Wrapped in the swathing bands of mother Earth,
Long his descent, his pedigree obscure,
To his inheritance of strife and dearth.
LVIII
As from the ground the earth worm crawls to light,
Speechless and blind, from antenatal night
Man rose on earth, the bitter strife began—
Man rose on earth, and craft did conquer might:
LIX
Since cruel Nature, careless of her child,
Left him an outcast on the worldly wild,
Cradled in space, and serpent-swathed in time,
And rocked to sleep by death, or dream-beguiled.
LX
I saw him in his cradle at the first,
With beasts and savage passions, rudely nursed,
To snatch uncertain life from Nature’s hand,
Niggard or prodigal, through best and worst;
LXI
He blindly bore the burden of his day
With his dumb kindred of the primal clay,
Whence drew his blood brute instincts, fiery lusts,
That waste his substance still, and tear and slay.
LXII
A babbling child he sits upon Time’s sand,
To the mute sky he cries, he would command;
Heedless he plays with serpents and with fire,
With life—a toy in his unconscious hand.
LXIII
Yet hath he held it from that early day,
Though Death did ever plot to snatch away,
And snared his tottering steps with dangers thick,
Prowling in countless shapes beside his way.
LXIV
Sore was the strife, and little was life’s boon
Between the toiling sun and wasting moon,
With lurid pleasures fierce, and horrid rite,
Blind day outworn, the long long sleep won soon.
LXV
Still Nature, prodigal, did cast his seed
O’er frozen sea, or burning zone, to breed—
Where hand or foot could cling, or heart could beat—
Man’s kind on earth, since sprung to flower, or weed.
LXVI
The rod of Want, the school of bitter Need,
Taught him Life’s letters, still so hard to read:
Use gave him skill, and skill new sense to use,
He bent the bow, he bade the ploughshare speed.
LXVII
Bread for his body and his soul he sought,
Raiment to cloak him from the cold he bought
Of ruthless nature, toiling brain and hand;
Past all the gates of death his race he brought.
LXVIII
Lo! infant Thought and Art, Man’s children fair,
First tottering from the cave, his primal lair;
Babes in the world’s wood wandering, to and fro,
To touch man’s sordid heart, and lift his care.
LXIX
Since the first hunter graved his dirk and horn,
Or in the shepherd state was music born—
When Song lay dreaming in the whispering reed,
Ere she discoursed unto the golden morn.
LXX
Born of life’s travail, Virtues, sweet, benign,
Grew like fair daughters of a race divine—
The pillars of Man’s house, before whose rod
Evil and Good, as twisted snakes, untwine.
LXXI
But to his roof had fled pale palsied Fear,
The child of Death and Night, but fathered there,
And nursed by Ignorance beside the hearth
To cloud his house with all her mystic gear.
LXXII
Demon and fetish painted she to scare,
And veils against the light did weave and wear;
Yea, Art and Thought, man’s firstlings, fain would bind
From birth to serve her will, her yoke to bear.
LXXIII
So Man, held hand and foot, a slave behold
Between the soldier-king and priest of old;
By force and fraud bound fast as by two chains—
How long, O Man, how long shall they thee hold?
LXXIV
“How long?” again I cried,—but Silence kept
Her finger on the lips of Hope: still slept,
Like clouds upon the mountains, dreams untold,
And Freedom on the tomb of ages wept.
LXXV
Yet, like a watcher by a beacon fire,
Amid the lurid gloom and shadows dire,
Wrapped in the cloak of darkness, fold on fold,
I marked through flames portentous shapes aspire.
* * * * *
LXXVI
Slow streamed the progress vast of human kind,
Out of the primal dark I watched it wind,
Like a full river gleaming towards the sun,
Crested with light, but lost in mists behind.
LXXVII
I saw the towering crests of ancient state
Arise and pass, and bow themselves to fate:
Captors of men bound still to conquering Time,
And in their triumph drawn to death’s dark gate.
LXXVIII
Colossal Egypt on her car rolled by,
Dragged by her crowd of slaves, with lash and cry;
Who now, a slave herself, is bought and sold,
And buried in the sand her pride doth lie.
