wide wings,
Since fate fell dark on her father, most hapless and gentlest of
star-crossed kings,
Her praise has increased as the chant of the dawn that the choir of
the noon outsings.
II
Storm and cloud in the skies were loud, and lightning mocked at the
blind sun's light;
War and woe on the land below shed heavier shadow than falls from
night;
Dark was earth at her dawn of birth as here her record of praise is
bright.
Clear and fair through her morning air the light first laugh of the
sunlit stage
Rose and rang as a fount that sprang from depths yet dark with a
spent storm's rage,
Loud and glad as a boy's, and bade the sunrise open on
Shakespeare's age.
Lords of state and of war, whom fate found strong in battle, in
counsel strong,
Here, ere fate had approved them great, abode their season, and
thought not long:
Here too first was the lark's note nursed that filled and flooded
the skies with song.
III
Shelley, lyric lord of England's lordliest singers, here first
heard
Ring from lips of poets crowned and dead the Promethean word
Whence his soul took fire, and power to outsoar the sunward-soaring
bird.
Still the reaches of the river, still the light on field and hill,
Still the memories held aloft as lamps for hope's young fire to
fill,
Shine, and while the light of England lives shall shine for England
still.
When four hundred more and fifty years have risen and shone and
set,
Bright with names that men remember, loud with names that men
forget,
Haply here shall Eton's record be what England finds it yet.
THE UNION
I
Three in one, but one in three,
God, who girt her with the sea,
Bade our Commonweal to be:
Nought, if now not one.
Though fraud and fear would sever
The bond assured for ever,
Their shameful strength shall never
Undo what heaven has done.
II
South and North and West and East
Watch the ravens flock to feast,
Dense as round some death-struck beast,
Black as night is black.
Stand fast as faith together
In stress of treacherous weather
When hounds and wolves break tether
And Treason guides the pack.
III
Lovelier than thy seas are strong,
Glorious Ireland, sword and song
Gird and crown thee: none may wrong,
Save thy sons alone.
The sea that laughs around us
Hath sundered not but bound us:
The sun's first rising found us
Throned on its equal throne.
IV
North and South and East and West,
All true hearts that wish thee best
Beat one tune and own one quest,
Staunch and sure as steel.
God guard from dark disunion
Our threefold State's communion,
God save the loyal Union,
The royal Commonweal!
EAST TO WEST
Sunset smiles on sunrise: east and west are one,
Face to face in heaven before the sovereign sun.
From the springs of the dawn everlasting a glory renews and
transfigures the west,
From the depths of the sunset a light as of morning enkindles the
broad sea's breast,
And the lands and the skies and the waters are glad of the day's
and the night's work done.
Child of dawn, and regent on the world-wide sea,
England smiles on Europe, fair as dawn and free.
Not the waters that gird her are purer, nor mightier the winds that
her waters know.
But America, daughter and sister of England, is praised of them,
far as they flow:
Atlantic responds to Pacific the praise of her days that have been
and shall be.
So from England westward let the watchword fly,
So for England eastward let the seas reply;
Praise, honour, and love everlasting be sent on the wind's wings,
westward and east,
That the pride of the past and the pride of the future may mingle
as friends at feast,
And the sons of the lords of the world-wide seas be one till the
world's life die.
INSCRIPTIONS
FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A PEDESTAL
I
Marlowe, the father of the sons of song
Whose praise is England's crowning praise, above
All glories else that crown her, sweet and strong
As England, clothed with light and fire of love,
And girt with might of passion, thought, and trust,
Stands here in spirit, sleeps not here in dust.
II
Marlowe, a star too sovereign, too superb,
To fade when heaven took fire from Shakespeare's light,
A soul that knew but song's triumphal curb
And love's triumphant bondage, holds of right
His pride of place, who first in place and time
Made England's voice as England's heart sublime.
III
Marlowe bade England live in living song:
The light he lifted up lit Shakespeare's way:
He spake, and life sprang forth in music, strong
As fire or lightning, sweet as dawn of day.
Song was a dream where day took night to wife:
"Let there be life," he said: and there was life.
IV
Marlowe of all our fathers first beheld
Beyond the tidal ebb and flow of things
The tideless depth and height of souls, impelled
By thought or passion, borne on waves or wings,
Beyond all flight or sight but song's: and he
First gave our song a sound that matched our sea.
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD BURTON
Night or light is it now, wherein
Sleeps, shut out from the wild world's din,
Wakes, alive with a life more clear,
One who found not on earth his kin?
Sleep were sweet for awhile, were dear
Surely to souls that were heartless here,
Souls that faltered and flagged and fell,
Soft of spirit and faint of cheer.
