VALÈRE GILLE.
1867—.
ART.
What use is action? We have thought until
The world is but the shadow of our dreams.
What if the sap in all the gardens teems,
Sunk back upon itself is our limp will.
The mind has ravaged space, and we are ill
With what we know; yet knowledge only seems,
Upon life's verge a net of cheating gleams;
And my possessions leave me tired and chill.
But thou alone, O torch of sacred Art,
With first, primeval beauty warm the heart,
And flash thy multiple glimpses of the Ideal;
And thou, O Poet, make lost Eden shine
Within us, and behind the seeming real
Show us the essences of things divine.
THERMOPYLÆ.
The sombre gorge is only lighted by
The bucklers on the beeches. Near their chief
The warriors, with no fear and with no grief,
Await their fate. And now the dawn is nigh.
To-morrow Greece shall mourn them: they must die.
The priests have read the auguries like a leaf.
Hydarnes, with the footstep of a thief,
Slinks with his traitor where the shadows lie.
So be it. Under arrows showering thick
By shadows shielded they will fight, beneath
The overhanging rocks, with pike and teeth.
And when the sword breaks they will grip the stick.
They share a few figs for their breakfast, right
Calmly. They with Pluto sup to-night.
A NAVAL BATTLE.
The fleets rush headlong o'er the sea, and lock
In a loud, long impact deafening the ear;
The hissing arrows make the heavens blear,
The heavy waves are clashing shock on shock.
Ares is with us, driving like a flock
The Persian ships which, when they staggering rear,
The rostrum pierces till, in mad career,
They crowd the shore and shatter on the rock.
The dusk climbs, but the most illustrious chase
The coward, and thrust from every vantage-place.
But now the moon breaks through the clouds, to show
Our native land kissed by its tender ray,
The glittering summits and the silvered bay,
And the free sea flowered with corpses of the foe.