LXXIX
Athens, supreme, with burnished helm and spear,
In art and arms and wisdom shining clear,
To other hands hath passed the lamp of life,
And weep the muses o’er her sculptured bier.
LXXX
There, clothed as with a robe with power and pride,
Great Rome upon her triumph car did ride
Over the necks of nations and of men,
Unto whose broken wheel still souls are tied.
LXXXI
All these I saw, as on time’s painted page
The figure of man’s life from age to age
Was figured, like his life of years and hours,
And glassed his face—an infant or a mage.
LXXXII
In boyhood bright beneath the Grecian sun,
I saw him stand, intent his race to run—
To touch the golden goal of thought and art,
And daring all man since hath dared or done.
LXXXIII
The apple of his life to Beauty’s hand
Freely he gave, and she so dowered his land,
That still that fond world takes it for her glass,
And gazes, leaving knowledge and command.
LXXXIV
In youth a mystic shadow o’er him fell:
He touched the lover’s lute beneath the spell;
He fought, a knight-at-arms, for lady’s grace;
He prayed a monk austere in haunted cell;
LXXXV
Till Nature roused him from his dreams again,
And Reason broke the chains which bound him then;
New knowledge, power, and beauty filled life’s cup,
And rolled the round world to his manhood’s ken.
LXXXVI
Yet old before his time he sits, out-worn
With words and wars, upon the seat of scorn;
Weary of life’s vain round, love’s fruitless chase,
False fortune’s whirling wheel, fame’s empty horn.
LXXXVII
For here, in living shape and semblance, shone
The passions and the powers man’s soul hath won
Through all his ages, like the starry signs
Where through life’s year revolves the sleepless sun.
LXXXVIII
The pattern and the form of thoughts untold;
The book of being wrought in runes of gold;
The twisted net that holds all gain and loss
The birth-clothes cover, or the shroud doth fold.
LXXXIX
The moving tapestry of human date,
Where lives for threads are crossed in love or hate,
Between the narrow beams of dark and day—
Time’s shifting loom, the toil of threefold fate.
XC
At their eternal task the sisters dread,
Who spin and weave and shear the slender thread
With all its dyes, that doth sustain and fill
This tangled web from pole to pole outspread.
XCI
The arras that doth clothe the house of Time,
Stained with the hues of all man’s bliss and crime:—
The chequered pageant of the changing earth
Still through its folds doth ever sink and climb:
XCII
Along the street of days and nights where rolls
The world’s car onwards and its throng of souls,
Like captives in a conqueror’s triumph chained—
Compelled by fortune’s wheel that none controls.
XCIII
The glittering triumph of youth’s golden dreams,
And ardent manhood in the zenith, beams
Of love, and fame, and power that guides the car,
And slow-pulsed eld still warmed in their last gleams.
XCIV
Masqued with the masquers in that endless race
The hours go by at grief’s or passion’s pace,
And cloaked alike in poverty or pride,
Through all life’s masks death shows his ashen face.
XCV
The shadow clinging to the feet of life,
As unto day doth cleave his silent wife—
Sower and reaper in the self-same field—
Twin spirits folded in immortal strife.
XCVI
There good and ill, brothers and bitter foes,
Do strike the balance of man’s joys and woes;
And in the traffic of the world’s exchange
Oft ill as good, and good as evil goes:
XCVII
Two knights that battle for Truth’s painted targe,
With flashing spears upon time’s river marge,
Where, like the rushing waters, rise their steeds,
And crash together in tremendous charge.
XCVIII
Their broken harness lies upon time’s plain,
Their wars’ receding tide doth cast the slain,
As shifts the battle ground from age to age,
And earth its grim memorials retain.
XCIX
These things I marked, as in a moving show
Before mine eyes life passed thro’ gloom and glow—
The trappings and the garniture that decked
This house of shadows still from room to room.
* * * * *
C
Man was; man is; but who shall count the gain,
Or measure out the sum of all life’s pain?
So to the play my thought made interlude,
And still to fate’s sad music sang refrain.
CI
Man is, but who can count his being’s cost?
Who metes the water from the pitcher lost?
The squandered corn upon the sower’s path?
Cast in time’s scale hath good or ill the most?
CII
Each out of Babel answers for himself,
As justice he doth love, or gilded pelf:
Who in the school of ignorance should read
Truth’s tattered book on thriftless nature’s shelf?
CIII
Unlettered children, hopeless to the task,
And dumb before life’s riddles, still we ask;
But labour, sole, is answered—patient thought,
And science still doth nature make unmask.
CIV
Ah! what is life?—A coin but stamped and cast
Into time’s treasury, counted, weighed, and pass’d,
Staked in the fateful race for weal or woe,
And, gold or silver, changed for lead at last?
CV
While dread Necessity, great Nature’s nurse,
Who rules man’s way for better or for worse,
Still watching by death’s bed and birth’s doth sit
To pour life’s blessing or to brand its curse.
CVI
Between the flickering lamps of day and night,
Cloaked in her age-worn mantle care-bedight,
Behold her shape, inexorable, vast—
Blind arbitress o’er changeling wrong and right:
CVII
Who pain, and bliss, and passion, hope, despair,
Casts in life’s cup, she, cunning, mixes fair,
And gives, as to a babe, man’s helpless lips,
Drawing delicious poison unaware.
CVIII
Then what is life? Well might we ask again—
A spirit from the cup that fills the brain
With teeming images of love and power,
And high desires ’tis impotent to gain?
CIX
Protean life which man doth vain pursue
From youth’s green meads to age’s mountains blue—
The painted fly a breathless child doth chase—
Through all its changing shapes to change but true:
CX
This quivering bubble, dyed with every stain
Of splendour and of passion, why in vain—
Ah! why?—It sails the summer air—
An iridescent moment lost in rain?
* * * * *
CXI
But still the cup is passed swift as of yore,
As life each new come guest doth pledge and pour
The priceless wine into the fragile glass,
Once to the brim filled up, and filled no more.
CXII
Some drink with eager thirst; some waste their store,
Or drop by drop still watch it shrinking sore;
Some, ere the vital juice hath passed their lips,
The frail cup shatter on the marble floor.
CXIII
Yet high the feast-tide rolled, and those who fell
Few missed, nor empty long their place did dwell,
For great the press is at earth’s table round,
And still new streams that company doth swell.
CXIV
Ah! bitter was the strife, and hot the breath,
Of envy, hate, their smiling masks beneath,
And baleful fires I saw in beauties’ eyes,
And rosy ensigns veiled the cheek of death.
CXV
While grovelled for the crumbs a famished crew,
As starvèd hounds for what man careless threw,
On wastrel bread and refuse fain to feed,
Or none, as deadlier their struggle grew.
CXVI
For very life at all too dear a cost
As slaves these toiled, while those as counters tost
Their lives for gold, or gold for lives exchanged,
Indifferent, so they did win, who lost.
CXVII
For those the roses, and for these the rue,
In man’s unequal measures paid undue:
Some murmured loud, some patient bore their fate—
The poor were many, and the rich were few.
CXVIII
Most weary of the sordid throng I grew,
And thence a little space apart withdrew,
Weary of life, that it this thing should be,
Nor other lot for man that hope foreknew.
CXIX
So to the portal dark I turned again,
And there, as at the first, the Sisters twain—
She who the fruitless garland hung aloft,
She on the shattered stone that wept in vain.
CXX
But in the forecourt flashed the fountain’s stream,
The wintry tree beside its glittering beam
Bore now a cloud of blossom, red and pale,
As if bright spring had touched it in a dream.
* * * * *
CXXI
Alone I stood in that still house of Time,
All swept and bare it was as at the prime,
And but the sea-wind peopled it with sighs,
And, heard afar, the slow waves’ measured chime.
CXXII
I saw Time’s shape colossal rising stark
Against the endless waves, receding dark
Beneath a rising dawn that never rose
Upon the sea, where yet would Hope embark.
