A Hermit of Carmel, and Other Poems

by George Santayana

What has chanced I know.
'T were idle to rehearse that history.
Only one matter, past my understanding,
I ask thee to confess: how came thy soul
To harbour thoughts so opposite to thine
And do thy nobleness this injury?
ULRIC. Alas! The saddest sorrow of the world
Is not foul sin, but that resplendent virtue
That yet brings evil on. 'T was nothing base,
Hideous, ignoble, or contemptible
That led me to my ruin, but the might
Of perfect sweetness, joy unthinkable,
And infinite deserts; it was the hunger
For what most truly merits to be loved.
'T was love, my lord, the love of Flerida
Which, in thy bosom waking heaven's choirs,
Brought hell into my breast. Was not her face
As fair for me as thee to look upon?
Was not her silver voice and high discourse
Potent with reason on my listening ears?
Why was it criminal in me to love
And in thee lawful? For we both were men,
And I the elder and the better born,
Who might have wooed and won her worthily.
Yet with no other crime than lucklessness,
Because her father and her constant soul
Lit first on thee, the tempest of my love
Wrecked honour, faith, fame, life, and hope of heaven,
Which, had the winds blown gently on my fortunes,
The self-same love had blessed and glorified.
PALMERIN. I pity thee; but summon not thy love
To shield thy shame. Hadst thou been fortunate,
Should I with cunning and outrageous hand
Have moved against thy peace? Nay, by God's mercy,
I should have gone my way, and patiently
In other worlds have justified my soul;
For sorrow more religiously than love
Counselleth mortals.
ULRIC. Ah, I loved too much.
PALMERIN. Thou sayest well, Too much. Not that thy love
In sweetness or in silent potency
Of grief surpassed or mine or any man's.
But finding in thy spirit no defence,
Love fattened on thy reason, drank thy will,
And quite consumed thy being; growing great,
It left thee little, as, when a fiery wind
Devours the stubble, both together perish
And all goes out in shame. Water these ashes,
Ulric, with warm and consecrated tears,
That haply some new sweetness thence arise
Beneath another heaven. Though thou leave us,
Our hearts will not forget thee. In thy prayers
Remember us, and use thy freedom well.
ULRIC. I thank thee for thy counsel and thy mercy,
Generous knight. Not comfortless I go,
For not thy lips alone, well catechised,
Forgive me, Palmerin: thy heart forgives.
I would not use my freedom now to rove
But to ascend. A cloister's little earth
Is covered by the whole wide firmament.
Being changed within, there let me live and die
An anchorite, that I may outwardly
Become a breathing symbol and a hand
Pointing to heaven, become a lamp of love
And keep my spirit's sacrificial flame
Burning before the altar, till my blood,
Its living oil, to light refine its fire
And rise, by prayer transmuted, from this world.
And at this parting let me bless thee, lady,
Angel God chose to save me from my sin
Even by tempting me. For in the storm
And fury of my madness thy calm eyes
That unaware had called me, as the moon
Summons the leaping sea to follow her,
Soon with quick bolt and soul-transfixing ire
Awaked me from my dream. For who was I,
That I should lift me to so pure a being
Except in adoration, as the wave
That mirrors in its slimy breast the glory
Of some clear star, soon, grateful for that light,
Sinks, moaning, to its restless element.
So moaned I, in my dungeon's loneliness
And in that larger solitude, the world,
Where now no joy remained to beckon me.
I cried to Nature, questioned sun and moon,
At my cell's bars celestial visitants;
Yes, I importuned my own soul to tell me
Whether a man be born to look on good
And straightway perish. Long I questioned fate.
No answer came from heaven to my doubts;
But with the Spring and the reviving note
Of thrush and swallow, and the ploughman's song
Heard from the fields, I somewhat calmed my griefs,
And my heart took new counsel. Though a wave
Mirror a star and sink into the sea,
It cannot suffer; though the summer fade
It shivers not at autumn; though the spheres
Crash back to chaos they lament it not.
Never the blasted deserts of the moon
Mourned their lost verdure or implored reprieve.
But my loud heart-beats, self-contemplative,
Note their own weariness, and death foreknown
Makes life a grim and halting agony.
Yet something in me rides on circumstance
And swims the tide of change. How should that die
Which knows its dying, or that pine and fade
Which marks the shrivelled leafage of the year?
Can ashes choke that voice to lying silence
Which once has said: I love? That truth must live
Though unremembered, and that splendour shine
Though all eyes close in sleep. When first I loved thee
Something immortal darted through my flesh
And made me godlike. Henceforth all of me
That loved thee, all of thee my puissant love
Hedging with worship rescued from the void
Lives in eternity, a part of God,
Who feeds with earth's unquenchable desire
The skies' ethereal altar, to whose flame
Passions are brands, thoughts smoke and frankincense,
Nations and worlds unceasing hecatombs.
