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Astrophel and other poems
By
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
Swinburne--Vol. VI
THE COLLECTED POETICAL WORKS OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
VOL. VI
A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER TALES
SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS
I. POEMS AND BALLADS (First Series).
II. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE, AND SONGS OF TWO NATIONS.
III. POEMS AND BALLADS (Second and Third Series), and SONGS OF THE
SPRINGTIDES.
IV. TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE, THE TALE OF BALEN, ATALANTA IN CALYDON,
ERECHTHEUS.
V. STUDIES IN SONG, A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS, SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC
POETS, THE HEPTALOGIA, ETC.
VI. A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY, ASTROPHEL, A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS.
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
By
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1917
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
_First printed_ (_Chatto_), 1904
_Reprinted_ 1904, '09, '10, '12
(_Heinemann_), 1917
_London: William Heinemann_, 1917
ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS
ASTROPHEL 121
A NYMPHOLEPT 127
ON THE SOUTH COAST 141
AN AUTUMN VISION 149
A SWIMMER'S DREAM 159
GRACE DARLING 164
LOCH TORRIDON 171
THE PALACE OF PAN 178
A YEAR'S CAROLS 181
ENGLAND: AN ODE 186
ETON: AN ODE 191
THE UNION 194
EAST TO WEST 196
INSCRIPTIONS FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A PEDESTAL 197
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD BURTON 199
ELEGY 202
A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING 208
SUNSET AND MOONRISE 212
BIRTHDAY ODE 214
THRENODY 217
THE BALLAD OF MELICERTES 220
AU TOMBEAU DE BANVILLE 222
LIGHT: AN EPICEDE 223
THRENODY 225
A DIRGE 227
A REMINISCENCE 229
VIA DOLOROSA 230
I. TRANSFIGURATION 231
II. DELIVERANCE 232
III. THANKSGIVING 233
IV. LIBITINA VERTICORDIA 234
V. THE ORDER OF RELEASE 235
VI. PSYCHAGOGOS 236
VII. THE LAST WORD 237
IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI 238
THE FESTIVAL OF BEATRICE 242
THE MONUMENT OF GIORDANO BRUNO 243
LIFE IN DEATH 245
EPICEDE 246
MEMORIAL VERSES ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM BELL SCOTT 249
AN OLD SAYING 253
A MOSS-ROSE 254
TO A CAT 255
HAWTHORN DYKE 258
THE BROTHERS 259
JACOBITE SONG 263
THE BALLAD OF DEAD MEN'S BAY 266
DEDICATION 271
ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS
TO WILLIAM MORRIS
ASTROPHEL
AFTER READING SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S ARCADIA IN THE
GARDEN OF AN OLD ENGLISH MANOR HOUSE
I
A star in the silence that follows
The song of the death of the sun
Speaks music in heaven, and the hollows
And heights of the world are as one;
One lyre that outsings and outlightens
The rapture of sunset, and thrills
Mute night till the sense of it brightens
The soul that it fills.
The flowers of the sun that is sunken
Hang heavy of heart as of head;
The bees that have eaten and drunken
The soul of their sweetness are fled;
But a sunflower of song, on whose honey
My spirit has fed as a bee,
Makes sunnier than morning was sunny
The twilight for me.
The letters and lines on the pages
That sundered mine eyes and the flowers
Wax faint as the shadows of ages
That sunder their season and ours;
As the ghosts of the centuries that sever
A season of colourless time
From the days whose remembrance is ever,
As they were, sublime.
The season that bred and that cherished
The soul that I commune with yet,
Had it utterly withered and perished
To rise not again as it set,
Shame were it that Englishmen living
Should read as their forefathers read
The books of the praise and thanksgiving
Of Englishmen dead.
O light of the land that adored thee
And kindled thy soul with her breath,
Whose life, such as fate would afford thee,
Was lovelier than aught but thy death,
By what name, could thy lovers but know it,
Might love of thee hail thee afar,
Philisides, Astrophel, poet
Whose love was thy star?