CXXIII
Yea! Hope arose and drew the painted veil
Of things that are, and furled it like a sail,
And on her gilded prow I stood at gaze
On golden sands beyond the morning pale.
CXXIV
And from the face of Earth were drawn away,
Like clinging mists that do obscure the day,
The shadows and the fears which have oppressed
Her children long beneath their baneful sway.
CXXV
As new created in her sculptured sphere,
I saw her rise again translucent, clear,
Robed in the kindling splendour of the sun,
Renascent from the sea of crystal air,
CXXVI
That limpid broke on her rejoicing shore,
Where life’s reviving stream welled evermore
From Nature’s fount, through teeming veins that bred
Man’s countless kin from one redundant core.
CXXVII
I saw the dragons slain of lust and greed,
Of gold and power, that waste to serve their need
Poor human lives; and till earth’s fruitful fields
With fire and sword, and bloody vengeance breed.
CXXVIII
No more the nations armed did lie and wait,
Like bandits fierce, to spoil and desolate
What each did hold most dear—no dogs of war
At tyrant’s beck, let loose to maim and bait.
CXXIX
No peoples blind by blinder leaders led
Into the pit of shame, or daily fed
Like swine on empty husks and sophistries,
And frozen custom giving stones for bread.
CXXX
No selfish castes in internecine strife
Fought like the beasts to win a worthless life;
No ruthless commerce cheapened hope and health,
Or held to slavish throats starvation’s knife.
CXXXI
No rights usurped, against the common good
Breathed out defiance, and the claims withstood
Of labour and of life, where all by labour lived:
No bonds were there but bonds of brotherhood.
CXXXII
No temple-gloom obscured the lucent skies,
Nor incense fume of faith’s dead sacrifice,
No baneful toil made cities desolate
With hellish smoke at morn and eve to rise.
CXXXIII
No morbid anchorite with famished creed
Would man persuade to sell his nature’s need
Of joy—no fevered dream of future fate
Would snatch life’s brimming cup, his human meed.
CXXXIV
Not there blind dogma flung the bitter fruit
Of discord, burning red, or hate uproot
The flower of innocence, or fraud beguiled,
Or force laid iron hands on man and brute.
CXXXV
I saw regenerate Man, as stainless, free—
A child again on mother Nature’s knee;
His wistful eyes did scan the starry spheres,
His hand outstretched to life’s new-flowering tree.
CXXXVI
The Ages kneeling at his feet did bear
The treasure of their thoughts in caskets rare—
The fire-tried gold of science, and the lore
Of wisdom, bought with costly toil and care.
CXXXVII
The thoughts each moment from the quivering brain
That spring like flames, or, born with labour pain,
Embodied there I saw—quick thronging spirits fair
From whose inwoven wings light fell like summer rain.
CXXXVIII
And each in hand did bear the emblems bright
Wherein do art and poesy delight,
And mysteries of science, hid in time,
Her wands of power and globes of knowledge-light
CXXXIX
For, more than men, lives Man, through death alive;
Slow moves the progress vast, still cry and strive
New hopes, new thoughts for utterance and for act,
And Use, and Strength, and Beauty yet survive.
CXL
Yea, beauty’s image graven on the mind
Beats with the pulse of life, in life enshrined;
Irradiant she moves in love’s own flame,
And joy with her, and the sweet graces kind.
CXLI
Like Venus flashing from the lucent sea,
Or, from the earth, the flower Persephone;
She that was buried, lo! is born again,
And time her resurrection brings to be.
CXLII
Daughter of earth yet is not mortal she,
Though time hath shook the blossoms from her tree,
Her spring returns, her summer and her fruit,
And Art by her hath Immortality.
