Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf

by Rennell Rodd

Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic school, and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but the real quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd's, aims, as I said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot be described in terms of intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for that. One can perhaps convey it best in terms of the other arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of Venetian glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as simple in natural motive as an etching by Whistler is, or one of those beautiful little Greek figures which in the olive woods round Tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment; and many of them seem like one of Corot's twilights just passing into music, for not merely in visible colour, but in sentiment also—which is the colour of poetry—may there be a kind of tone.

But I think that the best likeness to the quality of this young poet's work I ever saw was in the landscape by the Loire. We were staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that little village with its gray-slate roofs and steep streets and gaunt grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle like white pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart—very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. And above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea, or lie in the long grass and make plans pour la gloire, et pour ennuyer les philistins, or wander along the low sedgy banks, "matching our reeds in sportive rivalry," as comrades used in the old Sicilian days; and the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare too when one thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides by Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its purple every valley from Florence to Rome; for there was not much real beauty, perhaps, in it, only long white dusty roads, and straight rows of formal poplars; but now and then some little breaking gleam of broken light would lend to the gray field and the silent barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own, would transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing down through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill, would tip the willows with silver, and touch the river into gold; and the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of these the verses of my friend.

OSCAR WILDE.

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ROSE LEAF AND APPLE LEAF

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FROM THE HILL OF GARDENS
The outline of a shadowy city spread
Between the garden and the distant hill—
And o'er yon dome the flame-ring lingers still,
Set like the glory on an angel's head:
The light fades quivering into evening blue
Behind the pine-tops on Ianiculum;
The swallow whispered to the swallow "come!"
And took the sunset on her wings, and flew.
One rift of cloud the wind caught up suspending
A ruby path between the earth and sky;
Those shreds of gold are angel wings ascending
From where the sorrows of our singers lie;
They have not found those wandering spirits yet,
But seek for ever in the red sunset.
Pass upward angel wings! Seek not for these,
They sit not in the cypress-planted graves;
Their spirits wander over moonlit waves,
And sing in all the singing of the seas;
And by green places in the spring-tide showers,
And in the re-awakening of flowers.
Some pearl-lipped shell still dewy with sea foam
Bear back to whisper where their feet have trod;
They are the earth's for evermore; fly home!
And lay a daisy at the feet of God.
IN THE COLISEUM
Night wanes; I sit in the ruin alone;
Beneath, the shadow of arches falls
From the dim outline of the broken walls;
And the half-light steals o'er the age-worn stone
From a midway arch where the moon looks through,
A silver shield in the deep, deep blue.
This is the hour of ghosts that rise;
—Line on line of the noiseless dead—
The clouds above are their awning spread;
Look into the shadow with moon-dazed eyes,
You will see the writhing of limbs in pain,
And the whole red tragedy over again.
The ghostly galleys ride out and meet,
The Cæsar sits in his golden chair,
His fingers toy with his women's hair,
The water is blood-red under his feet,—
Till the owl's long cry dies down with the night,
And one star waits for the dawning light.
ROME, 1881.
THE SEA-KING'S GRAVE
High over the wild sea-border, on the
furthest downs to the west,
Is the green grave-mound of the Norseman,
with the yew-tree grove on its crest.
And I heard in the winds his story, as they
leapt up salt from the wave,
And tore at the creaking branches that grow
from the sea-king's grave.
Some son of the old-world Vikings, the wild
sea-wandering lords,
Who sailed in a snake-prowed galley, with a
terror of twenty swords.
From the fiords of the sunless winter, they
came on an icy blast,
Till over the whole world's sea-board the
shadow of Odin passed,
Till they sped to the inland waters and under
the South-land skies,
