54907/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_54907","id":"gutenberg_54907","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54907","summary":null,"tags":["American poetry -- 19th century","Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry"],"text":"THE WHITE SAIL\n\n                            And Other Poems\n\n\n\n\n                            THE WHITE SAIL\n                          AND OTHER POEMS. BY\n                         LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY\n\n                       [Illustration: colophon]\n\n                           TICKNOR & COMPANY\n                          PUBLISHERS, BOSTON\n\n\n                          _Copyright, 1887_,\n                        BY TICKNOR AND COMPANY.\n\n                        _All rights reserved._\n\n\n                           University Press:\n                    JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.\n\n\n\n\n       _A SALUTE by night, than night\u2019s own heart-beat stiller,\n              From the dying to the living. Keats! I lay\n           Here against thy moonlit, storm-unshaken pillar,\n                         My garland of a day._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n\nTHE WHITE SAIL                                                        11\n\n\nLegends.\n\nTARPEIA                                                               35\n\nTHE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR                                             40\n\nTHE RISE OF THE TIDE                                                  44\n\nCHALUZ CASTLE                                                         48\n\nTHE WOOING PINE                                                       51\n\nTHE SERPENT\u2019S CROWN                                                   57\n\nMOUSTACHE                                                             62\n\nRANIERI                                                               65\n\nSAINT CADOC\u2019S BELL                                                    68\n\nA CHOUAN                                                              76\n\n\nLyrics.\n\nYOUTH                                                                 83\n\nTHE LAST FAUN                                                         85\n\nKNIGHTS OF WEATHER                                                    87\n\nDAYBREAK                                                              90\n\nON SOME OLD MUSIC                                                     91\n\nLATE PEACE                                                            94\n\nTO A YOUNG POET                                                       97\n\nDE MORTUIS                                                            98\n\nDOWN STREAM                                                           99\n\nTHE INDIAN PIPE                                                      103\n\nBROOK FARM                                                           105\n\n\u2018MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS\u2019                                          107\n\nGARDEN CHIDINGS                                                      108\n\nFR\u00c9D\u00c9RIC OZANAM                                                      109\n\nBANKRUPT                                                             110\n\nA REASON FOR SILENCE                                                 112\n\nTEMPTATION                                                           113\n\nFOR A CHILD                                                          115\n\nAGLAUS                                                               116\n\nAN AUDITOR                                                           118\n\nTHE WATER-TEXT                                                       119\n\nCYCLAMEN                                                             120\n\nA PASSING SONG                                                       124\n\nIN TIME                                                              125\n\nTHE WILD RIDE                                                        126\n\nTHE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE                                               128\n\nA LAST WORD ON SHELLEY                                               129\n\nIMMUNITY                                                             130\n\nPAULA\u2019S EPITAPH                                                      131\n\nJOHN BROWN: A PARADOX                                                132\n\n\nSonnets.\n\nAPRIL DESIRE                                                         137\n\nTWOFOLD SERVICE                                                      138\n\nIN THE GYMNASIUM                                                     139\n\nA SALUTATION                                                         140\n\nAT A SYMPHONY                                                        141\n\nSLEEP                                                                142\n\nTHE ATONING YESTERDAY                                                143\n\n\u2018RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS\u2019                                             144\n\nFOUR SONNETS FROM \u2018LA VITA NUOVA\u2019                                    145\n\n\n\n\n          THE WHITE SAIL.\n\n\n    HIGH on the lone and wave-scarred porphyry,\n    The promontoried porch of Attica,\n    Past evenfall, sat he whose reverend hair\n    Down-glittered with the breaker\u2019s volleying foam\n    Visioned before him in the level dark:\n    \u00c6geus, of wronged Pandion heir, and king.\n    And round about his knees, and at his feet,\n    In saffrons and sad greens alone bedight,\n    Sat, clustered in dim wayward sidelong groups\n    Sheer to the ocean\u2019s edge, those liegemen fond\n    Who with him wished and wept. As thro\u2019 the hours\n    Of ebbing autumn, on a northward hill,\n    Lies summer\u2019s russet ruined panoply,\n    Knotted and heaped by the fantastic winds\n    Hap-hazard, while the first adventuring snow\n    Globes itself on the summit; so they clung\n    Secure among the rang\u00e8d crevices,\n    Month after month, and wakeful night on night\n    Vigilant; ever neighbored and o\u2019ertopped\n    With that white presence, and the boding sky.\n\n    And \u00c6geus prayed: \u2018O give me back but him!\n    My desert palm, my moorland mid-day fount,\n    My leopard-foot, in equal tameless grace\n    Swaying suavely down cool garden-paths\n    Or into battle\u2019s maw: my lad of Athens!\n    With bronze and tangly curls a-toss, to show\n    Infancy\u2019s golden-silken underglow;\n    The glad eye dusking blue, as is the sea\n    Ere fiery sunset tricks it; and the lashes\n    In one close sombre file against his cheek,\n    Enphalanxed in perpetual trail and droop,\n    Wherethro\u2019 gleams laughter as thro\u2019 sorrow\u2019s pale.\n    And anger\u2019s self doth tremble maidenly;\n    The massy throat; the nostril mobile, smooth;\n    The breast full-orbed with arduous large pride,\n    As I so oft have marked, when from the chase,\n    The witness-dropping knife swung with the bow,\n    Heading the burdened company, he came,\n    Aye vermeil with the wholesome wind, outwrestler\n    Of storms and perils all. High-mettled Theseus!\n    Keystone of greatness, bond of expectation,\n    Stay of this realm! in his strong-sinewed beauty\n    Dear unto men as Tanais bright-sanded\n    Whose flood harmonious lapses on the ear,\n    And makes for hearts yoke-wearied, thither roaming,\n    Thrice feastful holiday. Ah, righteous gods!\n    Forasmuch as I love him and await him,\n    Who from my youth have been your servitor,\n    Yield my old age its boon of vindication:\n    Haven the happy ship here, ere I die.\u2019\n\n    Still heedlessly the hushed moon bent her bow\n    Over the unshorn forest oakenry\n    And the dense gladiate leaves of Thor\u00e6\u2019s pine:\n    The cold and incommunicable moon,\n    Waxing and waning thro\u2019 the barren time\n    That brought not Theseus\u2019 self, nor of him sign,\n    Nor any waif of rumor out of Crete,\n    Whereto, a year nigh gone, the ship had sped\n    Forlorn; her decks enshrouded in plucked yew\n    Strewn to the mizzen; and her oary props\n    And halyards all with blossomed myrtle twined,\n    And every sail dark as from looms of hell,\n    In token of the universal dole.\n    And on her heav\u00e8d anchor and spurred keel\n    Cheers none, but protest, moans, and ire attended,\n    When from the quay, in melancholy weather\n    Forward she sobbed on black unwilling wing.\n\n    But ere that going drear, one foot ashore,\n    Theseus with his mild comrades hand in hand,--\n    The seven maids and boys to bondage sealed,\n    Lifted his head, and met his father\u2019s eyes,\n    And out of morning ardor made this oath:\n    \u2018My people, stand not for our sakes in tears!\n    No shape of ill shall daunt me; I will strike\n    And overcome, Heaven\u2019s favor for my shield.\n    And when engirt with conquest I return\n    (Or never else hies Theseus hitherward),\n    That ye may read my heart while yet at sea,\n    And know indeed that fate hath used me fair,\n    That these your lambs I shepherd and lead home,\n    Lo, I will set upon the central mast\n    The sky-sail white! white to the hollowing breeze,\n    White to that fierce and alien coast, and white\n    To your espial, from the horizon\u2019s brink\n    Unto the moored fulfilment of your joy.\n    Watch: you that keep your faith and love in me.\u2019\n\n    And they believed and watched, albeit with dread,\n    Steadfastly without plaint, to soothe the king,\n    Who, taciturn and close-engarmented,\n    From his nocturnal towered station leaned\n    Pining against the unresponsive tide.\n    And thro\u2019 his brain, with hum processional,\n    Wheeled memories of Theseus, deeds of Theseus,\n    The race he won of yore, the song he sang;\n    His truth, his eloquence, his April moods,\n    And all his championship of trodden tribes,\n    Since first he lit on Athens, like a star.\n\n    For \u00c6geus, to the low-voiced Meta wed,\n    Thereafter to Rhexenor\u2019s daughter spouse,\n    Childless, and by his brethren\u2019s guile deposed,\n    Led by a last mysterious oracle,\n    Once, exiled, to Tr\u0153zene wandered down;\n    And there, accorded Aphrodite\u2019s grace,\n    To whom the sacrificial smoke he raised,\n    Atonement and conciliation sweet,\n    Begot to Greece her hero; and straightway\n    Bereav\u00e8d \u00c6thra, of old Pelops\u2019 race\n    Forsook, by destined rumor summoned home.\n    But with the auroral kiss of parting, he\n    In the spring sunshine, on the mellow shore\n    Laid his huge blade beneath a caverned rock,\n    And both the jewelled sandals from his feet,\n    With lofty exhortation: \u2018Bid my son,\n    When he, with strength inherited of mine\n    Can heave this boulder, take the sword and shoon,\n    And claim in Athens me his sire. Farewell!\u2019\n    And \u00c6thra bided, dreaming, at the court,\n    Till from her knee laughed back her own blue eyes.\n\n    And the young boy, loosed in sun-dappled groves,\n    Defiant, chased the droning harvest-fly,\n    Or nicked pomegranates with his ruddy thumb\n    Ripe from the bough; nor would his mother chide,\n    But with strange awe hang o\u2019er him worshipping,\n    As one that turns with passionate-praying lips\n    East to the Delian shrine he shall not see:\n    Save once, when he a turtle-pigeon pent\n    In wicker-work of some swart soldier\u2019s skill,\n    With lisping promise aye to nourish it;\n    And stroked his plaining bird for one long day,\n    But on the morrow ceased his fostering,\n    And left his captive caged, the tiny gourd\n    Of water unreplenished. Then the child\n    Bewailed his darling, lying stiff and mute;\n    And \u00c6thra held his innocent hand in hers\n    With solemn lessoning; for she foresaw\n    Remorse, and irremediable ache,\n    And ruin, following him whose manhood swerves\n    To the eased byways of forgetfulness.\n    She, his hot brows caressing, so besought\n    The weeping prince: \u2018If thou, O little son!\n    Wilt lay hereafter duties on thyself,\n    Stand mindful of them; all thy vows observe.\n    Be a trust broken but a small, small thing,\n    Its possible shadow slaves this world in woe.\u2019\n    And ere the dial veered, did \u00c6thra speak\n    His vanished father\u2019s name and gave the charge,\n    And led him to the rock, and in him fired\n    The aspirations of his godlike race.\n\n    Lost quite to former pastimes, thenceforth he\n    Brooded on her sweet chronicle; and oft\n    Burst thro\u2019 arcades and vaporous aisles of dawn,\n    And stood, flushed in the rubious dimpling light,\n    Straining his thews at sunrise, to cajole\n    The granite treasurer of those tokens twain:\n    With his young heel intrenched in faithless sand,\n    His cloud of yellow hair hanging before,\n    Tugged at the flint; or pressed his forward knee\n    With obdurate sieges, into its hard side;\n    Anon, with restful rosy stretch of limb,\n    Plunged to the onset, hound-like, on all fours,\n    Beating a moated way about that place\n    Where the grim guardian held a fix\u00e8d foot;\n    And ever, noon on noon, with petulant tears,\n    Stole back, o\u2019ervanquished, to his quiet nooks.