A star in the moondawn of Maytime,
A star in the cloudland of change;
Too splendid and sad for the daytime
To cheer or eclipse or estrange;
Too sweet for tradition or vision
To see but through shadows of tears
Rise deathless across the division
Of measureless years.
The twilight may deepen and harden
As nightward the stream of it runs
Till starshine transfigure a garden
Whose radiance responds to the sun's:
The light of the love of thee darkens
The lights that arise and that set:
The love that forgets thee not hearkens
If England forget.
II
Bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy
lifetime shone,
Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave, and again
was gone:
Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has conquered as years
pass on.
Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and
praised and wept,
Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names that her
heart's love kept
Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it sank
and slept.
Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia resounds and
shines,
Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the steadfast
signs,
Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth, whose presage
the soul divines.
All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sunlight
round,
All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit, and held
them bound,
Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of its music
sound.
Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a
dove,
Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough thy soul from
afar above
Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the
fount of love.
Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys
and fears,
Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy
peerless peers,
Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the
rayless years.
Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of
clouded fame,
How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's England, be brought
to shame?
How should this be, while England is? What need of answer beyond
thy name?
III
From the love that transfigures thy glory,
From the light of the dawn of thy death,
The life of thy song and thy story
Took subtler and fierier breath.
And we, though the day and the morrow
Set fear and thanksgiving at strife,
Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow
The sun of thy life.
Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid thanksgiving and pride
be dumb:
Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with toils till
her life wax numb,
Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die not and dayrise
come.
But England, enmeshed and benetted
With spiritless villainies round,
With counsels of cowardice fretted,
With trammels of treason enwound,
Is yet, though the season be other
Than wept and rejoiced over thee,
Thine England, thy lover, thy mother,
Sublime as the sea.
Hers wast thou: if her face be now less bright, or seem for an hour
less brave,
Let but thine on her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit revive and
save,
Time shall see, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed in a
shameful grave.
If death and not life were the portal
That opens on life at the last,
If the spirit of Sidney were mortal
And the past of it utterly past,
Fear stronger than honour was ever,
Forgetfulness mightier than fame,
Faith knows not if England should never
Subside into shame.
Yea, but yet is thy sun not set, thy sunbright spirit of trust
withdrawn:
England's love of thee burns above all hopes that darken or fears
that fawn:
Hers thou art: and the faithful heart that hopes begets upon
darkness dawn.
The sunset that sunrise will follow
Is less than the dream of a dream:
The starshine on height and on hollow
Sheds promise that dawn shall redeem:
The night, if the daytime would hide it,
Shows lovelier, aflame and afar,
Thy soul and thy Stella's beside it,
A star by a star.
A NYMPHOLEPT
Summer, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt,
Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense.
Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt,
Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense,
Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God's bow, tense
As a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt.
Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass hence?
I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour,
Lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man.
The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower,
The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan
As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran,
Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power,
Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one God, Pan.
The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades
The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep.
Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades,
The passing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep
Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep
Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades
Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.
The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast;
It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day.
And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast,
Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway.
But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away,
Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last;
But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say.
For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust
Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a dream,
His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man's must,
His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream.
For the deep mid mystery of light and of heat that seem
To clasp and pierce dark earth, and enkindle dust,
Shall a man's faith say what it is? or a man's guess deem?
Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night
Than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees.
Why now should the haze not open, and yield to sight
A fairer secret than hope or than slumber sees?
I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees,
With worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light:
I gaze on the gods about me, and call on these.
I call on the gods hard by, the divine dim powers
Whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air,
In the pulseless peace of the fervid and silent flowers,
In the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there.
Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair?
The bent-grass heaves not, the couch-grass quails not or cowers;
The wind's kiss frets not the rowan's or aspen's hair.
But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed,
And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung
With love as with pain; and the wide wood's motionless breast
Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue
And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung,
Whose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest
Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung.
Is it rapture or terror that circles me round, and invades
Each vein of my life with hope--if it be not fear?
Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades,
Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing near
Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear.
Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades
Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here?
The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime
That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood,
Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time,
Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood,
When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could.
The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme:
The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good.
Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair,
That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt
In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air,
In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God dwelt:
For hence were the shafts of his love or his anger dealt.
For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair,
When each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt.
Is it love, is it dread, that enkindles the trembling noon,
That yearns, reluctant in rapture that fear has fed,
As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon,
If I live, and the life that may look on him drop not dead,
Shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread,
The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day's tune
Receive the God, be it love that he brings or dread.
The naked noon is upon me: the fierce dumb spell,
The fearful charm of the strong sun's imminent might,
Unmerciful, steadfast, deeper than seas that swell,
Pervades, invades, appals me with loveless light,
With harsher awe than breathes in the breath of night.
Have mercy, God who art all! For I know thee well,
How sharp is thine eye to lighten, thine hand to smite.
The whole wood feels thee, the whole air fears thee: but fear
So deep, so dim, so sacred, is wellnigh sweet.
For the light that hangs and broods on the woodlands here,
Intense, invasive, intolerant, imperious, and meet
To lighten the works of thine hands and the ways of thy feet,
Is hot with the fire of the breath of thy life, and dear
As hope that shrivels or shrinks not for frost or heat.
Thee, thee the supreme dim godhead, approved afar,
Perceived of the soul and conceived of the sense of man,
We scarce dare love, and we dare not fear: the star
We call the sun, that lit us when life began
To brood on the world that is thine by his grace for a span,
Conceals and reveals in the semblance of things that are
Thine immanent presence, the pulse of thy heart's life, Pan.
The fierce mid noon that wakens and warms the snake
Conceals thy mercy, reveals thy wrath: and again
The dew-bright hour that assuages the twilight brake
Conceals thy wrath and reveals thy mercy: then
Thou art fearful only for evil souls of men
That feel with nightfall the serpent within them wake,
And hate the holy darkness on glade and glen.
Yea, then we know not and dream not if ill things be,
Or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine.
We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea,
We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine:
We see not if shipwreck reign in the storm's dim shrine;
If death do service and doom bear witness to thee
We see not,--know not if blood for thy lips be wine.
But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan,
As in all things good, as in all things fair that fall,
We know thee present and latent, the lord of man;
In the murmuring of doves, in the clamouring of winds that call
And wolves that howl for their prey; in the midnight's pall,
In the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, O Pan,
And in each life living, O thou the God who art all.
Smiling and singing, wailing and wringing of hands,
Laughing and weeping, watching and sleeping, still
Proclaim but and prove but thee, as the shifted sands
Speak forth and show but the strength of the sea's wild will
That sifts and grinds them as grain in the storm-wind's mill.
In thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands:
The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfil.
Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic
That rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man's,
Where Typho labours, and finds not his thews Titanic,
In breathless torment that ever the flame's breath fans,
Men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans
Were given to the charge of thy keeping; and soundless panic
Held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights were Pan's.
And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe
Be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee,
So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law,
So fair and fearless and faithful and godlike she,
So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea,
Yet man should fear lest he see what of old men saw
And withered: yet shall I quail if thy breath smite me.
Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair,
Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim,
Death seals up life, and darkness the sunbright air,
And the stars that watch blind earth in the deep night swim
Laugh, saying, "What God is your God, that ye call on him?
What is man, that the God who is guide of our way should care
If day for a man be golden, or night be grim?"
But thou, dost thou hear? Stars too but abide for a span,
Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be
God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man,
Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free,
The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we,
Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan,
With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see.
Yet may not it say, though it seek thee and think to find
One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod,
What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind,
That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod
We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod,
With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind,
Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for God.
Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright,
And bright as the night is dark on the world--no more.
Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light;
And the labour of evil and good from the years of yore
Is even as the labour of waves on a sunless shore.
And he who is first and last, who is depth and height,
Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar.
The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life
Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,
Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,
Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead.
No service of bended knee or of humbled head
May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:
And life with death is as morning with evening wed.
And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here
Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem
Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear,
Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream,
And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream.
And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear,
What helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam?
What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense,
The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain
Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense,
Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain
Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain.
For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence
Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane?
