THE SONS OF GIUKI
Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose, And through the doors cast open flowed in the river of foes: They flooded the hall of the murder, and surged round that rampart of dead; No war-duke ran before them, no lord to the onset led, But the thralls shot spears at adventure, and shot out shafts from afar, Till the misty hall was blinded with the bitter drift of war: Few and faint were the Niblung children, and their wounds were waxen acold, And they saw the Hell-gates open as they stood in their grimly hold: Yet thrice stormed out King Hogni, thrice stormed out Gunnar the King, Thrice fell they aback yet living to the heart of the fated ring; And they looked and their band was little, and no man but was wounded sore, And the hall seemed growing greater, such hosts of foes it bore, So tossed the iron harvest from wall to gilded wall; And they looked and the white-clad Gudrun sat silent over all.
Then the churls and thralls of the Eastland howled out as wolves accurst, But oft gaped the Niblungs voiceless, for they choked with anger and thirst; And the hall grew hot as a furnace, and men drank their flowing blood, Men laughed and gnawed on their shield-rims, men knew not where they stood, And saw not what was before them; as in the dark men smote, Men died heart-broken, unsmitten; men wept with the cry in the throat, Men lived on full of war-shafts, men cast their shields aside And caught the spears to their bosoms; men rushed with none beside, And fell unarmed on the foemen, and tore and slew in death: And still down rained the arrows as the rain across the heath; Still proud o'er all the turmoil stood the Kings of Giuki born, Nor knit were the brows of Gunnar, nor his song-speech overworn; But Hogni's mouth kept silence, and oft his heart went forth To the long, long day of the darkness, and the end of worldly worth.
Loud rose the roar of the East-folk, and the end was coming at last: Now the foremost locked their shield-rims and the hindmost over them cast, And nigher they drew and nigher, and their fear was fading away, For every man of the Niblungs on the shaft-strewn pavement lay, Save Gunnar the King and Hogni: still the glorious King up-bore The cloudy shield of the Niblungs set full of shafts of war; But Hogni's hands had fainted, and his shield had sunk adown, So thick with the Eastland spearwood was that rampart of renown; And hacked and dull were the edges that had rent the wall of foes: Yet he stood upright by Gunnar before that shielded close, Nor looked on the foeman's faces as their wild eyes drew anear, And their faltering shield-rims clattered with the remnant of their fear; But he gazed on the Niblung woman, and the daughter of his folk, Who sat o'er all unchanging ere the war-cloud over them broke.
Now nothing might men hearken in the house of Atli's weal, Save the feet slow tramping onward, and the rattling of the steel, And the song of the glorious Gunnar, that rang as clearly now As the speckled storm-cock singeth from the scant-leaved hawthorn-bough, When the sun is dusking over and the March snow pelts the land. There stood the mighty Gunnar with sword and shield in hand, There stood the shieldless Hogni with set unangry eyes, And watched the wall of war-shields o'er the dead men's rampart rise, And the white blades flickering nigher, and the quavering points of war. Then the heavy air of the feast-hall was rent with a fearful roar, And the turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran: But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man, And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the sea The doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean's mastery, And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps, And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps: So before the little-hearted in King Atli's murder-hall Did the glorious sons of Giuki 'neath the shielded onrush fall: Sore wounded, bound and helpless, but living yet, they lie Till the afternoon and the even in the first of night shall die.
William Morris.
[CXIV]
IS LIFE WORTH LIVING
Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here; So long as May of April takes, In smiles and tears, farewell, And windflowers dapple all the brakes, And primroses the dell; While children in the woodlands yet Adorn their little laps With ladysmock and violet, And daisy-chain their caps; While over orchard daffodils Cloud-shadows float and fleet, And ousel pipes and laverock trills, And young lambs buck and bleat; So long as that which bursts the bud And swells and tunes the rill Makes springtime in the maiden's blood, Life is worth living still.
Life not worth living! Come with me, Now that, through vanishing veil, Shimmers the dew on lawn and lea, And milk foams in the pail; Now that June's sweltering sunlight bathes With sweat the striplings lithe, As fall the long straight scented swathes Over the crescent scythe; Now that the throstle never stops His self-sufficing strain, And woodbine-trails festoon the copse, And eglantine the lane; Now rustic labour seems as sweet As leisure, and blithe herds Wend homeward with unweary feet, Carolling like the birds; Now all, except the lover's vow, And nightingale, is still; Here, in the twilight hour, allow, Life is worth living still.
When Summer, lingering half-forlorn, On Autumn loves to lean, And fields of slowly yellowing corn Are girt by woods still green; When hazel-nuts wax brown and plump, And apples rosy-red, And the owlet hoots from hollow stump, And the dormouse makes its bed; When crammed are all the granary floors, And the Hunter's moon is bright, And life again is sweet indoors, And logs again alight; Ay, even when the houseless wind Waileth through cleft and chink, And in the twilight maids grow kind, And jugs are filled and clink; When children clasp their hands and pray ‘Be done Thy Heavenly will!’ Who doth not lift his voice, and say, ‘Life is worth living still’?