\n    There would he woo his mother\u2019s frequent tale,\n    And urge her gentle prophecy, that he\n    The kinsman of great Herakles, should too\n    Rise, mighty, and o\u2019er earth\u2019s fell odds prevail.\n    Wherefore, at waking-time, he plucked up heart\n    To wrestle with the pitiless rock anew,\n    Season on season, patient. And behold,\n    When the tenth summer\u2019s delicate keen dews\n    Died from his shoreward path, at last befell\n    One sure petrean tremor, one weird shock\n    At his tense vigor; and ere twilight failed,\n    Clean to the sea\u2019s verge rolled that doughty bulk!\n    And Theseus, in his full inheritance,\n    In the superb meridian of his youth,\n    Sandalled, the great hilt hard against his breast,\n    Climbed to his mother\u2019s bower. \u00c6thra laid\n    Her lips to his warm cygnet neck, and swooned,\n    Thereby apprised the destined hour had come,\n    And having sped her boy upon his quest,\n    Drooped, like a sun-void lily, and so died.\n\n    Then radiant Theseus, journeying overland,\n    All robber-plagues infesting those still glens\n    Physicianed, and redeemed all realms distressed.\n    Ph\u00e6a, prodigious Crommyonian shape,\n    Apt Cercyon of Arcadia, he slew;\n    And of his dominant valor overcame\n    The smith-god\u2019s son, who with the mortal mace\n    Beleaguered travellers in Epidaur;\n    Unburied martyrs fitly to avenge,\n    He harsh Procrustes bedded; limb from limb\n    Rent the Pine-bender on recoiling boughs;\n    And him that thrust the lavers of his feet\n    Headlong in chasms, Theseus likewise served\n    By dint of hospitable precedent;\n    Wide Marathonia\u2019s lordly bull he led,\n    Engarlanded with hyacinth and rose,\n    To the knife\u2019s edge at bland Apollo\u2019s shrine;\n    Last, guided to a grove sabbatical,\n    Knelt to the chanting white Phytalid\u00e6,\n    And in their midst was chrismed, and purified\n    From all the bloodshed of his troublous path.\n\n    On to the gate of Athens Theseus strode,\n    Docile to \u00c6thra\u2019s warning, that unnamed,\n    And with strict privacy, he should seek his sire;\n    For fifty jealous sons of Pallas held\n    The city\u2019s sovereignty; and overruled\n    Their father\u2019s childless brother, \u00c6geus old:\n    The agile, able, proud Pallantid\u00e6,\n    Whose wrath would rise against the tardy heir,\n    Tumultuous, and encompass Greece in war.\n    Therefore, unheralded, with wary step,\n    Chancing upon an open banquet-hall,\n    Preceded of his fame, came brave-arrayed\n    The stranger hero, but erewhile a boy;\n    And straight, along the heaped board glancing down,\n    Evil Medea, on her harmful track\n    From Corinth unto Colchis, intercepted.\n\n    This was Medea of the Fleecemen, late\n    Her tender brother\u2019s slayer, whose vile spells\n    Had promised \u00c6geus princes of his blood.\n    Stole from him, at the beck of that mock moon,\n    Honor, the flood august of all his life:\n    For he, distrustful of the oracles,\n    Inasmuch as Tr\u0153zene flowered no hope,\n    Now in the season of his utmost need,\n    Subservient to the sorceress and her whims,\n    Blasphemed, in slackened faith, and clave to her;\n    And strangling conscience, made his thraldom fine\n    With golden incident and public pomp,\n    Holding by night most sumptuous festival,\n    Feasting beside her, restless and unthroned.\n    Now Theseus knew that wily woman\u2019s face,\n    Who, reading her arraignment in his eyes,\n    Shrank close to \u00c6geus, voluble with fear,\n    And urged within his palm a carven bowl,\n    That he should bid the young wayfarer drain\n    Health to Medea! in one envenomed draught:\n    Which Theseus heard, alert, past harp and bell,\n    Past intervening hubbub of rich mirth,\n    And sprang to cower the temptress with a word.\n    But at the instant, sprang her minions too,\n    And riot and upbraidings dire began,\n    Conflict, and scorn, and drunken challenging.\n    Then leaped quicksilvered Theseus thro\u2019 the fray,\n    With love\u2019s suspicion kindling in his veins,\n    And gained that space before the startled host\n    Whence from her couch Medea shrieked away:\n    Limned beautiful and clear from front to feet,\n    Shod with the shoon \u00c6gean; and his arm\n    Sabred with the one sword that \u00c6geus knew!\n    Who, blanching \u2019neath roused memory\u2019s ebb and flow,\n    Among the wrangling merry-makers all,\n    Clarioned \u2018My own!\u2019 and strained him to his breast.\n\n    Theseus, in those fresh days of his return,\n    Tarried not idle; but with warlike haste\n    Bore down on the usurping lords of state,\n    Juniors and kin of his discrown\u00e8d sire;\n    Them, ere the morrow dwindled, he beheld\n    Scattered as chaff from off the threshing-floor,\n    And \u00c6geus, o\u2019er the wreckage of their reign\n    Exalted, with calm brows indiademed.\n    Then was the sacred and sequestered prime\n    Of liberation, benison, and peace;\n    When the round heaven, in summer\u2019s ministrance\n    Rolled on its choral axle; till, at end\n    Like to a cloudlet that assails the blue,\n    Comely and yet with rains ingerminate,\n    Minos the Cretan unto Athens sent\n    His nimble princeling. In a fortnight\u2019s span,\n    The island lad, competing in the games,\n    Won fairly; whereupon the envious mob\n    Made rude revolt, and took upon itself\n    The barbarous dishonor of his death.\n    And vengeful Minos sailed, and razed the town,\n    Laying the bitter forfeit in this wise:\n    \u2018Athens shall yearly proffer unto me\n    Her virgin tribute of patrician seed,\n    Seven youths, and maidens seven, as by lot,\n    Wherewith to feed the ravenous Minotaur.\u2019\n    Athens the peerless bowed her ashen head.\n\n    So dragged the dreadful twelvemonth thro\u2019 the realm,\n    Aye of its dearest blood depopulate,\n    And losing grasp on life. The fourth weak year,\n    Youngest of all departed, full thirteen\n    Faltered aboard the deck calamitous;\n    And with them Theseus, best-belov\u00e8d Theseus,\n    The king\u2019s sole-born, whom last the doom befell.\n    But as no sister-galley e\u2019er set out\n    To dolorous ports predestined, in due lapse\n    Returning with her steersman, went this ship,\n    Not hopeless; now her bravest made his vaunt\n    To thread the maze D\u00e6dalian, and destroy\n    The pampered monster, holding harm at bay\n    From the frail flock of Athens; and to flash\n    Homeward, to chime of oar-compell\u00e8d waves,\n    Signalling with the white exultant sail!\n    \u2018So that I live, this thing,\u2019 he said, \u2018is sworn:\n    Watch! you that keep your faith and love in me.\u2019\n\n    Such tales of Theseus\u2019 youth his father\u2019s mind\n    Rehearsed, while at his vigil in the night,\n    Deep pondering on each noble circumstance,\n    As a man shifteth, thro\u2019 an idle hour,\n    Anon with hand in light, anon in shade,\n    The lustres of his one memorial gem.\n    And oft the king, with a foreboding throe\n    Called, urging eld\u2019s unserviceable sight:\n    \u2018Shines the white sail yet?\u2019 Spake the murmurous ring:\n    \u2018Nay; but fantastic clouds low-wandering on.\u2019\n    Then the fond voice of \u00c6geus, askingly:\n    \u2018Alcamenes! yield my sad heart a song.\u2019\n\n    Rose kind Alcamenes, who from his birth\n    The king had cherished, from a mossy seat,\n    The anxious faces turned his happy way;\n    And with his pose quiescent, lyre in arm,\n    Breathed forth a simple ditty, sweet-sustained\n    Against the diapason of the sea.\n\n    \u2018Thy voice is like the moon, revealed by stealthy paces,\n    Thy silver-margined voice like the ample moon and free:\n    Ah, beautiful! ah, mighty! the stars fall on their faces,\n    The warring world is silent, for love and awe of thee.\n\n    \u2018My soul is but a sailor, to whom thy wonder-singing\n    Is anchorage, and haven, and unimagined day!\n    And who, in angry ocean, to thine enchantment clinging,\n    Forgets the helm for rapture, and drifts to doom away.\u2019\n\n    But the king hid his brow in both wan hands,\n    Sighing: \u2018That song at her beguiling feet,\n    Out of my brief enslavement, did I make\n    The year that Theseus on our revels stole.\n    It sears me like a brand with fires o\u2019erpast:\n    Be silent, my Alcamenes! spare it me.\n    Thou rather, Theron, sing! Engird my pain\n    With some thrice-gallant catch, some madrigal\n    That sets the dull blood dancing.\u2019 Theron smiled,\n    Masking suspense (for he was Theseus\u2019 friend),\n    Half-prone beneath his damask cloak, with chin\n    Hand-propped; and fixed his dark eyes on the king,\n    In trolling of an agitated lay.\n\n    \u2018I drowse in the grass, to the crickets\u2019 elfin strings,\n    With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book,\n    At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs,\n    Cydippe\u2019s hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill!\n    Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look,\n    My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill,\n    In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook:\n    Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill!\n    My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings,\n    Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there.\n    See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings\n    Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe\u2019s hand thro\u2019 my hair.\u2019\n\n    Again, with swift uneasy gesturing\n    Turned \u00c6geus, chiding, and protested ere\n    The whipped-up courage of that roundel\u2019s close:\n    \u2018Cease, Theron! this is but an ominous song,\n    A song of retribution.\u2019 For he thought:\n    \u2018So retribution dogs my bruis\u00e8d age;\n    Still, still Medea\u2019s soft and deadly name\n    Stings all the leafy splendor of my life,\n    And daunts the morrow\u2019s bud. And if there be\n    A reckoning I must pay for follies past,\n    Must it be--O not that, not now, not here!\u2019\n    And drawing to his height, he cried: \u2018The sail?\n    Comes the sail from the south?\u2019 They chorused \u2018Naught\n    Save argent flutterings of the shoreward gull.\u2019\n    And \u00c6geus, craving solace, urged once more:\n    \u2018Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul,\n    In numbers honey-clear.\u2019 Now Rhodalus\n    The poet, too, was loyal sentinel;\n    A fiery patriot, wont to domineer\n    The moods of Athens; very potent he,\n    And flexile-throated as the nightingale.\n    With all his fingers knit about his knee,\n    And head against a hoary pillar raised,\n    Dream-locked, upon the lowest sprayey ledge,\n    Riddling the unintelligible space,--\n    Void thrones, and filmy wakes of fugitives,\n    And interstellar agonies of midnight;\n    To him the king\u2019s voice throbbed a second time:\n    \u2018Rhodalus! sing thou what shall heal my soul.\u2019\n    Who, grave with poesy\u2019s most candid mien,\n    Answered the summons softly: \u2018Sire, I cannot.\n    The music of my brothers is amiss,\n    So mine would be. Our strings are jangled, wrested\n    From their discreet and silvern vassalage,\n    Snapped quite with languishment for Theseus\u2019 sake.\n    I cannot sing. But O you holy stars!\n    Stretching to us your tendrils of high glory;\n    Tacit compellers of our wayward spirits;\n    You dom\u00e8d guardians of this tear-bound earth,\n    You rich-wrought visions, charioted thousands\n    Hale rank on rank, thro\u2019 warless cities riding!\n    Young semispheric moon, O burning Seven,\n    Hesper and Phosphor! blue hour-measuring orbs\n    That elsewhere look on Theseus! Speed his pinnace,\n    Bide thro\u2019 the watches with us; shine; exhale not!\u2019\n    And the dense quiet bound them.\n\n                                        Cautiously,\n    In his far corner, one behind the king\n    At the dumb bursting-point of that weird hush,\n    With nervous finger twitched his neighbor\u2019s sleeve,\n    And strove to whisper him with palsied tongue,\n    And straight relaxed, and smiled; but new-convinced\n    Towards twilight\u2019s gracious advent, crept in awe\n    With arm extended, to his fellow\u2019s side;\n    And the two thrilled alike, immovable,\n    Each palm down-roofed above the frantic eye,\n    Froze at their posts: which eager Theron marked,\n    Piloting his keen sight across the main,\n    And smote his bosom with quick-smothered groan,\n    And, breathless, gazed and gazed. By twos and threes\n    The apprehensive company dropped aghast\n    Out on the reeling ragged precipice\n    Sparkled and shelled with the oncoming tide:\n    Till \u00c6geus, slow-divining dupe of hope,\n    Awoke, and knelt him down against his throne,\n    Faint with thanksgiving. And the moments creaked\n    In gyral passage, like Ixion\u2019s wheel,\n    Spoke on accurs\u00e8d spoke, portending woe.\n    But he, athwart his lonely pinnacle\n    Called like a ghost from walled eternity:\n    \u2018What of the sail? What cheer?\u2019 Their lips congealed\n    Nothing replied. The cruel hour rolled on.