And stared on the puny princes, with their
blue victorious eyes.
And they said he was old and royal, and a
warrior all his days,
But the king who had slain his brother lived
yet in the island ways.
And he came from a hundred battles, and
died in his last wild quest,
For he said, "I will have my vengeance, and
then I will take my rest."
He had passed on his homeward journey, and
the king of the isles was dead;
He had drunken the draught of triumph, and
his cup was the isle-king's head;
And he spoke of the song and feasting, and
the gladness of things to be,
And three days over the waters they rowed on
a waveless sea.
Till a small cloud rose to the shoreward, and
a gust broke out of the cloud,
And the spray beat over the rowers, and the
murmur of winds was loud,
With the voice of the far-off thunders, till the
shuddering air grew warm,
And the day was as dark as at even, and the
wild god rode on the storm.
But the old man laughed in the thunder as he
set his casque on his brow,
And he waved his sword in the lightnings and
clung to the painted prow.
And the shaft of the storm-god's quiver,
flashed out from the flame-flushed skies,
Rang down on his war-worn harness, and
gleamed in his fiery eyes.
And his mail and his crested helmet, and his
hair, and his beard burned red;
And they said, "It is Odin calls;" and he
fell, and they found him dead.
So here, in his war-guise armoured, they laid
him down to his rest,
In his casque with the rein-deer antlers, and
the long grey beard on his breast:
His bier was the spoil of the islands, with a
sail for a shroud beneath,
And an oar of his blood-red galley, and his
battle brand in the sheath;
And they buried his bow beside him, and
planted the grove of yew,
For the grave of a mighty archer, one tree for
each of his crew;
Where the flowerless cliffs are sheerest, where
the sea-birds circle and swarm,
And the rocks are at war with the waters,
with their jagged grey teeth in the storm;
And the huge Atlantic billows sweep in, and
the mists enclose
The hill with the grass-grown mound where
the Norseman's yew-tree grows.
A ROMAN MIRROR
They found it in her hollow marble bed,
There where the numberless dead cities sleep,
They found it lying where the spade struck deep,
A broken mirror by a maiden dead.
These things—the beads she wore about her throat
Alternate blue and amber all untied,
A lamp to light her way, and on one side
The toll men pay to that strange ferry-boat.
No trace to-day of what in her was fair!
Only the record of long years grown green
Upon the mirror's lustreless dead sheen,
Grown dim at last, when all else withered there.
Dead, broken, lustreless! It keeps for me
One picture of that immemorial land,
For oft as I have held thee in my hand
The dull bronze brightens, and I dream to see
A fair face gazing in thee wondering wise,
And o'er one marble shoulder all the while
Strange lips that whisper till her own lips smile,
And all the mirror laughs about her eyes.
It was well thought to set thee there, so she
Might smooth the windy ripples of her hair
And knot their tangled waywardness, or ere
She stood before the queen Persephone.
And still it may be where the dead folk rest
She holds a shadowy mirror to her eyes,
And looks upon the changelessness, and sighs
And sets the dead land lilies in her breast.
1879.
BY THE SOUTH SEA
So here we have sat by the sea so late,
And you with your dreaming eyes
Have argued well what I know you hate,
Till even my own dream dies.
Yet why will you smile at my old white years
When love was a gift divine,
When songs were laughter and hope and tears,
And art was a people's shrine?
Must I change the burdens I loved to sing,
The words of my worn-out song?
The old fair thoughts have a hollow ring,
My faiths have been dead so long.
And yet,—to have known that one did not know!
To have dreamed with the poet priest!
To have hope to feel that it might be so!
And theirs was a faith at least.
When the priest was poet, and hearts were fain
Of marvellous things to dream,
To see God's tears in a cloud of rain,
And his hair on a gold sunbeam;
To know that the sons of the old Sea King
Roamed under their waves at will,
To have heard a song that the wood gods sing
On the other side of the hill!
And so I had held it,—for all things blend
In the world's great harmony,—
That they served an end to an after-end,
And were of the things that be.
But now ye are bidding your God god-speed
With his lore upon dusty shelves;
So wise ye are grown, ye have found no need
For any god but yourselves.
Ye have learnt the riddle of seas and sand,
Of leaves in the spring uncurled;
There is no room left for my wonderland
In the whole of the great wide world.
And what have ye left for a song to say?
What now is a singer's fame?
He may startle the ear with a word one day,
And die,—and live in a name.
But the world has heed unto no fair thing,
Men pass on their soulless ways,
They give no faith unto those who sing,
—Give hardly a heartless praise.
But you say, Let us go unto all wide lands,
Let us speak to the people's heart!
Let us make good use of our lips and hands,
There is hope for the world in art!