* * * * *
CXLIII
I saw, I heard no more, for sleep, like rain
Fell soft at last upon my restless brain;
For Sleep in all the pageant made the last,
And with her poppies swept mine eyes again:
CXLIV
Yea, far upon her wings then I was borne
All dreamlessly till, like a dream, the morn
Broke on my sense and sight, and swift and loud,
Day, like a hunter, blew his golden horn.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: ·FLORA’S·FEAST· ·A·MASQVE·OF·FLOWERS]
THE sullen winter nearly spent,
Queen Flora to her garden went
To call the flowers from their long sleep,
The year’s glad festivals to keep:
And one by one each making bold
Their silken vesture to unfold,
And peeping forth to meet the sun,
The long procession is begun:—
The snowdrops, first upon the scene,
White-crested braved King Frost’s demesne:
The little Crocus reaches up
To catch a sunbeam in his cup:
The Daffodil his trumpet blows,
And after spring a-hunting goes:
Anemones rode out the gale,
Frail wind-flowers fluttered, red and pale:
The Violet and the Primrose dame,
With modest mien but hearts a-flame:
Green kirtled from the brooklet’s fold,
The rustic maid Marsh Marigold:
The “Lady smocks all silver white”
The milkmaids of the meadows bright,
Where shining Buttercups abound
Among the Cowslips on the ground.
Here, Lords and Ladies of the wood,
With shaking spear and riding hood:
Black knight-at-arms, the white-plumed Thorn;
In pomp the Crown Imperial borne.
While Tulips lift the banner red,
Or fill their cups with fire instead:
Sweet Hyacinths their bells did ring,
To swell the music of the spring.
With blazoned pennons from each spear
The Iris and the Flag appear:
Sweet masking May, in white or red,
Her snowy cloud of blossom spread:
And Chaucer’s Daisy, small and sweet—
“Si douce est la Margarete.”
The little Lilies of the Vale,
White ladies delicate and pale.
Great Peonies in crimson pride,
And budding ones in green that hide:
Fair Columbines that drew the car
Of Venus from her distant star:
And Love’s own flower, the blushing Rose,
The Queen of all the garden close:
And Roses from the hedgerow wild,
Behind their thorns that faintly smiled:
And from the cressy brook’s green side,
“Forget-me-Not,” a small voice cried.
Here stately Lilies pale and proud,
In vesture pure as summer cloud;
Or, burning like an orange flame,
With torches borne aloft they came.
The Monk that wears the Hood of blue,
The Belles of Canterbury, too:
Wide Oxeyes in the meads that gaze
On scarlet Poppy heads ablaze:
Ere Evening Primrose lights her lamp,
A beacon to the garden camp:
When Lilies of the Day are done,
And sunk the golden westering sun:
Fresh Pinks cast incense on the air,
In fluttering garments fringed and rare.
Their cousin from the corn in blue;
Corn Marigold of golden hue.
The fond Convolvulus still clings,
The Honeysuckle spreads his wings:
The Hollyhock his standard high,
Rears proudly to the autumn sky:
The blazing Sunflower, black and bold,
Burns yet to win the sunset’s gold,
That, reddening on the Triton’s spear
Foretells the waning of the year:
When Lilies, turned to Tigers, blaze
Amid the garden’s tangled maze;
Where still in triumph, stiff with gold,
The rich Chrysanthemums unfold;
Ere doth the floral pageant close
With one last flower—a Christmas Rose.
[Illustration: ·FROM·HELLAS·HOMEWARD·]
FROM sea to sea our steamer glides,
The Adriatic laves her sides,
Her engines, deep pulsating, beat,
A throbbing heart of fire and heat;
Its freight of human hearts to bear
With good and ill as time doth wear.
Still changeful as the changing seas
Beneath the wayward winds’ increase,
Or like the bird that eastward flies,
Our thoughts fare backward with our eyes
Which still the blue Ægean holds;
Round Grecian isles its cincture folds,
Where on Sunium falls the light,
And carves anew the columns white;
Where the gulf of Nauplia fills
The sculptured sides of Argos’ hills;
And through their gates thrown back do show
Fair gardens rich and trees arow,
Where yet in waking dreams one sees
The Apples of Hesperides,
With but the gleaming scales between
Of water in the sunsets’ sheen.