A living soul that had strength to quell
Hope the spectre and fear the spell,
Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime
And a faith superb, can it fare not well?
Life, the shadow of wide-winged time,
Cast from the wings that change as they climb,
Life may vanish in death, and seem
Less than the promise of last year's prime.
But not for us is the past a dream
Wherefrom, as light from a clouded stream,
Faith fades and shivers and ebbs away,
Faint as the moon if the sundawn gleam.
Faith, whose eyes in the low last ray
Watch the fire that renews the day,
Faith which lives in the living past,
Rock-rooted, swerves not as weeds that sway.
As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast
She stands, unsmitten of death's keen blast,
With strong remembrance of sunbright spring
Alive at heart to the lifeless last.
Night, she knows, may in no wise cling
To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing,
A sun that sets not in death's false night
Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king.
Souls there are that for soul's affright
Bow down and cower in the sun's glad sight,
Clothed round with faith that is one with fear,
And dark with doubt of the live world's light.
But him we hailed from afar or near
As boldest born of the bravest here
And loved as brightest of souls that eyed
Life, time, and death with unchangeful cheer,
A wider soul than the world was wide,
Whose praise made love of him one with pride,
What part has death or has time in him,
Who rode life's lists as a god might ride?
While England sees not her old praise dim,
While still her stars through the world's night swim,
A fame outshining her Raleigh's fame,
A light that lightens her loud sea's rim,
Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim
The pride that kindles at Burton's name.
And joy shall exalt their pride to be
The same in birth if in soul the same.
But we that yearn for a friend's face--we
Who lack the light that on earth was he--
Mourn, though the light be a quenchless flame
That shines as dawn on a tideless sea.
ELEGY
1869-1891
Auvergne, Auvergne, O wild and woful land,
O glorious land and gracious, white as gleam
The stairs of heaven, black as a flameless brand,
Strange even as life, and stranger than a dream,
Could earth remember man, whose eyes made bright
The splendour of her beauty, lit by day
Or soothed and softened and redeemed by night,
Wouldst thou not know what light has passed away?
Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world,
Mourns? For the world whose wildest ways he trod,
And smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled
Against him, knows him now less man than god.
Our demigod of daring, keenest-eyed
To read and deepest read in earth's dim things,
A spirit now whose body of death has died
And left it mightier yet in eyes and wings,
The sovereign seeker of the world, who now
Hath sought what world the light of death may show,
Hailed once with me the crowns that load thy brow,
Crags dark as midnight, columns bright as snow.
Thy steep small Siena, splendid and content
As shines the mightier city's Tuscan pride
Which here its face reflects in radiance, pent
By narrower bounds from towering side to side,
Set fast between the ridged and foamless waves
Of earth more fierce and fluctuant than the sea,
The fearless town of towers that hails and braves
The heights that gird, the sun that brands Le Puy;
The huddled churches clinging on the cliffs
As birds alighting might for storm's sake cling,
Moored to the rocks as tempest-harried skiffs
To perilous refuge from the loud wind's wing;
The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb
Even up to the utmost crag's edge curved and curled,
More bright than vision, more than faith sublime,
Strange as the light and darkness of the world;
Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun,
And washed from west and east by day's deep tide.
Shine yet less fair, when all their heights are won,
Than sundawn shows thy pillared mountain-side.
Even so the dawn of death, whose light makes dim
The starry fires that life sees rise and set,
Shows higher than here he shone before us him
Whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget.
Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb
Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud,
Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam,
And shrouded as a corpse with storm's grey shroud,
Foot following foot along the sheer strait ledge
Where space was none to bear the wild goat's feet
Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge
Where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat,
The abyss before us, viewless even as time's,
The abyss to left of us, the abyss to right,
Bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs
That death sets free from change of day and night.
The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath
Shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod,
The wondrous world it darkened, made our path
Like theirs who take the shadow of death for God.
Yet eastward, veiled in vapour white as snow,
The grim black herbless heights that scorn the sun
And mock the face of morning rose to show
The work of earth-born fire and earthquake done.
And half the world was haggard night, wherein
We strove our blind way through: but far above
Was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin,
And far beneath a land worth light and love.
Deep down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted
By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings
And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted
By present sense of past and monstrous things,
The glimmering water holds its gracious way
Full forth, and keeps one happier hand's-breadth green
Of all that storm-scathed world whereon the sway
Sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen.
But on the soundless and the viewless river
That bears through night perchance again to day
The dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver
From life that dies, and time's inveterate sway,
No shadow save of falsehood and of fear
That brands the future with the past, and bids
The spirit wither and the soul grow sere,
Hovers or hangs to cloud life's opening lids,
If life have eyes to lift again and see,
Beyond the bounds of sensual sight or breath,
What life incognisable of ours may be
That turns our light to darkness deep as death.
Priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm
With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies,
About his dust while yet his dust is warm
Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes,
Their godless ghost of godhead, false and foul
As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we,
Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl:
The corpse be theirs to mock; the soul is free.
Free as ere yet its earthly day was done
It lived above the coil about us curled:
A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun,
A soul whose wings were wider than the world.
We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams,
Bound fast with visions, girt about with fears,
Live, trust, and think by chance, while shadow seems
Light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers.
He, whose full soul held east and west in poise,
Weighed man with man, and creed of man's with creed,
And age with age, their triumphs and their toys,
And found what faith may read not and may read.
Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit
With fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn
Wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it
The splendour and the steadfastness of scorn.
What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what space
Illimitable, insuperable, infinite,
Now to that strong-winged soul yields ampler place
Than passing darkness yields to passing light,
No dream, no faith can tell us: hope and fear,
Whose tongues were loud of old as children's, now
From babbling fall to silence: change is here,
And death; dark furrows drawn by time's dark plough.
Still sunward here on earth its flight was bent,
Even since the man within the child began
To yearn and kindle with superb intent
And trust in time to magnify the man.
Still toward the old garden of the Sun, whose fruit
The honey-heavy lips of Sophocles
Desired and sang, wherein the unwithering root
Sprang of all growths that thought brings forth and sees
Incarnate, bright with bloom or dense with leaf
Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night:
And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf
His strenuous spirit bound and stored aright.
And eastward now, and ever toward the dawn,
If death's deep veil by life's bright hand be rent,
We see, as through the shadow of death withdrawn,
The imperious soul's indomitable ascent.
But not the soul whose labour knew not end--
But not the swordsman's hand, the crested head--
The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend,
Burton--a name that lives till fame be dead.
A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING
I
The clearest eyes in all the world they read
With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true
Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew
Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,
As they the light of ages quick and dead,
Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew
Can slay not one of all the works we knew,
Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.
The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,
And moulded of unconquerable thought,
And quickened with imperishable flame,
Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought
May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,
Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.
_December 13, 1889._
II
Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom
Time is not lord, but servant? What least part
Of all the fire that fed his living heart,
Of all the light more keen than sundawn's bloom
That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom
And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart
Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art,
A shadow born of terror's barren womb,
That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou,
To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow,
That power on him is given thee,--that thy breath
Can make him less than love acclaims him now,
And hears all time sound back the word it saith?
What part hast thou then in his glory, Death?
III
A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve:
Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand,
Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand
And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve.
A graceless guerdon we that loved receive
For all our love, from that the dearest land
Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland,
Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave,
Shone on our dreams and memories evermore
The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore
That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black
Seems now the face we loved as he of yore.
We have given thee love--no stint, no stay, no lack:
What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back?
IV
But he--to him, who knows what gift is thine,
Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we
Pass likewise thither where to-night is he,
Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine
And darken round such dreams as half divine
Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea
Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee,
To read with him the secret of thy shrine.
There too, as here, may song, delight, and love,
The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove,
Fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky
Till all beneath wax bright as all above:
But none of all that search the heavens, and try
The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye.
_December 14._
V
Among the wondrous ways of men and time
He went as one that ever found and sought
And bore in hand the lamplike spirit of thought
To illume with instance of its fire sublime
The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime.
No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought,
No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought
That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime,
No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light,
No love more lovely than the snows are white,
No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb,
No song-bird singing from some live soul's height,
But he might hear, interpret, or illume
With sense invasive as the dawn of doom.
VI
What secret thing of splendour or of shade
Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein
Man, led of love and life and death and sin,
Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid,
Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade
Of that full soul that had for aim to win
Light, silent over time's dark toil and din,
Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade?
O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee
That he might know not of in spirit, and see
The heart within the heart that seems to strive,
The life within the life that seems to be,
And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive,
The living sound of all men's souls alive?
VII
He held no dream worth waking: so he said,
He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep
And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.
But never death for him was dark or dread:
"Look forth" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep,
All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep
Vain memory's vision of a vanished head
As all that lives of all that once was he
Save that which lightens from his word: but we,
Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll,
Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea,
Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole,
And life and death but shadows of the soul.
_December 15._
SUNSET AND MOONRISE
NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1889
All the west, whereon the sunset sealed the dead year's glorious
grave
Fast with seals of light and fire and cloud that light and fire
illume,
Glows at heart and kindles earth and heaven with joyous blush and
bloom,
Warm and wide as life, and glad of death that only slays to save.
As a tide-reconquered sea-rock lies aflush with the influent wave
Lies the light aflush with darkness, lapped about by lustrous
gloom,
Even as life with death, and fame with time, and memory with the
tomb
Where a dead man hath for vassals Fame the serf and Time the slave.