\n    Intolerable arid east-blown wave\n    Vaulting on wave thro\u2019 all her caverns loud,\n    Far upon Oliaros boomed the sea.\n\n    Then bearded Rhodalus, compassionate,\n    Spied leaning o\u2019er the crags the frenzied king,\n    Rending his garment to the paling moon;\n    And yet evasive of those pleading eyes,\n    Knotting his arms against his breast, downcast,\n    Adjured him: \u2018O most reverend, O most dear!\n    The heart of life is rotten; prayer is vain.\n    Stay up thy soul: for lo! the sail is black.\u2019\n    And all the tranc\u00e8d host burst into moan.\n\n    Old \u00c6geus, like a dreamer, muttered \u2018Aye,\u2019\n    Passive; and from his brain the fever fell,\n    And more than Zeus himself, he things unseen\n    Saw, and to unheard choirings lent his ear.\n    Theseus, truth-speaking, vowed the sky-sail white;\n    The sail was black: therefore was Theseus dead\n    In untriumphant state; his comrades, dead;\n    Dead, the emprise of Greece; her dynasty\n    Ungendered, dead; the very gods were dead!\n    And he alive, alive? a wind-worn leaf\n    All winter gibbeted upon that bough\n    Whence the last fruit was reft? O mockery!\n    Inert, of his own broken heart impelled,\n    From the steep, solitary trysting-place,\n    King \u00c6geus, like a stone, dropped in the sea.\n\n    A wraith of smoke, fast-driven against a flame,\n    Yon by the crimsoning east the dark ship moved,\n    Her herald noises strangely borne ashore:\n    \u2018Joy, joy!\u2019 and interlinked: \u2018O joy, O joy,\n    Athens our mother! joy to all thy gates!\u2019\n    And thunderous firm acclaim of minstrelsy,\n    Laughter, and antheming, and salvos wild\n    Outran the racing prow. But mute they lay,\n    The blinded watchers, spent beyond desire,\n    Wounded beyond this wonder\u2019s balsaming.\n\n    Yet ever, thro\u2019 the trembling lovely light,\n    Known voice on voice re-echoed, face on face\n    Uprose in resurrection. They were safe,\n    And Athens, hark! from her long thraldom free!\n    And Theseus, victor, sang and sailed with them,\n    The pale unsistered Ph\u00e6dra for his bride,\n    For whom was constant Ariadne cast\n    On Naxos, where a god did comfort her.\n    Theseus! who when his bark the shallows grazed,\n    Leaped in the gentle waves for boyish glee,\n    Gained the thronged highway, crossed it at a bound,\n    Scaling the cliffs; and stood among them there,\n    Clausus, and his dear Theron, and the rest,\n    Nodding upon the clamorous crowd below;\n    But they, as soon, had turned them blunt away,\n    In hot resentment of that false one. He,\n    O\u2019erbrimming with frank welcomes, in dismay,\n    Stricken with sight of unresponsive hands,\n    Scenting disaster, reining up his tongue,\n    Asked sharply for the king.\n\n                                He understood\n    After mad struggle and bewilderment,\n    And gloomy gazing on the absent deeps.\n    Down on the penitential rock he sank,\n    All his fair body palpitant with shame,\n    Syllabing agony: \u2018\u00c6geus, \u00c6geus! ah,\n    Glory of Hellas! dead for trust in me.\n    Life-giver, irrecoverable friend,\n    My father! ah, ah, loving father mine,\n    Ah, dear my father!... I forgot the sail.\u2019\n\n    And the great morn burst. On a hundred hills\n    The marigold unbarred her casement bright.\n\n\n\n\n          LEGENDS\n\n\n\n\n          TARPEIA.\n\n\n    WOE: lightly to part with one\u2019s soul as the sea with its foam!\n    Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!\n\n    Lo, now it was night, with the moon looking chill as she went:\n    It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent.\n\n    The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird;\n    She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.\n\n    Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light;\n    All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.\n\n    The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee;\n    The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:\n\n    Exquisite artifice, whorls of barbaric design,\n    Frost\u2019s fix\u00e8d mimicry; orbic imaginings fine\n\n    In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them,\n    The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.\n\n    And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye.\n    \u2018I had never such trinkets!\u2019 she sighed,--like a lute was her sigh.\n\n    \u2018Were they mine at the plea, were they mine for the token, all told,\n    Now the citadel sleeps, now my father the keeper is old,\n\n    \u2018If I go by the way that I know, and thou followest hard,\n    If yet at the touch of Tarpeia the gates be unbarred?\u2019\n\n    The chief trembled sharply for joy, then drew rein on his soul:\n    \u2018Of all this arm beareth I swear I will cede thee the whole.\u2019\n\n    And up from the nooks of the camp, with hoarse plaudit outdealt,\n    The bearded Sabini glanced hotly, and vowed as they knelt,\n\n    Bare-stretching the wrists that bore also the glowing great boon:\n    \u2018Yea! surely as over us shineth the lurid low moon,\n\n    \u2018Not alone of our lord, but of each of us take what he hath!\n    Too poor is the guerdon, if thou wilt but show us the path.\u2019\n\n    Her nostril upraised, like a fawn\u2019s on the arrowy air,\n    She sped; in a serpentine gleam to the precipice stair,\n\n    They climbed in her traces, they closed on their evil swift star:\n    She bent to the latches, and swung the huge portal ajar.\n\n    Repulsed where they passed her, half-tearful for wounded belief,\n    \u2018The bracelets!\u2019 she pleaded. Then faced her the leonine chief,\n    And answered her: \u2018Even as I promised, maid-merchant, I do.\u2019\n    Down from his dark shoulder the baubles he sullenly drew.\n\n    \u2018This left arm shall nothing begrudge thee. Accept. Find it sweet.\n    Give, too, O my brothers!\u2019 The jewels he flung at her feet,\n\n    The jewels hard, heavy; she stooped to them, flushing with dread,\n    But the shield he flung after: it clanged on her beautiful head.\n\n    Like the Apennine bells when the villagers\u2019 warnings begin,\n    Athwart the first lull broke the ominous din upon din;\n\n    With a \u2018Hail, benefactress!\u2019 upon her they heaped in their zeal\n    Death: agate and iron; death: chrysoprase, beryl and steel.\n\n    \u2019Neath the outcry of scorn, \u2019neath the sinewy tension and hurl,\n    The moaning died slowly, and still they massed over the girl\n    A mountain of shields! and the gemmy bright tangle in links,\n    A torrent-like gush, pouring out on the grass from the chinks,\n\n    Pyramidal gold! the sumptuous monument won\n    By the deed they had loved her for, doing, and loathed her for, done.\n\n    Such was the wage that they paid her, such the acclaim:\n    All Rome was aroused with the thunder that buried her shame.\n\n    On surged the Sabini to battle. O you that aspire!\n    Tarpeia the traitor had fill of her woman\u2019s desire.\n\n    Woe: lightly to part with one\u2019s soul as the sea with its foam!\n    Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!\n\n\n\n\n          THE CALIPH AND THE BEGGAR.\n\n\n          I.\n\n    SCORNER of the pleading faces,\n    In the first year of his reign,\n    From the lean crowd and its traces\n\n    Down the open orchard-lane\n    Walked young Mahmoud in his glory,\n    In his pomp and his disdain\n\n    And beyond all oratory,\n    Music\u2019s sweetness, ocean\u2019s might,\n    Fell a voice from branches hoary:\n\n    \u2018He whose heart is at life\u2019s height,\n    Who has wisdom, love, and riches,\n    Islam\u2019s greatest, dies this night.\u2019\n\n    And he crossed the rampart ditches\n    Blinded, and confused, and slow;\n    High in palaced nooks and niches\n\n    Clanged his fathers\u2019 shields a-row;\n    And their turrets triple-jointed\n    Shook with tempests of his woe.\n\n    Long past midnight, disanointed,\n    Prone upon his breast he lay,\n    Warring on that hour appointed:\n\n    But behold! at break of day,--\n    As if heaven itself had spoken,--\n    Blown across the bannered bay,\n\n    Over mart and mosque outbroken,\n    Came the silver-solemn chime\n    For some parted spirit\u2019s token!\n\n    Mahmoud, with free breath sublime,\n    Summoned one whose snow-locks heaving\n    Made the vision of hoar Time;\n\n    And the red tides of thanksgiving\n    On his lifted brow, he said:\n    \u2018In my city of the living,\n\n    Which, proclaimed of bells, is dead?\u2019\n    And the gray beard answered: \u2018Master,\n    One who yesternight for bread\n\n    At thy gateway\u2019s bronze pilaster\n    Begged in vain: blind Selim, he,\n    Victim of the old disaster.\u2019\n\n    And the vassal suddenly\n    Looked on his hard lord with wonder,\n    For those tears were strange to see.\n\n\n          II.\n\n    Yet again, where boughs asunder\n    Held the wavy orchard-tent,\n    Sun-empurpled clusters under\n\n    In changed mood the Caliph went;\n    And anew heard sounds upgather,\n    (Chidings with caressings blent,\n\n    As the voice once of his father):\n    \u2018Haughty heart! not thou wert wise,\n    Rich, belov\u00e8d; Selim, rather,\n\n    \u2018Islam\u2019s prince in Allah\u2019s eyes!\n    Even the meek, in his great station,\n    Freehold had of Paradise.\u2019\n\n\n          III.\n\n    When the plague-wind\u2019s desolation\n    Pierced Bassora\u2019s burning wall,\n    Circled with a kneeling nation\n\n    Whom his mercies held in thrall,\n    Died the Caliph, whispering tender\n    Counsel to his liegemen tall:\n\n    \u2018One last service, children! render\n    Me, whose pride the Lord forgave:\n    Not by our supreme Defender,\n\n    \u2018Not beside the holy wave,\n    Not in places where my race is\n    Lay me! but in Selim\u2019s grave.\u2019\n\n\n\n\n          THE RISE OF THE TIDE.\n\n\n    A FISHERMAN gray, one night of yore,\n    His nets upgathered, plied the oar,\n    Right merrily heading for a haven,\n    While summer winds blew blithe before.\n\n    He sat beneath his pennon white;\n    His arms were brown, his eye was bright;\n    Twice twenty years his breast had carried\n    A ribbon from Lepanto\u2019s fight.\n\n    A cove he spied at sunset\u2019s edge,\n    With pleasant trees and margin-sedge;\n    And barefoot went by stakes down-driven\n    Thro\u2019 shallows wading from the ledge,\n\n    The boat drawn after; but behold!\n    A check fell on his venture bold:\n    He stood imprisoned, vainly leading\n    The ropes in whitening fingers old.\n\n    Within that black and marshy sound\n    His weight had sunken; he was bound\n    Knee-deep! and as he beat and struggled,\n    The mocking ripples danced around.\n\n    Long since the wood-thrush ceased her song;\n    The summer wind grew fierce and strong;\n    The shuddering moon went into hiding;\n    Down came the storm to wreak him wrong.\n\n    Against the prow he leaned his chin,\n    Thinking of all his strength had been;\n    Then turned, and laughed with courage steady:\n    \u2018O ho! what straits we twain are in!\u2019\n\n    And strove anew, unterrified,\n    But lastly, wearied wholly, cried\n    For succor, since his laden wherry\n    Rocked ever on the coming tide.\n\n    *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \u2018I hear a cry of anguish sore!\u2019\n    But straight his love had barred the door:\n    \u2018Bide here; the night bodes naught but danger.\u2019\n    Loud beat the waves along the shore.\n\n    A bedded child made soft behest:\n    \u2018So loud the voice I cannot rest.\u2019\n    \u2018It is the rain, dear, in the garden.\u2019\n    The cruel water binds his breast.\n\n    \u2018A lamp, a lamp! some traveller\u2019s lost!\u2019\n    But thro\u2019 the tavern roared the host:\n    \u2018Nay, only thunder rude and heavy.\u2019\n    Close to his lips the foam is tossed.\n\n    \u2018O listen well, my liege and king!\n    Hark from gay halls this grievous thing!\u2019\n    \u2018Strange how the wild wind drowns our music!\u2019\n    About his head the eddies swing.\n\n    At stroke of three the abbot meek\n    Moved out among his flock to speak\n    This word, with tears of doubt and wonder:\n    \u2018I had a dream; come forth and seek.\u2019\n\n    With torch and flagon, forth they sped:\n    The fisher glared from the harbor-bed!\n    The tide, from his white hair down-fallen,\n    All kindly ebbed, now he was dead.\n\n    Lepanto\u2019s star shone fast and good;\n    The sea-kelp wrapped him like a hood;\n    His arms were stretched in woe to heaven;\n    The boat had drifted: so he stood.\n\n    The Unavenged he seemed to be!\n    Then fell each monk upon his knee:\n    \u2018Lord Christ!\u2019 the abbot sang, awe-stricken:\n    \u2018Rest my old rival\u2019s soul!\u2019 sang he.\n\n\n\n\n          CHALUZ CASTLE.\n\n\n    THERE sped, at hint of treasure\n    Dug from the garden-mould,\n    Word to the doughty vassal:\n    \u2018Thy sovereign claims the gold!\u2019\n    \u2018Nay, Richard, come and wrest it!\u2019\n    Said Vidomar the bold.\n\n    Uprose the Lionhearted,\n    He locked his armor on:\n    And over seas that morrow\n    Around his gonfalon,\n    The crash and hiss of battle\n    Blazed up, and mocked the sun.