Past the twinkling lights that show,
Like stars to mock celestial glow,
And light us back to antique ground—
To Tiryn’s buried ruins found,
And Agamemnon’s house of old,
With treasures of Mykenæ’s gold,
Where stands the lion-guarded gate,
To keep the city’s shattered state,
Among the lonely hills forgot
Of ages long, as it were not.
Hill and dale dissolving glide,
As the winged wheels swiftly slide,
By Nemæan crags that still
The legendary echoes fill.
Or by Corinth’s fortressed steep,
And shattered temple, still that keep
The record of her ancient fame,
Her glory past into a name.
What oracle from Delphi hear?
What message from Apollo bear?
Speaks no more the god of light?
Doth he no word to men indite?
Yea, day by day his arrows’ flight
Behold! Dividing dark and bright,
Till they strike Athena’s fanes—
Still upon the rock she reigns,
Though, alas! Her house of state,
Empty is, and desolate:
Fair still her shrine of marble shines,
Whenas the sun-like moon defines
With opal lights and shadows blue
That well nigh build the temple new,
Which day by day o’erlays with gold
As in the sun’s bright flame of old.
Many a morn and eve have we
Watched him rise and set at sea,
His foaming steeds with tossing crests
Turn fire the watery way they breast,
Where dolphins leaping drive the spray
Before them in their wanton play.
What if the ancient gods no more
Are seen of men on sea or shore?
What if a sterner creed and cold
Did drive them from the Temple’s fold?
Or pride of rule, or curse of gold,
With wasting care that makes youth old,
Do blind men’s eyes to all save gain,
And beauty pleads with them in vain?
Though greed would all the earth degrade
And see the world a market made,
And drive the peasant from his soil,
And lay the yoke of hopeless toil
Upon the millions seeking bread,
To art and love and beauty dead;
Not all has gone while these have hold
In some true hearts not bought and sold.
Though fallen, Aphrodité’s shrines
Still through the opal wave she shines,
Or, veiled in light doth sail the blue
Where breaks the foam in iris hue;
And still from dangerous rocks is heard
The siren’s song Odysseus feared,
Far wandering from his sea-girt home
In Ithaca across the foam.
The same stars shine above his head
As watch us on our rocking bed;
As turned his thoughts to child and wife,
And homestead dear, and pleasant life;
So, tossing on the houseless seas
Sweet thoughts of home our hearts do please.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
·RONDEAUS·
·RONDELS·
&
TRIOLET·
]
RONDEAU—BEYOND THE VERGE
BEYOND the verge of night dost sigh
To watch the glow of reddening sky,
While sleep the worldlings wrapt in grey
Of mist and dreams that round them play
In semblance of reality?
Thought’s craggy cliff is steep to try,
That walls the future, yet Hope’s eye
Doth catch the breaking beacon ray
Beyond the verge.
Now gleam and glance in gold array
Bright vanes on towers that meet half-way
Like spears and torches held on high,
And flashing as the wind sweeps by—
The herald’s fleet of that new day
Beyond the verge.
RONDEAU—THE OLD AND NEW
THE Old and New together meet,
Around the world, across the street,
As neighbours, side by side, that grew;
As friends, or foes, as false or true,
Whose tale the heedless hours repeat.
Two stems entwined to part and greet,
From one root springing, bitter-sweet
With flower and fruitage, seed to strew,
The Old and New.
Since, serpent-twined, their knowledge knew
The heart of man, between the two,
With clinging hands and winged feet
He stands the sport of Time’s deceit,
The parti-coloured shield in view—
The Old and New.
RONDEAU—ACROSS THE FIELDS
ACROSS the fields like swallows fly
Sweet thoughts and sad of days gone by,
From Life’s broad highway turned away,
Like children thought and memory play,
Nor heed Time’s scythe though grass be high.
Beneath the blue and shoreless sky,
Time is but told when seedlings dry
By love’s light breath are blown like spray
Across the fields.
Now comes the scent of fallen hay,
And flowers bestrew the foot-worn clay,
While summer breathes a passing sigh,
As westward rolls the day’s gold eye,
And Time with Labour ends his day
Across the fields.
RONDEAU—IN LOVE’S DISPORT