Now the meadows with crocus besprent,

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT: AN ARABIAN ENTERTAINMENT.

THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL.

EVAN HARRINGTON.

EMILIA IN ENGLAND.

VITTORIA.

BEAUCHAMP’S CAREER.

THE EGOIST.

&c. &c.

_Forthcoming Publications in Verse._

POEMS.

THE SENTIMENTALISTS: A COMEDY.

POEMS AND LYRICS

OF

THE JOY OF EARTH

[Illustration]

POEMS AND LYRICS

OF

THE JOY OF EARTH

BY

GEORGE MEREDITH

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1883

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.

INSCRIBED TO

JAMES COTTER MORISON

* * * *

_Antistans mihi milibus trecentis._

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN 1

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN 28

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES 30

THE LARK ASCENDING 64

PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS 71

MELAMPUS 79

LOVE IN THE VALLEY 87

THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD 101

THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH 105

MARTIN’S PUZZLE 109

EARTH AND MAN 115

A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT 130

SONNETS.

LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT 157

THE STAR SIRIUS 158

SENSE AND SPIRIT 159

EARTH’S SECRET 160

THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE 161

THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE--_Continued_ 162

INTERNAL HARMONY 163

GRACE AND LOVE 164

APPRECIATION 165

THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM 166

THE STATE OF AGE 167

PROGRESS 168

THE WORLD’S ADVANCE 169

A CERTAIN PEOPLE 170

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS 171

A LATER ALEXANDRIAN 172

AN ORSON OF THE MUSE 173

THE POINT OF TASTE 174

CAMELUS SALTAT 175

CAMELUS SALTAT--_Continued_ 176

TO J. M. 177

TO A FRIEND LOST 178

MY THEME 179

MY THEME--_Continued_ 180

TIME AND SENTIMENT 181

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN.

I.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

Nothing harms beneath the leaves

More than waves a swimmer cleaves.

Toss your heart up with the lark,

Foot at peace with mouse and worm,

Fair you fare.

Only at a dread of dark

Quaver, and they quit their form:

Thousand eyeballs under hoods

Have you by the hair.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

II.

Here the snake across your path

Stretches in his golden bath:

Mossy-footed squirrels leap

Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:

Yaffles on a chuckle skim

Low to laugh from branches dim:

Up the pine, where sits the star,

Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.

Each has business of his own;

But should you distrust a tone,

Then beware.

Shudder all the haunted roods,

All the eyeballs under hoods

Shroud you in their glare.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

III.

Open hither, open hence,

Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,

Where the strawberry runs red,

With white star-flower overhead;

Cumbered by dry twig and cone,

Shredded husks of seedlings flown,

Mine of mole and spotted flint:

Of dire wizardry no hint,

Save mayhap the print that shows

Hasty outward-tripping toes,

Heels to terror, on the mould.

These, the woods of Westermain,

Are as others to behold,

Rich of wreathing sun and rain;

Foliage lustreful around

Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.

Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,

Shelter eager minikins,

Myriads, free to peck and pipe:

Would you better? would you worse?

You with them may gather ripe

Pleasures flowing not from purse.

Quick and far as Colour flies

Taking the delighted eyes,

You of any well that springs

May unfold the heaven of things;

Have it homely and within,

And thereof its likeness win,

Will you so in soul’s desire:

This do sages grant t’ the lyre.

This is being bird and more,

More than glad musician this;

Granaries you will have a store

Past the world of woe and bliss;

Sharing still its bliss and woe;

Harnessed to its hungers, no.

On the throne Success usurps,

You shall seat the joy you feel

Where a race of water chirps,

Twisting hues of flourished steel:

Or where light is caught in hoop

Up a clearing’s leafy rise,

Where the crossing deerherds troop

Classic splendours, knightly dyes.

Or, where old-eyed oxen chew

Speculation with the cud,

Read their pool of vision through,

Back to hours when mind was mud;

Nigh the knot, which did untwine

Timelessly to drowsy suns;

Seeing Earth a slimy spine,

Heaven a space for winging tons.

Farther, deeper, may you read,

Have you sight for things afield,

Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,

Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;

Showing a kind face and sweet:

Look you with the soul you see ’t.

Glory narrowing to grace,

Grace to glory magnified,

Following that will you embrace

Close in arms or aëry wide.

Banished is the white Foam-born

Not from here, nor under ban

Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn,

Pipings of the reedy Pan.

Loved of Earth of old they were,

Loving did interpret her;

And the sterner worship bars

None whom Song has made her stars.

You have seen the huntress moon

Radiantly facing dawn,

Dusky meads between them strewn

Glimmering like downy awn:

Argent Westward glows the hunt,

East the blush about to climb;

One another fair they front,

Transient, yet outshine the time;

Even as dewlight off the rose

In the mind a jewel sows.

Thus opposing grandeurs live

Here if Beauty be their dower;

Doth she of her spirit give,

Fleetingness will spare her flower.