\n\n    King Richard led his bowmen\n    By Chaluz dark and high;\n    Like rain and rack they followed\n    His flashing storm-blue eye:\n    Forth peered Bertrand de Gourdon\n    From the turret stair thereby.\n\n    Thro\u2019 morris-pikes and halberds\n    The king rode out and in,\n    His horse in gaudy trappings,\n    His sabre drawn and thin:\n    Down knelt Bertrand de Gourdon\n    His strongbow at his chin.\n\n    O shrill that arrow quivered!\n    And fierce and awful broke\n    Acclaim in billowy thunder\n    From all the foreign folk,\n    At mighty Richard fallen\n    Beneath a foreign oak!\n\n    Then leaped his English barons,\n    Converging from afar,\n    And loosed the flood of slaughter\n    To the gates of Vidomar;\n    And seized Bertrand de Gourdon,\n    As clouds enmesh a star.\n\n    They brought the bright-cheeked archer\n    Who scoffed not, neither feared,\n    To the tent ringed in with faces\n    That menaced in their beard;\n    But the king\u2019s face lay before him\n    In the lamplight semisphered.\n\n    The king\u2019s self, stern and pallid\n    Gazed on the lad that day,\n    And as if dreams were on him\n    Besought him gently: \u2018Say,\n    Bertrand de Gourdon! wherefore\n    Thou tak\u2019st my life away?\u2019\n\n    \u2018To venge my martyr-father,\n    My foster-brethren three:\n    In the name of thy dead foemen\n    This thing I did to thee!\u2019\n    And Richard perished, sighing:\n    \u2018Forgive him. Set him free!\u2019\n\n    Alas for that late loving\n    By seneschals betrayed!\n    While yet upon his lashes\n    The holy tear delayed,\n    They bound Bertrand de Gourdon,\n    They slew him in the glade.\n\n    Alas for noble spirits\n    Whom fates perverse befall!\n    Whence David in his beauty\n    Gave healing unto Saul,\n    The jeering wind beats ever\n    On Chaluz castle wall.\n\n\n\n\n          THE WOOING PINE.\n\n\n    THERE was a lady, starshine in her look,\n    Of lineage fierce, yet tremulous and kind\n    As the field-gossamer, that down the wind\n    Floats gleamingly from some enthistled nook;\n    And wayward as her beauty was her mind\n    That evermore bright errant journeys took.\n\n    Her father\u2019s houndish lords she moved among,\n    From feud and uproar dewily distraught;\n    Winnowed her harp of its least pain; and brought\n    Delight\u2019s full freshet to a beggar\u2019s tongue,\n    Or spun amid her maids with chapel-thought\n    That on a crystal pivot burned and swung.\n\n    But night on night, an exile from sleek rest,\n    She nestled warm before her hearth-fire low,\n    To watch its little wind-born planets go\n    Orbing; and from the martyr-oak\u2019s charred breast,\n    In spirit-blue flame, in quintuple wild glow,\n    The tossing leaves prolong their summer zest.\n\n    And ailingly, she needs must often sigh,\n    Perplex\u00e8d out of her rich wonted glee,\n    Whereof some unseen warder kept the key,\n    And quell the dark defiance of her eye\n    In patience, as a torch dips in the sea.\n    And so, in brooding, went the white days by.\n\n    Unto the horsemen brave in war\u2019s array\n    She waved no token from her latticed house,\n    Nor yet of princelings bare upon her brows\n    Love\u2019s salutation; but from such as they\n    Turned, as a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs,\n    And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away\n\n    Her seal\u00e8d sense beheld no man, nor heard,\n    Nor lent its troth to any mortal bond,\n    But lived heart-full of vital light beyond,\n    And with miraculous tides of being stirred,\n    Lingering tho\u2019 eager, till the forest fond\n    Winged to its own pure peace this homing bird.\n\n    For, sad with rains of unrevealed desire,\n    And heavy with predestined glory\u2019s beam,\n    She to the water-girdled wood\u2019s extreme\n    Stole from her suitors\u2019 pleas, her father\u2019s ire,\n    Far from their brambly ways to sit and dream,\n    And make sweet plaint, in daylight\u2019s dying fire;\n\n    When, one with lilt of her own veins, there rose\n    Across remote and jasmine-pillared space,\n    A voice of so persuasive, piteous grace\n    That all her glob\u00e8d sorrow did unclose\n    To fragrant helpfulness in that still place,\n    And sought, in tears, the breather of such woes.\n\n    And peering, of the level-shafted sun\n    Evasive, listening from a mossy knoll,\n    To kindling quiet sank her gentle soul,\n    In awe at some high venture to be done,\n    As when outpeals from Fame\u2019s coercive pole,\n    Too soon, on ears too weak, her clarion.\n\n    Burst in the golden air a wide and deep\n    Torrent of harmony, that with clang and shock\n    Might wreck a pinnace on an Afric rock,\n    And on the ruin foamily o\u2019erheap\n    Bright reparation: \u2019twas a strength to mock\n    Itself with swoons, and idle sobs, and sleep.\n\n    A splendor-hoary pine, of kingliest cheer,\n    Enrooted \u2019neath her thrilling footfall, stood;\n    Suffused with youth and gracious hardihood,\n    Sown of the wind from heaven\u2019s memorial sphere,\n    With the red might of centuries in his blood,\n    Unscarred and straight against the battling year,\n\n    From whose great heart those noble accents flowed,\n    And from the melancholy arms outspread\n    Whereon the aching winter long had snowed:\n    \u2018Come, sister! spouse! whom Love hath strangely led\n    From bondage, come!\u2019 And her most bless\u00e8d head\n    She laid upon his breast as her abode.\n\n    O wonderful to hearing, touch, and gaze!\n    This was of soul\u2019s unrest and spirit\u2019s scar\n    Solving and healing; this the late full star\n    Superillumining the hither ways,\n    And the old blind allegiance set ajar\n    Like a dark door, against its flooded rays.\n\n    All intertangled fell their dusky hair\n    In tender twilight\u2019s bowery recess;\n    And that fair bride of her heart-heaviness\n    Was disenthralled in love\u2019s Lethean air,\n    Where orchids hung upon the wind\u2019s caress,\n    And the first tawny lily made her lair.\n\n    Dear minions served them in the covert green:\n    The squirrel coy, the beetle in his mail,\n    The moth, the bee, the throbbing nightingale,\n    And the gaunt wolf, their vassal; to them e\u2019en\n    The widowed serpent, on her vengeful trail,\n    Upcast an iridescent eye serene.\n\n    The last tired envoy from the realm bereaved\n    Blew at the drawbridge, riding castlewards;\n    The fisher-folk along the beachen shards\n    Pierced, calling, the cool thickets silvern leaved;\n    And grandams meagre, and road-roaming bards\n    Shared her sad theme, for whom men vainly grieved.\n\n    But lad and lass, with parted mouth a-bloom,\n    Who strayed thereby in April\u2019s misty prime,\n    A vision freshening to the after-time\n    Caught thro\u2019 the rifts of uninvaded gloom,--\n    A maiden, honey-lipped as Tuscan rhyme,\n    And her young hunter, with his sombre plume.\n\n    For dynasties tho\u2019 passing-bells be tolled,\n    Theirs is the midmost ecstasy of June,\n    Her music, her imperishable moon;\n    While Time, that elsewhere is so rough and cold,\n    Like a soft child, flower-plucking all forenoon,\n    Gathers the ages from this garden old.\n\n    Calm housemates with them in their forest lone\n    Do Freedom, Innocence and Joy, abide:\n    And aye as one who into Heaven hath died\n    Thro\u2019 mortal aisleways of melodious moan,\n    The boatman sees, at dusk, from Arno\u2019s tide,\n    The Everlasting Lover with his own!\n\n\n\n\n          THE SERPENT\u2019S CROWN.\n\n\n    SAID he:\n\n    \u2018O diligent rover! browned under many a heaven,\n    Treasure and trophy you carry, spoils from the east and the west;\n    Yet I fear that you passed it over, the chief clime out of the seven,\n    My wonder-land and my island, where the chance of a knight is best.\n\n    \u2018There from the black mid-forest, past hemlock guards in waiting\n    (Heard you not of the legend?), when the wide sun winks at noon,\n    On the rock-ways sharpest, hoarest, warily undulating,\n    A star-dappled serpent hurries, with the odorous grace of June.\n\n    \u2018Over her human forehead, reared among glens abysmal,\n    Glitters a crown gold-gossamer; only a moment\u2019s arc\n    Crosses the creature torrid, flexile, palpitant, prismal,\n    Then breaks on the earth, a terror spiralling into the dark.\n\n    \u2018Every to-day and to-morrow, as the foreign old belfries tremble\n    With the hammer-hard heels of noon, just that instant, nor more nor less,\n    In the blue witch-reptile\u2019s furrow her shape stands to dissemble,\n    And the barbed tongue tempts and entices, and the fire-eyes acquiesce.\n\n    \u2018Once she was a wily woman, whose glory the gods have finished,\n    Whose handicraft still is ruin, whose glee is to snare and kill,\n    Defier of spearman and bowman, her empery undiminished;\n    But whoso can overcome her, shall bend the world to his will!\n\n    \u2018Therefore the knights importune to spur thro\u2019 the jungles fruity,\n    Many a lad and a hunter and a dreamer there ventureth;\n    For the king tends power and fortune to the slayer of that demon-beauty,\n    And awards him her crown thrice-charm\u00e8d whose captor can outwit Death,\n\n    \u2018Aye, ride above storm and censure, and lord it o\u2019er time and distance,\n    In the maddening-sweet assurance of bliss like a rose-rain shed,\n    All for a wood-path venture, a gallant alert resistance,\n    And a stroke of the steel in circle about that exquisite head!\n\n    \u2018A task for your young drilled muscle!\u2019\n                              But the other, in soft derision\n\n    Answered him:\n\n    \u2018Oh, I had once some wild schemes under my hat:\n    Some thrill for this same snake-tussle, and the heirdom of life Elysian,\n    Long peace, long loving, long praises: but I\u2019ve kindled\n         and cooled on that!\n\n    \u2018Ten years have I been a ranger, I have hewn all dread to the centre;\n    I have learned to sift out values; my soul is at rest and free.\n    If that be your boon for danger, on a dull safe youth to enter,\n    Tho\u2019 some may covet the guerdon, \u2019tis a poor enough thing to me.\n\n    \u2018I choose, might I come and return so, to a cause, a friend and a foeman\n    Staunch, to endure for the rest but as a moth, or a marigold!\n    Let the philosophers yearn so, the king bribe squire and yeoman!\n    Not for my lease immortal the serpent shall be cajoled.\n\n    \u2018To strike her down avenges her slain; but is evil ended?\n    The fashion dies; the function abides, and has fresher scope.\n    What is to be won? He cringes who would seize, were the choice extended,\n    For the risk elsewhere of living, here only survival\u2019s hope!\n\n    \u2018I would keep my lot mine purely, cast in with men\u2019s forever;\n    Their transient tempest sooner than these Sybaritic calms;\n    Tho\u2019 against the cobra, surely, I would pit my soul\u2019s endeavor,\n    Her crown and its lonely meaning I would scorn to take in alms.\n\n    \u2018Rather than ease unshaken, durance that sloth unhallows,\n    Once and for all, in honor, an end: what\u2019s the forfeit crown\n    If the chance of my short term taken run plump on the axe or the gallows,\n    So one brother\u2019s fetter be loosened, or one tyrant trampled down?\n\n    \u2018Why, see! this diadem\u2019s pleasure a Turk might sigh to inherit,--\n    Heart-beats thrumming; a torpid and solitary cheer;\n    No call to arms, no measure of progress! Well, let him wear it\n    Unquestioned ... I spurned the bauble when I killed your snake\n          last year.\u2019\n\n\n\n\n          MOUSTACHE.\n\n\n    A FRIENDLESS pup that heard the fife\n    Sprang to the column thro\u2019 the clearing,\n    And on to Switzerland and strife\n        Went grenadiering.\n\n    Much he endured, and much he dared\n    The long hot doomsday of the nations:\n    He wore a trooper\u2019s scars; he shared\n        A trooper\u2019s rations;\n\n    Warned pickets, seized the Austrian spies,\n    Bore the despatches; thro\u2019 the forces\n    From fallen riders, prompt and wise,\n        Led back the horses;\n\n    Served round the tents or in the van,\n    Quick-witted, tireless as a treadle:\n    \u2018This private wins,\u2019 said Marshal Lannes,\n        \u2018Ribbon and medal.\u2019\n\n    (\u2018Moustache, a brave French dog,\u2019 it lay\n    Graven on silver, like a scholar\u2019s;\n    \u2018Who lost a leg on Jena day,\n        But saved the colors!\u2019)\n\n    At Saragossa he was slain;\n    They buried him, and fired a volley:\n    End of Moustache. Nay, that were strain\n        Too melancholy.\n\n    His immortality was won,\n    His most of rapture came to bless him,\n    When, plumed and proud, Napoleon\n        Stooped to caress him.\n\n    His Emperor\u2019s hand upon his head!\n    How, since, shall lesser honors suit him?\n    Yet ever, in that army\u2019s stead,\n        Love will salute him.\n\n    And since not every cause enrolls\n    Such little, fond, sagacious henchmen,\n    Write this dog\u2019s moral on your scrolls,\n        Soldiers and Frenchmen!\n\n    As law is law, can be no waste\n    Of faithfulness, of worth and beauty;\n    Lord of all time the slave is placed\n        Who doth his duty.