Will the dull ears hear, will the dead souls see?
Will they know what we hardly know?
The chords of the wonderful harmony
Of the earth and the skies?—if so—
We have talked too long till it all seems vain,
The desire and the hopes that fired,
The triumphs won and the needless pain,
And the heart that has hoped is tired.
Do you see down there where the high cliffs shrink,
And the ripples break on the bay,
Our old sea boat at the white foam brink
With the sail slackened down half-way?
Shall we get hence? O fair heart's brother!
You are weary at heart with me,
We two alone in the world, no other:
Shall we go to our wide kind sea?
Shall we glide away in this white moon's track?
Does it not seem fair in your eyes!
—To drift and drift with our white sail black
In the dreamful light of the skies,
Till the pale stars die, and some far fair shore
Comes up through the morning haze,
And wandering hearts shall not wander more
Far off from the mad world's ways.
Or still more fair—when the dim scared night
Grows pale from the east to the west—
If the waters gather us home, and the light
Break through on the waves' unrest,
And there in the gleam of the gold-washed sea,
Which the smile of the morning brings,
Our souls shall fathom the mystery,
And the riddle of all these things.
1879.
IN A CHURCH
This was the first shrine lit for Queen Marie;
And I will sit a little at her feet,
For winds without howl down the narrow street
And storm-clouds gather from the westward sea.
Sweet here to watch the peasant people pray,
While through the crimson-shrouded window falls
Low light of even, and the golden walls
Grow dim and dreamful at the end of day,
Till from these columns fades their marble sheen,
And lines grow soft and mystical,—these wraiths
That watch the service of the changing faiths,
To Mary mother from the Cyprian queen.
But aye for me this old-word colonnade
Seems open to blue summer skies once more,
These altars pass, and on the polished floor
I see the lines of chequered light and shade;
I seem to see the dark-browed Lybian lean
To cool the tortured burning of the lash,
I see the fountains as they leap and flash,
The rustling sway of cypress set between.
And now yon friar with the bare feet there,
Is grown the haunting spirit of the place;
Ah! brown-robed friar with the shaven face,
The saints are weary of thy mumbled prayer.
From matins' bell to the slow day's decline
He sits and thumbs his endless round of beads,
Drawls out the dreary cadence of his creeds
And nods assent to each familiar line.
But she the goddess whose white star is set,
Whose fane was pillaged for this sombre shrine,
Could she look down upon those lips of thine,
And hear thee mutter, would she still regret?
There came a sound of singing on my ear,
And slowly glided through the far-off door
A glimmer of grey forms like ghosts, they bore
A dead man lying on his purple bier.
Some poor man's soul, so little candle smoke
Went curling upwards by the uncased shroud,
And then a sudden thunder-clap broke loud,
And drowned the droning of the priest who spoke.
So all the shuffling feet passed out again
To lightnings flashing through the wet and wind,
And while I lingered in the gate behind
The dead man travelled through the storm and rain.
ROME, 1881.
AT LANUVIUM
" Festo quid potius die
Neptuni faciam."
HORACE, Odes, iii. 28.
Spring grew to perfect summer in one day,
And we lay there among the vines, to gaze
Where Circe's isle floats purple, far away
Above the golden haze:
And on our ears there seemed to rise and fall
The burden of an old world song we knew,
That sang, "To-day is Neptune's festival,
And we, what shall we do?"
Go down brown-armed Campagna maid of mine,
And bring again the earthen jar that lies
With three years' dust above the mellow wine;
And while the swift day dies,
You first shall sing a song of waters blue,
Paphos and Cnidos in the summer seas,
And one who guides her swan-drawn chariot through
The white-shored Cyclades;
And I will take the second turn of song,
Of floating tresses in the foam and surge
Where Nereid maids about the sea-god throng;
And night shall have her dirge.
1881.
"IF ANY ONE RETURN"
I would we had carried him far away
To the light of this south sun land.
Where the hills lean down to some red-rocked bay
And the sea's blue breaks into snow-white spray
As the wave dies out on the sand.
Not there, not there, where the winds deface!
Where the storm and the cloud race by!
But far away in this flowerful place
Where endless summers retouch, retrace,
What flowers find heart to die.
And if ever the souls of the loved, set free,
Come back to the souls that stay,
I could dream he would sit for a while with me
Where I sit by this wonderful tideless sea
And look to the red-rocked bay,
By the high cliff's edge where the wild weeds twine,
And he would not speak or move,
But his eyes would gaze from his soul at mine,
My eyes that would answer without one sign,
And that were enough for love.
And I think I should feel as the sun went round
That he was not there any more,
But dews were wet on the grass-grown mound
On the bed of my love lying underground,
And evening pale on the shore.
1879.

