CONTENTS
PRELUDES
| [INDIA] | 1 | |
| [THOUGHT] | 2 | |
| [SCIENCE] | 2 | |
| [POWER] | 3 | |
| [DOGMA] | 4 | |
| [FROTH] | 4 | |
| [LIBERTY] | 5 | |
| [THE THREE ANGELS] | 5 | |
APOLOGUES
| [RETURN] | 6 | |
| [THE STAR AND THE SUN] | 6 | |
| [THE WORLD’S INHERITORS] | 7 | |
| [DEATH-SONG OF SAVAGERY] | 9 | |
| [OCEAN AND THE DEAD] | 10 | |
| [OCEAN AND THE ROCK] | 11 | |
| [THE BROTHERS] | 12 | |
| [ALASTOR] | 13 | |
LABOURS
| [SONNET] | 15 | |
| [VISION] | 16 | |
| [THOUGHT AND ACTION] | 18 | |
| [THE INDIAN MOTHER] | 20 | |
| [GANGES-BORNE] | 20 | |
| [INDIAN FEVERS] | 21 | |
| [THE STAR] | 21 | |
| [PETITION] | 22 | |
IN EXILE
PÆANS
| [MAN] | 55 | |
| [LIFE] | 56 | |
| [WORLD-SONG] | 56 |
[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.
PRELUDES
India
India
Here from my lonely watch-tower of the East
An ancient race outworn I see—
With dread, my own dear distant Country, lest
The same fate fall on thee.
Lo here the iron winter of curst caste
Has made men into things that creep;
The leprous beggars totter trembling past;
The baser sultans sleep.
Not for a thousand years has Freedom’s cry
The stillness of this horror cleaved,
But as of old the hopeless millions die,
That yet have never lived.
Man has no leisure but to snatch and eat,
Who should have been a god on earth;
The lean ones cry; the fat ones curse and beat,
And wealth but weakens worth.
O Heaven, shall man rebelling never take
From Fate what she denies, his bliss?
Cannot the mind that made the engine make
A nobler life than this?
Madras, 1881.
Thought
Thought
Spirit of Thought, not thine the songs that flow
To fill with love or lull Idalian hours.
Thou wert not nurtured ’mid the marish flowers,
Or where the nightshade blooms, or lilies blow:
But on the mountains. From those keeps of snow
Thou seëst the heavens, and earth, and marts and towers
Of teeming man; the battle smoke that lours
Above the nations where they strive below;—
The gleam of golden cohorts and the cloud
Of shrieking peoples yielding to the brink—
The gleam, the gold, the agony, the rage;
The civic virtue of a race unbow’d;
The reeling empire, lost in license, sink;
And chattering pigmies of a later age.
1881-2.
Science
Science
I would rejoice in iron arms with those
Who, nobly in the scorn of recompense,
Have dared to follow Truth alone, and thence
To teach the truth—nor fear’d the rage that rose.
No high-piled monuments are theirs who chose
Her great inglorious toil—no flaming death;
To them was sweet the poetry of prose,
But wisdom gave a fragrance to their breath.
Alas! we sleep and snore beyond the night,
Tho’ these great men the dreamless daylight show;
But they endure—the Sons of simple Light—
And, with no lying lanthorne’s antic glow,
Reveal the open way that we must go.
1881-2.
Power
Power
Caligula, pacing thro’ his pillar’d hall,
Ere yet the last dull glimmer of his mind
Had faded in the banquet, where reclined
He spent all day in drunken festival,
Made impious pretence that Jove with him,
Unseen, walk’d, talk’d and jested; for he spoke
To nothing by his side; or frown’d; or broke
In answering smiles; or shook a playful rim
Of raiment coyly. ‘Earth,’ he said, ‘is mine—
No vapour. Yet Caligula, brother Jove,
Will love thee if he find thee worthy love;
If not, his solid powers shall war with thine
And break them, God of Cloud.’ The courtiers round,
As in the presence of two deities, bent
In servile scorn: when, like a warning sent,
An utterance of earthquake shook the ground,
Awful, but which no human meaning bore.
