Ballades and Verses Vain

by Andrew Lang

FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.
Returning from what other seas
Dost thou renew thy murmuring,
Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of these
To tell, the shores where float and cling
My love, my hope, my memories?
Say does my lady wake to note
The gold light into silver die?
Or do thy waves make lullaby,
While dreams of hers, like angels, float
Through star-sown spaces of the sky?
Ah, would such angels came to me
That dreams of mine might speak with hers,
Nor wake the slumber of the sea
With words as low as winds that be
Awake among the gossamers!

A DREAM
Why will you haunt my sleep?
You know it may not be,
The grave is wide and deep,
That sunders you and me;
In bitter dreams we reap
The sorrow we have sown,
And I would I were asleep,
Forgotten and alone!
We knew and did not know,
We saw and did not see,
The nets that long ago
Fate wove for you and me;
The cruel nets that keep
The birds that sob and moan,
And I would we were asleep,
Forgotten and alone!

TWILIGHT ON TWEED.
Three crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the purple plain,
The dear remembered melody
Of Tweed once more again.
Wan water from the border hills,
Dear voice from the old years,
Thy distant music lulls and stills,
And moves to quiet tears.
Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood
Fleets through the dusky land;
Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,
My feet returning stand.
A mist of memory broods and floats,
The border waters flow;
The air is full of ballad notes,
Borne out of long ago.
Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy's day dream,
While trout below the blossom'd tree
Plashed in the golden stream.
* * * * * * * *¨* * * * * * *
Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and thrice fair you be;
You tell me that the voice is still
That should have welcomed me.
1870.

A SUNSET OF WATTEAU
LUI.
The silk sail fills, the soft winds wake,
Arise and tempt the seas;
Our ocean is the Palace lake,
Our waves the ripples that we make
Among the mirrored trees.
ELLE.
Nay, sweet the shore, and sweet the song,
And dear the languid dream;
The music mingled all day long
With paces of the dancing throng,
And murmur of the stream.
An hour ago, an hour ago,
We rested in the shade;
And now, why should we seek to know
What way the wilful waters flow?
There is no fairer glade.
LUI.
Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail,
And seek him everywhere;
Perchance in sunset's golden pale
He listens to the nightingale,
Amid the perfumed air.
Come, he has fled; you are not you,
And I no more am I;
Delight is changeful as the hue
Of heaven, that is no longer blue
In yonder sunset sky.
ELLE.
Nay, if we seek we shall not find,
If we knock none openeth;
Nay, see, the sunset fades behind
The mountains, and the cold night wind
Blows from the house of Death.

ROMANCE.
My Love dwelt in a Northern land.
A grey tower in a forest green
Was his, and far on either hand
The long wash of the waves was seen,
And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,
The woven forest boughs between!
And through the clear faint Northern night
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, silver-white,
Stole forth among the branches grey;
About the coming of the light,
They fled like ghosts before the day!
I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle grey;
I know not if the boughs between
The white deer vanish ere the day;
Above my Love the grass is green,
My heart is colder than the clay!

A SUNSET ON YARROW.
The wind and the day had lived together,
They died together, and far away
Spoke farewell in the sultry weather,
Out of the sunset, over the heather,
The dying wind and the dying day.
Far in the south, the summer levin
Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:
We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;
You saw within, but to me 'twas given
To see your face, as an angel's, there.
Never again, ah surely never,
Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,
The low good-night of the hill and the river,
The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,
Twain grown one in the solitude.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.
Your hair and chin are like the hair
And chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear;
You were unfashionably fair
And sad you were when girls are gay,
You read a book about Le vrai
Mérite de l'homme, alone in May.
What can it be,
Le vrai mérite de l'homme? Not gold,
Not titles that are bought and sold,
Not wit that flashes and is cold,
But Virtue merely!
Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know),
You bade the crowd of foplings go,
You glanced severely,
Dreaming beneath the spreading shade
Of "that vast hat the Graces made";[2]
So Rouget sang—while yet he played
With courtly rhyme,
And hymned great Doisi's red perruque,
And Nice's eyes, and Zulmé's look,
And dead canaries, ere he shook
The sultry time
With strains like thunder. Loud and low
Methinks I hear the murmur grow,
The tramp of men that come and go
With fire and sword.
They war against the quick and dead,
Their flying feet are dashed with red,
As theirs the vintaging that tread
Before the Lord.
O head unfashionably fair,
What end was thine, for all thy care?
We only see thee dreaming there:
We cannot see
The breaking of thy vision, when
The Rights of Man were lords of men,
When virtue won her own again
In '93.

THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.
[The myth in the "Birds" of Aristophanes, which represents Birds as older
than the Gods, may have been a genuine Greek tradition. The following
lines show how prevalent is the myth among widely severed races. The
Mexican Bird-gods I omit; who can rhyme to Huitzilopochtli?]
The Birds Sing:
We would have you to wit, that on eggs though
we sit, and are spiked on the spit, and are baked
in the pan,
Birds are older by far than your ancestors are, and made
love and made war ere the making of Man!
For when all things were dark, not a glimmer nor spark,
and the world like a barque without rudder or sail
Floated on through the night, 't was a Bird struck a
light, 't was a flash from the bright feather'd Tonatiu's[3]
tail!
Then the Hawk[4] with some dry wood flew up in the
sky, and afar, safe and high, the Hawk lit Sun and
Moon,
And the Birds of the air they rejoiced everywhere, and
they recked not of care that should come on them
soon.
For the Hawk, so they tell, was then known as Pundjel,[5]
and a-musing he fell at the close of the day;
Then he went on the quest, as we thought, of a nest,
with some bark of the best, and a clawful of clay,[6]
And with these did he frame two birds lacking a name,
without feathers (his game was a puzzle to all);
Next around them he fluttered a-dancing, and muttered;
and, lastly, he uttered a magical call:
Then the figures of clay, as they featherless lay, they
leaped up, who but they, and embracing they fell,
And this was the baking of Man, and his making; but
now he's forsaking his Father, Pundjel!
Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire,
and to crown their desire who was found but the
Wren?
To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he
flame, and for this has a name in the memory of
men![7]
And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men
brought it through without falter or fail?
Why the Hawk 't was again, and great Indra to men
would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,
While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night,
the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.[8]
And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung's
mead? why 't is told in the creed of the Sagamen
strong,
'T was the Eagle god who brought the drink from the
blue, and gave mortals the brew that's the fountain
of song.[9]
Next, who gave men their laws? and what reason or
cause the young brave overawes when in need of a
squaw,
Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, and
his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law?
For you still hold it wrong if a lubra[10] belong to the
self-same kobong[11] that is Father of you,
To take her as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you
give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too.
For her father, you know, is your father, the Crow, and
no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring.
Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum
shade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow was
the King.[12]
Thus on Earth's little ball to the Birds you owe all, yet
your gratitude's small for the favours they've done,
And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will,
yes, you plunder and kill the bright birds one by
one;
There 's a price on their head, and the Dodo is dead,
and the Moa has fled from the sight of the sun!

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[1] Pronounced "Maudlin."