This is in the tune we play,

Which no spring of strength would quell;

In subduing does not slay;

Guides the channel, guards the well:

Tempered holds the young blood-heat,

Yet through measured grave accord,

Hears the heart of wildness beat

Like a centaur’s hoof on sward.

Drink the sense the notes infuse,

You a larger self will find:

Sweetest fellowship ensues

With the creatures of your kind.

Ay, and Love, if Love it be

Flaming over _I_ and _ME_,

Love meet they who do not shove

Cravings in the van of Love.

Courtly dames are here to woo,

Knowing love if it be true.

Reverence the blossom-shoot

Fervently, they are the fruit.

Mark them stepping, hear them talk,

Goddess, is no myth inane,

You will say of those who walk

In the woods of Westermain.

Waters that from throat and thigh

Dart the sun his arrows back;

Leaves that on a woodland sigh

Chat of secret things no lack;

Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,

Bare or veiled they move sincere;

Not by slavish terrors tripped;

Being anew in nature dipped,

Growths of what they step on, these;

With the roots the grace of trees.

Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,

For a tyrant’s flattered pride,

Mind, which nourished not by light,

Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:

Whereof are strange tales to tell;

Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.

Here the ancient battle ends,

Joining two astonished friends,

Who the kiss can give and take

With more warmth than in that world

Where the tiger claws the snake,

Snake her tiger clasps infurled,

And the issue of their fight

Peoples lands in snarling plight.

Here her splendid beast she leads

Silken-leashed and decked with weeds

Wild as he, but breathing faint

Sweetness of unfelt constraint.

Love, the great volcano, flings

Fires of lower Earth to sky;

Love, the sole permitted, sings

Sovereignly of _ME_ and _I_.

Bowers he has of sacred shade,

Spaces of superb parade,

Voiceful ... But bring you a note

Wrangling, howsoe’er remote,

Discords out of discord spin

Round and round derisive din:

Sudden will a pallor pant

Chill at screeches miscreant;

Owls or spectres, thick they flee;

Nightmare upon horror broods;

Hooded laughter, monkish glee,

Gaps the vital air.

Enter these enchanted woods

You who dare.

IV.

You must love the light so well

That no darkness will seem fell.

Love it so you could accost

Fellowly a livid ghost.

Whish! the phantom wisps away,

Owns him smoke to cocks of day.

In your breast the light must burn

Fed of you, like corn in quern

Ever plumping while the wheel

Speeds the mill and drains the meal.

Light to light sees little strange,

Only features heavenly new;

Then you touch the nerve of Change,

Then of Earth you have the clue;

Then her two-sexed meanings melt

Through you, wed the thought and felt.

Sameness locks no scurfy pond

Here for Custom, crazy-fond:

Change is on the wing to bud

Rose in brain from rose in blood.

Wisdom throbbing shall you see

Central in complexity;

From her pasture ’mid the beasts

Rise to her ethereal feasts,

Not, though lightnings track your wit

Starward, scorning them you quit:

For be sure the bravest wing

Preens it in our common spring,

Thence along the vault to soar,

You with others, gathering more,

Glad of more, till you reject

Your proud title of elect,

Perilous even here, while few

Roam the arched greenwood with you.

Heed that snare.

Muffled by his cavern-cowl

Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,

Who was lord ere light you drank,

And lest blood of knightly rank

Stream, let not your fair princess

Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,

Watches keenly there.

Oft has he been riven; slain

Is no force in Westermain.

Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,

Put his fangs to uses, tame,

Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,

How to cure him sick and lame.

Much restricted, much enringed,

Much he frets, the hooked and winged,

Never known to spare.

’Tis enough: the name of Sage

Hits no thing in nature, nought;

Man the least, save when grave Age

From yon Dragon guards his thought.

Eye him when you hearken dumb

To what words from Wisdom come.

When she says how few are by

Listening to her, eye his eye.

Him shall Change, transforming late,

Wonderously renovate.

Hug himself the creature may:

What he hugs is loathed decay.

Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!

Change will strip his armour off;

Make of him who was all maw,

Inly only thrilling-shrewd,

Such a servant as none saw

Through his days of dragonhood.

Days when growling o’er his bone,

Sharpened he for mine and thine;

Sensitive within alone;

Scaly as in clefts of pine.

Change, the strongest son of Life,

Has the Spirit here to wife.

Lo, their young of vivid breed,

Bear the lights that onward speed,

Threading thickets, mounting glades,

Up the verdurous colonnades,

Round the fluttered curves, and down,

Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown,

Whither, in her central space,

Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase.

Fount unresting, Lure divine!

There meet all: too late look most.

Fire in water hued as wine,

Springs amid a shadowy host;

Circled: one close-headed mob,

Breathless, scanning divers heaps

Where a Heart begins to throb,

Where it ceases, slow, with leaps

And ’tis very strange, ’tis said,

How you spy in each of them

Semblance of that Dragon red,

As the oak in bracken-stem.