There, growing one with all that ravished me,
I also bum and never cease from love.
Farewell, sweet lady. For thy pity thanks,
More thanks for thy disdain, but for thy beauty
Infinite thanks, for it was infinite
And, while it blinded most, unsealed mine eyes.
FLERIDA. Go in God's peace, and may he grant thee grace
To see him always.

Exit ULRIC.

Palmerin, this night
Brings me a surfeit and a cloud of joys.
I cannot seize them all. But many days
Will suck their drop of sweetness from this store,
And many silent nights and absences
Feed on its garnered bliss.
NURSE. What, prattling still?
You 'll catch the ague and the chill of the fens,
And lolling in the moonlight, talking love,
You 'll die before the wedding. Come along.
PALMERIN. Sleep, Flerida, falls sweetly on a heart
Freed from long doubt and anguish. Take thy rest.
Palmerin watches at thy castle gates
And all is well. Sleep, sleep, my Flerida.
FLERIDA. Let me gaze long upon thee ere I go,
Lest, waking, I believe that I have dreamt
And weep anew and be disconsolate.
PALMERIN. Ah, were I only lying by thy side
At the first checking of thy peaceful breath,
To chase away that doubt before it grieved thee
And with two kisses close thy dreamful eyes!
Alas that we should meet to part, and love
Only to be divided!
FLERIDA. Palmerin,
Though thou hast faced the world and conquered it,
Thy noble heart is young. My briefer years
And lonely life have farther traced the thread
By which fate guides us through this labyrinth.
To learn to part, to learn to be divided,
We meet and love on earth; to learn to die
Is the one triumph of the life of prayer.
Shall love be but to hug the mother's breast,
Or else run wailing? To prolong for ever
The lovers' kiss, or pine for blandishments?
Is the Lord's body but unleavened bread
Weighed with a baker's measure, or his blood
Wine to be drunk in bumpers? And shall love
Be reckoned in embraces, and its grace
Die with the taking of its sacrament?
These be but symbols to the eye of time
Of secrets written in eternity.
The love that fed must wean the nourished soul,
And through the dark and narrow vale of death
Send forth the lover lone but panoplied.
Else life were vain and love a moment's trouble
That, passing, left untenanted the void,
As summer winds a-tremble in this bower
Might waft some fragrance from a rifled rose
Through yonder gulf of night and nothingness.
Hadst thou in battle fallen, were my soul
Bereft of Palmerin? Or had I languished,
Would Flerida have mocked thy constancy?
Banish such thoughts, dear master of my being,
From thy immortal soul. These fond enchantments
Make the sweet holiday and youth of love;
They are a largess and bright boon of heaven
To sweeten our resolves. But youth will fade,
And death, not mowing with a two-edged scythe,
Will cut down one and leave the other bowing
Before the wintry wind. Arm not with terror
That swift, unheralded, insidious foe,
But let him find our love invulnerable
And our heart's treasure in eternal hands.
My lord, good-night. To-day my joy is full,
To God I leave to-morrow. Fare thee well.
PALMERIN [kneeling to kiss the hand she gives him].
Good-night, my own. May angels guard thy
slumber—
FLERIDA. And share thy vigil—
PALMERIN. Till my angel come.

[Exit FLERIDA, followed by her household As they go, some voices repeat scratches of the previous song: "Come make thy dwelling here," etc.

PALMERIN [alone].
No, Palmerin, unbuckle not thy arms,
Guard well thy lady's sleep.
Haply the wizards of the wood have charms
To make a virgin weep.
All goblin sprites and fairies of the trees
That lead their impish dance
Will spy thy mantle's cross; their blood will freeze
To see a Christian lance.
Hark! the old croaking frogs, and the far din
Of crickets in the field.
They bid me welcome home. "Hie, Palmerin,
Once of the argent shield,
"What's this device? Is Flerida this flower,
And these five pearls her tears,
Shed for thy love in her disconsolate bower
These five unhappy years?
"Those sable bars athwart a field of gules,
Are they thy nights and days
Spent mid bluff captains and rash drunken fools
In marches, bouts, and frays?"
Ay, ye chirp well, if I divine your note,
Ye civil, croaking elves!
A foolish master have your fields and moat
And your so learned selves.
Nothing he knows of wit or bookish lore
And nothing of the fair,
Only to break the brutal front of war
And half repeat a prayer.
Yet this sad wight is he, as fairies know,
Whom Flerida hath blest,
Soon locked within her arms. She long ago
Was locked within his breast,
Celestial Flerida, whom all the hours
Adorning from her birth
Have crowned the queen of stars, the queen of flowers,
The queen of maids on earth.
Her peerless heart hath chosen him her lord,
The rare intrepid maid,
Whose tender hand incarnadined a sword
Lest he should be betrayed.
Out of his nothingness her bounteous love
Bred all his poor desert
As God lent to the void he made us of
His image for a heart.