With glaring eyeballs narrowing in dismay,
The huddled creature fallen foaming lay,
Glass’d in the liquid marbles of the floor.
1881-2.
Dogma
Dogma
To a poor martyr perisht in the flame
Lo suddenly the cool and calm of Heaven,
And One who gently touch’d and tended, came.
‘For thee, O Lord,’ he cried, ‘my life was given.’
When thus the Pitiful One: ‘O suffering man,
I taught thee not to die, but how to live;
But ye have wrongly read the simple plan,
And turn to strife the Heav’nly gift I give.
I taught the faith of works, the prayer of deeds,
The sacrament of love. I gave, not awe,
But praise; no church but God’s; no form, no creeds;
No priest but conscience and no lord but law.
Behold, my brother, by my side in Heaven
Judas abhor’d by men and Nero next.
How then, if such as these may be forgiven,
Shall one be damn’d who stumbles at a text?’
1881-2.
Froth
Froth
This bubbling gossip here of fops and fools,
Who have no care beyond the coming chance,
Rough-rubs the angry soul to arrogance
And puts puff’d wisdom out of her own rules.
True, knowledge comes on all winds, without schools,
And every folly has her saw: perchance
Some costly gem from silliest spodomance
May be unash’d; and mind has many tools.
But still, love here rains not her heav’nly dew,
Nor friendship soothes the folly-fretted sense;
But pride and ignorance, the empty two,
Strut arm-in-arm to air their consequence,
And toil bleeds tears of gold for idle opulence.
1881-2.
Liberty
Liberty
When Cassius fell and Brutus died,
Resentful Liberty arose,
Where from aloft the mountain snows
She watch’d the battle’s breaking tide;
And as she rent her azure robe
Darkness descended o’er the globe.
‘Break never, Night,’ she cried, ‘nor bring
Before I come again the morn
With all her heav’nly light, for scorn
Of this base world so slumbering;
Where men for thrice five hundred years
Their sin shall mourn, and me, in tears.’
1882.
The Three Angels
The Three Angels
Heav’n vex’d in heaven heard the World
And all the grief thereof, and sent
The angel Strength. Swift he unfurl’d
His wings and flasht his sword and went:
But still the cry of Earth rang to the firmament.
Then gentle Love, most loved in heaven,
Heav’n sent to Earth. His large eyes shone,
Upcast with glory from God given,
And darkening downward from the Throne
He fell: nor bated yet the far terrestrial moan.
Then all the host of heav’n, amazed,
Cried, ‘Next let Wisdom go and prove
Himself and conquer.’ But he raised
His face and answer’d, ‘Heav’n above,
Like them, alone I fail; send with me Strength and Love.’
1882.
APOLOGUES
Return
Return
Muse, in my boyhood’s careless days
My rev’rence for thee was not small,
Altho’ I roam’d by Star and Sea
And left thee, seeking other ways—
I left thee, for I knew that all
Return by Sea and Star to thee.
Not worthy he to hear thy song,
Him thou thyself despisest most,
Who dares not leave thee and arise
To face the World’s discordant throng;
Since thou’rt best gain’d by being lost,
And Earth is in thy Heav’nly eyes.
1886-7.
The Star and the Sun
The Star and the Sun
In Darkness, and pacing the Thunder-Beat Shore
By many Waves,
No sound being near to me there but the hoarse
Cicala’s cry,
While that unseen Sword, the Zodiacal Light,
Falchion of Dawn,
Made clear all the Orient, wanning the Silvery Stars,
I heard the fine flute of the Fast-Fading Fire,
The Morning Star,
Pipe thus to the Glimmering Glories of Night,
And sing, O World,
If I too must leave thee then who can remain?
But lo! from the Deep
The Thundering Sun upsprang and responded, I.
Andamans, 1886-7.
The World’s Inheritors
The World’s Inheritors
God gazing down from Heaven saw the World.
