| PREVIOUS EDITION |
| Collected for the first time in 1899. Smith, Elder & Co. Vol. II. |
| See notes at end of that volume. |
NEW POEMS
ECLOGUE I
THE MONTHS
BASIL AND EDWARD
Man hath with man on earth no holier bond
Than that the Muse weaves with her dreamy thread:
Nor e'er was such transcendent love more fond
Than that which Edward unto Basil led,
Wandering alone across the woody shires
To hear the living voice of that wide heart,
To see the eyes that read the world's desires,
And touch the hand that wrote the roving rhyme.
Diverse their lots as distant were their homes,
And since that early meeting, jealous Time
Knitting their loves had held their lives apart.
But now again were these fine lovers met
And sat together on a rocky hill
Looking upon the vales of Somerset,
Where the far sea gleam'd o'er the bosky combes,
Satisfying their spirits the livelong day
With various mirth and revelation due
And delicate intimacy of delight,
As there in happy indolence they lay
And drank the sun, while round the breezy height
Beneath their feet rabbit and listless ewe
Nibbled the scented herb and grass at will.{324}
Much talked they at their ease; and at the last
Spoke Edward thus, ''Twas on this very hill
This time of the year,—but now twelve years are past,—
That you provoked in verse my younger skill
To praise the months against your rival song;
And ere the sun had westered ten degrees
Our rhyme had brought him thro' the Zodiac.
Have you remembered?'—Basil answer'd back,
'Guest of my solace, how could I forget?
Years fly as months that seem'd in youth so long.
The precious life that, like indifferent gold,
Is disregarded in its worth to hold
Some jewel of love that God therein would set,
It passeth and is gone.'—'And yet not all,'
Edward replied: 'The passion as I please
Of that past day I can to-day recall;
And if but you, as I, remember yet
Your part thereof, and will again rehearse,
For half an hour we may old Time outwit.'
And Basil said, 'Alas for my poor verse!
What happy memory of it still endures
Will thank your love: I have forgotten it.
Speak you my stanzas, I will ransom yours.
Begin you then as I that day began,
And I will follow as your answers ran.'
JANUARY
Ed. The moon that mounts the sun's deserted way,
Turns the long winter night to a silver day;
But setteth golden in face of the solemn sight
Of her lord arising upon a world of white.
FEBRUARY
Ba. I have in my heart a vision of spring begun
In a sheltering wood, that feels the kiss of the sun:
And a thrush adoreth the melting day that dies
In clouds of purple afloat upon saffron skies.
{325} MARCH
Ed. Now carol the birds at dawn, and some new lay
Announceth a homecome voyager every day.
Beneath the tufted sallows the streamlet thrills
With the leaping trout and the gleam of the daffodils.
APRIL
Ba. Then laugheth the year; with flowers the meads are bright;
The bursting branches are tipped with flames of light:
The landscape is light; the dark clouds flee above,
And the shades of the land are a blue that is deep as love.
MAY
Ed. But if you have seen a village all red and old
In cherry-orchards a-sprinkle with white and gold,
By a hawthorn seated, or a witch-elm flowering high,
A gay breeze making riot in the waving rye!
JUNE
Ba. Then night retires from heaven; the high winds go
A-sailing in cloud-pavilions of cavern'd snow.
O June, sweet Philomel sang thy cradle-lay;
In rosy revel thy spirit shall pass away.
JULY
Ed. Heavy is the green of the fields, heavy the trees
With foliage hang, drowsy the hum of bees
In the thund'rous air: the crowded scents lie low:
Thro' tangle of weeds the river runneth slow.
AUGUST
Ba. A reaper with dusty shoon and hat of straw
On the yellow field, his scythe in his armës braw:
Beneath the tall grey trees resting at noon
From sweat and swink with scythe and dusty shoon.
{326}
SEPTEMBER
Ed. Earth's flaunting flower of passion fadeth fair
To ripening fruit in sunlit veils of the air,
As the art of man makes wisdom to glorify
The beauty and love of life born else to die.
OCTOBER
Ba. On frosty morns with the woods aflame, down, down
The golden spoils fall thick from the chestnut crown.
May Autumn in tranquil glory her riches spend,
With mellow apples her orchard-branches bend.