Far from earth as heaven, the steadfast light withdrawn, superb,
suspense,
Burns in dumb divine expansion of illimitable flower:
Moonrise whets the shadow's edges keen as noontide: hence and
thence
Glows the presence from us passing, shines and passes not the
power.
Souls arise whose word remembered is as spirit within the sense:
All the hours are theirs of all the seasons: death has but his
hour.
BIRTHDAY ODE
AUGUST 6, 1891
I
Love and praise, and a length of days whose shadow cast upon time
is light,
Days whose sound was a spell shed round from wheeling wings as of
doves in flight,
Meet in one, that the mounting sun to-day may triumph, and cast out
night.
Two years more than the full fourscore lay hallowing hands on a
sacred head--
Scarce one score of the perfect four uncrowned of fame as they
smiled and fled:
Still and soft and alive aloft their sunlight stays though the suns
be dead.
Ere we were or were thought on, ere the love that gave us to life
began,
Fame grew strong with his crescent song, to greet the goal of the
race they ran,
Song with fame, and the lustrous name with years whose changes
acclaimed the man.
II
Soon, ere time in the rounding rhyme of choral seasons had hailed
us men,
We too heard and acclaimed the word whose breath was life upon
England then--
Life more bright than the breathless light of soundless noon in a
songless glen.
Ah, the joy of the heartstruck boy whose ear was opened of love to
hear!
Ah, the bliss of the burning kiss of song and spirit, the mounting
cheer
Lit with fire of divine desire and love that knew not if love were
fear!
Fear and love as of heaven above and earth enkindled of heaven were
one;
One white flame, that around his name grew keen and strong as the
worldwide sun;
Awe made bright with implied delight, as weft with weft of the
rainbow spun.
III
He that fears not the voice he hears and loves shall never have
heart to sing:
All the grace of the sun-god's face that bids the soul as a
fountain spring
Bids the brow that receives it bow, and hail his likeness on earth
as king.
We that knew when the sun's shaft flew beheld and worshipped,
adored and heard:
Light rang round it of shining sound, whence all men's hearts were
subdued and stirred:
Joy, love, sorrow, the day, the morrow, took life upon them in one
man's word.
Not for him can the years wax dim, nor downward swerve on a
darkening way:
Upward wind they, and leave behind such light as lightens the front
of May:
Fair as youth and sublime as truth we find the fame that we hail
to-day.
THRENODY
OCTOBER 6, 1892
I
Life, sublime and serene when time had power upon it and ruled its
breath,
Changed it, bade it be glad or sad, and hear what change in the
world's ear saith,
Shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens the dusk
of death.
Suns that sink on the wan sea's brink, and moons that kindle and
flame and fade,
Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and
see not shade
Rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and
moonlight swayed.
So, when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pillowed on
Shakespeare's breast,
Hand in hand with him, soon to stand where shine the glories that
death loves best,
Passed the light of his face from sight, and sank sublimely to
radiant rest.
II
Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voiceless
praise,
Shines for ever the name that never shall feel the shade of the
changeful days
Fall and chill the delight that still sees winter's light on it
shine like May's.
Strong as death is the dark day's breath whose blast has withered
the life we see
Here where light is the child of night, and less than visions or
dreams are we:
Strong as death; but a word, a breath, a dream is stronger than
death can be.
Strong as truth and superb in youth eternal, fair as the sundawn's
flame
Seen when May on her first-born day bids earth exult in her radiant
name,
Lives, clothed round with its praise and crowned with love that
dies not, his love-lit fame.
III
Fairer far than the morning star, and sweet for us as the songs
that rang
Loud through heaven from the choral Seven when all the stars of the
morning sang,
Shines the song that we loved so long--since first such love in us
flamed and sprang.
England glows as a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from sea to
sea,
Bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow that
needs must be,
Needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory to lawn
and lea.
Not through tears shall the new-born years behold him, crowned with
applause of men,
Pass at last from a lustrous past to life that lightens beyond
their ken,
Glad and dead, and from earthward led to sunward, guided of Imogen.
THE BALLAD OF MELICERTES
IN MEMORY OF THEODORE DE BANVILLE
Death, a light outshining life, bids heaven resume
Star by star the souls whose light made earth divine.
Death, a night outshining day, sees burn and bloom
Flower by flower, and sun by sun, the fames that shine
Deathless, higher than life beheld their sovereign sign.
Dead Simonides of Ceos, late restored,
Given again of God, again by man deplored,
Shone but yestereve, a glory frail as breath.
Frail? But fame's breath quickens, kindles, keeps in ward,
Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.