Mighty, himself a heav’n, he fill’d the heavens.
His beard fell like a wasted thunder at eve,
And all his robe was woven with white stars,
And on his breast a star.
The World was dark. Deep in a forest there,
Where not the rill that routed in the wood
Dared break the silence, nor one murmur of night
Wound to the stagnant, chill, and listening air,
Five children slumbering lay.
One ruddy as the red grapes of the south;
One duskier, breather of more burning air;
One blue-eyed, blond, and golden-crown’d with locks;
One finely fashion’d in an even mould;
And one hard wrought as steel.
Lord of the Woods their Sire; enormous, rough,
Hair-tangled like the north-bear: but his Mate
Queen of a myriad palaces that shone
With chalcedon and jasper, justly wrought,
And gems of jewel’d stone.
Who when he saw her won her; loved her well;
By her abhor’d: and so he slew her then,
And gazed upon her beauty dead, and died
Himself, lamenting his wild woods. And these
Their wondrous offspring were.
Europe, A.D. 500.
The World beheld them and adored—adored,
And fear’d, and sought to slay them; for
The battle-brood of gods is battle-born.
But they endured; nor in the thunder found
Harm, or the bolt of death.
And God look’d down and spake, and thro’ the Earth
The murmur ran, terranean like the shock
When central earthquakes jar, until the Deep
Foams tingling to the icèd poles; and said,
To these I give the World.
Andamans, 1886-7.
Death-Song of Savagery
Death-Song of Savagery
I have heard it—I have heard the Forest
Strive to bring me comfort, and the Ocean
Roll large-tongued consolation round me.
I have heard the weakling Wildbirds crying,
And the wailing Winds proclaim me brother.
I have heard these things and yet I perish.
From the Flowers, the myriad mouths of Forest,
Honey’d words have come, and from the Billows,
Bursting, issue of sweet cheering voices.
In this Midnight and moon-glamour’d Darkness,
Winds and Wildbirds crying give me pity;
But, altho’ I hear them, lo! I perish.
For a mighty Voice rolls thro’ my Spirit,
Crying, As thou wert, so art, and shalt be,
Ever and for ever and for ever,
Son of Midnight and moon-glamour’d Darkness,
Rayless, lightless, and thy One Star faded,
Child of Night and Ocean, till thou perish.
Andamans, 1886-7.
Epilogue to the author’s romance The Child of Ocean.
Ocean and the Dead
| Ocean and the Dead | |
| The Dead: | ‘Dost dare to rouse us from our sleep, |
| Eternal, given of God, O Deep?’ | |
| Ocean: | ‘A thunder on your bones! In life |
| You waged with me your pigmy strife.’ | |
| The Dead: | ‘Living, but humble mariners we; |
| Dead, Ocean, what are we to thee?’ | |
| Ocean: | ‘You hoped to find within your graves |
| Eternal refuge from my waves.’ | |
| The Dead: | ‘Living, we faced thee full of fears; |
| Dying, thy roar was in our ears.’ | |
| Ocean: | ‘Dead, I will break your bones for ever. |
| Man may forgive, but Nature never.’ | |
| Andamans, 1886-7. | |
In 1740 the cemeteries of Dunwich were laid bare by the sea.