\n\n    No virtue fades to thin romance\n    But Heaven to use eternal moulds it:\n    Mark! Some firm pillar of new France,\n        Moustache upholds it.\n\n\n\n\n          RANIERI.\n\n\n    TO the lute Ranieri played,\n    Once beneath the jasmine shade\n    In a June-bright bower imprisoned,\n    Many a Pisan beauty listened,\n    Velvet-eyed, with head propped under\n    Her gold hair\u2019s uncoifed wonder;\n    Like the rich sun-blooded roses\n    Whom the wind o\u2019ertakes in poses\n    Of some marble-still delight,\n    On the dewy verge of night.\n\n    \u2018Merrily and loud sang he,\n    With the fairest at his knee,\n    Sky-ringed in that garden nest!\n    Who, save sorcerers, had guessed\n    Whither sylph and minstrel came\n    From the awful Archer\u2019s aim?\n    Or that, glossy-pined below,\n    Lay the city in her woe,\n    For her sins, as it was written,\n    Desolate and fever-smitten?\n\n    \u2018Apt Ranieri was, and young,\n    Love\u2019s persuasion on his tongue;\n    And his high-erected glance,\n    Softened into dalliance,\n    Laughed along its haughty level:\n    Foremost in all skill and revel,\n    Steeled against the laws that seemed\n    Monkish figments idly dreamed,\n    Early dipping his wild wing\n    In the pools of rioting,\n    With the moaning world shut out,\n    With the damosels about;\n    Crimson-girdled, in the sun\n    Regnant, as if he were one\n    For whom Death himself was mute;--\n    So he sat, and twanged his lute.\u2019\n    (Placid, in her novice veil,\n    Sister Claudia told the tale.)\n\n    \u2018When, across the air of June,\n    Like a mist half-risen at noon,\n    Or a fragrance barely noted,\n    A Jud\u00e6an Vision floated!\n    Who, midway of music\u2019s burst,\n    Pleadingly, as if athirst,\n    Long athirst, and long unsated,\n    Sighed: \u201cRanieri!\u201d sighed and waited.\n\n    \u2018Ah, the Prodigal that heard\n    Fell to ashes at the word!\n    But with broken murmurings\n    Putting by the wreath\u00e8d strings,--\n    From the safe and craven places,\n    From the fond, bewildered faces,\n    Trembling with the rush of thought,\n    With contrition overwrought,\n    At a royal gesture, down\n    Straight to the dismantled town;\n    Girt with justice, chaste and tender,\n    To all risks himself to render,\n    Of all sorrows rude and froward\n    To be prop and cure henceforward;\n    By no lapse of irksome duty\n    Swerving from the Only Beauty,\n    By no olden lure enticed;--\n    Saint Ranieri followed Christ!\u2019\n    (Said the little nun: \u2018Amen:\n    Christ who calleth, now as then.\u2019)\n\n\n\n\n          SAINT CADOC\u2019S BELL.\n\n\n          I.\n\n    SAILOR! with wonder thou hearest me,\n    Moored where the roots of thine anchors be,\n    Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.\n\n        A bell was I of Pagan lands\n        Forged and welded in might and beauty,\n        But captured by Christian chivalry,\n        And set in a belfry by godly hands,\n        With chrisms and benedictions three,\n        For a fourfold consecrated duty:\n    To summon to pray, to peal for the fray,\n    To measure the hours, to moan for the dead;\n        To moan for the dead, ah me! ah me!\n        Where the wild gold parasites suck and spread,\n        Where the sea-flower rears her dreamy head;\n        In the grots of immortality\n        The cool weird singing mermaids dwell in;\n        In the still city, with its empurpled air\n        Shaken upon the eye from bastions fair\n        Of coral, and pearl, and unbought jasper\u2019s glisten,\n        I toll and wail, I burst and fail, ah, listen!\n        I, the holy bell, the gift of the Lord Llewellyn,\n        Now the keel of a Cornish ship looms over my prison,\n        Call from the underworld in mine old despair.\n\n\n          II.\n\n        They brought me in my virgin fame\n        To the carven minster wonder-high,\n        Close to the glorious sun and sky,\n        With song, and jubilee, and acclaim:\n    The fountains brimming with wine sprayed out on the crowd;\n    In the chapel-porches the viols and harps clanged loud,\n    And the slim maids danced a solemn measure, ever and aye the same,\n    Singing: \u2018Behold, we hang our bell in\n    The freedom of spring, in the golden weather,\n        The gift of the Lord Llewellyn,\n    Redeemed from heathenry and strange shame,\n    The lion-strong bell, for our service at last led hither,\n    Flower-woven, caressed, and in Christ made willing and tame.\u2019\n        But ere the pleased stir of the people had died,\n    Llewellyn, fresh home from the wars, with his soldierly stride\n    Climbed, bearded and splendid in mail, and his only young child\n    Held up from his shoulder in sight of them all; till they cried\n    Peal on peal of delight when the rosy babe turned, and her lip\n        Laid sweetly upon me in benison mild.\n    Yea, sailor! and thou that hearest my voice from thy ship,\n    Thou knowest my sorrow\u2019s beginning, thou knowest, ah me!\n    Whence my tolling and wailing, my breaking and failing, afar\n          in the heart of the sea.\n\n\n          III.\n\n        I served the Lord ten years and a day,\n        In Saint Cadoc\u2019s church by the surging bay;\n        And housed with the gathering webs and must,\n        \u2019Mid whirring of velvety wings outside,\n        In calm and in wind, brooding over the tide,\n        And the bright massed roofs, and the crags\u2019 array,\n        My strong life, innocent and just,\n        Fell of a sudden to ashes and dust,\n    And on my neck hotly the demon laid the bare rod of his sway!\n\n        How it befell, I know not yet,\n        (Sailor, with wonder thou hearest me),\n        Save that a passionate sharp regret,\n        An exile\u2019s longing, o\u2019ermastered not,\n        Seared thought like a pestilential spot,\n        And sent my day-dreams traitorously\n        Back to the place where my life began,\n        To the long blue mornings, blown and wet,\n        To the pyre by the sacred rivulet,\n        And the chanting Cappadocian.\n        No more a Christian bell was I!\n        For all became, which seemed so good,\n        Vile thraldom, in my bitter mood\n        That thrust the old conformance by.\n        Sullen and harsh, to the acolyte\n        I answered of a Sabbath night,\n    And sprang on the organ\u2019s withdrawing peal\n    To shatter its pomp, like a charge of steel.\n        The good monks puzzled and prayed, I trow:\n        But against their Heaven I set my brow.\n\n\n          IV.\n\n        To me, by the ancient, triple-roped,\n        Lone, tortuous stair, whereby I made\n    A tingling silence, a heavy concentric shade,\n    The twelve-years\u2019 child of the Lord Llewellyn groped:\n    With May-wreaths laden, the loving strange child came!\n    And my pulses that throbbed at sight of her, ten years gone,\n    Chilled and recoiled at her delicate finger-touch, guessing\n    Along my brazen-wrought margin, the laud and the blessing\n    Traced, thro\u2019 the vine, thro\u2019 the tangle of star and of sun,\n    By her dead father\u2019s name, by Llewellyn\u2019s magnificent name.\n    And even as she stood in the dark, the doom and the horror rushed on me;\n        (I had weakened my soul, and they won me!)\n    I felt the desire at my vitals, the unbearable joy that is pain:\n    With one mad tigerish spring against the dim rafter,\n    I smote the sweet child in my rage, I smote her with laughter,\n        And a sound like the rain\n    Whirled east on the casement, died after:\n    And I knew that the life in her brain\n    I had quenched at the stroke, and flung even my darling of yore\n    Down the resonant, tottering stair, down, down to the centuried door!\n        Then the swift hurricane,\n    The clamoring army thronged up from below, my\n    allegiance to claim!\n    Lean goblins, brown-flecked like a toad, the gnomic horned ghosts,\n    Imps flickering, quarry-sprites grim, all the din of the dolorous hosts,\n    All the glory and glee of the curs\u00e8d hissed round me and round,\n          as a flame.\n    And they loosened my hold from the tower, and my hope from the hem\n    Of the garment of Him who could save, as they jeered! and with speed\n    Crashed down past the rocks and the wrecks; and the horrible deed\n    Was done. I was theirs; and I gave up my spirit to them.\n\n\n          V.\n\n        In a mossy minaret\n        Fathoms under, I am set.\n        All the sea-shapes undulating\n        At my gates forlorn are waiting,\n        All the dreary faint-eyed people\n        Watch me in my hollow steeple,\n        While the glass-clear city heaves\n        Oft beneath its earthy eaves.\n        So in sorrow, sorrow, sorrow\n        Yestereven and to-morrow,\n        Thro\u2019 the \u00e6ons, in a cell\n        Hangs Saint Cadoc\u2019s loveless bell,\n        Orb\u00e8d, like a mortal\u2019s tear,\n        On the moony atmosphere,\n        Bearing, the refrain of time,\n        Memory, and unrest, and crime.\n        Thou that hast the world sublime!\n    I that was free, I am lost, I am damned, I am here!\n    And whenever a child among men by a blow is dead,\n    Docile for aye from the deeps must I lift my head,\n        And from the heathen heart of me that breaks,\n        The unextinguishable music wakes,\n        Naught availing, naught deterred.\n        And the sailor heareth me,\n        Even as thou, alas! hast heard,\n        Fallen in awe upon thy knee,\n    Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the ominous sea.\n\n\n\n\n          A CHOUAN.\n\n\n    FROM the school-porch at Vannes\n    Weaponed, the children ran;\n    One little voice began,\n          Lark-like ascended:\n\n    \u2018Treason is on the wing,\n    Black vows, and menacing:\n    March, boys! God save the King!\u2019\n          Allio ended.\n\n    Singing, with sunny head,\n    Battleward straight he led,\n    Stones for his captain\u2019s bed,\n          Herbs for his diet:\n\n    He and his legion brave,\n    Trouble enough they gave!\n    Ere the Blues\u2019 bullets drave\n          Them into quiet.\n\n    Spared, with a few as bold,\n    Once the storm over-rolled,\n    Allio, twelve years old,\n          Crept from the clamor;\n\n    Came, when the days were brief,\n    To the old desk in grief,\n    Thumbing anew the leaf\n          Of the old grammar.\n\n    Kings out!... rang the chime,\n    Kings in!... answered Time.\n    In his ignoring clime,\n          Silent, he studied;\n\n    Till, ere his youth was done,\n    For him, the chosen one,\n    Shepherd disclaimed of none,\n          Aaron\u2019s rod budded.\n\n    Long, in unbroken round,\n    Peace on his paths he found;\n    Saw the glad Breton ground\n          Husbanded, quarried:\n\n    Blessed it, the record saith,\n    All the years he had breath,\n    Till the dim eightieth\n          Snowed on his forehead.\n\n    President!... Emperor!...\n    President!... On the floor\n    Spake a sharp Senator\n          Widening his ranges:\n\n    \u2018From Paris I impeach\n    Vannes for disloyal speech;\n    Send thither troops to teach,\n          How the world changes!\u2019\n\n    Down on the peasants then\n    Rode the Republic\u2019s men,\n    Trampling the corn again,\n          Miring the flowers;\n\n    Hewed thro\u2019 the rebels nigh,\n    Scoffed at the women\u2019s cry,\n    Set the tricolor high\n          On the church towers.\n\n    Pale in his cot that day,\n    Dying, the pastor lay,\n    Where still his eye could stray\n          Up valleys gleaming;\n\n    Watchers were at his side;\n    Prayer unto prayer replied:\n    Hush! what was that he spied,\n          Pinnacle-streaming?\n\n    (Nothing was he aware\n    In his deaf Breton air,--\n    So gray traditions there\n          Throve unforgotten,--\n\n    That, by a final chance,\n    Kings all were led a dance;\n    Long since, in fickle France,\n          Sceptres were rotten!)\n\n    Sprang the old lion, still\n    Live with prodigious will,\n    To his stone casement-sill;\n          Foolish and true one!\n\n    Snatched up the blade he bore,\n    Rough with its rust of yore,\n    Kissed it, a saint no more--\n          Only a Chouan!\n\n    Barred from the charging mass\n    In the choked market-pass,\n    All he could do, alas!\n          Now, was to clang it:\n\n    Nay, more:--\u2018God save the King!\u2019\n    With a last clarion ring,\n    Shot ere he ceased to sing,\n          Allio sang it.\n\n\n\n\n          LYRICS\n\n\n\n\n          YOUTH.\n\n\n    LET us hymn thee for our silent brothers,\n    Freely as the wild impellent wind blows,\n    Briefly, rudely, in the smoky pauses\n    Of a battle, in the stress and scourging\n    Of the sail apast thy heavenly margin;\n    Let us hymn thee, while the gallant pulses\n    In high heart and limbs one kingliest instant,\n    Boom and flash thy name and their allegiance;\n    \u2018Once, and for one only,\u2019 let us hymn thee,\n    O Delight, O Sunrise, O sole Answer,\n    Empery unbought, supreme Adventure,\n    Youth, ah, Youth! all men\u2019s desire and sorrow.\n\n    Let us hymn thee, we, the passing, dying,\n    Out of bondage by a vision lifted,\n    Since by chance sublime, in secret places,\n    Goddess! we, Aktaion-like, have seen thee.