What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night,
Draws near, makes pause, and again--or I dream--draws near?
More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun's light,
More pure than moonbeams--yea, but the rays run sheer
As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, clear
And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright
That the light clothes round with love that is one with fear.
Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie,
Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued,
Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky
Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood
Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood
The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by
And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed.
I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden
This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with light
Suppressed and elate and reluctant--obscure and golden
As water kindled with presage of dawn or night--
A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight,
Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden
Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight.
I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange;
A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies,
As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range
And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies.
But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs,
No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change;
Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes.
Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul
Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss
Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole,
If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss,
If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss,
Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal.
And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this?
An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth,
Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat
And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth,
May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet,
May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet;
And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth,
Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet.
Bloom, fervour, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow,
Breathe and brighten about me: the darkness gleams,
The sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below,
Made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams;
The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams
That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know:
Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams.
I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun
Whose flame-lit odour satiates the flowers: mine eyes
Close, and the goal of delight and of life is one:
No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies.
No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies:
The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done,
If the mind and the face of the season be loveless, dies.
Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling,
If haply thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good,
Unknown sweet spirit, whose vesture is soft in spring,
In summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood
That shudders and wanes and shrinks as a shamed thing should,
In winter bright as the mail of a war-worn king
Who stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood.
My spirit or thine is it, breath of thy life or of mine,
Which fills my sense with a rapture that casts out fear?
Pan's dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine,
Transformed as night or as day by the kindling year.
Earth-born, or mine eye were withered that sees, mine ear
That hears were stricken to death by the sense divine,
Earth-born I know thee: but heaven is about me here.
The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light,
The doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea,
The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night,
Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent ill to be,
Where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me
Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight;
And nought is all, as am I, but a dream of thee.
ON THE SOUTH COAST
TO THEODORE WATTS
Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of
flowers and birds,
Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that
the land engirds,
Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life diviner than
lives in words,
Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with sublime acclaim,
Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken, girdled
with cloud or flame;
Earth's fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and
is yet the same.
Twice each day the divine sea's play makes glad with glory that
comes and goes
Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of
their old repose,
Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs
and flows.
Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with trunks of
the wildwood tree,
Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and meadow, by
lawn and lea,
Inland still at her own wild will swells, rolls, and revels the
surging sea.
Strong as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with shadows
of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of
prayers and tears,--
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and
waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that
glooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and
snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a
straight stem grows.
Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has whelmed not or
touched or neared,
Arch and vault without stain or fault, by hands of craftsmen we
know not reared,
Time beheld them, and time was quelled; and change passed by them
as one that feared.
Time that flies as a dream, and dies as dreams that die with the
sleep they feed,
Here alone in a garb of stone incarnate stands as a god indeed,
Stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal to man's
frail seed.
Men and years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow is fain
to shed:
These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note of them
quick or dead:
Time, whose breath is their birth and death, folds here his
pinions, and bows his head.
Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of unwearied
hands
Sees, as then, though the Red King's men held ruthless rule over
lawless lands,
Stand their massive design, impassive, pure and proud as a virgin
stands.
Statelier still as the years fulfil their count, subserving her
sacred state,
Grows the hoary grey church whose story silence utters and age
makes great:
Statelier seems it than shines in dreams the face unveiled of
unvanquished fate.
Fate, more high than the star-shown sky, more deep than waters
unsounded, shines
Keen and far as the final star on souls that seek not for charms or
signs;
Yet more bright is the love-shown light of men's hands lighted in
songs or shrines.
Love and trust that the grave's deep dust can soil not, neither may
fear put out,
Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though years be as
hosts in rout,
Spent and slain; but the signs remain that beat back darkness and
cast forth doubt.
Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier
than praise dare trace,
Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only the sea's
own face,
Shrines or songs that the world's change wrongs not, live by grace
of their own gift's grace.
Dead, their names that the night reclaims--alive, their works that
the day relumes--
Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none may behold
their tombs:
Nights and days shall record their praise while here this flower of
their grafting blooms.
Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten
and wax and rise,
Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains with strength
from the kindled skies,
Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man's love rears though
the man's name dies.
Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar
and near,
Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the
seaboard here;
Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that
the dawn holds dear.
Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the
low green lea,
Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange
and free,
Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the
fairer sea.
Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the
remote fields in,
Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the
days begin;
Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields and the
stars that win.
Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the
first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with
the grace of years;
Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that
death reveres.
Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger
than all things, bows
Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his
crownless brows,
Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time
avows.
Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a
flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous
oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that
the sundown sheds.
Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that
kindled it shines with shine
Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun's
own shrine:
Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more
divine.
Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not,
here may the sunset show,
Lightly graven in the waters paven with ghostly gold by the clouds
aglow:
Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave
below.
Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald,
gleams
Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as
dreams
Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all
that seems;
Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the
grace of sleep,
Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes long waking and
fain to weep
Feel fast bound on them--light around them strange, and darkness
above them steep.
Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews
awhile
Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of
speech and smile,
Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears enter or
doubts defile,
Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight
wed,
Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to
rosebright red
Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to northward its
wood-girt head.
There, when day is at height of sway, men's eyes who stand, as we
oft have stood,
High where towers with its world of flowers the golden spinny that
flanks the wood,
See before and around them shore and seaboard glad as their gifts
are good.
Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-swelling
unending downs;
East and west on the brave earth's breast glow girdle-jewels of
gleaming towns;
Southward shining, the lands declining subside in peace that the
sea's light crowns.
Westward wide in its fruitful pride the plain lies lordly with
plenteous grace;
Fair as dawn's when the fields and lawns desire her glitters the
glad land's face:
Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a lordlier
race.
Down beneath us afar, where seethe in wilder weather the tides
aflow,
Hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of rest that they
may not know,
Still as dew on a flower the blue broad stream now sleeps in the
fields below.
Mild and bland in the fair green land it smiles, and takes to its
heart the sky;
Scarce the meads and the fens, the reeds and grasses, still as they
stand or lie,
Wear the palm of a statelier calm than rests on waters that pass
them by.
Yet shall these, when the winds and seas of equal days and coequal
nights
Rage, rejoice, and uplift a voice whose sound is even as a sword
that smites,
Felt and heard as a doomsman's word from seaward reaches to
landward heights,
Lift their heart up, and take their part of triumph, swollen and
strong with rage,
Rage elate with desire and great with pride that tempest and storm
assuage;
So their chime in the ear of time has rung from age to rekindled
age.
Fair and dear is the land's face here, and fair man's work as a
man's may be:
Dear and fair as the sunbright air is here the record that speaks
him free;
Free by birth of a sacred earth, and regent ever of all the sea.
AN AUTUMN VISION
OCTOBER 31, 1889
+Zephyrou gigantos aura+
I
Is it Midsummer here in the heavens that illumine October on earth?
Can the year, when his heart is fulfilled with desire of the days
of his mirth,
Redeem them, recall, or remember?
For a memory recalling the rapture of earth, and redeeming the sky,
Shines down from the heights to the depths: will the watchword of
dawn be July
When to-morrow acclaims November?
The stern salutation of sorrow to death or repentance to shame
Was all that the season was wont to accord her of grace or acclaim;
No lightnings of love and of laughter.
But here, in the laugh of the loud west wind from around and above,
In the flash of the waters beneath him, what sound or what light
but of love
Rings round him or leaps forth after?
II
Wind beloved of earth and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow,
Wind whose might in fight was England's on her mightiest warrior
day,
South-west wind, whose breath for her was life, and fire to scourge
her foe,
Steel to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way,
Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky,
Rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms
the shore,
We receive, acclaim, salute thee, we who live and dream and die,
As the mightiest mouth of song that ever spake acclaimed of yore.
We that live as they that perish praise thee, lord of cloud and
wave,
Wind of winds, clothed on with darkness whence as lightning light
comes forth,
We that know thee strong to guard and smite, to scatter and to
save,
We to whom the south-west wind is dear as Athens held the north.