Ocean and the Rock
| Ocean and the Rock | |
| The Rock: | ‘Cease, O rude and raging Sea, |
| Thus to waste thy war on me. | |
| Hast thou not enough assail’d, | |
| All these ages, Fool, and fail’d?’ | |
| Ocean: | ‘Gaunt and ghastly Skeleton, |
| Remnant of a time that’s gone, | |
| Tott’ring in thy last decay | |
| Durst thou still to darken day?’ | |
| The Rock: | ‘Empty Brawler, brawl no more; |
| Cease to waste thy watery war | |
| On my bastion’d Bases broad, | |
| Sanctified by Time and God.’ | |
| Ocean: | ‘Thou that beëst but to be, |
| Scornest thou my energy? | |
| Not much longer lasts the strife. | |
| I am Labour, I am Life.’ | |
| The Rock: | ‘Roar, then, roar, and vent thy Surge; |
| Thou not now shalt drone my dirge. | |
| Dost imagine to dismay | |
| This my iron breast with Spray?’ | |
| Ocean: | ‘Relic of primeval Slime, |
| I shall whelm thee in my time. | |
| Changeless thou dost ever die; | |
| Changing but immortal I.’ | |
| Andamans, 1886-7. | |
The Brothers
| The Brothers | |
| Beneath Socotra, and before | |
| The mariner makes the Libyan shore, | |
| Or him the Doubtful Cape beguiles, | |
| Black in the Night two dreadful Isles. | |
| By Allah chain’d to Ocean’s bed, | |
| Each shows above an awful head, | |
| And front to front, envisaged, frown | |
| To frown retorts—by loud renown | |
| The Brothers. But no love between: | |
| Tho’ bound, they nurse a mutual spleen; | |
| And, when the thundering Waves engage | |
| In battle, vent immortal rage. | |
| Darzé: | ‘Ho! Thro’ the Midnight learn my hate. |
| When God releases, then thy fate.’ | |
| Samhé: | ‘When God unbinds thy fetter’d feet, |
| For mercy him, not me, entreat.’ | |
| Darzé: | ‘Dost think, because thy head is high, |
| That thou art more divine than I?’ | |
| Samhé: | ‘Because thy looks are earthward given |
| Thou hatest one who looks to Heaven.’ | |
| Darzé: | ‘Because thou gazest at the Sun |
| Think’st thou thou art the nobler one?’ | |
| Samhé: | ‘For them who with the Stars converse |
| There is no better and no worse.’ | |
| Darzé: | ‘So! hold thy old philosophy! |
| Truth and the World enough for me. | |
| For humble Truth was born on Earth, | |
| But Lies, forsooth, have better birth!’ | |
| Samhé: | ‘I watch the white Stars rise and fall; |
| I hear the vanish’d Eagles call; | |
| For me the World is but a Sod; | |
| I strive to see the eyes of God.’ | |
| 1888. | |
The islands about which this legend is told are known as Jezírat Darzé and Jezírat Samhé, east of Cape Gardafui—one high and the other low.
Alastor
Alastor
’Tis said that a noble youth of old
Was to his native village lost,
And to his home, and agèd sire;
For he had wander’d (it is told)
Where, pinnacled in eternal frost,
Apollo leads his awful Choir.
Awful, for nought of human warms
The agony of their song sublime,
Which like the breath of ice is given
Ascending in vapour from all forms,
Where gods in clear alternate chime
Reveal their mystery-thoughts to Heaven.
Nor in those regions of windless cold
Is fiery the Sun, tho’ fierce in light;
But frozen-pale the numbèd Moon
Wanders along the ridges that fold
Enormous Peaks, what time the Night
Rivals with all her stars the Noon.
For there, not dimly as here, the Stars,
But globèd and azure and crimson tinct,
Climb up the windless wastes of snow,
Gold-footed, or thro’ the long-drawn bars
Of mountain mist, with eyes unblink’d
And scorn, gaze down on the World below;
Or high on the topmost peak and end
Of ranges stand with sudden blaze,
Like Angels born in spontaneous birth;
Or wrap themselves in flame and descend
Between black foreheads of rock in haze,
Slowly, like grievèd gods to earth.
And there for ever the patient Wind
Rakes up the crystals of dry snow,
And mourns for ever her work undone;
And there for ever, like Titans blind,
Their countenance lifting to Heaven’s glow,
The sightless Mountains yearn for the Sun.
There nightly the numbèd eagle quells
(Full-feather’d to his feet of horn)
His swooning eye, his eyrie won,
And slumbers, frozen by frosty spells
Fast to the pinnacle; but at Morn
Unfetter’d leaps toward the Sun.
. . . . .
