Not weak with eld
The stars beheld
Proud Persia coming to her doom;
Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed,
The long luxurious galleys lost
Their souls at Actium.
Not outer arts
Of hostile hearts
Seduced the arm of France to be
The wreckage of his wars at last,
The orphan of the kingdoms, cast
Upon the mothering sea.
Man evermore doth work his will,
And evermore the gods are still,
Applauding him alone who stands
Too just for Heaven-accusing groans,
But in his house of havoc owns
The doing of his hands:
Transgressor, yet divinely taught
To suffer all, blaspheming naught,
When fair-begun must foul conclude:
Himself progenitor of death
Who breeds, within, the only breath
Can kill beatitude.
[The Acknowledgment]
Since first I knew it our divine employ
To beat beyond the reach of soiling care,
As at Philippi, well of doom aware,
The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy;
Since first my soul so jealous was of joy,
That any facile linden-bloom in air,
Or fall of water on a wildwood stair,
Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy;
Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled
Long, long, at such august amends up-piled,
Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop
Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup,
On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child,
Immortals! unto You will drink it up.
[By the Trundle-bed]
Lost love, be never beyond Love's calling!
For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet
As fontal water in Arden falling,
As first-mown hay in the April heat:
To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden,
And bring to bloom in the outer cold,
Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden,
Our son that is like you, and six years old;
And lest his worth be the worth unreal,
To ward him not from the mortal blast,
But suffer your own, through a long ordeal,
Verily like you to be at the last,
And hear men murmur, if so he merit
In your old place with your look to arise:
"The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?—
You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes."