Poems in Many Lands

by Rennell Rodd

II.—IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS.

Is this the man by whose decree abide
The lives of countless nations, with the trace
Of fresh tears wet upon the hard cold face?
—He wept, because a little child had died.

They set a marble image by his side,
A sculptured Eros, ready for the chase;
It wore the dead boy’s features, and the grace
Of pretty ways that were the old man’s pride.

And so he smiled, grown softer now, and tired
Of too much empire, and it seemed a joy
Fondly to stroke and pet the curly head,
The smooth round limbs so strangely like the dead,
To kiss the white lips of his marble boy
And call by name his little heart’s-desired.

AT LANUVIUM.

“Festo quid potius die
Neptuni faciam.”
Horace, Odes, iii. 28.

Spring grew to perfect summer in one day,
And we lay there among the vines, to gaze
Where Circe’s isle floats purple, far away
Above the golden haze;

And on our ears there seemed to rise and fall
The burden of an old world song we knew,
That sang, “To-day is Neptune’s festival,
And we, what shall we do?”

Go down brown-armed Campagna maid of mine,
And bring again the earthen jar that lies
With three years’ dust above the mellow wine;
And while the swift day dies.

You first shall sing a song of waters blue,
Paphos and Cnidos in the summer seas,
And one who guides her swan-drawn chariot through
The white-shored Cyclades;

And I will take the second turn of song,
Of floating tresses in the foam and surge
Where Nereid maids about the sea-god throng;
And night shall have her dirge.

A ROMAN MIRROR.

They found it in her hollow marble bed,
There where the numberless dead cities sleep,
They found it lying where the spade struck deep,
A broken mirror by a maiden dead.

These things—the beads she wore about her throat
Alternate blue and amber all untied,
A lamp to light her way, and on one side
The toll-men pay to that strange ferry-boat.

No trace to-day of what in her was fair!
Only the record of long years grown green
Upon the mirror’s lustreless dead sheen,
Grown dim at last, when all else withered there.

Dead, broken, lustreless! It keeps for me
One picture of that immemorial land,
For oft as I have held thee in my hand
The dull bronze brightens, and I dream to see

A fair face gazing in thee wondering wise,
And o’er one marble shoulder all the while
Strange lips that whisper till her own lips smile,
And all the mirror laughs about her eyes.

It was well thought to set thee there, so she
Might smooth the windy ripples of her hair
And knot their tangled waywardness, or ere
She stood before the queen Persephone.

And still it may be where the dead folk rest
She holds a shadowy mirror to her eyes,
And looks upon the changelessness and sighs,
And sets the dead land lilies in her breast.

THE SONG OF THE DEAD CHILD.
FLORENCE, ’81.

By the light of their waxen tapers, I saw not ever a tear,
For the child in its bridal garment, the little dead child on the bier.

Some child of the poor;—I wonder, was it glad that the years were done,
This flower that fell in spring tide, and had hardly looked on the sun?

They have decked her in burial raiment, they have twined a wreath for her hair;
Ah child, you had never in life such delicate dress to wear!

And the man in the pilgrim’s habit has covered the marble head,
And carried it out for ever to the sleeping place of the dead.

Rest, little one, have no fear, you will hardly turn in your sleep,
Though the moon and the stars are clouded, and the grave they have made be deep!

But an hour before the dawning there will come one down on the night,
With the wings and the brows of an angel, in wonder-robes of white.

He will smile in your eyes of wonder, he will take your hand in his hand,
And gather you up in his arms and pass from the sleeping land.

Then after a while, at morning, you will come to the lands that lie
On the other side of the sunrise between the cloud and the sky,

And here is the place of resting with the wings of your angel furled,
For the feet that are tired with travel in the dusty ways of the world.

And here is the children’s meeting, the length of a summer’s day,
You will gather you crowns of roses, in the deep meadow lands at play.

While up through the clouds dividing, like a sweet bewildering dream,
You will watch the wings of the angels drift by in an endless stream;

Such marvellous robes are o’er them, and whiter are some than snows,
And some like the April blossom, and some like the pale primrose.

For these are the hues of day-dawn that you saw from the world of old,
And the first light over the mountains was shed from their crowns of gold;

And many go by with weeping, for ever, the long night through,
The tears of the sorrowing angels fall over the earth in dew;

Till your eyes grow weary of wonder as you sit in the long cool grass,
And many will bend and kiss you of the wonderful forms that pass;

With your head on the breast of the angel there will steal down over your eyes
The sleep of the long forgetting, and the dream where memory dies,

As the flowers are washed in the night-time, when the dew drops down from above,
You will reck no more of the winter, and hunger, and want of love.

Then at last it will seem like even when you waken, and hand in hand
You will pass with your angels guiding, to the utmost verge of the land;

And I think you will hear far voices growing musical there, and loud,
As you pass, with an unfelt swiftness, from luminous cloud to cloud;

Till the light shall turn to a glory, that seemed but a lone faint star,
That will be the gate of Heaven, where the souls of the children are.

NIGHT AT AVIGNON.

No cloud between the myriad stars and me,—
Soft music moving o’er a sleeping land
Of winds that fret about the cypress tree,
And Rhone’s swift rapids rippling past the sand.
Arch over arch, and tower on battled wall,
Against the violet deepness of the skies;—
And one grey spire set high above them all,
Where round the hill the moon begins to rise.
An hour’s knell rings softly out once more
From unseen cloisters, where the misty bridge
Fades in the distance of the further shore,
And nearer spires repeat it o’er and o’er;
One great blue star peers through the seaward ridge;

A hollow footfall up the echoing street
Goes wandering out to silence, and the breeze
Drops faint and fainter, here beneath my feet
The grass is all with violets overstrewn;
Oh listen, listen; in yon garden trees
Do you not hear the lute that lovers use!
One sets the discord of its strings atune;—
And in the dreamland of the risen moon
They sing some olden love-song of Vaucluse.

“WHERE THE RHONE GOES DOWN TO THE SEA.”

A sweet still night of the vintage time,
Where the Rhone goes down to the sea;
The distant sound of a midnight chime
Comes over the wave to me.
Only the hills and the stars o’erhead
Bring back dreams of the days long dead,
While the Rhone goes down to the sea.

The years are long, and the world is wide,
And we all went down to the sea;
The ripples splash as we onward glide,
And I dream they are here with me—
All lost friends whom we all loved so,
In the old mad life of long ago,
Who all went down to the sea.

So we passed in the golden days
With the summer down to the sea.
They wander still over weary ways,
And come not again to me.
I am here alone with the night wind’s sigh,
The fading stars, and a dream gone by,
And the Rhone going down to the sea.

AT TIBER MOUTH.

The low plains stretch to the west with a glimmer of rustling weeds,
Where the waves of a golden river wind home by the marshy meads;
And the fresh wind born of the sea grows faint with a sickly breath,
As it stays in the fretting rushes and blows on the dews of death.
We came to the silent city, in the glare of the noontide heat,
When the sound of a whisper rang through the length of the lonely street;
No tree in the clefted ruin, no echo of song nor sound,
But the dust of a world forgotten lay under the barren ground.
There are shrines under these green hillocks to the beautiful gods that sleep,
Where they prayed in the stormy season for lives gone out on the deep;
And here in the grave street sculptured, old record of loves and tears,
By the dust of the nameless slave, forgotten a thousand years.
Not ever again at even shall ship sail in on the breeze,
Where the hulls of their gilded galleys came home from a hundred seas,
For the marsh plants grow in her haven, the marsh birds breed in her bay,
And a mile to the shoreless westward the water has passed away.
But the sea-folk gathering rushes come up from the windy shore,
So the song that the years have silenced grows musical there once more;
And now and again unburied, like some still voice from the dead,
They light on the fallen shoulder and the lines of a marble head.
But we went from the sorrowful city and wandered away at will,
And thought of the breathing marble and the words that are music still.
How full were their lives that laboured, in their fetterless strength and far
From the ways that our feet have chosen as the sunlight is from the star,
They clung to the chance and promise that once while the years are free
Look over our life’s horizon as the sun looks over the sea,
But we wait for a day that dawns not, and cry for unclouded skies,
And while we are deep in dreaming the light that was o’er us dies;
We know not what of the present we shall stretch out our hand to save
Who sing of the life we long for, and not of the life we have;
And yet if the chance were with us to gather the days misspent,
Should we change the old resting-places, the wandering ways we went?
They were strong, but the years are stronger; they are grown but a name that thrills,
And the wreck of their marble glory lies ghost-like over their hills.
So a shadow fell o’er our dreaming for the weary heart of the past,
For the seed that the years have scattered, to reap so little at last.
And we went to the sea-shore forest, through a long colonnade of pines,
Where the skies peep in and the sea, with a flitting of silver lines.
And we came on an open place in the green deep heart of the wood
Where I think in the years forgotten an altar of Faunus stood;
From a spring in the long dark grasses two rivulets rise and run
By the length of their sandy borders where the snake lies coiled in the sun.
And the stars of the white narcissus lie over the grass like snow,
And beyond in the shadowy places the crimson cyclamens grow;
Far up from their wave home yonder the sea-winds murmuring pass,
The branches quiver and creak and the lizard starts in the grass.
And we lay in the untrod moss and pillowed our cheeks with flowers,
While the sun went over our heads, and we took no count of the hours;
From the end of the waving branches and under the cloudless blue,
Like sunbeams chained for a banner, the thread-like gossamers flew.
And the joy of the woods came o’er us, and we felt that our world was young
With the gladness of years unspent and the sorrow of life unsung.
So we passed with a sound of singing along to the seaward way,
Where the sails of the fishermen folk came homeward over the bay;
For a cloud grew over the forest and darkened the sea-god’s shrine,
And the hills of the silent city were only a ruby line.
But the sun stood still on the waves as we passed from the fading shores,
And shone on our boat’s red bulwarks and the golden blades of the oars,
And it seemed as we steered for the sunset that we passed through a twilight sea,
From the gloom of a world forgotten to the light of a world to be.