And ’tis said how each and each:

Which commences, which subsides:

First my Dragon! doth beseech

Her who food for all provides.

And she answers with no sign;

Utters neither yea nor nay;

Fires the water hued as wine;

Kneads another spark in clay.

Terror is about her hid;

Silence of the thunders locked;

Lightnings lining the shut lid;

Fixity on quaking rocked.

Lo, you look at Flow and Drought

Interflashed and interwrought:

Ended is begun, begun

Ended, quick as torrents run.

Young Impulsion spouts to sink;

Luridness and lustre link;

’Tis your come and go of breath;

Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;

Each of either reaped and sown:

Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.

See you so? your senses drift;

’Tis a shuttle weaving swift.

Look with spirit past the sense,

Spirit shines in permanence.

That is She, the view of whom

Is the dust within the tomb,

Is the inner blush above,

Look to loathe, or look to love;

Think her Lump, or know her Flame;

Dread her scourge, or read her aim;

Shoot your hungers from their nerve;

Or, in her example, serve.

Some have found her sitting grave;

Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,

Hurling dust of fool and knave

In a hissing smithy’s jet.

More it were not well to speak;

Burn to see, you need but seek.

Once beheld she gives the key

Airing every doorway, she.

Little can you stop or steer

Ere of her you are the sëer.

On the surface she will witch,

Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze

Under, and the soul is rich

Past computing, past amaze.

Then is courage that endures

Even her awful tremble yours.

Then, the reflex of that Fount

Spied below, with Reason mount

Lordly and a quenchless force,

Lighting Pain to its mad source,

Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,

Shot through all its phantom shapes.

Then your spirit will perceive

Fleshly seed of fleshly sins;

Where the passions interweave,

How the serpent tangle spins

Of the sense of Earth misprised,

Brainlessly unrecognised;

She being Spirit in her clods,

Footway to the God of Gods.

Then for you are pleasures pure,

Sureties as the stars are sure:

Not the wanton beckoning flags

Which, of flattery and delight,

Wax to the grim Habit-Hags

Riding souls of men to night:

Pleasures that through blood run sane,

Quickening spirit from the brain.

Each of each in sequent birth,

Blood and brain and spirit, three

(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),

Join for true felicity.

Are they parted, then expect

Some one sailing will be wrecked:

Separate hunting are they sped,

Scan the morsel coveted.

Earth that Triad is: she hides

Joy from him who that divides;

Showers it when the three are one

Glassing her in union.

Earth your haven, Earth your helm,

You command a double realm;

Labouring here to pay your debt,

Till your little sun shall set;

Leaving her the future task:

Loving her too well to ask.

Eglantine that climbs the yew,

She her darkest wreathes for those

Knowing her the Ever-new,

And themselves the kin o’ the rose.

Life, the chisel, axe and sword,

Wield who have her depths explored:

Life, the dream, shall be their robe,

Large as air about the globe;

Life, the question, hear its cry

Echoed with concordant Why;

Life, the small self-dragon ramped,

Thrill for service to be stamped.

Ay, and over every height

Life for them shall wave a wand:

That, the last, where sits affright,

Homely shows the stream beyond.

Love the light and be its lynx,

You will track her and attain;

Read her as no cruel Sphinx

In the woods of Westermain.

Daily fresh the woods are ranged;

Glooms which otherwhere appal,

Sounded: here, their worths exchanged,

Urban joins with pastoral:

Little lost, save what may drop

Husk-like, and the mind preserves.

Natural overgrowths they lop,

Yet from nature neither swerves,

Trained or savage: for this cause:

Of our Earth they ply the laws,

Have in Earth their feeding root,

Mind of man and bent of brute.

Hear that song; both wild and ruled.

Hear it: is it wail or mirth?

Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?

None, and all: it springs of Earth.

O but hear it! ’tis the mind;

Mind that with deep Earth unites,

Round the solid trunk to wind

Rings of clasping parasites.

Music have you there to feed

Simplest and most soaring need.

Free to wind, and in desire

Winding, they to her attached

Feel the trunk a spring of fire,

And ascend to heights unmatched,

Whence the tidal world is viewed

As a sea of windy wheat,

Momently black, barren, rude;

Golden-brown, for harvest meet,

Dragon-reaped from folly-sown;

Bride-like to the sickle-blade:

Quick it varies, while the moan,

Moan of a sad creature strayed,

Chiefly is its voice. So flesh

Conjures tempest-flails to thresh

Good from worthless. Some clear lamps

Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.

Monster is it still, and blind,

Fit but to be led by Pain.

Glance we at the paths behind,

Fruitful sight has Westermain.

There we laboured, and in turn

Forward our blown lamps discern,

As you see on the dark deep

Far the loftier billows leap,

Foam for beacon bear.