\n    Tho\u2019 our voice as a spent eagle\u2019s voice is,\n    Let us hymn thee, while the doom is forging;\n    Holding, losing, thro\u2019 one first last moment,\n    One mad moment worth dull life forever,\n    Triumphing in anguish, let us hymn thee!\n    Thine, beholden Beauty, thine this heart-break,\n    Thine, O Hope forsworn! this salutation,\n    Youth, ah, Youth! all men\u2019s desire and sorrow.\n\n\n\n\n          THE LAST FAUN.\n\n\n    HOW hath he stumbled hither, in search of love and praise,\n    A tardy comer and goer across the world\u2019s highways,\n    A kind shape from the thicket, a wanderer all his days?\n\n    He finds a rocky seat where the moiling town recedes:\n    The altered shepherds flout him; but O he little heeds!\n    Incredulous he swings there, and drones upon his reeds.\n\n    He stamps his cloven heel, and he laughs adown the wind,\n    With eye that wanes and waxes at doings of mankind.\n    Slow, slow creeps the invader upon that happy mind.\n\n    The apple breasts his fellow; doves wheel by two and three,\n    And ever dance in circle the shallops on the sea;\n    The goats and deer are many; but playmate none hath he,\n    Nor nymph nor child to follow upon his signals rude;\n    He smiles: there is no frolic; he snarls: there is no feud.\n    He feels his poor heart sinking at every interlude.\n\n    His shaggy ear and freakish resents the wail and din;\n    Earth\u2019s rumors chill his veins with their ghostly gliding in;\n    He aches to slip these tethers, and be where he hath been.\n\n    Elsewhere is waking glory, and here the dream, the thrall.\n    Hush! hear the sunless waters, the wrestling leaves that call!\n    He lops the grass, and whistles; and while he cheats them all,\n\n    Obeys, is gone, gone wholly. From alien air too cold,\n    The Faun, with garlands flying, with sylvan ditties trolled,\n    Being homesick, being patient, regains his greenwood old.\n\n\n\n\n          KNIGHTS OF WEATHER.\n\n\n    WHEN down the filmy lanes\n    The too wise sun goes grieving,\n    A wake of splendor leaving\n    Upbillowed from the ground;\n    When at the window-panes\n    The hooded chestnuts rattle,\n    And there is clash of battle\n    New England\u2019s oaks around:\n    Oh, then we knights of weather,\n    We birds of sober feather,\n    Fill up the woods with revel\n    That summer\u2019s pomp is slain;\n    And make a mighty shouting\n    For King October\u2019s outing,\n    The Saracen October\n    Astride the hurricane!\n\n    When dappled butterflies\n    Have crept away to cover,\n    And one persistent plover\n    Is coaxing from the fen;\n    When apples show the skies\n    Their bubbly lush vermilion,\n    And from a rent pavilion\n    Laugh down on maids and men:\n    Oh, then we knights of weather,\n    We birds of sober feather,\n    Fill up the woods with revel\n    That summer\u2019s pomp is slain;\n    And make a mighty shouting\n    For King October\u2019s outing,\n    The Saracen October\n    Astride the hurricane!\n\n    When pricks the winy air;\n    When o\u2019er the meadows clamber\n    Cloud-masonries of amber;\n    When brooks are silver-clear;\n    When conquering colors dare\n    The hills and cliffy places,\n    To hold, with braggart graces,\n    High wassail of the year:\n    Oh, then we knights of weather,\n    We birds of sober feather,\n    Fill up the woods with revel\n    That summer\u2019s pomp is slain;\n    And make a mighty shouting\n    For King October\u2019s outing,\n    The Saracen October\n    Astride the hurricane!\n\n\n\n\n          DAYBREAK.\n\n\n    THE young sun rides the mists anew; his cohorts follow from the sea.\n    Let Aztec children shout and sue, the Persian lend a thankful knee:\n    Those glad auroral eyes shall beam not anywhere henceforth on me.\n\n    Up with the banners on the height, set every matin bell astir!\n    The tree-top choirs carouse in light; the dew\u2019s on phlox and lavender:\n    Ah, mockery! for, worlds away, the heart of morning beats with her.\n\n\n\n\n          ON SOME OLD-MUSIC.\n\n\n    TO lie beside a stream, upon the sod\n    At ease, while weary shepherds homeward plod,\n    And feel benignly by, as daylight mellows,\n    The mountains in their weathering period;\n          Aye so, with silence shod\n    To lie in depth of grass with man\u2019s meek fellows,\n    The cattle large and calm, aware of God,\n\n    And, keen as if to flesh the spirit sprang,\n    To hear,--O but to hear that silvern clang\n    Of young hale melody! and hither rally\n    The thrill, the aspiration, and the pang\n          Again, as once it rang\n    Sovereign and clear thro\u2019 all the Saco valley,\n    Whose slaves were we that heard, and he that sang!\n\n    Happy the spot, the hour, the spanning strain\n    Precious and far, the rainbow of the rain,\n    The seal of patience, dark endeavor\u2019s summing,\n    The heaven-bright close of Pergolese\u2019s pain!\n          Sighs bid it back in vain,\n    Nor win its peer, till craftsmen aftercoming\n    Lost art, lost heart, from shipwrecked years regain.\n\n    How, like an angel, it effaced the crime,\n    The moil and heat of our tempestuous time,\n    And brought from dewier air, to us who waited,\n    The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime!\n          As falls, at midnight\u2019s chime\n    To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated,\n    The thought of Love\u2019s remote sunshining prime.\n\n    There flits upon the wind\u2019s wing, as we gaze,\n    Our northern springtime, virgin-green three days;\n    The racy water shallowing, the glory\n    Of jonquils strewn, the wafted apple-sprays:\n          O let it be thy praise,\n    Child-song too lovely and too transitory!\n    Thou art as they; thy feet have gone their ways.\n\n    O beauty unassailable! O bride\n    Of memory! while yet thou didst abide\n    The yester joy was ours, the joy to-morrow,\n    Life\u2019s brimming whole: and since to earth denied,\n          Soft ebbed thy dreamy tide,\n    To us the first, the full, the only sorrow,\n    Wild as when Abel out of Eden died.\n\n\n\n\n          LATE PEACE.\n\n\n    AS a pool beset with lilies\n    In the May-green copses hid,\n    Far from wayfarers and wrongers,\n    Clangors, rumors, disillusions,\n    Neighbored by the wild-grape only,\n    By the hemlock\u2019s dreamy host,\n    By the Rhodian nightingale,\n    O remote, remote, O lonely!--\n    So thy life is.\n\n    Whence and wherefore is it\n    Never peace may be co-dweller\n    With my lakelet\n    Too belov\u00e8d and too sheltered,\n    That, secure from broil of cities,\n    From a secret regnant spring\n    To its own wild depth awaking,\n    Makes but moaning and resistance,\n    Undiminishable protest;\n    Mimicking with pain and fury\n    Of humanity the struggle;\n    Fretting, foaming, pacing ever\n    Round and round its fragrant cloister,\n    All within itself perplex\u00e8d,\n    Every heart-vein bruised but eager;\n    And its clear soul, doubt-o\u2019erladen,\n    \u2019Neath the stirred and floating foulness,\n    Long abased, long dumb, ah! long?--\n    So thy life is.\n\n    Comes the respite, comes the guerdon;\n    The perfect truce arrives\n    In the honey-dropping twilight,\n    The southwestering pallid sunshine,\n    The magian clouds a-fire,\n    The mooring galleon-wind:\n    At whose spell,\n    Potent daily,\n    The lulled water is beguiled\n    Back to saneness, back to sweetness.\n    All its arrowy hissing atoms\n    Gather from the chase forsaken;\n    The sphered galaxy of bubbles,\n    Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful,\n    Disunite, as to heard music,\n    Like weird dancers, from their wreathings\n    Each to its cool grotto swaying;\n    Till there follows, on their fervor,\n    Depth, and crystal clarity.\n    So thy life is, so thy life!\n    Darkling to beatitude,\n    Shaken in the saving change.\n    And the spirit made wise, not weary\n    By the throes that youth endureth,\n    When old age falls, evening-placid,\n    On the mystery unriddled,\n    Yet in empire, yet in honor,\n    In submission not ignoble,\n    Glistens to a central quiet,\n    Leal to the most lovely moon.\n\n\n\n\n          TO A YOUNG POET.\n\n\n    SIGH not to be remembered, dear,\n    Nor for Time\u2019s fickle graces strive;\n    Vex not thy spirit\u2019s songful cheer\n    With the sick ardor to survive.\n\n    But be content, thou quick bright thing\n    A while than lasting stars more fair:\n    A lone high-flashing skylark\u2019s wing\n    Across obliterating air.\n\n    O rich in immortality!\n    Not thee Fame\u2019s graven stones benight;\n    But ever, to some world-worn eye,\n    All Heaven is bluer for thy flight.\n\n\n\n\n          DE MORTUIS.\n\n\n    THE skilfullest of mankind!\n    So praise him, reckoning\n    By shot in the sea-gull\u2019s wing,\n    By doubts in boyhood\u2019s mind.\n\n\n\n\n          DOWN STREAM.\n\n\n    SCARRED hemlock roots,\n    Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots\n      Spring\u2019s first-knighted;\n    Clinging aspens grouped between,\n    Slender, misty-green,\n      Faintly affrighted:\n\n    Far hills behind,\n    Sombre growth, with sunlight lined,\n      On their edges;\n    Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair,\n    And the straight and fair\n      Phalanx of sedges:\n\n    Wee wings and eyes,\n    Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies,\n      Fearless rangers;\n    Drowsy turtles in a tribe\n    Diving, with a gibe\n      Muttered at strangers;\n\n    Wren, bobolink,\n    Robin, at the grassy brink;\n      Great frogs jesting;\n    And the beetle, for no grief\n    Half-across his leaf\n      Sighing and resting;\n\n    In the keel\u2019s way,\n    Unwithdrawing bream at play,\n      Till from branches\n    Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft,\n    Graze them with their soft\n      Full avalanches!\n\n    This is very odd!\n    Boldly sings the river-god:\n      \u2018Pilgrim rowing!\n    From the Hyperborean air\n    Wherefore, and O where\n      Should man be going?\u2019\n\n    Slave to a dream,\n    Me no urgings and no theme\n      Can embolden;\n    Now no more the oars swing back,\n    Drip, dip, till black\n      Waters froth golden.\n\n    Musketaquid!\n    I have loved thee, all unbid,\n      Earliest, longest;\n    Thou hast taught me thine own thrift:\n    Here I sit, and drift\n      Where the wind\u2019s strongest.\n\n    If, furthermore,\n    There be any pact ashore,\n      I forget it!\n    If, upon a busy day\n    Beauty make delay,\n      Once over, let it!\n\n    Only,--despite\n    Thee, who wouldst unnerve me quite\n      Like a craven,--\n    Best the current be not so,\n    Heart and I must row\n      Into our haven!\n\n\n\n\n          THE INDIAN PIPE.\n\n(TO R. L. S.)\n\n\n      YOUR bays shall all men bring,\n        And flowers the children strew you.\n    Once, as I stood in a thick west wood,\n      I took from a fissure a precious thing,\n        The homage whereof be to you!\n\n      A thing pearl-pale, yet stung\n        With fire, as the morning\u2019s beam is;\n    Hid underground thro\u2019 a solar round,\n      Hardy and fragile, antique and young,\n        More exquisite than a dream is.\n\n      No rose had so bright birth;\n        No gem of romance surpassed it,\n    By a minstrel-knight, for his maid\u2019s delight,\n      Borne from the moon-burnt marge of the earth,\n        Where Paynim breakers cast it.\n\n      Rude-named, memorial, quaint,\n        The dews and the darkness mould it:\n    Scarce twice in an age is our heritage\n      This glory and mystery without taint.\n        Dear Stevenson, do you hold it\n\n      A text of grace, ah! much\n        Beyond what the praising throng say:\n    Only your art is its peer at heart,\n      Only your touch is a wonder such,\n        My wild little loving song says!\n\n\n\n\n          BROOK FARM.\n\n\n    DOWN the long road bent and brown,\n    Youth, that dearly loves a vision,\n    Ventures to the gates Elysian,\n    As a palmer from the town,\n\n    Coming not so late, so far,\n    Rocks and birches! for your story,\n    Nor to prate of vanished glory\n    Where of old was quenched a star;\n\n    Where, of old, in lapse of toil,\n    Time, that has for weeds a dower,\n    Bade the supersensual flower\n    Starve in our New England soil.\n\n    But to Youth, whose radiant eyes\n    Shatter mists of grief and daunting,\n    Lost glad voices still are chanting\n    \u2019Neath those unremaining skies;\n    Still the dreams of fellowship\n    Beat their wings of aspiration;\n    And a smile of soft elation\n    Trembles from his haughty lip,\n\n    If another dare deride\n    Hopes heroic snapped and parted,\n    Disillusion so high-hearted,\n    All success is mean beside!\n\n\n\n\n       \u2018MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS.\u2019\n\n\n    \u2018MY times are in Thy hands!\u2019\n    It rumbles from the sea;\n    It jingles ever, inland far,\n    From the reddening rowan-tree.\n\n    Let me not sit inert,\n    Let me not be afraid!\n    Teach me to dare and to resist\n    Like the first mortal made,\n\n    To whom of fate\u2019s dread strength\n    No sickening rumors ran;\n    Who with whatever grim event\n    Grappled, as man with man.