He heard, he saw. Not to the air
Dared breathe a breath; but with his sight
Wreak’d on Immortals mortal wrong,
And dared to see them as they were—
The black Peaks blacken’d in their light,
The white Stars flashing with their song.
So fled. But when revealing Morn
Show’d him, descended, giant-grown,
Men ant-like, petty, mean and weak,
He rush’d, returning. Then in scorn
Th’ Immortals smote him to a Stone
That aches for ever on the Peak.
1888.
LABOURS
Sonnet
Sonnet
High Muse, who first, where to my opening sight,
New-born, the loftiest summits of the world,
Silent, with brows of ice and robes unfurl’d
Of motionless thunder, shone above the night,
Didst touch my infant eyes and fill with light
Of snow, and sleepless stars, and torrents hurl’d,
And fragrant pines of morning mist-empearl’d,
And music of great things and their delight:
Revisit me; resume my soul; inspire
With force and cold out of the north—not given
To sickly dwellers in these southern spots,
Where all day long the great Sun rolls his fire
Intol’rable in the dusty march of heaven,
And the heart shrivels and the spirit rots.
Madras, 1890.
Vision
Vision
A valley of far-fallen rocks,
Like bones of mouldering mountains, spread,
And ended by the barren blocks
Of mountains doom’d or dead:
No rivage there with green recess
Made music in that wilderness.
Despairing fell the sore-spent Sun,
And cried, ‘I die,’ and sank in fire;
Like conquering Death, the Night came on
And ran from spire to spire;
And swollen-pale ascended soon,
Like Death in Life, the leprous Moon.
On windy ledges lined with light,
Between the still Stars sparsely strewn,
Two Spirits grew from out the Night
Beneath the mistless Moon,
And held deep parley, making thought
With words sententious half distraught.
One full-robed; in his hand a book;
His lips, that labour’d for the word,
Scarce moved in utterance; and his look
Sought, not his face who heard,
But that Sad Star that sobs alway
Upon the breast of dying Day.
One, weary, with two-handed stress
Leant on his shoulder-touching spear
His beard blown o’er the hairiness
Of his great breast; and clear
His eyes shot speculation out
To catch the truth or quell the doubt.
1. ‘The dreams of Hope, of blue-eyed Hope,
Melt after morn and die in day;
Love’s golden dew-globe, lit aslope,
Dulls with a downward ray;
Canst thou with all thy thought renew
The flying dreams or drying dew?’
2. ‘Not I creator. Hour by hour
I labour without stress or strife
To gain more knowledge, greater power,
A nobler, longer life.
By thought alone we take our stand
Above the world and win command.’
1. ‘Know, Knowledge doth but clip our wings,
And worldly Wisdom weaken worth,
To make us lords of little things,
And worm-gods of the earth.
Were earth made Heaven by human wit,
Some wild star yet might shatter it.’
2. ‘The wings of Fancy are but frail,
And Virtue’s without Wisdom weak;
Better than Falsehood’s flowery vale,
The Truth, however bleak.
Tho’ she may bless not nor redeem,
The Truth is true, and reigns supreme.’
1. ‘Not all, but few, can plead and prove
And crown their brows with Truth and pass;
Their little labours cannot move
The mountain’s mighty mass.
To man in vain the Truth appeals,
Or Heav’n ordains, or Art reveals.’
2. ‘So self-consuming thought. But see
The standards of Advance unfurl’d;
The buds are breaking on the lea,
And Spring strikes thro’ the world.
Tho’ we may never reach the Peak,
God gave this great commandment, Seek.’
. . . . .
The ponderous bolts of Night were drawn;
The pale Day peer’d thro’ cloudy bars;
The Wind awoke; the sword of Dawn
Flasht thro’ the flying Stars;
The new-born Sun-Star smote the Gloom:
The Desert burst in endless Bloom.
Bangalore, 1890.
Thought and Action
Thought and Action
The Angel of the Left Hand spake. His speech
Fell as when on some shuddering arctic beach
The icy Northern creeps from reach to reach
And curdles motion and with thrilling spell
Fixes the falling ripple. ‘Peace and quell,’
He said, ‘the action not maturèd well.