Like to the dateless dark before our birth
Are those five winters past,
This vigil like the twilight life of earth,
Then paradise at last
And changeless love. How in the paling skies
The star of morning burns!
Open, heaven's gates! Eternal sun, arise!
Sir Palmerin returns.

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ELEGIAC AND LYRIC POEMS

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PREMONITION
The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
A hidden light illumines all our seeing,
An unknown love enchants our solitude.
We feel and know that from the depths of being
Exhales an infinite, a perfect good.
Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow
And be not happy like a naked star,
Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow,
Some rapture from the rapture felt afar.
Our heart strings are too coarse for Nature's fingers
To wake her purest melodies upon,
And the harsh tremor that among them lingers
Will into sweeter silence die anon.
We catch the broken prelude and suggestion
Of things unuttered, needing to be sung;
We know the burden of them, and their question
Lies heavy on the heart, nor finds a tongue.
Till haply, lightning through the storm of ages,
Our sullen secret flash from sky to sky,
Glowing in some diviner poet's pages
And swelling into rapture from this sigh.
SOLIPSISM
I could believe that I am here alone,
And all the world my dream;
The passion of the scene is all my own,
And things that seem but seem.
Perchance an exhalation of my sorrow
Hath raised this vaporous show,
For whence but from my soul should all things borrow
So deep a tinge of woe?
I keep the secret doubt within my breast
To be the gods' defence,
To ease the heart by too much ruth oppressed
And drive the horror hence.
O sorrow that the patient brute should cower
And die, not having sinned!
O pity that the wild and fragile flower
Should shiver in the wind!
Then were I dreaming dreams I know not of,
For that is part of me
That feels the piercing pang of grief and love
And doubts eternally.
But whether all to me the vision come
Or break in many beams,
The pageant ever shifts, and being's sum
Is but the sum of dreams.
SYBARIS
Lap, ripple, lap, Icarian wave, the sand
Along the ruins of this piteous land;
Murmur the praises of a lost delight,
And soothe the aching of my starved sight
With sheen of mirrored beauties, caught aright.
Here stood enchanted palaces of old,
All veined porphyry and burnished gold;
Here matrons and slight maidens sat aloof
Beneath cool porches, rich with Tyrian woof
Hung from the carven rafters of the roof.
Here in the mart a swarthy turbaned brave
Showed the wrought blade or praised the naked slave.
"Touch with your finger-tips this edge of steel,"
Quoth he, "and see this lad, from head to heel
Like a bronze Cupid. Feel, my masters, feel."
Here Aphrodite filled with frenzied love
The dark recesses of her murmurous grove.
The doves that haunted it, the winds that sighed,
Were souls of youths that in her coverts died,
And hopes of heroes strewed her garden wide.
Under her shades a narrow brazen gate
Led to the courts of Ares and of Fate.
Who entered breathed the unutterable prayer
Of cruel hearts, and death was worshipped there,
And men went thence enfranchised by despair.
Here the proud athlete in the baths delayed,
While a cool fountain on his shoulders played,
Then in fine linen swathed his breast and thighs,
And silent, myrtle-crowned, with serious eyes,
Stepped forth to list the wranglings of the wise.
A sage stalked by, his ragged mantle bound
About his brows; his eyes perused the ground;
He conned the number of the cube and square
Of the moon's orb; his horny feet and bare
Trampled the lilies carpeting the stair.
A jasper terrace hung above the sea
Where the King supped with his beloved three:
The Libyan chanted of her native land
In raucous melody, the Indian fanned,
And the huge mastiff licked his master's hand.
Below, alone, despairing of the gale,
A crouching sailor furled the saffron sail;
Then rose, breathed deep, and plunged in the lagoon.
A mermaid spied his glistening limbs: her croon
Enticed him down; her cold arms choked him soon.
And the King laughed, filled full his jewelled bowl,
And drinking cried: "What know we of the soul?
What number addeth to her harmony
These drops of vintage that attune her key,
Or those of brine that set the wretched free?
"If death should change me, as old fables feign,
Into some slave or beast, to purge with pain
My lordly pleasures, let my torment be
Still to behold thee, Sybaris, and see
The sacred horror of thy loves and thee.
"Be thou my hell, my dumb eternal grief,
But spare thy King the madness of belief,
The brutish faith of ignorant desire
That strives and wanders. Let the visible fire
Of beauty torture me. That doom is higher.
"I wear the crown of life. The rose and gem
Twine with the pale gold of my diadem.
Nature, long secret, hath unveiled to me
And proved her vile. Her wanton bosoms be
My pillow now. I know her, I am free."
He spoke, and smiling stretched a languid hand,
And music burst in mighty chords and bland
Of harp and flute and cymbal.—When between
Two cypresses the large moon rose, her sheen
Silvered the nymphs' feet, tripping o'er the green.