\n\n    Seal to my utmost age\n    What now my youth hath known:\n    \u2018My times are in Thy hands,\u2019 O most!\n    When wholly in my own.\n\n\n\n\n          GARDEN CHIDINGS.\n\n\n    THE spring being at her blessed carpentry,\n    This morning makes a stem, this noon a leaf,\n    And jewels her sparse greenery with a bud;\n    Fostress of happy growth is she. But thou,\n    O too disdainful spirit, or too shy!\n    Passive dost thou inhabit, like a mole,\n    The porch elect of darkness; for thy trade\n    Is underground, a barren industry,\n    Shivering true ardor on the nether air,\n    Shaping the thousandth tendril, and all year\n    Webbing the silver nothings to and fro.\n    What wonder if the gardener think thee dead,\n    When every punctual neighbor-root now goes\n    Adventurously skyward for a flower?\n    Up, laggard! climb thine inch; thyself fulfil;\n    Thou only hast no sign, no pageantry,\n    Save these fine gropings: soon from thy small plot\n    The seasonable sunshine steals away.\n\n\n\n\n          FR\u00c9D\u00c9RIC OZANAM.\n\n\n    UNTO the constant heart whom saints befriend\n    Afar in peace, what were our gaudy praise?\n    His course is ended, and his faith is kept.\n    Honor in silence to that memory! sweet\n    Equally in the forum of the schools,\n    And in the sufferer\u2019s hovel. His, threefold,\n    The lowliness of Isai\u2019s chosen son,\n    And zeal that fired the warring Macchabee,\n    About him like a wedding-garment, worn\n    The day of his acceptance; and we know\n    That for the sake of some such soul as this,--\n    So brave, so clean, compassionate and just,\n    Alert in its most meek security,--\n    Love beareth yet with all that stains the world.\n\n\n\n\n          BANKRUPT.\n\n\n    PAST the cold gates, a wraith without a name,\n    Sullen and withered, like a thing half-tame\n    Still for its jungle moaning, came by night,\n    Before the Judgment\u2019s awful Angel came.\n\n    \u2018Answer, Immortal! at my high decree\n    Glory or shame shall flood thee as the sea:\n    What of the power, the skill, the graciousness,\n    The star-strong soul the Lord hath lent to thee?\u2019\n\n    But the lone spectre raised a mournful hand:\n    \u2018Call me not that! Release me from this land!\n    What words are Heaven and Hell? They fall on me\n    As on a sphere the fooled and slipping sand.\n\n    \u2018Discerning, thou the good mayst yet belie,\n    By some last test, the sinner sanctify.\n    My guilt is neutral-safe, like innocence:\n    No boon nor bane of deathless days gain I,\n\n    \u2018Whose life is hollow shell and broken bowl,\n    Of all which was its treasury, the whole\n    Utterly, vilely squandered. O most Just!\n    Put down thy scales: for I have spent my soul.\u2019\n\n\n\n\n          A REASON FOR SILENCE.\n\n\n    YOU sang, you sang! you mountain brook\n      Scarce by your tangly banks held in,\n    As running from a rocky nook,\n      You leaped the world, the sea to win,\n    Sun-bright past many a foamy crook,\n      And headlong as a javelin.\n\n    Now men do check and still your course\n      To serve a village enterprise,\n    And wheelward drive your sullen force,\n      What wonder, slave! that in no wise\n    Breaks from you, pooled \u2019mid reeds and gorse,\n      The voice you had in Paradise?\n\n\n\n\n          TEMPTATION.\n\n\n    I COME where the wry road leads\n    Thro\u2019 the pines and the alder scents,\n    Sated of books, with a start,\n    Sharp on the gang to-day:\n    Scarce see the Romany steeds,\n    Scarce hear the flap of the tents,\n    When hillo! my heart, my heart\n    Is out of its leash, and away.\n\n    Gypsies, gypsies, the whole\n    Tatterdemalion crew!\n    Brown and sly and severe\n    With curious trades in hand.\n    A string snaps in my soul,\n    The one high answer due\n    If an exile chance to hear\n    The songs of his fatherland.\n\n... To be abroad with the rain,\n    And at home with the forest hush,\n    With the crag, and the flower-urn,\n    And the wan sleek mist upcurled;\n    To break the lens and the plane,\n    To burn the pen and the brush,\n    And, clean and alive, return\n    Into the old wild world!...\n\n    How is it? O wind that bears\n    The arrow from its mark,\n    The sea-bird from the sea,\n    The moth from his midnight lamp,\n    Fate\u2019s self, thou mocker of prayers!\n    Whirl up from the mighty dark,\n    And even so, even me\n    Blow far from the gypsy camp!\n\n\n\n\n          FOR A CHILD.\n\n          Schumann\u2019s \u2018Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.\u2019\n\n\n    IN memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made\n    Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid,\n                  Aye, truly, sore afraid:\n\n    For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears,\n    In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears\n    Would yet be strong to break my song,\n                  Thro\u2019 all these after-years!\n\n\n\n\n          AGLAUS.\n\n\n    THE ash hath no perfidious mind;\n    The open fields are just and kind;\n    Tho\u2019 loves betray, I hear this way\n    The feathery step of the faithful wind.\n\n    Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose\n    Around me, talismanic, close:\n    The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes,\n    Are bulwarks twain of my year\u2019s repose.\n\n    No struggle, no delight, no moan,\n    But at my hearthstone I have known!\n    All thoughts that pass, as in a glass\n    The gods have bared to me for mine own.\n\n    Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed,\n    Hath of her own will been my guest;\n    Not smoking feud, but quietude\n    My heart hath chosen, at her behest.\n\n    \u2018This is of men the happiest man\n    Who hath his plot Arcadian,\u2019\n    Apollo cried, my gates beside,\n    \u2018Nor ever wanders beyond its span.\u2019\n\n    Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold;\n    My hair is shaken in the cold;\n    The night is nigh; but ere I die,\n    Bear witness, brothers! that young and old,\n\n    My name I wear without regret:\n    The Home-Keeper am I, and yet\n    At every inn my feet have been,\n    Above all travellers I am set.\n\n    Tho\u2019 ocean currents by me purled,\n    The sails of my desire were furled.\n    What pilgrims crave, three acres gave;\n    And I, Aglaus, have seen the world!\n\n\n\n\n          AN AUDITOR.\n\n\n    WHY chide me that mutely I listen, ah, jester?\n          For either thou knowest\n    Too much, or thou knowest not aught of this aching vexed\n          planet down-whirling:\n    Thou knowest?--Thy wit is but fortitude; would\u2019st have me\n          laugh in its presence?\n    Thou knowest not?--Laugh I can never, for innocence also is sacred.\n\n\n\n\n          THE WATER-TEXT.\n\n\n    WATCHING my river marching overland,\n    By mighty tides, transfigured and set free,--\n    My river, lapped in idle-hearted mirth,\n    Made at a touch a glory to the earth,\n    And leaving, wheresoever falls his hand,\n    The balm and benediction of the sea,--\n\n    O soon, I know, the hour whereof we dreamed,\n    The saving hour miraculous, arrives!\n    When, ere to darkness winds our sordid course,\n    Some glad, new, potent, consecrating force\n    Shall speed us, so uplifted, so redeemed,\n    Along the old worn channel of our lives.\n\n\n\n\n          CYCLAMEN.\n\n\n    ON me, thro\u2019 joy\u2019s eclipse, and inward dark,\n    First fell thy beauty like a star new-lit;\n    To thee my carol now! albeit no lark\n    Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite.\n                O would that song might fit\n    These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting,\n    Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing,\n    Thou undefiled estray of earth\u2019s o\u2019ervanished spring!\n\n    Here is the sunless clime, the fallen race;\n    Down our green dingles is no peer of thee:\n    Why art thou such, dear outcast, who hadst place\n    With shrine, and bower, and olive-silvery\n                Peaked islets in mid-sea?\n    Thou seekest thine Achaian dews in vain,\n    And osiered nooks jocose, at summer\u2019s wane,\n    With gossip spirit-fine of chill and widening rain.\n\n      Thou wert among Thessalia\u2019s hoofy host,\n      Their radiant shepherd stroked thee with a sigh;\n      When falchioned Perseus spied the \u00c6thiop coast,\n      Unto his love\u2019s sad feet thy cheek was nigh;\n                  And all thy blood beat high\n      With woodland Rh\u0153cus at the brink of bliss;\n      Thy leaf the Naiad plucked by Thyamis,\n    And she, the straying maid, the bride beguiled of Dis.\n\n      These, these are gone. The air is wan and cold,\n      The choric gladness of the woods is fled:\n      But thou, aye dove-like, rapt in memories old,\n      Inclinest to the ground thy fragile head,\n                  In ardor and in dread.\n      Searcher of yesternight! how wilt thou find\n      In any dolven aisle or cavern blind,\n    In any ocean-hall, the glory left behind?\n\n      June\u2019s butterfly, poised o\u2019er his budded sweet,\n      Is scarce so quiet-winged, betimes, as thou.\n      Fail twilight\u2019s thrill, and noonday\u2019s wavy heat\n      To kiss the fever from thy downcast brow.\n                  Ah, cease that vigil now!\n      No west nor east thine unhoused vision keeps,\n      Nor yet in heaven\u2019s pale purpureal deeps\n    Of worlds unnavigate, the dream of childhood sleeps.\n\n      Flower of the joyous realm! thy rivers lave\n      Their once proud valleys with forgetful moan;\n      Thy kindred nod on many a trodden grave\n      Among marmorean altars overthrown;\n                  For thou art left alone,\n      Alone and dying, duped for love\u2019s extreme:\n      Hope not! thy Greece is over, as a dream;\n    Stay not! but follow her down Time\u2019s star-lucent stream.\n\n      Less art thou of the earth than of the air,\n      A frail outshaken splendor of the morn;\n      Dimmest desire, the softest throb of prayer,\n      Impels thee out of bondage to thy bourn:\n                  Ere thou art half forlorn,\n      Farewell, farewell! for from thy golden stem\n      Thou slippest like a wild enchanter\u2019s gem.\n    Swift are the garden-ghosts, and swiftest thou of them!\n\n      Yea, speed thy freeborn life no doubts debar,\n      O blossom-breath of that which was delight!\n      In cooling whirl and undulation far\n      The wind shall be thy bearer all the night\n                  Thro\u2019 ether trembling-white:\n      And I that clung with thee, as exiles may\n      Whose too slight roots in every zephyr sway,\n    Thy little soul salute along her homeward way!\n\n\n\n\n          A PASSING SONG.\n\n\n    WHERE thrums the bee and the honeysuckle hovers,\n    Gather, golden lasses, to a roundelay;\n    Dance, dance, yokefellows and lovers,\n    Headlong down the garden, in the heart of May!\n    Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.\n\n    Dance! what if last year Winnie\u2019s cheek were rounder?\n    Dance! tho\u2019 that foot, Hal, were nimbler yesterday.\n    Spread the full sail! for soon the ship must founder;\n    Flaunt the red rose! soon the canker-worm has sway:\n    Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.\n\n    See the dial shifting, hear the night-birds calling!\n    Dance, you starry striplings! round the fountain-spray;\n    With its mellow music out of sunshine falling,\n    With its precious waters trickling into clay,\n    Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away!\n\n\n\n\n          IN TIME.\n\n\n    HER little dumb child, for whom hope was none\n    In any mind, she watched from sun to sun,\n    Until three years her mighty faith had run;\n\n    Then, in an agony of love, laid by\n    The bright head from her breast, and went to lie\n    \u2019Neath cedarn shadows, and the wintry sky,\n\n    Not having, for her long desire and prayer,\n    One sign from those shut lips, so rosy-fair\n    It seemed all eloquence must nestle there.\n\n    That day, to her near grave, thro\u2019 frost and sleet,\n    He, following from his toys on truant feet,\n    Cried: \u2018Mother, mother!\u2019 joyous and most sweet.\n\n    And as their souls ached in them at the word,\n    The father lifted his new-wakened bird\n    With one rapt tear, that now at last she heard!\n\n\n\n\n          THE WILD RIDE.\n\n\n    _I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,\n    All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;\n    All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._\n\n    Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,\n    Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion,\n    With a stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.\n\n    The road is thro\u2019 dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;\n    There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:\n    What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!