What scorn to build with labour, round on round,
And lay the costly marbles, when ’tis found
The whole design at last inapt, unsound!
Beware the bitter moment when awake
We view the mischief that our visions make—
The good things broken in a mad mistake.
But rather use the thought that is divine;
And know that every moment of design
Will save an hour of action, point for line.
And leave to others loss or victory;
And like the stars of heaven seek to be
The wise man’s compass but beyond the sea.’
Then He upon the Right. His words came forth
Like the full Southern blowing to the north.
‘The time is come,’ he said, ‘to try thy worth.
For when Thought’s wasted candles wane and wink,
And meditations like the planets sink,
The sun of Action rushes from the brink.
Stand not for ever in the towers of Thought
To watch the watery dawning waste to nought
The distant stars deluding darkness brought.
Not timorous weak persuasion, but the brand
Of Action—not discussion, but command—
Can rouse the ranks of God and storm the land,
Where men who know the day still doze again;
Not walls of dust can dam th’ outrageous main,
Nor mitigation seize the world and reign.
Fear not. Unsheath the naked falchion. Try
The end. For in the end, who dares deny,
The utter truth shall slay the utter lie.’
Bangalore, 1890-3.
The Indian Mother
The Indian Mother
Full fed with thoughts and knowledges sublime,
And thundering oracles of the gods, that make
Man’s mind the flower of action and of time,
I was one day where beggars come to take
Doles ere they die. An Indian mother there,
Young, but so wretched that her staring eyes
Shone like the winter wolf’s with ravening glare
Of hunger, struck me. For to much surprise
A three-year child well nourish’d at her breast,
Wither’d with famine, still she fed and press’d—
For she was dying. ‘I am too poor,’ she said,
‘To feed him otherwise’; and with a kiss
Fell back and died. And the soul answeréd,
‘In spite of all the gods and prophets—this!’
Bangalore, 1890-3.
Ganges-Borne
Ganges-Borne
The fingers which had stray’d
Thro’ shining clusters of his children’s hair
Now lifeless moved, and play’d
With horrible tresses of the ripples there;
His eyes, as if he pray’d,
Were cast beneath long eyelids, wan and spare.
Rock’d by the roaring flood,
He seem’d to speak as in debate with doom,
Uplooking, while the flood
Bore him with thunder to the ocean foam.
God’s face, a luminous cloud,
Look’d thro’ the midnight, black, and horrible gloom.
Bangalore, 1890-3.
Indian Fevers
Indian Fevers
In this, O Nature, yield I pray to me.
I pace and pace, and think and think, and take
The fever’d hands, and note down all I see,
That some dim distant light may haply break.
. . . . . .
The painful faces ask, can we not cure?
We answer, No, not yet; we seek the laws.
O God, reveal thro’ all this thing obscure
The unseen, small, but million-murdering cause.
Bangalore, 1890-3.
The Star
The Star
Far across the Loneland, far across the Sea,
Far across the Sands, O silver shining
Sister of the Silence, Sister of the Dew,
Sister of the Twilight, lighten me.
Ever art thou beaming. I, with eyes upcast,
Gazing worn and weary from this Dark World,
Ask of thee thy Wisdom, steadfast Eye of God,
That I be as Thou art while I last.
1890-3.
Petition
Petition
Truth, whom I hold divine,
Thy wings are strong to bear
Thro’ day or desperate night;
For, ever those eyes of thine,
Fix’d upward full of prayer,
Are seeking for the light.
Guide me and bear. Descend
Into the sulphurous void—
Tho’ I so weak, thy wings
Stronger than him who, pen’d
In hell unmerited, buoy’d
Poets past infernal springs.
Take me and bear. Descend
Into these deeps of death,
Wherever the light may lead,
Wherever the way may wend;
And give to my failing breath,
O Spirit, thy words of deed.
1890-3.
IN EXILE