AVILA
Again my feet are on the fragrant moor
Amid the purple uplands of Castile,
Realm proudly desolate and nobly poor,
Scorched by the sky's inexorable zeal.
Wide desert where a diadem of towers
Above Adajar hems a silent town,
And locks, unmindful of the mocking hours,
Her twenty temples in a granite crown.
The shafts of fervid light are in the sky,
And in my heart the mysteries of yore.
Here the sad trophies of my spirit lie:
These dead fulfilled my destiny before.
Like huge primeval stones that strew this plain,
Their nameless sorrows sink upon my breast,
And like this ardent sky their cancelled pain
Smiles at my grief and quiets my unrest.
For here hath mortal life from age to age
Endured the silent hand that makes and mars,
And, sighing, taken up its heritage
Beneath the smiling and inhuman stars.
Still o'er this town the crested castle stands,
A nest for storks, as once for haughty souls;
Still from the abbey, where the vale expands,
The curfew for the long departed tolls,
Wafting some ghostly blessing to the heart
From prayer of nun or silent Capuchin,
To heal with balm of Golgotha the smart
Of weary labour and distracted sin.
What fate has cast me on a tide of time
Careless of joy and covetous of gold,
What force compelled to weave the pensive rhyme
When loves are mean, and faith and honour old,
When riches crown in vain men's sordid lives,
And learning chokes a mind of base degree?
What winged spirit rises from their hives?
What heart, revolting, ventures to be free?
Their pride will sink and more ignobly fade
Without memorial of its hectic fire.
What altars shall survive them, where they prayed?
What lovely deities? What riven lyre?
Tarry not, pilgrim, but with inward gaze
Pass daily, musing, where their prisons are,
And o'er the ocean of their babble raise
Thy voice in greeting to thy changeless star.
Abroad a tumult, and a ruin here;
Nor world nor desert hath a home for thee.
Out of the sorrows of the barren year
Build thou thy dwelling in eternity.
Let patience, faith's wise sister, be thy heaven,
And with high thoughts necessity alloy.
Love is enough, and love is ever given,
While fleeting days bring gift of fleeting joy.
The little pleasures that to catch the sun
Bubble a moment up from being's deep,
The glittering sands of passion as they run,
The merry laughter and the happy sleep,—
These are the gems that, like the stars on fire,
Encrust with glory all our heaven's zones;
Each shining atom, in itself entire,
Brightens the galaxy of sister stones,
Dust of a world that crumbled when God's dream
To throbbing pulses broke the life of things,
And mingled with the void the scattered gleam
Of many orbs that move in many rings,
Perchance at last into the parent sun
To fall again and reunite their rays,
When God awakes and gathers into one
The light of all his loves and all his days.
KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL
The buttress frowns, the gorgeous windows blaze,
The vault hangs wonderful with woven fans,
The four stone sentinels to heaven raise
Their heads, in a more constant faith than man':
The College gathers, and the courtly prayer
Is answered still by hymn and organ-groan;
The beauty and the mystery are there,
The Virgin and Saint Nicholas are gone.
Not one Ora pro nobis bids them pause
In their far flight, to hear this anthem roll;
No heart, of all that the King's relic awes,
Sings Requiescat to his mournful soul.
No grain of incense thrown upon the embers
Of their cold hearth, no lamp in witness hung
Before their image. One alone remembers;
Only the stranger knows their mother tongue.
Long rows of tapers light the people's places;
The little choristers may read, and mark
The rhythmic fall; I see their wondering faces;
Only the altar—like the soul—is dark.
Ye floating voices through these arches ringing
With measured music, subtle, sweet, and strong,
Feel ye the inmost reason of your singing?
Know ye the ancient burden of your song?
The twilight deepens, and the blood-dyed glories
Of all these fiery blazonings are dim.
Oh, they are jumbled, sad, forgotten stories!
Why should ye read them, children? Chant your hymn.
But I must con them while the rays of even
Kindle aloft some fading jewel-gleam
And the vast windows glow a peopled heaven,
Rich with the gathering pageant of my dream.
Eden I see, where from the leafy cover
The green-eyed snake begins to uncoil his length
And whispers to the woman and her lover,
As they lie musing, large, in peaceful strength.
I see their children, bent with toil and terror,
Lurking in caves, or heaping madly on
The stones of Babel, or the endless error
Of Sodom, Nineveh, and Babylon.
Here the Egyptian, wedding life with death,
Flies from the sun into his painted tomb,
And winds the secret of his antique faith
Tight in his shroud, and seals in sterile gloom.
There the bold prophets of the heart's desire
Hail the new Zion God shall build for them,
And rapt Isaiah strikes the heavenly lyre,
And Jeremiah mourns Jerusalem.
Here David's daughter, full of grace and truth,
Kneels in the temple, waiting for the Lord;
With the first Ave comes the wingèd youth,
Bringing the lily ere he bring the sword.
