Prelude
THE wailful sweetness of the violinFloats down the hushèd waters of the wind,The heart-strings of the throbbing harp beginTo long in aching music. Spirit-pined,
In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, untilThe wounded soul ooze sadness. The red sun,A bubble of fire, drops slowly toward the hill,While one bird prattles that the day is done.
O setting Sun, that as in reverent daysSinkest in music to thy smoothèd sleep,Discrowned of homage, though yet crowned with rays,Hymned not at harvest more, though reapers reap:
For thee this music wakes not. O deceived,If thou hear in these thoughtless harmoniesA pious phantom of adorings reaved,And echo of fair ancient flatteries!
Yet, in this field where the Cross planted reigns,I know not what strange passion bows my headTo thee, whose great command upon my veinsProves thee a god for me not dead, not dead!
For worship it is too incredulous,For doubt—oh, too believing-passionate!What wild divinity makes my heart thusA fount of most baptismal tears?—Thy straight
Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me!What secret would thy radiant finger show?Of thy bright mastership is this the key?Is this thy secret, then? And is it woe?
Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and harkA song thou hast not heard in Northern day;For Rome too daring, and for Greece too dark,Sweet with wild wings that pass, that pass away!
ODE.
Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth,The springing music, and its wasting breath—The fairest things in life are Death and Birth,And of these two the fairer thing is Death.Mystical twins of Time inseparable,The younger hath the holier array,And hath the awfuller sway:It is the falling star that trails the light,It is the breaking wave that hath the might,The passing shower that rainbows maniple.Is it not so, O thou down-stricken Day,That draw’st thy splendours round thee in thy fall?High was thine Eastern pomp inaugural;But thou dost set in statelier pageantry,Lauded with tumults of a firmament:Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky,Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident,Thou dost thy dying so triumphally:I see the crimson blaring of thy shawms!Why do those lucent palmsStrew thy feet’s failing thicklier than their might,Who dost but hood thy glorious eyes with night,And vex the heels of all the yesterdays?Lo! this loud, lackeying praiseWill stay behind to greet the usurping moon,When they have cloud-barred over thee the West.Oh, shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon!The earth not pæans thee, nor serves thy hest,Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face,And leave to blank disgraceThe oblivious world! unsceptre thee of state and place!
Ha! but bethink thee what thou gazedst on,Ere yet the snake Decay had venomed tooth;The name thou bar’st in those vast seasons gone—Candid Hyperion,Clad in the light of thine immortal youth!Ere Dionysus bled thy vines,Or Artemis drave her clamours through the wood,Thou saw’st how once against Olympus’ heightThe brawny Titans stood,And shook the gods’ world ’bout their ears, and howEnceladus (whom Etna cumbers now)Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines,The river unrecked, that did its broken floodSpurt on his back: before the mountainous shockThe rankèd gods dislock,Scared to their skies; wide o’er rout-trampled nightFlew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours thenHad tempested on earth, star upon starMounded in ruin, if a longer warHad quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men.Then did the ample margeAnd circuit of thy targeSullenly redden all the vaward fight,Above the blusterous clashWheeled thy swung falchion’s flashAnd hewed their forces into splintered flight.
Yet ere Olympus thou wast, and a god!Though we deny thy nod,We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity.What know we elder than thee?When thou didst, bursting from the great void’s husk,Leap like a lion on the throat o’ the dusk;When the angels rose-chapletedSang each to other,The vaulted blaze overheadOf their vast pinions spread,Hailing thee brother;How chaos rolled back from the wonder,And the First Morn knelt down to thy visage of thunder!Thou didst draw to thy sideThy young Auroral bride,And lift her veil of night and mystery;Tellus with baby handsShook off her swaddling-bands,And from the unswathèd vapours laughed to thee.
Thou twi-form deity, nurse at once and sire!Thou genitor that all things nourishest!The earth was suckled at thy shining breast,And in her veins is quick thy milky fire.Who scarfed her with the morning? and who setUpon her brow the day-fall’s carcanet?Who queened her front with the enrondured moon?Who dug night’s jewels from their vaulty mineTo dower her, past an eastern wizard’s dreams,When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon,All the rained gems of the old Tartarian lineShiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame?Whereof a moiety in the Paolis’ seamsStatelily builded their Venetian name.Thou hast enwoofèd herAn empress of the air,And all her births are propertied by thee:Her teeming centuriesDrew being from thine eyes:Thou fatt’st the marrow of all quality.
Who lit the furnace of the mammoth’s heart?Who shagged him like Pilatus’ ribbèd flanks?Who raised the columned ranksOf that old pre-diluvian forestry,Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea,When the ancient heavens did in rains depart,While the high-dancèd whirlsOf the tossed scud made hiss thy drenchèd curls?Thou rear’dst the enormous brood;Who hast with life imbuedThe lion maned in tawny majesty,The tiger velvet-barred,The stealthy-stepping pard,And the lithe panther’s flexuous symmetry.