\n\n    _I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,\n    All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;\n    All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._\n\n    We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;\n    We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.\n    Thou leadest, O God! All\u2019s well with Thy troopers that follow.\n\n\n\n\n          THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE.\n\n\n    BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;\n    You pace the garden-walks secure and sensitive;\n    You linger on the stair: Love\u2019s lonely pulses leap!\n    The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.\n\n    Years after, and years after, you keep your heirdom still,\n    Your winning youth about you, your joyous force and skill,\n    Unvexed, unapprehended, with waking sense adored;\n    And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.\n\n    To every quiet inmate, strong in the cheer you brought,\n    Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought;\n    And unto whoso knocks, an awe-struck visitor,\n    The sunshine that was you floods all the open door!\n\n\n\n\n          A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY.\n\n\n    EACH ninth hierarchal wave, a league of sound,\n    To phantom shreds the hostile crags confound,\n    To wreck on wreck forlorn. The crags remain.\n\n    Smile at the storm for our safe poet\u2019s sake!\n    Not ever this ordain\u00e8d world shall break\n    That mounting, foolish, foam-bright heart again.\n\n\n\n\n          IMMUNITY.\n\n\n    LEAF of the deep-leaved holly-tree,\n      Long spared the weather-god\u2019s disdain,\n    Have not thy brothers borne for thee\n      June\u2019s inavertible raging rain?\n\n    And they are beautiful and hale,\n      Those sun-veined revellers; and thou\n    Still crippled, still afraid and pale,\n      Sole discord of the singing bough!\n\n\n\n\n          PAULA\u2019S EPITAPH.\n\n\n    GO you by with gentle tread.\n    This was Paula, who is dead:\n    Eyes dark-lustrous to the look\n    As a leaf-pavilioned brook,\n    Voice upon the ear to cling\n    Sweeter than the cithern-string;\n    Whose shy spirit, unaware\n    Loosed into refreshful air,\n    With it took for talisman,\n    Climbing past the starry van,\n    Names to which the heavens do ope,\n    Candor, Chastity, and Hope.\n\n\n\n\n          JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX.\n\n\n    COMPASSIONATE eyes had our brave John Brown,\n    And a craggy stern forehead, a militant frown;\n    He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley,\n    The fool who redeemed us once of our folly,\n    And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown!\n\n    Too vehement, verily, was John Brown!\n    For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown\n    Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter\n    Of freedmen; aye, call him fanatic and martyr:\n    He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown.\n\n    A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown,\n    And a jeer; but ah! soon from the terrified town,\n    In his bleeding track made over hilltop and hollow,\n    Wise armies and councils were eager to follow,\n    And the children\u2019s lips chanted our lost John Brown.\n\n    Star-led for us, stumbled and groped John Brown,\n    Star-led, in the awful morasses to drown;\n    And the trumpet that rang for a nation\u2019s upheaval,\n    From the thought that was just, thro\u2019 the deed that was evil,\n    Was blown with the breath of this dumb John Brown!\n\n    Bared heads and a pledge unto mad John Brown!\n    Now the curse is allayed, now the dragon is down,\n    Now we see, clear enough, looking back at the onset,\n    Christianity\u2019s flood-tide and Chivalry\u2019s sunset\n    In the old broken heart of our hanged John Brown!\n\n\n\n\n          SONNETS\n\n\n\n\n          APRIL DESIRE.\n\n\n    WHILE in these spacious fields is my sojourn,\n    Needs must I bless the blossomy outbreak\n    Of earth\u2019s pent beauty, and for old love\u2019s sake\n    Trembling, the bees\u2019 on-coming chant discern;\n    Hail the rash hyacinth, the ambushed fern,\n    High-bannered boughs that green defiance make,\n    And watch from sheathing ice the brave Spring take\n    Her broad, bright river-blade. Ah! then, in turn\n    Long-hush\u00e8d forces stir in me; I feel\n    All the most sharp unrest of the young year;\n    Fain would my spirit, too, like idling steel\n    Be snatched from its dull scabbard, for a strife\n    With cold oppressions! straightway, if not here,\n    In consummated freedom, ampler life.\n\n\n\n\n          TWOFOLD SERVICE.\n\n\n    CHAMPIONS of men with brawny fist and lung,\n    You righteous! with eyes oped and utterance terse,\n    Whose greed of energies would fain disperse\n    Ere any mould be cast, or roundel sung,\n    Your gentler brothers still at play among\n    The smirch and jangle of the universe,\n    Mere fool-blind trespassers for you to curse,\n    The Sabbath-breakers, the unchristened young;--\n    Peace! These, too, know: these are as ye employed,\n    Nor of laborious help and value void,\n    Living; who, faithful to their fellows\u2019 need,\n    Fling life away for truth, art, fatherland,\n    Like a gold largess from a princely hand,\n    Without one trading thought of heavenly meed.\n\n\n\n\n          IN THE GYMNASIUM.\n\n\n    I LEAN against a pillar in the sun,\n    The sandals loose on mine arrested feet,\n    While from their paths orbicular the fleet\n    Slim racers drop like stars. O loveliest one,\n    Lender of sixfold wings the while I run,\n    Whose tortoise-lyre saves yet for me its sweet\n    Cyllenic suasions old, to thy dim seat\n    Glory and grace! the votive rites are done.\n    Thy sole rememberer honey hath, nor palm,\n    Libation none, nor lamb to lead to thee,\n    Ah, Maia\u2019s son! once god, and once aye-living.\n    Here stood thy shrine: here chants my heart in calm\n    Sad as the centralmost weird wave\u2019s at sea,\n    Hermes! thy last June p\u00e6an and thanksgiving.\n\n\n\n\n          A SALUTATION.\n\n\n    HIGH-HEARTED Surrey! I do love your ways,\n    Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,\n    All with inviolate honor sealed and blent,\n    To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays:\n    I love your youth, your friendships, whims, and frays;\n    Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent,\n    Heard as in dreams from some old harper\u2019s tent,\n    And stirring in the listener\u2019s brain for days.\n    Good father-poet! if to-night there be\n    At Framlingham none save the north-wind\u2019s sighs,\n    No guard but moonlight\u2019s crossed and trailing spears,\n    Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me,\n    Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes\n    Sought not one other down three hundred years!\n\n\n\n\n          AT A SYMPHONY.\n\n\n    OH, I would have these tongues oracular\n    Dip into silence, tease no more, let be!\n    They madden, like some choral of the free\n    Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar.\n    To earth the boast that her gold empires are,\n    The menace of delicious death to me,\n    Great Undesign, strong as by God\u2019s decree,\n    Piercing the heart with beauty from afar!\n    Music too winning to the sense forlorn!\n    Of what angelic lineage was she born,\n    Bred in what rapture?--These her sires and friends:\n    Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger\u2019s throe.\n    Praised be the Spirit that thro\u2019 thee, Schubert! so\n    Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.\n\n\n\n\n          SLEEP.\n\n\n    O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide\n    On whose moon-heaving breast my head hath lain,\n    Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain\n    Thro\u2019 holy hours, be yet unsatisfied,\n    Loose me betimes! for in my soul abide\n    Urgings of memory; and exile\u2019s pain\n    Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain\n    May throb for the old strife wherein he died.\n\n    Often and evermore, across the sea\n    Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of day\n    O speed me! like that outworn king erewhile\n    From kind Ph\u00e6acia shoreward borne; for me,\n    Thy loving heal\u00e8d Greek, thou too shall lay\n    Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle.\n\n\n\n\n          THE ATONING YESTERDAY.\n\n\n    YE daffodilian days, whose fallen towers\n    Shielded our paradisal prime from ill,\n    Fair past, fair motherhood! let come what will,\n    We, being yours, defy the anarch powers.\n    For us the happy tidings fell, in showers\n    Enjewelling the wind from every hill;\n    We drained the sun against the winter\u2019s chill;\n    Our ways were barricadoed in with flowers:\n\n    And if from skyey minsters now unhoused,\n    Earth\u2019s massy workings at the forge we hear,\n    The black roll of the congregated sea,\n    And war\u2019s live hoof: O yet, last year, last year\n    We were the lark-lulled shepherdlings, that drowsed\n    Grave-deep, at noon, in grass of Arcady!\n\n\n\n\n       \u2018RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS.\u2019\n\n\n    OF thraldom and the accurs\u00e8d diadem\n    In that vast snow-land, shout the passionate tale;\n    Touch graybeards in the mart, bid braggarts quail,\n    And rouse the student lone from his old phlegm\n    To breathe the self-same sacred air with them,\n    Spirits supreme, our brothers! whose avail\n    Is sacrifice. Nay, make no woman\u2019s wail:\n    Rome is re-born! whom kings dare not contemn.\n    On Neva\u2019s shore-streets tho\u2019 high blood be spent,\n    There this lorn world\u2019s renascent hopes are meeting:\n    In camp is Mucius, at the bridge, Horatius;\n    Regulus walks in gyves, magnificent;\n    And thence men hear--O sound sublime and gracious!\n    The unquelled heart of C\u00e6sar\u2019s Brutus beating.\n\n\n\n\n          FOUR SONNETS FROM \u2018LA VITA NUOVA.\u2019\n\n\n          I.\n\n  \u2018_Io mi sentii svegliar dentro allo core._\u2019\n\n    WITHIN my bosom, from long apathy,\n    Love\u2019s mood of tenderness extreme awoke,\n    And spying him far off, mine eye bespoke\n    Love\u2019s self, so joyous scarce it seem\u00e8d he,\n    Crying: \u2018Now, verily, pay thy vows to me!\u2019\n    And bright thro\u2019 every word his smile outbroke.\n    Then stood we twain, I in my liege lord\u2019s yoke,\n    Watching the path he came by, soon to see\n    The Lady Joan and Lady Beatrice\n    Nearing our very nook, each marvel close\n    Following her peer, all beauty else above;\n    And Love said, in a voice like Memory\u2019s:\n    \u2018The first is Spring; but she that with her goes,\n    My counterpart, bears my own name of Love!\u2019\n\n\n          II.\n\n  \u2018_Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare._\u2019\n\n    SO chaste, so noble looks that lady mine\n    Saluting on her way, that tongues of some\n    Are mute a-tremble, and the eyes that clomb\n    High as her eyes, abashed, their gaze decline.\n    Thro\u2019 perils of heard praise she moves benign,\n    Armored in her own meekness, as if come\n    Hither from Heaven, to give our Christendom\n    Even of a miracle the vouch divine.\n    So with beholders doth her worth avail,\n    It sheds, thro\u2019 sight, a sweetness on the soul,\n    (Alas! how told to one that felt it never?)\n    And from her presence seemeth to exhale\n    A breath half-solace and of love the whole,\n    That saith to the bowed spirit \u2018Sigh!\u2019 forever.\n\n\n          III.\n\n  \u2018_Era venuta nella mente mia._\u2019\n\n    THERE came upon my mind remembrances\n    Of my lost lady, who for her reward\n    Is now set safe, by Heaven\u2019s Most Highest Lord,\n    In kingdoms of the meek, where Mary is.\n    And Love, whose own are her dear memories,\n    Called to the sighs in my heart\u2019s wreckage stored:\n    \u2018Go!\u2019 whereby outwardly, with one accord,\n    Not having ever other vent than this,\n    Plaining athwart my breast they flocked to air,\n    With speech that, oft recalled, draws unaware\n    The darkened tears into my mournful eyes;\n    And those that came in greatest anguish thence\n    Sang: \u2018O most glorious Intelligence!\n    Thou art one year this day in Paradise.\u2019\n\n\n          IV.\n\n  \u2018_Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate._\u2019\n\n    YE pilgrims, who with pensive aspect go\n    Thinking, perhaps, of bygone things and dear,\n    Come you from lands so very far from here\n    As unto us who watch your port would show?\n    For that you weep not outright, filing slow\n    Thro\u2019 the mid-highway of this city drear,\n    You even as gentle stranger-folk appear,\n    Who of the common sorrow nothing know!\n    Would you but linger, would you but be told,\n    Pledge with its thousand sighs my soul doth give\n    That you, likewise, should travel on heart-broken:\n    Ah, we have lost our Beatrice! Behold,\n    What least soever word be of her spoken,\n    The tears must follow now from all that live.\n\n           University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.","title":"The White Sail, and Other Poems","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":14852}