Is life worth living? Yes, so long As there is wrong to right, Wail of the weak against the strong, Or tyranny to fight; Long as there lingers gloom to chase, Or streaming tear to dry, One kindred woe, one sorrowing face That smiles as we draw nigh; Long as at tale of anguish swells The heart, and lids grow wet, And at the sound of Christmas bells We pardon and forget; So long as Faith with Freedom reigns, And loyal Hope survives, And gracious Charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For Intellect or Will, And men are free to think and act Life is worth living still.
Not care to live while English homes Nestle in English trees, And England's Trident-Sceptre roams Her territorial seas! Not live while English songs are sung Wherever blows the wind, And England's laws and England's tongue Enfranchise half mankind! So long as in Pacific main, Or on Atlantic strand, Our kin transmit the parent strain, And love the Mother-land; So long as flashes English steel, And English trumpets shrill, He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.
Austin.
[CXV]
THEOLOGY IN EXTREMIS
Oft in the pleasant summer years, Reading the tales of days bygone, I have mused on the story of human tears, All that man unto man has done, Massacre, torture, and black despair; Reading it all in my easy-chair.
Passionate prayer for a minute's life; Tortured crying for death as rest; Husband pleading for child or wife, Pitiless stroke upon tender breast. Was it all real as that I lay there Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?
Could I believe in those hard old times, Here in this safe luxurious age? Were the horrors invented to season rhymes, Or truly is man so fierce in his rage? What could I suffer, and what could I dare? I who was bred to that easy-chair.
They were my fathers, the men of yore, Little they recked of a cruel death; They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore, They stood and burnt for a rule of faith. What would I burn for, and whom not spare? I, who had faith in an easy-chair.
Now do I see old tales are true, Here in the clutch of a savage foe; Now shall I know what my fathers knew, Bodily anguish and bitter woe, Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare, Far from my civilised easy-chair.
Now have I tasted and understood That old-world feeling of mortal hate; For the eyes all round us are hot with blood; They will kill us coolly—they do but wait; While I, I would sell ten lives, at least, For one fair stroke at that devilish priest.
Just in return for the kick he gave, Bidding me call on the prophet's name; Even a dog by this may save Skin from the knife and soul from the flame; My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it, But life is sweet if a word may earn it.
A bullock's death, and at thirty years! Just one phrase, and a man gets off it; Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears Whining aloud the name of the prophet; Only a formula easy to patter, And, God Almighty, what can it matter?
‘Matter enough,’ will my comrade say Praying aloud here close at my side, ‘Whether you mourn in despair alway, Cursed for ever by Christ denied; Or whether you suffer a minute's pain All the reward of Heaven to gain.’
Not for a moment faltereth he, Sure of the promise and pardon of sin; Thus did the martyrs die, I see, Little to lose and muckle to win; Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it, But what shall I do if I don't believe it?
Life is pleasant, and friends may be nigh, Fain would I speak one word and be spared; Yet I could be silent and cheerfully die, If I were only sure God cared; If I had faith, and were only certain That light is behind that terrible curtain.
But what if He listeth nothing at all, Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say That mighty God who created all To labour and live their appointed day; Who stoops not either to bless or ban, Weaving the woof of an endless plan.
He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf, Shall not the season its order keep? Can it be changed by a man's belief? Millions of harvests still to reap; Will God reward, if I die for a creed, Or will He but pity, and sow more seed?
Surely He pities who made the brain, When breaks that mirror of memories sweet, When the hard blow falleth, and never again Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat; Bitter the vision of vanishing joys; Surely He pities when man destroys.
Here stand I on the ocean's brink, Who hath brought news of the further shore? How shall I cross it? Sail or sink, One thing is sure, I return no more; Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea?
They tell fair tales of a far-off land, Of love rekindled, of forms renewed; There may I only touch one hand Here life's ruin will little be rued; But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard, To lose them for ever, and all for a word!
Now do I feel that my heart must break All for one glimpse of a woman's face; Swiftly the slumbering memories wake Odour and shadow of hour and place; One bright ray through the darkening past Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last,
Showing me summer in western land Now, as the cool breeze murmureth In leaf and flower—And here I stand In this plain all bare save the shadow of death; Leaving my life in its full noonday, And no one to know why I flung it away.
Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll? I shall be murdered and clean forgot; Is it a bargain to save my soul? God, whom I trust in, bargains not; Yet for the honour of English race, May I not live or endure disgrace.
Ay, but the word, if I could have said it, I by no terrors of hell perplext; Hard to be silent and have no credit From man in this world, or reward in the next; None to bear witness and reckon the cost Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.
I must be gone to the crowd untold Of men by the cause which they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old; Never a story and never a stone Tells of the martyrs who die like me, Just for the pride of the old countree.