Hither, hither, if you will,

Drink instruction, or instil,

Run the woods like vernal sap,

Crying, hail to luminousness!

But have care.

In yourself may lurk the trap:

On conditions they caress.

Here you meet the light invoked:

Here is never secret cloaked.

Doubt you with the monster’s fry

All his orbit may exclude;

Are you of the stiff, the dry,

Cursing the not understood;

Grasp you with the monster’s claws;

Govern with his truncheon-saws;

Hate, the shadow of a grain;

You are lost in Westermain:

Earthward swoops a vulture sun,

Nighted upon carrion:

Straightway venom winecups shout

Toasts to One whose eyes are out:

Flowers along the reeling floor

Drip henbane and hellebore:

Beauty, of her tresses shorn,

Shrieks as nature’s maniac:

Hideousness on hoof and horn

Tumbles, yapping in her track:

Haggard Wisdom, stately once,

Leers fantastical and trips:

Allegory drums the sconce,

Impiousness nibblenips.

Imp that dances, imp that flits,

Imp o’ the demon-growing girl,

Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pits

Round you, and with them you whirl

Fast where pours the fountain-rout

Out of Him whose eyes are out:

Multitudes on multitudes,

Drenched in wallowing devilry:

And you ask where you may be,

In what reek of a lair

Given to bones and ogre-broods:

And they yell you Where.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN.

I.

Last night returning from my twilight walk

I met the gray mist Death, whose eyeless brow

Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk

He reached me flowers as from a withered bough:

O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

II.

Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.

Another stood by me, a shape in stone,

Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,

And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:

O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

III.

Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.

Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,

And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,

Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s decline:

Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES.

I.

He who has looked upon Earth

Deeper than flower and fruit,

Losing some hue of his mirth,

As the tree striking rock at the root,

Unto him shall the marvellous tale

Of Callistes more humanly come

With the touch on his breast than a hail

From the markets that hum.

II.

Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.

’Twas the season when wintertide,

In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,

Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,

By light throwing shallow shade,

Between the beam and the gloom,

Sicilian Enna, whose Maid

Such aspect wears in her bloom

Underneath since the Charioteer

Of Darkness whirled her away,

On a reaped afternoon of the year,

Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.

O and naked of her, all dust,

The majestic Mother and Nurse,

Ringing cries to the God, the Just,

Curled the land with the blight of her curse:

Recollected of this glad isle

Still quaking. But now more fair,

And momently fraying the while

The veil of the shadows there,

Soft Enna that prostrate grief

Sang through, and revealed round the vines,

Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,

The wheat-blades tripping in lines,

A hue unillumined by sun

Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts:

All the penetrable dun

Of the Morn ere she mounts.

III.

Nor had saffron and sapphire and red

Waved aloft to their sisters below,

When gaped by the rock-channel head

Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow,

Reverberant over the plain:

A sound oft fearfully swung

For the coming of wrathful rain:

And forth, like the dragon-tongue

Of a fire beaten flat by the gale,

But more as the smoke to behold,

A chariot burst. Then a wail

Quivered high of the love that would fold

Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,

Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed,

And the team of the chariot swart

Reared in marble, the six, dismayed,

Like hoofs that by night plashing sea

Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:

For, lo, the Great Mother, She!

And Callistes gazed, he gave

His eyeballs up to the sight:

The embrace of the Twain, of whom

To men are their day, their night,

Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:

Our Lady of the Sheaves

And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet

Of Enna: he saw through leaves

The Mother and Daughter meet.

They stood by the chariot-wheel,

Embraced, very tall, most like

Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel

Down their shivering columns and strike

Head to head, crossing throats: and apart,

For the feast of the look, they drew,

Which Darkness no longer could thwart;

And they broke together anew,

Exulting to tears, flower and bud.

But the mate of the Rayless was grave:

She smiled like Sleep on its flood,

That washes of all we crave:

Like the trance of eyes awake

And the spirit enshrouded, she cast

The wan underworld on the lake.

They were so, and they passed.

IV.

He tells it, who knew the law

Upon mortals: he stood alive

Declaring that this he saw:

He could see, and survive.

V.

Now the youth was not ware of the beams

With the grasses intertwined,

For each thing seen, as in dreams,

Came stepping to rear through his mind,

Till it struck his remembered prayer

To be witness of this which had flown

Like a smoke melted thinner than air,

That the vacancy doth disown.

And viewing a maiden, he thought

It might now be morn, and afar

Within him the memory wrought

Of a something that slipped from the car

When those, the august, moved by:

Perchance a scarf, and perchance

This maiden. She did not fly,

Nor started at his advance:

She looked, as when infinite thirst

Pants pausing to bless the springs,

Refreshed, unsated. Then first

He trembled with awe of the things

He had seen; and he did transfer,

Divining and doubting in turn,

His reverence unto her;

Nor asked what he crouched to learn:

The whence of her, whither, and why

Her presence there, and her name,

Her parentage: under which sky

Her birth, and how hither she came,

So young, a virgin, alone,

Unfriended, having no fear,

As Oreads have; no moan,

Like the lost upon earth; no tear;

Not a sign of the torch in the blood,

Though her stature had reached the height

When mantles a tender rud

In maids that of youths have sight,

If maids of our seed they be:

For he said: A glad vision art thou!

