[Str. 13.Dante, the seer of all things evil and good,
Beheld two ladies, Beauty
And high life-hallowing Duty,
That strove for sway upon his mind and mood
And held him in alternating accord
Fast bound at feet of either: but our lord,
The seer and singer of righteousness and wrong
Who stands now master of all the keys of song,
Sees both as dewdrops run
490Together in the sun,
For him not twain but one thing twice divine;
Even as his speech and song are bread and wine
For all souls hungering and all hearts athirst
At best of days and worst,
And both one sacrament of Love's great giving
To feed the spirit and sense of all souls living.
[Ant. 13.The seventh day in the wind's month, ten years gone
Since heaven-espousing earth
Gave the Republic birth,
500The mightiest soul put mortal raiment on
That came forth singing ever in man's ears
Of all souls with us, and through all these years
Rings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong,
That on our souls hath shed itself in song,
Poured forth itself like rain
On souls like springing grain
That with its procreant beams and showers were fed
For living wine and sacramental bread;
Given all itself as air gives life and light,
510Utterly, as of right;
The goodliest gift our age hath given, to be
Ours, while the sun gives glory to the sea.
[Ep. 13.Our Father and Master and Lord,
Who hast thy song for sword,
For staff thy spirit, and our hearts for throne:
As in past years of wrong,
Take now my subject song,
To no crowned head made humble but thine own;
That on thy day of worldly birth
520Gives thanks for all thou hast given past thanks of all on earth.
NOTES
v. [33]. Odes et Ballades, 1822-1824.
[57]. Les Orientales, 1829.
[69]. Les Feuilles d'Automne, 1831.
[71]. Les Chants du Crépuscule, 1835.
[73]. Les Voix Intérieures, 1837.
[81]. Les Rayons et les Ombres, 1840.
[101]. Hernani, 1830.
[105]. Marion de Lorme, 1831.
[109]. Le Roi s'amuse, 1832.
[113]. Lucrèce Borgia, 1833.
[121]. Marie Tudor, 1835.
[127]. Angelo, Tyran de Padoue, 1835.
[129]. La Esmeralda, 1836.
[133]. Ruy Blas, 1838.
[137]. Les Burgraves, 1842.
[153]. Cromwell, 1827: Étude sur Mirabeau, 1834
(Littérature et Philosophie mêlées, 1819-1834).
[177]. Han d'Islande, 1823. Bug-Jargal, 1826.
[182]. Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, 1829:
Claude Gueux, 1834.
[193]. Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831.
[205]. Le Rhin, 1845.
[216].
Napoléon le Petit, 1852. Châtiments, 1853. Histoire d'un Crime, 1877. In this place I must take occasion to relieve my conscience from a sense of duty unfulfilled so long as I for one have not uttered my own poor private protest—worthless and weightless though it may seem, if cast as a grain into the scale of public opinion—against a projected insult at once to contemporary France and to the present only less than to past generations of Englishmen.
On the proposed desecration of Westminster Abbey
by the erection of a monument to
the son of Napoleon III
"Let us go hence." From the inmost shrine of grace
Where England holds the elect of all her dead
There comes a word like one of old time said
By gods of old cast out. Here is no place
At once for these and one of poisonous race.
Let each rise up from his dishallowed bed
And pass forth silent. Each divine veiled head
Shall speak in silence with averted face.
"Scorn everlasting and eternal shame
Eat out the rotting record of his name
Who had the glory of all these graves in trust
And turned it to a hissing. His offence
Makes havoc of their desecrated dust
Whose place is here no more. Let us go hence."
Feb. 25, 1880.