There, to behold the Mother and the Child,
The sturdy shepherds down the mountain plod,
And angels sing, with voices sweet and wild
And wide lips parted: "Glory be to God."
Here, mounted on an ass, the twain depart
To hallowed Egypt, safe from Herod's wrong;
And Mary ponders all things in her heart,
And pensive Joseph sadly walks along.
There with the Twelve, before his blood is shed,
Christ blesses bread and breaks it with his hands,
"This is my body." Thomas shakes his head,
They marvel all, and no one understands,
Save John, whom Jesus loved above the rest.
He marvels too, but, seeking naught beside,
Leans, as his wont is, on his Master's breast.
Ah! the Lord's body also should abide.
There Golgotha is dark against the blue
In the broad east, above the painted crowd,
And many look upon the sign, but few
Read the hard lesson of the cross aloud.
And from this altar, now an empty tomb,
The Lord is risen. Lo! he is not here.
No shining angel sitteth in the gloom,
No Magdalen in anguish draweth near.
All pure in heart, or all in aspect pure,
The seemly Christians, kneeling, line the choir,
And drop their eyelids, tender and demure,
As the low lingering harmonies expire.
In that Amen are the last echoes blended
Of all the ghostly world. The shades depart
Into the sacred night. In peace is ended
The long delirious fever of the heart.
Then I go forth into the open wold
And breathe the vigour of the freshening wind,
And with the piling drift of cloud I hold
A worship sweeter to the homeless mind,
Where the squat willows with their osiers crowned
Border the humble reaches of the Cam,
And the deep meadows stretching far around
Make me forget the exile that I am,—
Exile not only from the wind-swept moor
Where Guadarrama lifts his purple crest,
But from the spirit's realm, celestial, sure
Goal of all hope and vision of the best.
They also will go forth, these gentle youths,
Strong in the virtues of their manful isle,
Till one the pathway of the forest smooths,
And one the Ganges rules, and one the Nile
And to whatever wilderness they choose
Their hearts will bear the sanctities of home,
The perfect ardours of the Grecian Muse,
The mighty labour of the arms of Rome;
But, ah! how little of these storied walls
Beneath whose shadow all their nurture was!
No, not one passing memory recalls
The Blessed Mary and Saint Nicholas.
Unhappy King, look not upon these towers,
Remember not thine only work that grew.
The moving world that feeds thy gift devours,
And the same hand that finished overthrew.
ON AN UNFINISHED STATUE
BY MICHAEL ANGELO IN THE BARGELLO,
CALLED AN APOLLO OR A DAVID
What beauteous form beneath a marble veil
Awaited in this block the Master's hand?
Could not the magic of his art avail
To unseal that beauty's tomb and bid it stand?
Alas! the torpid and unwilling mass
Misknew the sweetness of the mind's control,
And the quick shifting of the winds, alas!
Denied a body to that flickering soul.
Fair homeless spirit, harbinger of bliss,
It wooed dead matter that they both might live,
But dreamful earth still slumbered through the kiss
And missed the blessing heaven stooped to give,
As when Endymion, locked in dullard sleep,
Endured the gaze of Dian, till she turned
Stung with immortal wrath and doomed to weep
Her maiden passion ignorantly spurned.
How should the vision stay to guide the hand,
How should the holy thought and ardour stay,
When the false deeps of all the soul are sand
And the loose rivets of the spirit clay?
What chisel shaking in the pulse of lust
Shall find the perfect line, immortal, pure?
What fancy blown by every random gust
Shall mount the breathless heavens and endure?
Vain was the trance through which a thrill of joy
Passed for the nonce, when a vague hand, unled,
Half shaped the image of this lovely boy
And caught the angel's garment as he fled.
Leave, leave, distracted hand, the baffling stone,
And on that clay, thy fickle heart, begin.
Mould first some steadfast virtue of thine own
Out of the sodden substance of thy sin.
They who wrought wonders by the Nile of old,
Bequeathing their immortal part to us,
Cast their own spirit first into the mould
And were themselves the rock they fashioned thus.
Ever their docile and unwearied eye
Traced the same ancient pageant to the grave,
And awe made rich their spirit's husbandry
With the perpetual refluence of its wave,
Till 'twixt the desert and the constant Nile
Sphinx, pyramid, and awful temple grew,
And the vast gods, self-knowing, learned to smile
Beneath the sky's unalterable blue.
Long, long ere first the rapt Arcadian swain
Heard Pan's wild music pulsing through the grove,
His people's shepherds held paternal reign
Beneath the large benignity of Jove.
Long mused the Delphic sibyl in her cave
Ere mid his laurels she beheld the god,
And Beauty rose a virgin from the wave
In lands the foot of Heracles had trod.
Athena reared her consecrated wall,
Poseidon laid its rocky basement sure,
When Theseus had the monstrous race in thrall
And made the worship of his people pure.