And she answered him: Thou to me!

As men utter a vow.

VI.

Then said she, quick as the cries

Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!

And Helios rose in her eyes,

That were full as the dew-balls bright,

Relucent to him as dews

Unshaded. Breathing, she sent

Her voice to the God of the Muse,

And along the vale it went,

Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill;

Sweet, but no young maid’s throat:

The echo beyond the hill

Ran falling on half the note:

And under the shaken ground

Where the Hundred-headed groans

By the roots of great Ætna bound,

As of him were hollow tones

Of wondering roared: a tale

Repeated to sunless halls.

But now off the face of the vale

Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls

Of the lake’s rock-head were gold,

And the breast of the lake, that swell

Of the crestless long wave rolled

To shore-bubble, pebble and shell.

A morning of radiant lids

O’er the dance of the earth opened wide:

The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids

Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,

Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:

There was milk, honey, music to make:

Up their branches the little birds billed:

Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.

O shining in sunlight, chief

After water and water’s caress,

Was the young bronze-orange leaf,

That clung to the tree as a tress,

Shooting lucid tendrils to wed

With the vine-hook tree or pole,

Like Arachne launched out on her thread.

Then the maiden her dusky stole

In the span of the black-starred zone,

Gathered up for her footing fleet.

As one that had toil of her own

She followed the lines of wheat

Tripping straight through the field, green blades,

To the groves of olive gray,

Downy-gray, golden-tinged: and to glades

Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray

In a night, like the snow-packed storm:

Pear, apple, almond, plum:

Not wintry now: pushing, warm!

And she touched them with finger and thumb,

As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,

Recounting again and again,

Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,

With the meaning known to men.

For hours in the track of the plough

And the pruning-knife she stepped,

And of how the seed works, and of how

Yields the soil, she seemed adept.

Then she murmured that name of the dearth,

The Beneficent, Hers, who bade

Our husbandmen sow for the birth

Of the grain making earth full glad.

She murmured that Other’s: the dirge

Of life-light: for whose dark lap

Our locks are clipped on the verge

Of the realm where runs no sap.

She said: We have looked on both!

And her eyes had a wavering beam

Of various lights, like the froth

Of the storm-swollen ravine stream

In flame of the bolt. What links

Were these which had made him her friend?

He eyed her, as one who drinks,

And would drink to the end.

VII.

Now the meadows with crocus besprent,

And the asphodel woodsides she left,

And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent

Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft

That tutors the torrent-brook,

Delaying its forceful spleen

With many a wind and crook

Through rock to the broad ravine.

By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,

And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,

And the sun-loving lizards and snakes

On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid

Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,

At a snap of twig or bark

In the track of the foreign foot-fall,

She climbed to the pine-forest dark,

Overbrowing an emerald chine

Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath,

Running poplar and cypress to pine,

The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,

Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,

The citadel watching the bay,

The bay with the town in its arms,

The town shining white as the spray

Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,

Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,

White-ringed, as the midday flock,

Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.

That hour of the piercing shaft

Transfixes bough-shadows, confused

In veins of fire, and she laughed,

With her quiet mouth amused,

To see the whole flock, adroop,

Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,

Imperceptibly filling the loop

Of its shade at a slant of sun.

The pipes under pent of the crag,

Where the goatherds in piping recline,

Have whimsical stops, burst and flag

Uncorrected as outstretched swine:

For the fingers are slack and unsure,

And the wind issues querulous:--thorns

And snakes!--but she listened demure,

Comparing day’s music with morn’s.

Of the gentle spirit that slips

From the bark of the tree she discoursed,

And of her of the wells, whose lips

Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.

And much of the sacred loon,

The frolic, the Goatfoot God,

For stories of indolent noon

In the pineforest’s odorous nod,

She questioned, not knowing: he can

Be waspish, irascible, rude,

He is oftener friendly to man,

And ever to beasts and their brood.

For the which did she love him well,

She said, and his pipes of the reed,

His twitched lips puffing to tell

In music his tears and his need,

Against the sharp catch of his hurt.

Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak,

Nor spake as the schools, to divert,

But fondly, perceiving him weak

Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear,

A holiness, horn and heel.

All this she had learnt in her ear

From Callistes, and taught him to feel.