How came the entombèd tree a light-bearer,Though sunk in lightless lair?Friend of the forgers of earth,Mate of the earthquake and thunders volcanic,Clasped in the arms of the forces TitanicWhich rock like a cradle the girthOf the ether-hung world;Swart son of the swarthy mine,When flame on the breath of his nostrils feedsHow is his countenance half-divine,Like thee in thy sanguine weeds?Thou gavest him his light,Though sepultured in nightBeneath the dead bones of a perished world;Over his prostrate formThough cold, and heat, and storm,The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled.Who made the splendid roseSaturate with purple glows;Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-pressWhence the wind vintagesGushes of warmèd fragrance richer farThan all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus’ vats?Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar,With dusky cheeks burnt redShe sways her heavy head,Drunk with the must of her own odorousness;While in a moted trouble the vexed gnatsMaze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush.Who girt dissolvèd lightnings in the grape?Summered the opal with an Irised flush?Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape,And huest the daffodilly,Yet who hast snowed the lily,And her frail sister, whom the waters name,Dost vestal-vesture ’mid the blaze of June,Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moonEre Autumn’s kiss sultry her cheek with flame?Thou sway’st thy sceptred beamO’er all delight and dream,Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance:And like a jocund maidIn garland-flowers arrayed,Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance.
And now, O shaken from thine antique throne,And sunken from thy coerule empery,Now that the red glare of thy fall is blownIn smoke and flame about the windy sky,Where are the wailing voices that should meetFrom hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shapeWho tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feetPulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia’s grape?Where is the threne o’ the sea?And why not dirges theeThe wind, that sings to himself as he makes strideLonely and terrible on the Andean height?Where is the Naiad ’mid her sworded sedge?The Nymph wan-glimmering by her wan fount’s verge?The Dryad at timid gaze by the wood-side?The Oread jutting lightOn one up-strainèd sole from the rock-ledge?The Nereid tip-toe on the scud o’ the surge,With whistling tresses dank athwart her face,And all her figure poised in lithe Circean grace?Why withers their lament?Their tresses tear-besprent,Have they sighed hence with trailing garment-gem?O sweet, O sad, O fair!I catch your flying hair,Draw your eyes down to me, and dream on them!
A space, and they fleet from me. Must ye fade—O old, essential candours, ye who madeThe earth a living and a radiant thing—And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms?Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charmsDraws from dull death his lost Eurydice,Lo ever thus, even at consummating,Even in the swooning minute that claims her his,Even as he trembles to the impassioned kissOf reincarnate Beauty, his controlClasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul!Whatso looks lovelilyIs but the rainbow on life’s weeping rain.Why have we longings of immortal pain,And all we long for mortal? Woe is me,And all our chants but chaplet some decay,As mine this vanishing—nay, vanished Day.The low sky-line dusks to a leaden hue,No rift disturbs the heavy shade and chill,Save one, where the charred firmament lets throughThe scorching dazzle of Heaven; ’gainst which the hill,Out-flattened sombrely,Stands black as life against eternity.Against eternity?A rifting light in meBurns through the leaden broodings of the mind:O blessèd Sun, thy stateUprisen or derogateDafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find.
If with exultant treadThou foot the Eastern sea,Or like a golden beeSting the West to angry red,Thou dost image, thou dost followThat King-Maker of Creation,Who, ere Hellas hailed Apollo,Gave thee, angel-god, thy station;Thou art of Him a type memorial.Like Him thou hang’st in dreadful pomp of bloodUpon thy Western rood;And His stained brow did veil like thine to night,Yet lift once more Its light,And, risen, again departed from our ball,But when It set on earth arose in Heaven.Thus hath He unto death His beauty given:And so of all which form inheritethThe fall doth pass the rise in worth;For birth hath in itself the germ of death,But death hath in itself the germ of birth.It is the falling acorn buds the tree,The falling rain that bears the greenery,The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.For there is nothing lives but something dies,And there is nothing dies but something lives.Till skies be fugitives,Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth;For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.
AFTER-STRAIN.
Now with wan ray that other sun of SongSets in the bleakening waters of my soul:One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long’Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole.
Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory.Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields;Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee,Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields.
Of reapèd joys thou art the heavy sheafWhich must be lifted, though the reaper groan;Yea, we may cry till Heaven’s great ear be deaf,But we must bear thee, and must bear alone.
Vain were a Simon; of the AntipodesOur night not borrows the superfluous day.Yet woe to him that from his burden flees!Crushed in the fall of what he cast away.
Therefore, O tender Lady, Queen Mary,Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drapeThe Cross’s rigorous austerity,Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must gape.
‘Lo, though suns rise and set, but crosses stay,I leave thee ever,’ saith she, ‘light of cheer.’’Tis so: yon sky still thinks upon the Day,And showers aërial blossoms on his bier.
Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edgèd sharp;And once more welling through the air, ah me!How the sweet viol plains him to the harp,Whose pangèd sobbings throng tumultuously.
Oh, this Medusa-pleasure with her stings!This essence of all suffering, which is joy!I am not thankless for the spell it brings,Though tears must be told down for the charmed toy.
No; while soul, sky, and music bleed together,Let me give thanks even for those griefs in me,The restless windward stirrings of whose featherProve them the brood of immortality.
My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon,Who shall not slake her immitigable scarsUntil she hear ‘My sister!’ from the moon,And take the kindred kisses of the stars.