Long had the stripling stood in silence, veiled,
Hearing the heroes' legend o'er and o'er,
Long in the keen palæstra striven, nor quailed
To tame the body to the task it bore,
Ere soul and body, shaped by patient art,
Walked linked with the gods, like friend with friend,
And reason, mirrored in the sage's heart,
Beheld her purpose and confessed her end.
Mould, then, thyself and let the marble be.
Look not to frailty for immortal themes,
Nor mock the travail of mortality
With barren husks and harvesting of dreams.
MIDNIGHT
The dank earth reeks with three days' rain,
The phantom trees are dark and still,
Above the darkness and the hill
The tardy moon shines out again.
O heavy lethargy of pain!
O shadows of forgotten ill!
My parrot lips, when I was young,
To prove and to disprove were bold.
The mighty world has tied my tongue,
And in dull custom growing old
I leave the burning truth untold
And the heart's anguish all unsung.
Youth dies in man's benumbed soul,
Maid bows to woman's broken life,
A thousand leagues of silence roll
Between the husband and the wife.
The spirit faints with inward strife
And lonely gazing at the pole.
But how should reptiles pine for wings
Or a parched desert know its dearth?
Immortal is the soul that sings
The sorrow of her mortal birth.
O cruel beauty of the earth!
O love's unutterable stings!
IN GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS
ON FIRST HEARING A SKYLARK SING
Too late, thou tender songster of the sky
Trilling unseen, by things unseen inspired,
I list thy far-heard cry
That poets oft to kindred song hath fired,
As floating through the purple veils of air
Thy soul is poured on high,
A little joy in an immense despair.
Too late thou biddest me escape the earth,
In ignorance of wrong
To spin a little slender thread of song;
On yet unwearied wing
To rise and soar and sing,
Not knowing death or birth
Or any true unhappy human thing.
To dwell 'twixt field and cloud,
By river-willow and the murmurous sedge,
Be thy sweet privilege,
To thee and to thy happy lords allowed.
My native valley higher mountains hedge
'Neath starlit skies and proud,
And sadder music in my soul is loud.
Yet have I loved thy voice,
Frail echo of some ancient sacred joy.
Ah, who might not rejoice
Here to have wandered, a fair English boy,
And breathed with life thy rapture and thy rest
Where woven meadow-grasses fold thy nest?
But whose life is his choice?
And he who chooseth not hath chosen best.
FUTILITY
Fair Nature, has thy wisdom naught to say
To cheer thy child in a disconsolate hour?
Why do thy subtle hands betray their power
And but half-fashioned leave thy finer clay?
Upon what journeys doth thy fancy stray
That weeds in thy broad garden choke the flower,
And many a pilgrim harboured in thy bower
A stranger came, a stranger went away?
Ah, Mother, little can the soul avail
Unchristened at some font of ancient love.
What boots the vision if the meaning fail,
When all the marvels of the skies above
March to the passions they are mirrors of?
If the heart pine, the very stars will pale.
BEFORE A STATUE OF ACHILLES
I
Behold Pelides with his yellow hair,
Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove;
Above the frowning of his brows it wove
A crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care.
Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair,
As with the wrongful world he proudly strove,
And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove,
Mastering love, resentment, and despair.
He knew his end, and Phoebus' arrow sure
He braved for fame immortal and a friend,
Despising life; and we, who know our end,
Know that in our decay he shall endure
And all our children's hearts to grief inure,
With whose first bitter battles his shall blend.
II
Who brought thee forth, immortal vision, who
In Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth?
Out of the sunlight and the sapful earth
What god the simples of thy spirit drew?
A goddess rose from the green waves, and threw
Her arms about a king, to give thee birth;
A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth,
Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew.
Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deep
Thy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer
But far away new generations keep
Thy laurels fresh, where branching Isis hems
The lawns of Oxford round about, or where
Enchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames.
III
I gaze on thee as Phidias of old
Or Polyclitus gazed, when first he saw
These hard and shining limbs, without a flaw,
And cast his wonder in heroic mould.
Unhappy me who only may behold,
Nor make immutable and fix in awe
A fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw,
A tempered mind whose faith was never told!
The godlike mien, the lion's lock and eye,
The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heart
Better than many words that part by part
Spell in strange symbols what serene and whole
In nature lives, nor can in marble die.
The perfect body is itself the soul.
ODI ET AMO
I love and hate. Alas, the why
I know not: but I love, and die.
CATULLUS.
I
A wreathed altar was this pagan heart,
In sad denial dressed and high intent,
And amid ruins fed its flame apart,
Heedless of shadows as they came and went.
Till the poor soul, enticed by what she saw,
Forsook her grief's eternal element,
Filled with her tears a well from which to draw,
And flooded heaven with a light she lent.
A thousand times that mirrored glory fled,
By ravished eyes a thousand times pursued;
Yet loving hope outlived all beauties dead,
And hunger turned the very stones to food.