Yea, the solemn divinity flushed

Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast,

And the steeps where the cataract rushed,

And the wilds where the forest is priest,

Were his temple to clothe him in awe,

While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read

The haunts of the beak and the claw

As plain as the land of bread,

But Cities and martial States,

Whither soon the youth veered his theme,

Were impervious barrier-gates

To her: and that ship, a trireme,

Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,

Though he dwelt on the message it bore

Of sceptre and sword and lance

To the bee-swarms black on the shore,

Which were audible almost,

So black they were. It befel

That he called up the warrior host

Of the Song pouring hydromel

In thunder, the wide-winged Song,

And he named with his boyish pride

The heroes, the noble throng

Past Acheron now, foul tide!

With his joy of the godlike band

And the verse divine, he named

The chiefs pressing hot on the strand,

Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.

The fleetfoot and ireful; the King;

Him, the prompter in stratagem,

Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,

O Muse! But she cried: Not of them!

She breathed as if breath had failed,

And her eyes, while she bade him desist,

Held the lost-to-light ghosts gray-mailed,

As you see the gray river-mist

Hold shapes on the yonder bank.

A moment her body waned,

The light of her sprang and sank:

Clear feature, and she breathed deep.

She wore the wan smile he had seen,

As the flow of the river of Sleep,

On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.

In sunlight she craved to bask,

Saying: Life! And who was she? who?

Of what issue? He dared not ask,

For that partly he knew.

VIII.

A noise of the hollow ground

Turned the eye to the ear in debate:

Not the soft overflowing of sound

Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,

Barely swayed to some whispers remote,

Some swarming whispers above:

Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,

Hush-hushing the nested-dove:

It was not the pines, or the rout

Oft heard from mid-forest in chase,

But the long muffled roar of a shout

Subterranean. Sharp grew her face.

She rose, yet not moved by affright;

’Twas rather good haste to use

Her holiday of delight

In the beams of the God of the Muse.

And the steeps of the forest she crossed,

On its dry red sheddings and cones

Up the paths by roots green-mossed,

Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.

Then out where the brook-torrent starts

To her leap, and from bend to curve

A hurrying elbow darts

For the instant-glancing swerve,

Decisive, with violent will

In the action formed, like hers,

The maiden’s, ascending; and still

Ascending, the bud of the furze,

The broom, and all blue-berried shoots

Of stubborn and prickly kind,

The juniper flat on its roots,

The dwarf rhododaphne, behind

She left, and the mountain sheep

Far behind, goat, herbage and flower.

The island was hers, and the deep,

All heaven, a golden hour.

Then with wonderful voice that rang

Through air as the swan’s nigh death,

Of the glory of Light she sang,

She sang of the rapture of Breath.

Nor ever, says he who heard,

Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,

From bosom of singer or bird

A sweetness thus rich of the God

Whose harmonies always are sane.

She sang of furrow and seed,

The burial, birth of the grain,

The growth, and the showers that feed,

And the green blades waxing mature

For the husbandman’s armful brown.

O, the song in its burden ran pure,

And burden to song was a crown.

Callistes, a singer, skilled

In the gift he could measure and praise,

By a rival’s art was thrilled,

Though she sang but a Song of Days,

Where the husbandman’s toil and strife

Little varies to strife and toil:

But the milky kernel of life,

With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil!

The song did give him to eat:

Gave the first rapt vision of Good,

And the fresh young sense of Sweet:

The grace of the battle for food,

With the issue Earth cannot refuse

When men to their labour are sworn.

’Twas a song of the God of the Muse

To the forehead of Morn.

IX.

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:

Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:

The fishing-boat havenward sailed,

Bent abeam, with a whitened track,

Surprised, fast hauling the net

As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.

She said: Is it night? O not yet!

With a travail of thoughts in her look.

The mountain heaved up to its peak:

Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl:

Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.

Night? but never so fell a scowl

Wore night, nor the sky since then

When ocean ran swallowing shore,

And the Gods looked down for men.

Broke tempest with that stern roar

Never yet, save when black on the whirl

Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.

Then the youth and the shuddering girl,

Dim as shades in the angry shower,

Joined hands and descended a maze

Of the paths that were racing alive

Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,

Incessant, with sound of a hive.

The height was a fountain-urn

Pouring streams, and the whole solid height

Leaped, chasing at every turn

The pair in one spirit of flight

To the folding pine-forest. Yet here,

Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,

The stillness bred spectral fear

Of the awfulness ranging without,

And imminent. Downward they fled,

From under the haunted roof,

To the valley aquake with the tread

Of an iron-resounding hoof,

As of legions of thunderful horse

Broken loose and in line tramping hard.

For the rage of a hungry force

Roamed blind of its mark over sward:

They saw it rush dense in the cloak

Of its travelling swathe of steam;

All the vale through a thin thread-smoke

Was thrown back to distance extreme:

And dull the full breast of it blinked,

Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er,

Diminished, in strangeness distinct,

Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:

An Enna of fields beyond sun,

Out of light, in a lurid web,

And the traversing fury spun

Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb;

As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,

Retire, and in ravenous greed,

Inveterate, swell its return.

Up and down, as if wringing from speed

Sights that made the unsighted appear,

Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.

