Even as stormy passions here,
Battling with God above,
Revenge and wrath, despair and fear,
Make glorious music to my ear,
Beyond all songs of love.
SONNETS.
IDLE CHARON.
The shores of Styx are lone for evermore,
And not one shadowy form upon the steep
Looms through the dusk, far as the eye can sweep,
To call the ferry over as of yore;
But tintless rushes all about the shore
Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep,
Hoar-bearded Charon lies; while pale weeds creep
With tightening grasp all round the unused oar.
For in the world of Life strange rumours run
That now the Soul departs not with the breath,
But that the Body and the Soul are one;
And in the loved one’s mouth, now, after death,
The widow puts no obol, nor the son,
To pay the ferry in the world beneath.
THE OBOL.[A]
Scarce have I rhymed of Charon looming grey
Amid pale rushes through the dusky air,
And of the obol we no longer care
To put in dead men’s mouths as ferry-pay,
When, lo, I find, amongst some pence, to-day
Received as common change, I know not where,
A stray Greek obol, seeming Charon’s fare
To put between my lips when I be dead.
Poor bastard Obol, even couldst thou cheat
The shadowy Boatman, I should scarcely find
The heart to cross: extinction seems so sweet.
I need thee not; and thou shalt be consigned
To some old whining beggar in the street,
Whose soul shall cross, while mine shall stay behind.
[A] The coin referred to in this sonnet was a modern Greek piece of five lepta, rather smaller than a halfpenny, and bearing the word Obolos on the reverse.
LETHE.
I had a dream of Lethe, of the brink
Of leaden waters, whither many bore
Dead, pallid loves, while others, old and sore,
Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink.
And, having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink
Their load of love or guilt for evermore,
Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore
That lay beyond, no more to think and think.