Insensate love, wilt thou then never tire,
Breeding the fuel of thy proper fire?
II
What gleaming cross rebukes this infidel?
What lion groans, awakened in his lair?
Angel or demon, what unearthly spell
Returns, divinely false like all things fair,
To mock this desolation? Fleeting vision,
Frail as a smoke-wreath in the sunlit air,
Indomitable hope or vain derision,
Madness or revelation, sin or prayer,
What art thou? Is man's sum of wisdom this,
That he believe denying, and blaspheme
Worshipping still, and drink eternal bliss
Out of the maddening chalice of a dream?
Strange sweetness that embitterest content,
Art thou a poison or a sacrament?
CATHEDRALS BY THE SEA
REPLY TO A SONNET BEGINNING "CATHEDRALS
ARE NOT BUILT ALONG THE SEA"
For æons had the self-responsive tide
Risen to ebb, and tempests blown to clear,
And the belated moon refilled her sphere
To wane anew—for, æons since, she died—
When to the deeps that called her earth replied
(Lest year should cancel unavailing year)
And took from her dead heart the stones to rear
A cross-shaped temple to the Crucified.
Then the wild winds through organ-pipes descended
To utter what they meant eternally,
And not in vain the moon devoutly mended
Her wasted taper, lighting Calvary,
While with a psalmody of angels blended
The sullen diapason of the sea.
MONT BRÉVENT
O dweller in the valley, lift thine eyes
To where, above the drift of cloud, the stone
Endures in silence, and to God alone
Upturns its furrowed visage, and is wise.
There yet is being, far from all that dies,
And beauty where no mortal maketh moan,
Where larger planets swim the liquid zone,
And wider spaces stretch to calmer skies.
Only a little way above the plain
Is snow eternal. Round the mountain's knees
Hovers the fury of the wind and rain.
Look up, and teach thy noble heart to cease
From endless labour. There is perfect peace
Only a little way above thy pain.
THE RUSTIC AT THE PLAY
Our youth is like a rustic at the play
That cries aloud in simple-hearted fear,
Curses the villain, shudders at the fray,
And weeps before the maiden's wreathed bier.
Yet once familiar with the changeful show,
He starts no longer at a brandished knife,
But, his heart chastened at the sight of woe,
Ponders the mirrored sorrows of his life.
So tutored too, I watch the moving art
Of all this magic and impassioned pain
That tells the story of the human heart
In a false instance, such as poets feign;
I smile, and keep within the parchment furled
That prompts the passions of this strutting world.
RESURRECTION
THE SOUL OF A BURIED BODY
Methought that I was dead,
Felt my large heart, a tomb within the tomb,
Cold, hope-untenanted,
Not thankless for this gloom.
For all I loved on earth had fled before me.
I was the last to die.
I heard what my soul hated tramping o'er me,
And knew that trouble stalked beneath the sky.
But now is loosed the mailed hand of Death
Clapped on my mouth. I seem to draw a breath
And something like a sigh.
I feel the blood again
Coursing within my body's quickened house,
Feel hands and throat and brain,
And dim thoughts growing plain,
Or dreams of thoughts. So spring might thaw the boughs
And from its winter's lethargy arouse
An oak's numb spirit.—But hark! I seem to hear
A sound, like distant thunder.
Above the quaking earth it breaks, or under,
And cracks the riven sphere.
This vault is widened, I may lift my head,
Behold a ray! The sun!—I was not dead.
THE ANGEL OF ETERNITY
Yes, dead. Be not affrighted.
Ages have passed. This world is not the same.
Thy lamp of life, relighted,
Burns with a purer flame.
THE SOUL
What lovely form art thou?
What spirit, voice, or face
Known and unknown? I cannot name thee now
Nor the long-vanished place
Where first I pledged thee some forgotten vow.
Dear mother or sweet son
Or young love dead or lost familiar friend,
Which of these all art thou, or all, or none,
Bright stranger, that dost bend
Thy glorious golden head,
A kindlier sun, above the wakened dead?
THE ANGEL
We are not strangers. 'T is the world was strange,
That rude antique parade of earth and sky,
That foolish pageant of mortality
And weary round of change.
Till this glad moment thou hast lived in dreams,
Nursed in a fable, catechised to croon
The empty science of a sun and moon
That with their dubious beams
Light the huge dusky stage of all that seems.
Believe it not, my own. Awake, depart
Out of the shades of hell,
Trusting the sacred spell
That falls upon thy strong perplexed heart,
The joy ineffable,
The nameless premonition and dire pang
Of love. Be free at last,
Free as the hopes that from thy sorrow sprang
Forget the horror of the tyrant past,
Forget the gods, forget
The baleful shadow on the present cast
By all that is not yet.
Arise and follow me. Say not I seem
A shadow among shades,
A dryad's laugh amid the windy glades,
A swimmer's body guessed beneath the stream
This is the dawn of day,
Thy dream-oppressed vision breaking through
Its icy hood of clay
And plunging deep into the balmy blue.