Lo, a sea upon land held career

Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.

Callistes of home and escape

Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.

She gazed at the Void of shape,

She put her white hand to his reach,

Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.

And divided from day, from night,

From air that is breath, stood she,

Like the vale, out of light.

X.

Then again in disorderly words

He muttered of home, and was mute,

With the heart of the cowering birds

Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot.

He gave her some redness that streamed

Through her limbs in a flitting glow.

The sigh of our life she seemed,

The bliss of it clothing in woe.

Frailer than flower when the round

Of the sickle encircles it: strong

To tell of the things profound,

Our inmost uttering song,

Unspoken. So stood she awhile

In the gloom of the terror afield,

And the silence about her smile

Said more than of tongue is revealed.

I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:

It said: and not joylessly shone

The remembrance of light through the screen

Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.

She led the youth trembling, appalled,

To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise

Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called,

And the hurricane blackness had eyes.

It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt.

Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side

Would have clasped her and dared a revolt

Sacrilegious as ever defied

High Olympus, but vainly for strength

His compassionate heart shook a frame

Stricken rigid to ice all its length.

On amain the black traveller came.

Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,

Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,

And the lord of the steeds was in form

He, the God of implacable brow,

Darkness: he: he in person: he raged

Through the wave like a boar of the wilds

From the hunters and hounds disengaged,

And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s.

Horror melted in anguish to hear.

Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path

Of the terrible Charioteer,

With the foam and torn features of wrath,

Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;

And the steeds clove it, rushing at land

Like the teeth of the famished at meat.

Then he swept out his hand.

XI.

This, no more, doth Callistes recall:

He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,

On the maiden the chariot fall,

As a thundercloud swings on the moon.

Forth, free of the deluge, one cry

From the vanishing gallop rose clear:

And: Skiágeneia! the sky

Rang: Skiágeneia! the sphere.

And she left him therewith, to rejoice,

Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,

The life of their day in her voice,

Left her life in her name.

XII.

Now the valley in ruin of fields

And fair meadowland, showing at eve

Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields

After battle, bade men believe

That no other than wrathfullest God

Had been loose on her beautiful breast,

Where the flowery grass was clod,

Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.

The valley, discreet in grief,

Disclosed but the open truth,

And Enna had hope of the sheaf:

There was none for the desolate youth

Devoted to mourn and to crave.

Of the secret he had divined

Of his friend of a day would he rave:

How for light of our earth she pined:

For the olive, the vine and the wheat,

Burning through with inherited fire:

And when Mother went Mother to meet,

She was prompted by simple desire

In the day-destined car to have place

At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,

And be drawn to the dear earth’s face.

She was fire for the blue and the green

Of our earth, dark fire; athirst

As a seed of her bosom for dawn,

White air that had robed and nursed

Her mother. Now was she gone

With the Silent, the God without tear,

Like a bud peeping out of its sheath

To be sundered and stamped with the sere.

And Callistes to her beneath,

As she to our beams, extinct,

Strained arms: he was shade of her shade

In division so were they linked.

But the song which had betrayed

Her flight to the cavernous ear

For its own keenly wakeful: that song

Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer

Of the husbandman’s heart made strong

Through droughts and deluging rains

With his faith in the Great Mother’s love:

O the joy of the breath she sustains,

And the lyre of the light above,

And the first rapt vision of Good,

And the fresh young sense of Sweet:

That song the youth ever pursued

In the track of her footing fleet.

For men to be profited much

By her day upon earth did he sing:

Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch

On the blossoms of tender Spring,

Immortal: and how in her soul

She is with them, and tearless abides,

Folding grain of a love for one goal

In patience, past flowing of tides.

And if unto him she was tears,

He wept not: he wasted within:

Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,

Only crazed where the cravings begin.

Our Lady of Gifts prized he less

Than her issue in darkness: the dim

Lost Skiágeneia’s caress

Of our earth made it richest for him.

And for that was a curse on him raised,

And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,

Though the bounteous Giver be praised

Through the island with rites of old time

Exceedingly fervent, and reaped

Veneration for teachings devout,

Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped,

And the wine-presses ruddily spout,

And the olive and apple are juice

At a touch light as hers lost below.

Whatsoever to men is of use

Sprang his worship of them who bestow,

In a measure of songs unexcelled:

But that soul loving earth and the sun

From her home of the shadows he held

For his beacon where beam there is none:

And to join her, or have her brought back,

In his frenzy the singer would call,

Till he followed where never was track,

On the path trod of all.

THE LARK ASCENDING.

He rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound

Of many links without a break,

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,

All intervolved and spreading wide,

Like water-dimples down a tide

Where ripple ripple overcurls

And eddy into eddy whirls;

A press of hurried notes that run

So fleet they scarce are more than one,

Yet changeingly the trills repeat

And linger ringing while they fleet,

Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear

To her beyond the handmaid ear,

Who sits beside our inner springs,

Too often dry for this he brings,

Which seems the very jet of earth

At sight of sun, her music’s mirth,

As up he wings the spiral stair,

A song of light, and pierces air

With fountain ardour, fountain play,

To reach the shining tops of day,

And drink in everything discerned

An ecstasy to music turned,

Impelled by what his happy bill

Disperses; drinking, showering still,

Unthinking save that he may give

His voice the outlet, there to live

Renewed in endless notes of glee,

So thirsty of his voice is he,

For all to hear and all to know

That he is joy, awake, aglow,

The tumult of the heart to hear

Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,

And know the pleasure sprinkled bright

By simple singing of delight,

Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,

Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained

Without a break, without a fall,

Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,

Perennial, quavering up the chord

Like myriad dews of sunny sward

That trembling into fulness shine,

And sparkle dropping argentine;

Such wooing as the ear receives

From zephyr caught in choric leaves

Of aspens when their chattering net

Is flushed to white with shivers wet;

And such the water-spirit’s chime

On mountain heights in morning’s prime,

Too freshly sweet to seem excess,

Too animate to need a stress;

But wider over many heads

The starry voice ascending spreads,

Awakening, as it waxes thin,

The best in us to him akin;

And every face to watch him raised,

Puts on the light of children praised,

So rich our human pleasure ripes

When sweetness on sincereness pipes,

Though nought be promised from the seas,

But only a soft-ruffling breeze

Sweep glittering on a still content,

Serenity in ravishment.

For singing till his heaven fills,

’Tis love of earth that he instils,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup,

And he the wine which overflows

To lift us with him as he goes:

The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine

He is, the hills, the human line,

The meadows green, the fallows brown,

The dreams of labour in the town;

He sings the sap, the quickened veins,

The wedding song of sun and rains

He is, the dance of children, thanks

Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,

And eye of violets while they breathe;

All these the circling song will wreathe,

And you shall hear the herb and tree,

The better heart of men shall see,

Shall feel celestially, as long

As you crave nothing save the song.

Was never voice of ours could say

Our inmost in the sweetest way,

Like yonder voice aloft, and link

All hearers in the song they drink:

Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,

Our passion is too full in flood,

We want the key of his wild note

Of truthful in a tuneful throat,

The song seraphically free

Of taint of personality,

So pure that it salutes the suns

The voice of one for millions,

In whom the millions rejoice

For giving their one spirit voice.

Yet men have we, whom we revere,

Now names, and men still housing here,

Whose lives, by many a battle-dint

Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,

Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet

For song our highest heaven to greet:

Whom heavenly singing gives us new,

Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,

From firmest base to farthest leap,

Because their love of Earth is deep,

And they are warriors in accord

With life to serve and pass reward,

So touching purest and so heard

In the brain’s reflex of yon bird:

Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,

Through self-forgetfulness divine,

In them, that song aloft maintains,

To fill the sky and thrill the plains

With showerings drawn from human stores,

As he to silence nearer soars,

Extends the world at wings and dome,

More spacious making more our home,

Till lost on his aërial rings

In light, and then the fancy sings.

PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS.

I.

When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,

Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,

Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,

Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!

Mindful were the shepherds as now the noon severe

Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,

How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,

Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

II.

Chirping none the scarlet cicalas crouched in ranks:

Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk gray:

Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:

Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.

Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,

Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:

Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,

Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s gate.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

III.

Water, first of singers, o’er rocky mount and mead,

First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,

Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,

Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.

Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,

Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,

Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool

Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

IV.

Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields:

Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:

Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,

Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!

Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins

Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice rose:

Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;

Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

V.

Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft:

Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s teeth

Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;

Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!

Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped

Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new gold.

Hung the hooky beak up aloft the arrowhead

Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

VI.

Tales we drank of giants at war with gods above:

Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air!

Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love

Ease because the creature was all too fair.

Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good

Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast.

He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood

Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

VII.

Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known,

Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.

Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,

After he had taught how the sweet sounds came.

Stretched about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see

Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.

So began contention to give delight and be

Excellent in things aimed to make like kind.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

VIII.

You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats,

You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!

Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!

Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!

You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,

You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:

He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!

Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

MELAMPUS.

I.

With love exceeding a simple love of the things

That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;

Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings

From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;

Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;

Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;

The good physician Melampus, loving them all,

Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.

II.

For him the woods were a home and gave him the key

Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.

The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we

To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours:

And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined

Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows

In them, in us, from the source by man unattained

Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.

III.

And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast

Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,

The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best

Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape:

For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk,

As babes they learn where her motherly help is great:

They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,

And need they medical antidotes find them straight.

IV.

Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,

Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain

Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods

Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane

The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns

To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life

Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns

Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.

V.

Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,

A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret

That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,

Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set

Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue

Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears

A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,

He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!

VI.

A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech

Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves

To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;

He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.

No fears have I of a man who goes with his head

To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand:

I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;

I pipe him much for his good could he understand.

VII.