GARIBALDI IN ROME.
JUNE 29-30, 1849.

St. Peter’s eve, from dim Janiculum
The battle’s thunder drowned the bells that tolled,
The great guns flashed, but that night as of old
We kept St. Peter’s vigil, and the dome
Blazed with its myriad little lamps of gold,
And all the river ran with yellow foam,
While on the torchlit Capitol unrolled
The banner blew of our Republic, Rome,

Then silence fell with treacherous midnight,—
An hour ere dawn we heard a wild alarm,
The blast of bugles, the swift call to arm,
We sang his war hymn and fell in to fight;
Then as dawn gathered on the Esquiline
Our grand old lion gave the battle sign.

ἙΡΑΝ ΤΩΝ ἉΔΥΝΑΤΩΝ.

So now I know we shall not any more,
As we have done in these last golden days,
Go hand in hand along life’s pleasant ways,
Walk heart with heart together as before.

It seems we cannot choose but wear the chain
Fate winds about our little lives. Ah sweet,
What wall is set between us that your feet
Must wander alway where I gaze in vain!

Could we have climbed together! How these bars
Had melted in the fire of love; the road
Had known our footsteps where the wise men trod,
And our sure ways had ended with the stars!

We had atoned for passion!—passed above
All fleeting shadows of the world’s desire,
Made pure our spirits at a holier fire,
And in the lap of morning laid our love.

One law I knew, one right, one starward way,
One hope to make our lives divine, one love
In this one life, one star of truth above,
And one great desert where the rest go stray.

Life had no more to give, if that we two
Had let the world go gladly, grasp and reach
Strained ever upward, leaning each on each,
Had seen one star-ray of the pure and true.

Had we but climbed together! Oh my light,
My star, my moon, and art thou clouded o’er?
And we that were together, evermore
Must stand apart and stare across the night!

One life it seems must take its tale of days,
And as it may make service of its own,
But ah! the infinite help of love!—alone
The heart grows faint and weary of dispraise.

I shall be braver on the way I go,
Hearing that voice forever, for whose sake,
What burthen had I not bowed down to take,
What shame or peril, had it helped you so!

This must content me, to have loved, who lose
In this hard world where little loves live on,
No man will love you as I might have done,
Sweet heart, too holy for the world to choose!

Therefore be strong, remembering love’s past,
Climb on for ever in the steep old way
That haply so a moment’s space we may
Meet on the verge of changes at the last.

That at the end of all these journeyings,
Crossing the borderland of time and space
We two may stand together face to face,
Whose hearts were set upon abiding things,
And through the cloud-veil of Eternity
Our eyes may meet at last in the full light, and see.

TRANSLATIONS.

From the Italian of Stecchetti.