NOVEMBER
Ed. Sad mists have hid the sun, the land is forlorn:
The plough is afield, the hunter windeth his horn.
Dame Prudence looketh well to her winter stores,
And many a wise man finds his pleasure indoors.
DECEMBER
Ba. I pray thee don thy jerkin of olden time,
Bring us good ice, and silver the trees with rime;
And I will good cheer, good music and wine bestow,
When the Christmas guest comes galloping over the snow.
Thus they in verse alternate sang the year
For rabbit shy and listless ewe to hear,
Among the grey rocks on the mountain green
Beneath the sky in fair and pastoral scene,
Like those Sicilian swains, whose doric tongue
After two thousand years is ever young,—
Sweet the pine's murmur, and, shepherd, sweet thy pipe,—
Or that which gentle Virgil, yet unripe,
Of Tityrus sang under the spreading beech
And gave to rustic clowns immortal speech,
By rocky fountain or on flowery mead{327}
Bidding their idle flocks at will to feed,
While they, retreated to some bosky glade,
Together told their loves, and as they played
Sang what sweet thing soe'er the poet feigned:
But these were men when good Victoria reigned,
Poets themselves, who without shepherd gear
Each of his native fancy sang the year.
ECLOGUE II
GIOVANNI DUPRÈ
LAWRENCE AND RICHARD
LAWRENCE
Look down the river—against the western sky—
The Ponte Santa Trinità—what throng
Slowly trails o'er with waving banners high,
With foot and horse! Surely they bear along
The spoil of one whom Florence honoureth:
And hark! the drum, the trumpeting dismay,
The wail of the triumphal march of death.
RICHARD
'Twill be the funeral of Giovánn Duprè
Wending to Santa Croce. Let us go
And see what relic of old splendour cheers
The dying ritual.
LAWRENCE
They esteem him well
To lay his bones with Michael Angelo.
Who might he be?
RICHARD
He too a sculptor, one
Who left a work long to resist the years.
LAWRENCE
You make me question further.
{328}
RICHARD
I can tell
All as we walk. A poor woodcarver's son,
Prenticed to cut his father's rude designs
(We have it from himself), maker of shrines,
In his mean workshop in Siena dreamed;
And saw as gods the artists of the earth,
And long'd to stand on their immortal shore,
And be as they, who in his vision gleam'd,
Dowering the world with grace for evermore.
So, taxing rest and leisure to one aim,
The boy of single will and inbred skill
Rose step by step to academic fame.
LAWRENCE
Do I not know him then? His figures fill
The tympana o'er Santa Croce's gate;
In the museum too, his Cain, that stands
A left-handed discobolos....
RICHARD
So great
His vogue, that elder art of classic worth
Went to the wall to give his statues room;
And last—his country's praise could do no more—
He cut the stone that honoured good Cavour.
LAWRENCE
I have seen the things.
RICHARD
He, finding in his hands
His life-desire possest, fell not in gloom,
Nor froth'd in vanity: his Sabbath earn'd
He look'd to spend in meditative rest:
So laying chisel by, he took a pen
To tell his story to his countrymen,
And prove (he did it) that the flower of all,
Rarest to attain, is in the power of all.
{329}
LAWRENCE
Yet nought he ever made, that I have learn'd,
In wood or stone deserved, nay not his best,
The Greek or Tuscan name for beautiful.
'Twas level with its praise, had force to pull
Favour from fashion.
RICHARD
Yet he made one thing
Worthy of the lily city in her spring;
For while in vain the forms of beauty he aped,
A perfect spirit in himself he shaped;
And all his lifetime doing less than well
Where he profess'd nor doubted to excel,
Now, where he had no scholarship, but drew
His art from love, 'twas better than he knew:
And when he sat to write, lo! by him stood
The heavenly Muse, who smiles on all things good;
And for his truth's sake, for his stainless mind,
His homely love and faith, she now grew kind,
And changed the crown, that from the folk he got,
For her green laurel, and he knew it not.
LAWRENCE
Ah! Love of Beauty! This man then mistook
Ambition for her?
RICHARD
In simplicity
Erring he kept his truth; and in his book
The statue of his grace is fair to see.
LAWRENCE
Then buried with their great he well may be.
RICHARD
And number'd with the saints, not among them
Who painted saints. Join we his requiem.