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SONNETS
"UNE HEURE VIENDRA QUI TOUT PAIERA"
It was a tomb in Flanders, old and grey,
A knight in armour, lying dead, unknown
Among the long-forgotten, yet the stone
Cried out for vengeance where the dead man lay;
No name was chiselled at his side to say
What wrongs his spirit thirsted to atone,
Only the armour with green moss o'ergrown,
And those grim words no years had worn away.
It may be haply in the songs of old
His deeds were wonders to sweet music set,
His name the thunder of a battle call,
Among the things forgotten and untold;
His only record is the dead man's threat,—
"An hour will come that shall atone for all!"
1879.
ACTEA
When the last bitterness was past, she bore
Her singing Cæsar to the Garden Hill,
Her fallen pitiful dead emperor.
She lifted up the beggar's cloak he wore
—The one thing living he would not kill—
And on those lips of his that sang no more,
That world-loathed head which she found lovely still,
Her cold lips closed, in death she had her will.
Oh wreck of the lost human soul left free
To gorge the beast thy mask of manhood screened!
Because one living thing, albeit a slave,
Shed those hot tears on thy dishonoured grave,
Although thy curse be as the shoreless sea,
Because she loved, thou art not wholly fiend.
1881.
IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS
Is this the man by whose decree abide
The lives of countless nations, with the trace
Of fresh tears wet upon the hard cold face?
—He wept, because a little child had died.
They set a marble image by his side,
A sculptured Eros, ready for the chase;
It wore the dead boy's features, and the grace
Of pretty ways that were the old man's pride.
And so he smiled, grown softer now, and tired
Of too much empire, and it seemed a joy
Fondly to stroke and pet the curly head,
The smooth round limbs so strangely like the dead,
To kiss the white lips of his marble boy
And call by name his little heart's-desired.
1879.
"ATQUE IN PERPETUUM FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE"
This was the end love made,—the hard-drawn breath,
The last long sigh that ever man sighs here;
And then for us, the great unanswered fear,
Will love live on,—the other side of death?
Only a year, and I had hoped to spend
A life of pleasant communing, to be
A kindred spirit holding fast to thee,
We never thought that love had such an end.
This was the end love made, for our delight,
For one sweet year he cannot take away;—
Those tapers burning in the dim half-light,
Those kneeling women with a cross that pray,
And there, beneath green leaves and lilies white,
Beyond the reach of love, our loved one lay.
1879.
ON THE BORDER HILLS
So the dark shadows deepen in the trees
That crown the border mountains, all the air
Is filled with mist-begotten phantasies,
Shaped and transfigured in the sunset glare.
What wildly spurring warrior-wraiths are these?
What tossing headgear, and what red-gold hair?
What lances flashing, what far trumpet's blare
That dies along the desultory breeze?
Slow night comes creeping with her misty wings
Up to the hill's crest, where the yew trees grow;
About their shadow-haunted circle clings
The rumour of an unrecorded woe,
Old as the battle of those border kings
Slain in the darkling hollow-lands below.
1881.

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