He for her waged war as thou for us against all powers defiant,
Fleets full-fraught with storm from Persia, laden deep with death
from Spain:
Thee the giant god of song and battle hailed as god and giant,
Yet not his but ours the land is whence thy praise should ring
and rain;
Rain as rapture shed from song, and ring as trumpets blown for
battle,
Sound and sing before thee, loud and glad as leaps and sinks the
sea:
Yea, the sea's white steeds are curbed and spurred of thee, and
pent as cattle,
Yet they laugh with love and pride to live, subdued not save of
thee.
Ears that hear thee hear in heaven the sound of widening wings
gigantic,
Eyes that see the cloud-lift westward see thy darkening brows
divine;
Wings whose measure is the limit of the limitless Atlantic,
Brows that bend, and bid the sovereign sea submit her soul to
thine.
III
Twelve days since is it--twelve days gone,
Lord of storm, that a storm-bow shone
Higher than sweeps thy sublime dark wing,
Fair as dawn is and sweet like spring?
Never dawn in the deep wide east
Spread so splendid and strange a feast,
Whence the soul as it drank and fed
Felt such rapture of wonder shed.
Never spring in the wild wood's heart
Felt such flowers at her footfall start,
Born of earth, as arose on sight
Born of heaven and of storm and light.
Stern and sullen, the grey grim sea
Swelled and strove as in toils, though free,
Free as heaven, and as heaven sublime,
Clear as heaven of the toils of time.
IV
Suddenly, sheer from the heights to the depths of the sky and the
sea,
Sprang from the darkness alive as a vision of life to be
Glory triune and transcendent of colour afar and afire,
Arching and darkening the darkness with light as of dream or
desire.
Heaven, in the depth of its height, shone wistful and wan from
above:
Earth from beneath, and the sea, shone stricken and breathless with
love.
As a shadow may shine, so shone they; as ghosts of the viewless
blest,
That sleep hath sight of alive in a rapture of sunbright rest,
The green earth glowed and the grey sky gleamed for a wondrous
while;
And the storm's full frown was crossed by the light of its own deep
smile.
As the darkness of thought and of passion is touched by the light
that gives
Life deathless as love from the depth of a spirit that sees and
lives,
From the soul of a seer and a singer, wherein as a scroll unfurled
Lies open the scripture of light and of darkness, the word of the
world,
So, shapeless and measureless, lurid as anguish and haggard as
crime,
Pale as the front of oblivion and dark as the heart of time,
The wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made
More fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not
shade.
The grim sea-swell, grey, sleepless, and sad as a soul estranged,
Shone, smiled, took heart, and was glad of its wrath: and the
world's face changed.
V
Up from moorlands northward gleaming
Even to heaven's transcendent height,
Clothed with massive cloud, and seeming
All one fortress reared of night,
Down to where the deep sea, dreaming
Angry dreams, lay dark and white,
White as death and dark as fate,
Heaving with the strong wind's weight,
Sad with stormy pride of state,
One full rainbow shone elate.
Up from inmost memory's dwelling
Where the light of life abides,
Where the past finds tongue, foretelling
Time that comes and grace that guides,
Power that saves and sways, compelling
Souls that ebb and flow like tides,
Shone or seemed to shine and swim
Through the cloud-surf great and grim,
Thought's live surge, the soul of him
By whose light the sun looks dim.
In what synod were they sitting,
All the gods and lords of time,
Whence they watched as fen-fires flitting
Years and names of men sublime,
When their counsels found it fitting
One should stand where none might climb--
None of man begotten, none
Born of men beneath the sun
Till the race of time be run,
Save this heaven-enfranchised one?
With what rapture of creation
Was the soul supernal thrilled,
With what pride of adoration
Was the world's heart fired and filled,
Heaved in heavenward exaltation
Higher than hopes or dreams might build,
Grave with awe not known while he
Was not, mad with glorious glee
As the sun-saluted sea,
When his hour bade Shakespeare be?
VI
There, clear as night beholds her crowning seven,
The sea beheld his likeness set in heaven.
The shadow of his spirit full in sight
Shone: for the shadow of that soul is light.
Nor heaven alone bore witness: earth avowed
Him present, and acclaimed of storm aloud.