Lyall.
[CXVI]
THE OBLATION
Ask nothing more of me, sweet; All I can give you I give. Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet: Love that should help you to live, Song that should spur you to soar.
All things were nothing to give Once to have sense of you more, Touch you and taste of you, sweet, Think you and breathe you and live, Swept of your wings as they soar, Trodden by chance of your feet.
I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet: He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.
Swinburne.
[CXVII]
ENGLAND
England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found? Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned. Time may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason, and fraud, and fear: Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from far and near: Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from year to year.
Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame and smite, We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of night, We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in light.
Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not by eyeless foes: Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows: Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows. Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth: Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth: Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent's tooth.
Greed and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the strength of Spain.
Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of thee England's place: Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed with grace: Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as fair of face, How shalt thou be abased? or how shalt fear take hold of thy heart? of thine, England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes divine? Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her darkness shine.
England, none that is born thy son, and lives by grace of thy glory, free, Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he worships thee; None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea.
Swinburne.
[CXVIII]
A JACOBITE IN EXILE
The weary day rins down and dies, The weary night wears through: And never an hour is fair wi' flower, And never a flower wi' dew.
I would the day were night for me, I would the night were day: For then would I stand in my ain fair land, As now in dreams I may.
O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance.
O weel were they that fell fighting On dark Drumossie's day: They keep their hame ayont the faem And we die far away.
O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep, But night and day wake we; And ever between the sea banks green Sounds loud the sundering sea.
And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep But sweet and fast sleep they: And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them Is e'en their country's clay; But the land we tread that are not dead Is strange as night by day.
Strange as night in a strange man's sight, Though fair as dawn it be: For what is here that a stranger's cheer Should yet wax blithe to see?
The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep, The fields are green and gold: The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring, As ours at home of old.
But hills and flowers are nane of ours, And ours are over sea: And the kind strange land whereon we stand, It wotsna what were we Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame, To try what end might be.
Scathe and shame, and a waefu' name, And a weary time and strange, Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing Can die, and cannot change.
Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn, Though sair be they to dree: But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, Mair keen than wind and sea.
Ill may we thole the night's watches, And ill the weary day: And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep, A waefu' gift gie they; For the songs they sing us, the sights they bring us, The morn blaws all away.
On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw, The burn rins blithe and fain: There's nought wi' me I wadna gie To look thereon again.
On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide: There sounds nae hunting-horn That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat Round banks where Tyne is born.
The Wansbeck sings with all her springs The bents and braes give ear; But the wood that rings wi' the sang she sings I may not see nor hear; For far and far thae blithe burns are, And strange is a' thing near.
The light there lightens, the day there brightens, The loud wind there lives free: Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me That I wad hear or see.
But O gin I were there again, Afar ayont the faem, Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed That haps my sires at hame!
We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair, And the sweet grey gleaming sky, And the lordly strand of Northumberland, And the goodly towers thereby; And none shall know but the winds that blow The graves wherein we lie.
Swinburne.
[CXIX]
THE REVEILLÉ
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armèd men the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum,— Saying, ‘Come, Freemen, come! Ere your heritage be wasted,’ said the quick alarming drum.
‘Let me of my heart take counsel: War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come?’ But the drum Echoed, ‘Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest,’ said the solemn-sounding drum.
‘But when won the coming battle, What of profit springs therefrom? What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become?’ But the drum Answered, ‘Come! You must do the sum to prove it,’ said the Yankee-answering drum.
‘What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?’ But the drum Answered, ‘Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant,—Come!’
Thus they answered,—hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming, Said, ‘My chosen people, come!’ Then the drum, Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, ‘Lord, we come!’
Bret Harte.
[CXX]
WHAT THE BULLET SANG
O Joy of creation To be! O rapture to fly And be free! Be the battle lost or won Though its smoke shall hide the sun, I shall find my love—the one Born for me!
I shall know him where he stands, All alone, With the power in his hands Not o'erthrown; I shall know him by his face, By his god-like front and grace; I shall hold him for a space All my own!
It is he—O my love! So bold! It is I—All thy love Foretold! It is I. O love! what bliss! Dost thou answer to my kiss? O sweetheart! what is this Lieth there so cold?
Bret Harte.
[CXXI]
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA
King Philip had vaunted his claims; He had sworn for a year he would sack us; With an army of heathenish names He was coming to fagot and stack us; Like the thieves of the sea he would track us, And shatter our ships on the main; But we had bold Neptune to back us— And where are the galleons of Spain?
His carackes were christened of dames To the kirtles whereof he would tack us; With his saints and his gilded stern-frames He had thought like an egg shell to crack us; Now Howard may get to his Flaccus, And Drake to his Devon again, And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus— For where are the galleons of Spain?
Let his Majesty hang to St. James The axe that he whetted to hack us; He must play at some lustier games Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us; To his mines of Peru he would pack us To tug at his bullet and chain; Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!— But where are the galleons of Spain?