Bid thy vain cares adieu
And say farewell to earth, thy foster-mother.
She hath befooled thee long,
And fondly thought to smother
The sweet and cruel laughter of my song
Which the stars sing together, and the throng
Of seraphs ever shout to one another.
Come, heaven-chosen brother,
Dear kinsman, come along.
THE SOUL
To what fields beside what rivers
Dost thou beckon me, fair love?
With no sprinkled stars above
Is high heaven seen? Or quivers,
With no changes of the moon,
Her bright path athwart the pool?
Is thy strange world beautiful?
Tell me true, before I shake
From my sense this heavy swoon.
Tell me true, lest I awake
Into deeper dreams, poor fool,
And rejoice for nothing's sake.
THE ANGEL
For mortals life and truth
Are things apart, nor when the first is done
Know they the other; for their lusty youth
Is madness, and their age oblivion.
But henceforth thou art one
With the supernal mind,
Not born in labour nor in death resigned,
The life of all that live,
The light by whose eclipse the world is blind,
The truth of all that know,
The joy for which we grieve,
And the untasted sweet that makes our woe.
Now thou hast drained the wine
Shatter the glass.
The music was divine,
Let the voice pass.
Linger not in the host
Of the long lost
Bidding the dying bring
Meal-cakes and fruit, and sing
To cheer thy ghost.
But be the living joy
That tunes all song,
The loves of girl and boy,
The hopes that throng
The unconquerable heart, defying wrong.
Seek for thine immortality of bliss
Not other brighter skies
Or later worlds than this,
But all that in this struggle is the prize,
The love that wings the kiss,
The truth the visions miss.
THE SOUL
My heaven lives, bright angel, in thine eyes.
As when, beside the Lake of Galilee,
John, o'er his meshes bent,
Looked up, and saw another firmament
When God said, Follow me;
So is my world transfigured, seeing thee,
And, looking in thine eyes, I am content,
And with thy sweet voice for all argument
I leave my tangled nets beside the sea.
Done is my feigned task,
Fallen the mask
That made me other, O my soul, than thee.
I have fulfilled my pain
And borne my cross,
And my great gain
Is to have known my loss.
Keep, blessed vision, keep
The sacred beauty that entranced my soul.
I have read; seal the scroll.
I have lived; let me sleep.
THE ANGEL
Behold, I close thine eyes
With the first touch of my benignant hands.
With consecrated brands
I light thy pyre and loose thy spirit's bands.
The eternal gods receive thy sacrifice,
The changeless bless thy embers.
May there arise from thence no wailing ghost
That shivers and remembers
The haunts he loved, where he hath suffered most.
The life that lived by change
Is dead, nor changeth more.
No eager, dull, oblivious senses pore
On portents dark and strange.
Thy first life was not life,
Nor was thy first death death.
Thy children took thy heritage of strife,
And thy transmutable breath
Passed to another heart that travaileth.
Now thou hast truly died;
Escaped, renounced, defied
The insensate fervour and the fret of being;
And thy own master, freed
From shame of murderous need,
Pure, just, all-seeing,
Now thou shalt live indeed.
THE SOUL
I pay the price of birth.
My earth returns to earth.
Hurry my ashes, thou avenging wind,
Into the vortex of the whirling spheres!
I die, for I have sinned,
Yea, I have loved, and drained my heart of tears.
And thou within whose womb,
Mother of nations, labouring Universe,
My life grew, be its tomb.
Thou brought'st me forth, take now my vital seed.
Receive thy wage, thou iron-hearted nurse,
Thy blessing I requite thee and thy curse.
Now shall my ashes breed
Within thy flesh for every thought a thought,
For every deed a deed,
For every pang I bore
An everlasting need,
For every wrong a wrong, and endless war.
All earthly hopes resigned
And all thy battle's spoils
I lay upon thine altar and restore;
But the inviolate mind
Is loosened from thy toils
By thy own fatal fires. I mount, I soar,
Glad Phoenix, from the flame
Into the placid heaven whence I came,
Floating upon the smoke's slow lurid wings
Into my native sky
To bear report of all this vanity
And sad offence of things,
Where with knowledge I may lie,
Veiled in the shadow of eternal wings.
THE ANGEL
If in the secret sessions of our love
Above the heavenly spheres,
Some stain upon the page of wisdom prove
Her earthly price of tears,
Cling closer, my beloved, that the beat
Of my unruffled heart
May tune thy own, its tenderer counterpart,
To noble courage, and from this high seat
Of our divine repose
Large consolation flow to mortal woes.
For 'neath the sun's fierce heat,
In midst of madness and inscrutable throes,
His heart is strong who knows
That o'er the mountains come the silent feet
Of Patience, leading Peace,
And his complainings cease
To see the starlight shining on the snows.

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