From the arching sky to the ageless hills and sea
The whole world, visible, audible, was he:
Each part of all that wove that wondrous whole
The raiment of the presence of his soul.
The sun that smote and kissed the dark to death
Spake, smiled, and strove, like song's triumphant breath;
The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was dumb
Swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come.
Yet high from heaven its empire vast and vain
Frowned, and renounced not night's reluctant reign.
The serpentine swift sounds and shapes wherein
The stainless sea mocks earth and death and sin,
Crawls dark as craft, or flashes keen as hate,
Subdued and insubmissive, strong like fate
And weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet
That storms and sins are more than suns that set;
That evil everlasting, girt for strife
Eternal, wars with hope as death with life.
The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves
Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves,
And waxed within more bitter as they bowed,
Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud,
Devouring fast as fire on earth devours
And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers,
Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell,
And darkening with its miscreative spell
Light, glad and keen and splendid as the sword
Whose heft had known Othello's hand its lord,
Spake all the soul that hell drew back to greet
And felt its fire shrink shuddering from his feet.
Far off the darkness darkened, and recoiled,
And neared again, and triumphed: and the coiled
Colourless cloud and sea discoloured grew
Conscious of horror huge as heaven, and knew
Where Goneril's soul made chill and foul the mist,
And all the leprous life in Regan hissed.
Fierce homeless ghosts, rejected of the pit,
From hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit.
About them and before, the dull grey gloom
Shuddered, and heaven seemed hateful as the tomb
That shrinks from resurrection; and from out
That sullen hell which girt their shades about
The nether soul that lurks and lowers within
Man, made of dust and fire and shame and sin,
Breathed: all the cloud that felt it breathe and blight
Was blue as plague or black as thunderous night.
Elect of hell, the children of his hate
Thronged, as to storm sweet heaven's triumphal gate.
The terror of his giving rose and shone
Imminent: life had put its likeness on.
But higher than all its horrent height of shade
Shone sovereign, seen by light itself had made,
Above the woes of all the world, above
Life, sin, and death, his myriad-minded love.
From landward heights whereon the radiance leant
Full-fraught from heaven, intense and imminent,
To depths wherein the seething strengths of cloud
Scarce matched the wrath of waves whereon they bowed,
From homeborn pride and kindling love of home
To the outer skies and seas of fire and foam,
From splendour soft as dew that sundawn thrills
To gloom that shudders round the world it fills,
From midnights murmuring round Titania's ear
To midnights maddening round the rage of Lear,
The wonder woven of storm and sun became
One with the light that lightens from his name.
The music moving on the sea that felt
The storm-wind even as snows of springtide melt
Was blithe as Ariel's hand or voice might make
And bid all grief die gladly for its sake.
And there the soul alive in ear and eye
That watched the wonders of an hour pass by
Saw brighter than all stars that heaven inspheres
The silent splendour of Cordelia's tears,
Felt in the whispers of the quickening wind
The radiance of the laugh of Rosalind,
And heard, in sounds that melt the souls of men
With love of love, the tune of Imogen.
VII
For the strong north-east is not strong to subdue and to slay the
divine south-west,
And the darkness is less than the light that it darkens, and dies
in reluctant rest.
It hovers and hangs on the labouring and trembling ascent of the
dawn from the deep,
Till the sun's eye quicken the world and the waters, and smite it
again into sleep.
Night, holy and starry, the fostress of souls, with the fragrance
of heaven in her breath,
Subdues with the sense of her godhead the forces and mysteries of
sorrow and death.
Eternal as dawn's is the comfort she gives: but the mist that
beleaguers and slays
Comes, passes, and is not: the strength of it withers, appalled or
assuaged by the day's.
Faith, haggard as Fear that had borne her, and dark as the sire
that begat her, Despair,
Held rule on the soul of the world and the song of it saddening
through ages that were;
Dim centuries that darkened and brightened and darkened again, and
the soul of their song
Was great as their grief, and sublime as their suffering, and
strong as their sorrows were strong.
It knew not, it saw not, but shadows triune, and evoked by the
strength of their spell
Dark hell, and the mountain of anguish, and heaven that was
hollower and harder than hell.
These are not: the womb of the darkness that bare them rejects
them, and knows them no more:
Thought, fettered in misery and iron, revives in the light that it
lived in of yore.
For the soul that is wisdom and freedom, the spirit of England
redeemed from her past,
Speaks life through the lips of the master and lord of her
children, the first and the last.
Thought, touched by his hand and redeemed by his breath, sees,
hears, and accepts from above
The limitless lightnings of vision and passion, the measureless
music of love.
A SWIMMER'S DREAM
NOVEMBER 4, 1889
_Somno mollior unda_
I
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter,
Fair and flawless from face to feet,
Hailed of all when the world was golden,
Loved of lovers whose names beholden
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden
Days more glad than their flight was fleet.
So they sang: but for men that love her,
Souls that hear not her word in vain,
Earth beside her and heaven above her
Seem but shadows that wax and wane.
Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses,
Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses,
Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses
Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.
All the strength of the waves that perish
Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,
Sighs for love of the life they cherish,
Laughs to know that it lives and dies,
Dies for joy of its life, and lives
Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives--
Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives
Change that bids it subside and rise.
II
Hard and heavy, remote but nearing,
Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight,
Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering
Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate.
Dawn and even and noon are one,
Veiled with vapour and void of sun;
Nought in sight or in fancied hearing
Now less mighty than time or fate.
The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer,
Pale and sweet as a dream's delight,
As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer,
Touched by dawn or subdued by night.
The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad,
Swings the rollers to westward, clad
With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer,
Lures and lulls him with dreams of light.
Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder,
Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud,
Fill the world of the skies whereunder
Heaves and quivers and pants aloud
All the world of the waters, hoary
Now, but clothed with its own live glory,
That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder
With light more living and word more proud.
III
Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife,
Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee
Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free,
Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life,
Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea.
Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd,
Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems
Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams
Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed,
Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams.
IV
O russet-robed November,
What ails thee so to smile?
Chill August, pale September,
Endured a woful while,
And fell as falls an ember
From forth a flameless pile:
But golden-girt November
Bids all she looks on smile.
The lustrous foliage, waning
As wanes the morning moon,
Here falling, here refraining,
Outbraves the pride of June
With statelier semblance, feigning
No fear lest death be soon:
As though the woods thus waning
Should wax to meet the moon.
As though, when fields lie stricken
By grey December's breath,
These lordlier growths that sicken
And die for fear of death
Should feel the sense requicken
That hears what springtide saith
And thrills for love, spring-stricken
And pierced with April's breath.
The keen white-winged north-easter
That stings and spurs thy sea
Doth yet but feed and feast her
With glowing sense of glee:
Calm chained her, storm released her,
And storm's glad voice was he:
South-wester or north-easter,
Thy winds rejoice the sea.
V
A dream, a dream is it all--the season,
The sky, the water, the wind, the shore?
A day-born dream of divine unreason,
A marvel moulded of sleep--no more?
For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving
Feel as in slumber beneath them heaving
Soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving
Sense of nought that was known of yore.
A purer passion, a lordlier leisure,
A peace more happy than lives on land,
Fulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure
The dreaming head and the steering hand.
I lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow,
The deep soft swell of the full broad billow,
And close mine eyes for delight past measure,
And wish the wheel of the world would stand.
The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture
Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb,
So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture
Was felt that soothed me with sense of home.
To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever--
Such joy the vision of man saw never;
For here too soon will a dark day sever
The sea-bird's wing from the sea-wave's foam.
A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer
At once and brighter than dreams that flee,
The moment's joy of the seaward swimmer
Abides, remembered as truth may be.
Not all the joy and not all the glory
Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary;
For there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer,
And here to south of them swells the sea.
GRACE DARLING
Take, O star of all our seas, from not an alien hand,
Homage paid of song bowed down before thy glory's face,
Thou the living light of all our lovely stormy strand,
Thou the brave north-country's very glory of glories, Grace.